Here’s a recap of tonight’s events - it’s going to be long. For perspective: I am a GA pilot based in the US, I hold a commercial rating, airplane single and multi-engine land, instrument rated, and a ground instructor. I stream on Twitch, focusing mainly on GA simming, which was the goal tonight.
I began downloading the sim at approximately 2230Z, which put me in the queue. 95 minutes later, at 0005Z, it went into the loading/unpacking screen, which took about 20 minutes.
After that, I was in. Long story short, I had about zero issues all night - I consider myself pretty lucky. I had a vanilla installation - no third party content at all. Premium deluxe edition.
I went in and customized my personal appearance - I think the options are good, but we need facial hair! I then worked on getting my controls setup. I have a pretty extensive and modular simpit and I’ll spare the details - all I was looking for was to get simple yoke, rudder, and throttles set up. The control configurator UI was kind of a mess, not intuitive at all. Despite that, I kind of got it setup.
I started my stream at about 0100Z. Immediately, I selected the 172 at Auburn, CA (KAUN). On the world map I noticed that my world hub edits are still in place, very cool! We used live weather.
We started with the preflight walkaround. I have been asking for this feature from day one and love that it’s here. The implementation could use some work - it’s not always clear what you have to click, how close you have to get, etc. This could use some streamlining. Also, no fuel sumping or visually checking the tanks? Tsk. At the time, I didn’t know that was a hotkey to squat my avatar, that will be helpful going forward.
Once we got the preflight done, it was into the plane. I didn’t have my switch boxes set up, so everything was mouseclick. I had to tweak the engine control setup several times - again showing that the controller UI needs work. One buggy item - the trim. Any time I moved the trim wheel, it re-centered, at least until I got the airplane turned on, then it stayed. That shouldn’t be the case. Also, can I not remove the EFB suction mount?
Once we fired up the engine, I taxied out. Immediately I noticed there were no taxiway lights. Well, none of the procedurally-drawn taxiway lights were there, however, the ones I manually put in using light strings were. We took off from runway 7. The runway numbers are still hilariously small. Grrr. As I rotated, I noticed the aircraft was very sensitive in pitch, but that was likely because I had customized my settings on the old sim. I did one bouncy circuit in the pattern and quickly desensitized the elevator control. The second circuit was much better. I did notice that the Cessna is really draggy, like overly so - I could be at idle, full flaps, 10° nose down and 1000fpm descent and I’m still slowing down.
I then headed out to the practice area. Along the way, I started to notice the new scenery effects and clouds. I have to say, the clouds look a lot better. Many layers, a solid patch of altocumulus in the distance. The nearby cumulus could use work - should be more solid and wider-based and less transparent. The shadows and overall lighting looks amazing. Way better than 2020.
I did some slow flight, which was fine, but then I did a power-off stall, and for the first time, did NOT get the nasty wing drop at the break. Yay! I then did a power-on stall and it did wing drop, but to the right. Hmm. I thought maybe I wasn’t coordinated, so this time I did it again, but added a bunch of left rudder (incorrect but intentionally so), and it still dropped the right wing. That’s not good. I then tried to enter a spin and could not get it to do it, no matter what I tried, until I finally got it to do about three turns before it pulled out of it (despite the yoke still being in my lap and pro-spin pedal to the floor). Hmm.
We then flew up to Truckee Airport (KTRK). Along the way I noticed some amazing things in the scenery. The trees overall look more realistic, but there are still many that are way too big. There are sequoias all over the sierras in the sim, but those only exists in a few small groves in reality. Way overdone. And there are still too many treeless ridgelines irl that have trees in the sim. There should be a krumholz transition zone with progressively smaller trees, until they end at the alpine treeline.
However, we flew by several vertical mountainsides and the vertical faces are 1000x better. Very well done there! Overall, the mountain scenery is much more immersive, more to come.
After landing at Truckee, we switched to an X-Cub and turned off live weather (it was pretty windy up there). As we took off, I noticed a few things - one, again, 400’ trees right next to the runway at Truckee. No. The XCub is also way too sensitive in rudder on the ground. It behaves as if it weighs nothing at all. But what’s weird is I should have been getting a lot more static RPM, even at that density altitude. It took forever to wind up and felt anemic.
We flew over Brockway Summit to Lake Tahoe. I noticed again that the trees are just way too big. But an interesting thing happened, as we crossed the summit over into Kings Beach, I noticed that there was a sharp tree boundary between the “urban” area, where the trees were actually more appropriate for a non-alpine city (too small), but bounded by the giant trees, showing a sharp delineation. This needs to be smoothed - the trees in town should be a bit bigger and the ones outside of town a lot smaller.
We then flew by Mt Rose into Reno. I noticed there aren’t any ski lifts (I need to get Mamu’s project lifts installed, stat!). As we went into Reno-Tahoe international, I noticed that y’all still haven’t fixed the runway markings. There isn’t a single runway in the world that has one stripe 500’ threshold markings, followed by fixed distance, followed by two, two, and one, one threshold marking. That 500 footer should be three per side in the US, or they should all be one per side as you’d find in other places.
Once again on the ground, the rudder efficacy is way too strong. We took off again and flew by downtown Reno, it looked decent. Recognizable.
After flying up into the hills and seeing some misplaced buildings, we flew into Spanish Springs airport, a dirt strip north of Reno. I finally figured out how to get external views going. I have to say, this is where the sim really started to shine - I finally exited and engaged walking mode.
Before I continue, let me beg - please don’t make the mere act of opening the door an exit or entrance. There must be another step to do so - we have doors open all the time in GA aircraft and it doesn’t mean we’re transitioning in or out.
I walked away from the aircraft, up the hill and started getting excited for all the possibilities. I’ve been playing a lot of RDR2 and almost expected to see jackrabbits or rattlesnakes but saw no fauna - maybe there a setting I missed. I LOVE the ground detail - rocks, bushes, grass. One negative - I use track IR and when I turned my head, it also changed my walking direction. That should be independent. I should be able to look around freely while walking in the direction I’m using on my controller.
I walked into a neighborhood. The trees were WAY oversized once again. I compared it with a street view of the same street and it was okay for a sim. The houses still do not look like houses one would find in the US - that could be addressed. I tried messing with the seasons - the deciduous trees did change appropriately, but the grass did not change color. Flowers did appear and disappear, though.
Back in the plane, I departed to the west, but on the ground. Yeah, this baby four-wheels!. I love the interaction with all the rocks, etc. I also noticed all the dirt that started to appear on the wheels and the airframe. I finally found a place to take off. And headed west again towards the mountains.
Along the way, I discovered that the replay mode works! My stream audience thought this was fantastic. And a flyby view (for replay only) - a great step forward! Didn’t play with this much, but it’s an exciting development. I found a lake to dip my wheels into, but unfortunately I was exterior view and misjudged the water - ended up upside-down (crash detection off). However, the airplane just stayed on top of the water. The water had no effect on the accumulated dirt. I was able to slew it upright again, put it on land and took off.
As I flew back into California, I visited the picturesque Sierra Valley. As I flew through Beckwourth pass, I noticed the traffic driving westbound on both edges of the road, and eastbound splitting them down the middle. Oops. There was also a lot of fast traffic intersecting from small rural dirt roads into the highway. This was a bit unnerving.
In the valley, I landed in a few ag fields (alfalfa mostly). Here I noticed the deformation of the ground. Being November, it’s probably fine that I was carving 6” ruts in the field, but I tried other seasons, and it did the same - this would only make sense if the field was wet. Also, the field did change a bit in the seasons, but it never greened up in the spring/summer (it’s irrigated, so it should).
I found another field with big hay bales in it, which was awesome to see (and they’re also seasonal), but the airplane clipped right through them. Boo. And where, may I ask, are all the cows?
I took off and headed up to Bodad airstrip. The area surrounding Bodad underwent a big fire a few years ago, but the scenery did not reflect that. I took an opportunity to get out of the plane and get “lost” in the woods. There’s too much grass on the ground under the dense forest canopy. Needs more shrubs, dirt, and pine needles. Also the Sequoias again. Scale those way back. But such a neat feature.
I also discovered how to turn on the EFB while walking. Here’s the deal: the plane has a position marker on the map, but there is no position marker for the avatar as we walk away. Please add that, and maybe a compass we can use to wayfind! Also maybe some markers we can drop. This is a huge opportunity!
After somehow finding my way back to my plane, we went up in the air. I honored a request to go to New York City. So I jumped in the new Hrumman Albatross (finally!!!) at Teterboro and flew into the city at night. The night lighting, the twinkling looks fantastic! The skyscrapers of Manhattan not so much. I turned daytime back on and landed on the Hudson. The water effects are better, but still too local. The Albatross should also kick up a much bigger spray. The wheels also keep spinning the the retracted position while it’s drifting on the water. But man, that’s going to be a fun plane once I get more into it. I did exit and found I could walk on water. Don’t tell my wife.
All in all, despite the news about everybody having issues today, I was fortunate to have very little problems. I will say that my performance never dropped, barely stuttered at all - a vast improvement over 2020. Kudos for all the optimizations!
Summary:
The good: shadows and lighting. Albatross exists. Avatar and walkaround mode. Vertical terrain.
Vegetation and ground interactions. Replay. Stall behavior (mostly). Clouds. Overall performance.
Buggy: click spot interactions on the walkaround. Draggier than expected airframes. Albatross wheels spinning
The bad: oversized trees, sharp tree boundaries. The controller UI. Spin behavior. Opening the door is automatically in/out. Road traffic.
Wishlist: cleaning the airplane with water interactions, facial hair, avatar shows in efb map, cows, grass that changes color seasonally, an extra step to get in/out of the plane when you open the door, Track IR independent view direction when walking. Fuel sumping and inspection interaction
Still? Runway markings still wrong. Mixture is still too sensitive and causes too much power loss when rich at altitude. Airport buildings (hangars) still way too tall
What the? Taxiway lights disappeared
Will stream again tomorrow (Wednesday) to check out career modes!