I recently watched the developer livestream where they presented aircraft like the Globemaster and the H225. While they showcased the planes in detail, they used alwas the classic msfs20 way for showing interiors. Currently the walking mode, seems limited to the exterior, which makes actions like accessing the laptop in the cargo hold of the Boeing feel a bit unnatural.
For a more immersive experience, I think it would be amazing if we could also explore the interiors of large aircraft with the walking mode. Imagine boarding through the open door, walking to the cockpit, or even getting up mid-flight to wander through the cabin. This would add so much to the experience, especially for beautifully detailed planes like the FlyByWire A380, which I hope will be available in MSFS24.
Having an interior walking mode without complex keybindings would make the experience feel more natural and intuitive. Would anyone else like to see this feature added?
I guess they didn’t currently implement that not because they won’t like to have it but as it would basically force all add-on developers to create proper boundaries (collisions) inside the interiors.
Otherwise the players avatar would fall through the floor or through walls. Stairs and ladders on the interior would also be tricky to handle.
Simplifying that however would anyway turn it into the drone cam we already have imho.
I see your point. but I see it as with the simulated electrical system, hydraulic system, etc. that come with the new SIM. Every developer can use this in their addons, but they don’t have to.
I want developers to have as large a platform as possible with as many tools as possible. This is the only way it works in the Cloud and on the Xbox.
The more possibilities arise with the SIM, the more challanges/work on developer side comes.
This is probably the dark side of technological progress. 20 years ago a 2D cockpit without FMC was enough.
Thanks to Working Title we have vnav in the standard c172 :).
My dream is to walk through my DC6 and Robert from PMDG probably has to work overtime for that.
The difficulty here is that aircraft have two models - interior & exterior. When one changes from the External to Cockpit view, you are also changing which model is being rendered (AFAIK).
One way to “boarding through the open door” would be to have a just a single model that encompassed everything, but I suspect that for a number of reasons - such as performance and memory size - this is impractical. It would also likely require major architectural changes in the code, so I’d not expect to see this (if implemented) until the next version of MSFS after 2024.
More detailed interiors for walking and discovering means less memory for series S users and more unhappy customers with CTDS and black avionics.
Personally im all for making sure the basics work for everyone first before adding use once features for the very few
I suspect you’re right on the multiple models thing (in fact I’m certain of it from an optimization standpoint) but curiously I’m fairly certain that the cockpit of the Citation in 2020 is fully rendered while in exterior camera views, to the extent that the MFDs are visibly still operating/changing. Perhaps it depends on aircraft and how visible certain interior components are from the exterior?
Hi @PJKGames - yes, I’ve seen glass cockpits in some aircraft rendered in 2020 in the External view. I suspect, however, that they are rendered at a fairly low level (LOD) to avoid impacting performance. I’ve noticed that one can only zoom in so far in External view.
I’m not sure if it’s a cockpit model being displayed inside, or a simplified rendering of the interior that is part of the Exterior model. I suspect the latter, as I don’t think one can “nest” one model within another, but I have not delved into the 2024 SDK too deeply at this point.
I agree with this suggestion. The walkaround mode should also allow movement inside the aircraft, such as exploring the cabin or cockpit. A practical solution would be to have separate modes for interior and exterior walkarounds, with an option to switch between them using a keybind or door interaction. This approach would handle LOD differences while letting players explore both areas effectively, since different parts of the aircraft are loaded in different levels of detail depending on which camera mode you are engaged in.
Is there a way to get inside the interior when the cockpit door blocks the cockpit camera? Like the ES-30, I can see it has an interior but I can’t get the cockpit camera in there to make some presets. Same for a few other aircraft.
TLDR: Implementation like in the bus simulator to get up from the seat and also change to captain and first officer or at least a clickspot at the cockpit door to get the cockpit view. And please put a working staircase on the plane or the possibility to use the stairs at the jetway to get into the cabin.
Unfortunately, I find the implementation of these features very poor. It might make a bit more sense for small planes, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement, especially for airliners. For example, there isn’t even a staircase on the plane, even if it was just decorative, it would be a bit better. But most of all I would have liked the character’s function to be used much more, like actually using it in the cabin instead of using the camera like now. To me, it just feels like this feature hasn’t been thought through properly or the potential has simply been wasted. I would prefer an implementation like in Bus Simulator, for example, where you can get up from your seat and walk around everywhere or sit back down on the seat and steer the bus. I can imagine that it’s a bit more complicated in the flight simulator, but imagine that you would enter the plane via a passenger boarding bridge or a staircase (I’d also like an animation at the beginning that shows you walking into the plane with a crew). Then you enter the cockpit and choose where you sit and how the views are set. If it’s really due to the complexity and computing power, it could be worked around a bit by having the character at least enter the cabin and the cockpit door have a clickspot, which you can then use to enter the cockpit with ctrl + c, as is currently the case.
I like the feature and I think it has potential, but I think it still needs a lot of development.
And please do not let us spawn outside unless you give us the option to change it in the settings.
Every time I fly an airliner I wish I could board and deboard through the main door and walk dawn the stairs to do my walkaround, or maybe take the jetway and have a quick tour through the terminal (Now that everytime we have more and more detailed terminal interiors).
Over time this will only get more and more importance.
Don’t let this topic sink.
Agree and we need more votes for this. It’s incredible that it was not integrated since the beginning. It’s very frustrating to have to click on a cockpit door and suddenly being teleported on ground and looking back seeing the doors already closed
Being able to leave the doors open and walk freely in the plane would be a dream and how it should have been implemented since the beginning.