However, in the flight across the Channel, ATC does instruct you to fly the “ILS13 approach, OSDIT transition”, so you can load that approach into the G1000.
And now we can get the ILS frequencies directly from the VFR map.
As for the Sitka approach, once again the bug you’re reporting is in the Known Issues:
In the Sitka Approach (FSX), upon approach to the runway, the narrator tells users to turn around when they don’t have to. The user can ignore this instruction.
Admittedly, the Activities Issues list is a hefty one .
Yeah I ended up just loading the approach on the G1000 but a less experienced simmer probably wouldn’t work out they could do that - and that still doesn’t give me a plate I can use to brief the approach. FSX had the approach plates included for these kinds of missions which I think should definitely be done in MSFS as well.
I would happily pay for a selection of FSX missions remade to the same standard or better as they were in FSX or brand new one’s like the concepts i made a couple years back now. With unique voice acting, triggers that work, objectives to hit etc.
FSX came out 16yrs ago. We should be progressing with the missions not going backwards. The Top Gun DLC had more of the right idea.
I must admit that I was very much looking forward to seeing the resurgence of proper missions in MSFS. I was (perhaps naively) hoping that with the announcement that we would be receiving missions from the franchise’s past, they were implying that the sim’s missions system would be receiving some much needed upgrades. As we now are aware, that was not the case.
This is not a post intended to overly criticize the missions that we received. I have not played all of them. Of the ones I have played, I can tell that they were made to be authentic, to the extent that the current mission system would allow, which is unfortunately not quite as good as me and most likely many others were hoping for.
Several key features are missing that would be essential for taking these missions from glorified bush trips to proper missions. I have ordered them based on what I perceive to be the most important at the top, to least important at the bottom, but I think ALL of these are important for a functioning missions system in the sim.
MISSION-ONLY special scenery, effects, and scriptable AI traffic. Simply put, some scenery that might be necessary for storytelling purposes during a mission may be entirely fictional in nature and therefore it is not desireable to have it be present in the “real world” during free flight as well. One example is the secret island in a certain FSX mission. Another example would be a campfire marking the location of a stranded individual who the player must rescue. It would not make sense for that to be present during free flight either. Finally, I feel like AI traffic is pretty self explanatory. In many missions, it is desireable or necessary for storytelling for there to be aircraft other than the player’s flying around and doing things. Currently this feature is missing and its absence severely limits the type and quality of missions that can be produced.
Multi-station custom weather. Live weather is impractical for use in missions because it is not going to be the same every time, and presets are of limited usefulness because they are global and this prevents the weather from appearing to change throughout the mission as the player moves from one location to the next. Missions that are predicated on having a difficult instrument approach in bad weather currently require the weather to be equally bad everywhere which is not realistic or desirable in many cases. The solution is to make weather settings that are adjustable on a per-region basis, and have smooth(ish) transitions between regions. This would also be an improvement for free flight as well.
Player choice dialog boxes. A box that pops up at a point in a mission where a player must make a decision in order to continue. This is seen in FSX missions where a risky rescue can be attempted but the co-pilot leaves it up to you. By involving the player in the most important decisions about the mission, the immersion level increases.
A TOGGLEABLE mission compass and pointer. We have a mission pointer of sorts, but it is not optional and cannot be toggled off if the user desires that level of challenge. The mission compass from the FSX days is MIA as of now. Being able to select one or both of these features to be turned on or off provided a good amount of scalability to the difficulty of missions. It can satisfy the hardcore simmer as well as the casual player who just wants to go on an adventure.
A proper mission objective tracker and reward system a la FSX. One of the more charming aspects of FSX was that you could look back on your profile and see your collection of little tokens and mementos from the missions you completed. Some missions gave multiple rewards based on the completion of optional side objectives, etc. A fairly trivial feature on its face, but it helped add a sense of accomplishment to completing a mission, and the various tchotchkes often had a decent amount of character or significance to them (a patch, medal, or pair of wings, a note from a mission character, a cup of steaming hot cocoa after flying through a snowstorm, etc.)
Improvements to failure modeling. Failures in game are fairly limited and some don’t seem to provide expected results. For example, “engine fire” does not produce any visible fire effects, nor does it actually do anything. Admittedly this less of a mission specific feature but considering that many missions from FSX made use of the failures system to increase the difficulty, it would be nice to see some improvements in that regard.
A message log so players can look back at previous dialogs that were said during the mission. This feature can help people who forget what exactly they were supposed to be doing or didn’t quite catch the last part of that last radio call.
There’s a chance that some, if not all, of the missing/incomplete features I described are currently in the pipeline, which would be great. However, on the off chance they aren’t… I hope that maybe they can be? Pretty please? For the good of both the official Asobo missions and the community of eager potential third party developers out there who are looking to create their own adventures, I hope we can get some more of these features implemented, alongside a proper mission editor as well.
EDIT: Added player choice dialog boxes because I forgot about that one. Also considering making this into a wishlist post.
I did, then it just randomly started working an hour or so later. Sorry I can’t give a better explanation other than I experienced the same thing and it eventuallywent away on its own.
THIS should be put in the wish list. The thing I was most excited for the 40th was the DC-3 (so I could do some bush trips with it) and the missions. And well, the missions are lacking like coming into “bad weather” is just some wind gusts. I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to be able to see the runway with conditions… I would love for these missions to be more engaging than they are. That was the original intention of putting them in to begin with.
Nothing gets done unless people vote on it. No every opinion or report is going to be just jumped on, it needs to be logged, and it needs to be voted on to make sure it is important to people. So if nothing ever gets put in a wishlist, nothing will ever get done.
Now as far as these missions making the sim unstable, I wouldn’t go that far. Are you crashing while trying to do missions? Its just there is no way currently to program other aircraft, there is no way to alter weather, etc. These are all additions that need to be made to the bush trip functionality. It is disappointing its not there? Yes. But I can’t exactly say that it is considered that the sim is unstable.
I tried the spruce goose, had a nice flight in a big circle and landed it again, nice flight but there was no guidance or mission.
I crashed the Wright flier before the first post lol.
I Wanted to do the Lindbergh Trans Atlantic flight in leg installments 45 mins to an hour every day but I think I overshot north of the first check point (I think it’s around Providence) and reached the coast because the compass waypoint direction never changed from 069 to 066 (I might have that mixed up from memory) and when doing a 27 min hour flight I want to make sure it will register each leg. Too bad the map can’t be zoomed in and out although I understand that is cheating considering how Charles did it. (I can’t drive more than 12-14 hours myself). Oh, and ended up over a decommissioned naval airport and could not find the NZW I saw on the map by google to help figure out where I was. the runway there would be impossible to use…
I tried the Grand Canyon heli tour followed all the waypoints and made my way back to the last one and the marker disappeared so I couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to land and I ran out of fuel, it puts me back to the last marker which is quite bit away with no fuel (forgot my shortcut to auto refuel). might try again sometime.
Only talking about the Ekranoplan in Aleutian Cargo Run - but no more Caspian Sea Monster as AI-Ship included? That was one my favourite from FSX - why didn’t you included it?
Btw. I don’t like that there are no more differences between standard, premium, deluxe. So maybe you could make more money with “free” stuff if you would do it better than you have done it in MSFS40 and include it in deluxe version - so it’s still free - but users have to pay for a prime sim . And you should include the old audio files incl. different languages!
Great done Missions will be a MUST for future.
Missions seem as though they were rushed and put together. There’s no guide as to what you’re meant to do, eg the kitty hawk flight and the goose…like what am I aiming to do when it starts. Also the scenic helicopter at the Grand Canyon on the Xbox is awful, grand Canyon is just hills rather than cliffs.
This! When they announced the 40th anniversary missions, my thoughts were that the devs were finally going to add a new mode to MSFS, a proper mission mode with some of what you listed. It’s really disappointing to find out that we’re still stuck with bush trips, discovery flights and landing challenge. The sim would benefit so much from a proper mission system.
I hope that feedback will be heard and that we’ll get to see that developed over the next year or so
When I first played the new version of the FSX mission ‘Caribbean Landing’, I missed a trigger and didn’t get any landing clearance, I thought I just had some bad luck. But today I did some more investigating, and found that some of the missions were just poorly ported from FSX. The people that made them, just turned them into bushtrips and re-recorded some of the dialog, but they clearly weren’t familiar with the MSFS mission system.
They didn’t update any of the systems: the POI markers; objectives; and most importantly of all, they didn’t update any of the areas.
In MSFS you need to define the orientation of the areas in a slightly different place than FSX. But they didn’t change anything. This means pretty much all areas have the wrong heading. As you can see in the screenshots below, it really destroys the mission.
In the proper mission, you are ‘fenced in’ by area triggers. If you go outside them, you’ll get feedback. If you just go straight, you’ll hit the first trigger (descend to 3000 and turn 130). When you are in line with the runway, you’ll get the next dialog (turn 100). And a bit later in the approach, you’ll get landing clearance.
This sequence, and with it the whole mission, falls apart because of the faulty areas. To me, it shows a lack of care and quality control on the part of Microsoft. It is also indicative of the regressed state of the mission SDK right now.
Started the “San Juan Island Run”.
Shortly after the start the yoke vanished and I was not able to get it back.
Copilot was not visible as well.
Rage quitted the mission!!
I did that mission (San Juan Island Run) last night.
For me it started with the yoke invisible and I had to click around to find the spot on the floor to click to get it back. I had trouble getting started as I didn’t realise the beaver has landing gear on the floats and I had left my gear lever down so I was getting a “You crashed into the water” message and failing the mission on my takeoff roll
Once I got going I was disappointed that unlike the FSX version of the mission there was no option to continue with the original plan or to take the new job - they just decide for you. I guess this is just because in MSFS they didn’t build a system to make a choice
Near the end of the mission while I was following the directions given to me (fly west to the channel then follow it south) I got to the point where I turned south and noticed the next waypoint marker said “Fly North west” when it should have said “Fly South”. It is all the little mistakes like this that really show how little care was put into creating these missions on MSFS IMO.
As a side note I find the waypoint markers annoying and would prefer to fly without them. I want to find my own way rather than just flying towards the next marker each time! An option like in FSX where you can enable / disable the markers (and a mission compass) would be good!
Finally I made it to my destination for this mission and got the popup showing that the mission was complete shortly after landing in the lake, but when I got back to the main menu I checked the missions page and this mission still showed “0%” even though I had just completed it - so I guess I need to do it again now to get it marked off!
EDIT: Oh and something else that I noticed on this mission which I have noticed on the others as well is the subtitles for the radio messages often (but not always) are prepended with “[MISSING AUDIO]”. Not sure what that is about but it seems like some of the mission files could be missing?
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. And you should include the old audio files incl. different languages!
