Was looking for an alternative to FSPassengers for MSFS 2020 - For 3 main points that I liked about the program for FSX:
You can fly commercial aircraft from the get-go (Don’t remember if it was an option or rather an altering of the file/config - does not matter to me).
You’re flight is rated AND you can control the various aspects of the rating and determine which ones you want to be rated upon and which one you do not want to include.
OPTIONAL - You manage the airline, as in, you get Money from your flights to purchase new planes (But, in FSPassengers you could change the modifier so you wouldn’t have to make 100 flights to get enough money to buy a new Boeing/Airbus).
Do any of you know something like that that might fit?
and it’s freeware equivalent (only generates schedules based on user parameters. no “career mode”)
A Pilots Life simulates a typical Airline pilot career. You start off working for ■■■■■■ 1-2 star airlines and grind your way to more airframe licenses which unlock more routes and you’ll be able to apply for your favorite airline flying popular route. You can apply for other airlines but your odds of being accepted are RNG based on your pilot rating and weighted by what airframe licenses you have. Your pilot rating is determined by the flight rating of your last 10 flights.
It will rate your flights but keep in mind the following:
It does not track what airframe you fly in-sim, but you will not be given a route or job offer for which you don’t have a license for. Example: if you want to fly Ryanair, don’t get an a320 license; If you fly for Southwest, but don’t want to fly the 737 at that moment, dont. You will not be penalized for using a different airframe than whats called for
Flight ratings are standardized across the board. BAW has the same PIREP requirements as Republic Airways.
Regardless of which country you’re flying, it assumes you are in US Airspace (speed 250kts below 10,000 feet/FL100). Transition Altitude is otherwise not tracked.
That all said, its pretty tricky to get 100% flight ratings.
It’s not 100% to what you’re looking for, but it’s probably the closest thing (minus the airline management). There are a bunch of other nifty features like it’ll show you where on the runway you touched down, a thriving discord and in-app community and achievements. What I like about it is you have the option to fly in places you never would consider yourself flying just loading the game and asking yourself “Well where do i want to fly today?” I had fun flying out of Tblisi, Georgia before getting an offer for SWA. And even that was fun because i never would have otherwise willingly flown into MDW or DAL (and i could meta a SWA pilot on VATSIM )
Otherwise, most other “career” apps i know of start you as a humble GA pilot with a weak PPL and work your way up doing boring and meaningless jobs or basically amounts to a monthly spreadsheet simulator subscription spending more time managing your pilots than you do actually flying.
Its really worth the money imo but you can try the freeware A Random Flight Generator if you want to check out the PIREP system first. It seems important that you have the ability to tune your PIREP criteria so hopefully the freeware will let you see if the fixed/standardized nature is sufficient. As mentioned its similar to APL V2 but theres no career mode basically and just generates a schedule based on user criteria.
I don’t think there’s anything that comes close to what FSPassengers was offering as a whole. Yes, 15+ years later there are a few addons which have some exceptional features, better than FSPassengers’, but on average I still miss the little gimmicks offered by the latter that added immensely to immersion (from injuries and -brrr- deaths for bad landings, to playing elevator music on specific stages of flight and so on).
I tried a few career addons but eventually I got stuck with On-Air. Very inclined to try A Pilot’s Life though.
Thank you so much for the very detailed response. I do have some questions though because as far as I can see, there is no trial period (currect me if I’m wrong).
You said that you need to grind all the way up and get licenses, so basically my question are:
Do you have to do the grind? Is there anyway to manipulate it?
If you start from scrach, are your first flight still on a commercial jet?
Is the rating system something that can be changed in any way? (i.e shutting some criteria off)
Lastly, I did not quite get what you mentioned about that “It does not track what airframe” and what does that exactly means and changes in APL.
Correct. There is no way to cheese it. You could use sim-rate/time accel but you will only be paid for real time flown. If you fly an 8 hour route in 4 hours, you’ll only be paid for the 4 hours.
Yes. You’re given some starting cash to buy your airframe license which you will be given job offers for and subsequently. the offers and schedules you are given are based on what licenses you have. So if you “buy” the a320 and 737 licenses, you will likely not receive a job offer from Republic Airways since they fly Embraers pretty much exclusively. You are not limited by rank, you could fly big bois right from the start if you want; you’re only limited to what cash you have earned
No. As i said it is standardized across the board and cannot be changed. The most you can change is what cruising altitude you’re at so it can move onto the next flight phase. Your landing rate, whether or not your lights are on properly, whether you overspeed etc, is all based on pass/fail.
APL does not force you to use the airframe the leg calls for. For example if you get on with Delta in the app and you receive a route from Atlanta to Newark and calls for a 737-9 but you do not own that plane, you can still fly in a plane of your choice and not be penalized. The only reason the airframe licenses exist is to provide your job offers and route scheduling.
With this in mind, APL does not have an end or goal to complete other than what you set it to be so it’s only a “grind” if you make it one. Some people change airlines every week to see the world. Some people grind as necessary so they can work their dream airline and call it a day. Some people want to meta the real life pilot grind.
Now are you wanting airline pilot simulation or do you want passenger simulation too? For Passenger simulation look into PACX (paid) or LukeAirTool (Free, but probably abandoned). This will provide “passengers” you have to “manage.” Yes the ability to have different announcements based on what airline you’re flying is available in both apps as well as emergencies, pireps and all that immersion stuff.
You can sort it to only give you short/medium/long haul flights. It would not be fair to be paid for sim time when you only spent half the real world time actually flying. The app is supposed to give a pilots life experience (ah, see what i did there?) so to me it makes sense only to be paid for the real world time spent in front of the computer
That said, nobody I know sits at their computer for the entire time during long haul flights unless they are on VATSIM. Even then there’s a good chance they’re going to get up and walk away for an hour or two (when theres no ATC of course). Some people get up and get a flight going then go to work and let it go all day then come home and land the plane.
Definitely off topic and not 100% sure about this, but I think VATSIM imposed that rule back in the day when they found out that there were people flying super long haul flights (like London-Hong Kong in B747) without being anywhere around the PC for most of the flight duration. They’d go eat, watch movies, go out, sleep etc and at some point VATSIM had had enough and tried to limit those occurrences. That was probably before 2005 (possibly even before 2003), can’t remember when exactly.
I also remember people playing Silent Hunter 3 (unbelievably immersing WWII submarine sim) in real time. This is beyond long haul flights, this is two full days just to get out of the harbor and into the Atlantic, without seeing action at all. Talking about immersion and commitment (and boredom, which is exactly what those brave submariners felt most of the time, at least in the early years of the war)…
Of course SH3 would not CTD every now and then like MSFS does.
I also find that flying the CRJ also needs you to be on top of things and never away from the cockpit for long durations, because the aircraft can easily stall or overspeed if you leave the throttle unattended for more than 10-20 minutes. It needs constant adjustments.
afaik the rule now is you have to be around in case a controller logs on. But then again, i’ve heard people falling asleep on their long haul to find out ATC has been trying to contact them for 3 hours and they were DC’d from vatsim
I mean i’m used to single engine fighters but this thing has two engines. It’s an entirely different kind of flying, all together
)