Im gonna have a little rant so feel free to ignore me
I am torn on this game/sim.. it looks gorgeous, yes, it doesnt run all that good on my i9-9900k paired with RTX 2080TI and 32GB Ram.
It doesnt have all the features of the last version, some of the features are half implemented and have been fixed in days by the community, for instance the cockpit bug in large airliners wtf guys.
Autopilot isnt working, AI control doesnt work, Manual cache navigation is beyond a nightmare, lots of people cant even play the thing or even install it.
The planes are half implemented and I find it very cheeky to be selling more planes as DLC when the base game (all versions included) isnt finished yet.
Man I could go on and it will make me sound like I hate it, which I dont, I love it I just feel a bit ■■■■■■ you know.. know what I mean? It installed itslf into a folder called “Chucky” I mean what is this someones hobby project ffs!
Also, while I am here ( and another thing!!) I offered to be in the beta, no, apparently some people got in, that weren’t just youtubers either (cynicism noted), and apparently feedback was heard but notthing done about it. I feel like I have truly paid to be in the beta and I paid a lot for this piece of software. I have somewhat of a javascript developer history myself (latest ecma etc react angular node babel webpack etc etc for those interested) and Ive been trauling through their code and while on the whole the code is good it really can be tidied up a lot (a lot of stuff doesnt need to happen every frame, and needs a couple of timers wrapping around the really heavy duty stuff) and for the amount I just paid I dont want this level of code I want professional, at least working code. I do not want to see 54,000 errors when I open the developer console for the first time: I do feel for anyone considering serious development on this platform - seperating your own errors from the base errors will be tough, it pumps out a lot of errors! its quite shocking honestly but as I said I am a developer (web apps) so I am probably biased.
It’s fairly simple to modify the files I suppose the community will end up with a few flavours knocking about over time, you can actually edit it fairly fine grained so you could have it even talking with a local British Birmingham accent if you can figure out how to get the tts to sound like it! Good stuff
“… AND MAINTAIN…” is an unnecessary filler blocking the frequency. Of course a pilot will maintain the assigned altitude or FL upon reaching. In over 30 years on the board I never found out why some colleagues were eager to inflate their radio calls with nonsensical bloatware.
“ROGER. THIS IS UNDERSTOOD…”
“ROGER, GOOD COPY…”
“I READ YOU LOUD AND CLEAR…” or “I HAVE YOU FIVE BY FIVE (also “FIVE SQUARE”)…” or “I READ YOU LIMA CHARLIE…”
(Aircraft cleared for ILS approach reports LLZ established) “ROGER, CLEARED DOWN TO THE MINIMUM…”.
Of course, in dense traffic situations this habit comes back to haunt them, so they simply leave out other more important infos instead of cutting out their poetry.
I know there’s a lot here, but as a pilot and also a software engineer I’m quite disappointed with the ATC in it’s current state.
For one, every controller has the same voice. Even in FSX with local TTS processing being done on the user’s computer, they had more variety. They supposedly are using Azure Cloud TTS generation (you can find it in the settings) to get the ATC voices, but it sounds exactly like FSX with a more realistic “radio filter” put on it. I was hoping it would be much more interactive with variety.
This of course is in concurrence with the phraseology mishaps, and since the patch released last week I’ve noticed a lot of times when I delegate the ATC to the AI, it will talk over the ATC controller who is giving instructions to someone else.
I’ve also noticed that the ATC in game will give an instruction and not allow even the AI to respond before giving instructions to 10 other airplanes first. IRL, even in busy airspaces like LAX where I fly, the controller always gives a short pause for the pilot to respond after each instruction (of course they talk faster than other controllers and pilots have shorter responses).
Finally, at least with Live Traffic enabled or when seeing other people playing online, tower and ground ATC don’t talk to the other planes, so sometimes they’ll just takeoff, land, etc. Live traffic also sometimes spawns an aircraft at the start of a runway when I’m on short final to land
So far is is a great first release of the game. As a software dev I understand the power of iteration - you can’t make everything perfect before release, so it’s better to release when the product is workable then quickly address bugs and continue working on new features as the customers request it. It’s a much better approach than Asobo sticking their heads in the sand for another year or so to try to patch everything up, then releasing only to find more bugs and missing features still. I’m glad to see they’re committed to this for years to come
Nicely said. Don’t get me wrong I love the sim and I just have a bit of a bad taste that shouldn’t be there, it feels a little rushed is all and hopefully with a bit of time and tlc it will improve.
The issue with this statement is that this depends on the very definition of what fs2020 is, to Asobo and Microsoft, vs to its customer base. In other words this is posing the question of what is the fs2020 target customer base as well. What I mean is:
On one hand, if fs2020 is brought to market as the pinnacle of the Flight Simulator franchise, there is a legacy of customers and vendors, highly involved in anything “simulation” related and expecting nothing but the very best in the core simulation features at a minimum. Many simmers were participating in the alpha and have given valuable feedback and bug reports to things which shouldn’t be broken at all if fs2020 is a flight simulator. It appears some of the most prevalent issues pertaining to “simulation” were not addressed at all, or not satisfactorily enough. By your logic of iterative development the product is not release-grade from the point of view of “simmers” because of these essential features which are just missing or plain wrong.
On the other hand, if fs2020 marketing strategy is to sell a XBox game, which compatibility with PC hardware is just a byproduct, not a core decision, the revenue strategy would be based on attracting the largest user base possible among gamers and there is nothing better than good looking visual and convincing enough “flying”. If on top of this the bulk of the revenue stream is in selling a variety of “engagement” DLC (like flight lessons and discovery tours) to a percentage of this user base and converting as much of them to regular customers of addons, then fs2020 is certainly ready for PC prime time. By your logic of iterative development the product is in release-grade from the point of view of “PC beta testers contributing to the XBox launch”.
In effect, in the later case this makes us, PC users, freely offering our time and feedback to the team for them to iron out what is not working so that the title is ready and glitch free when the new XBox hits the market, with a Market Place ready to be preyed upon by thousands of gamers and filled with good looking addons.
This wouldn’t be complete without even asking the following: is there even any specific “target” audience in particular for this product?
Is it a game first with some extra deeper features necessary to attracting simmers?
Is it a simulator first with gorgeous eye candy for the gamers (and for the simmer nonetheless) ?
Is it both from the get go with more emphasis to some of the features attracting one of the audience for now and the other features attracting the other audience will come later?
In any case, the simulator will be attracting a larger gamer base than a simmer base. This is a promise for more revenue opportunities for 3rd party vendors too, but if the product is a game masquerading as a simulator, what about the tools being offered to 3rd party vendors and how deep in system and simulation modeling can they go?
Simmers are a loyal and long term target audience which is attracting highly specialized vendors. They could be contributing to filling the Market Place for a long time even after the 10 years of services planned for fs2020. Gamers are cashing in until the new AAA game but until then they are bragging how great aviators they are (which they certainly are regardless - no judgment) and they are distracting away from PS5 and other competitive threats.
At this stage and if this is any indication, the SDK is showing a strong emphasis in all the tools and info necessary for making good looking sceneries and textured aircraft models, much less emphasis on accurate systems development capabilities and inter-addons expansibility, let alone lower level control of the simulator core features.
In any case it is a highly dynamic market and if their previous market attempt with the product “Flight” is telling something, it is you can plan ahead a market place strategy around a product but you might find out complete market rejection for the product because it didn’t address the things for which the actual customers were willing to spend their money in the market place.
Let’s just hope they got it right so that we can enjoy a new simulator to the fullest as simmers, not just gamers with an XBox controller between 3 laps in Forza and 4 stages chasing zombies
as some have said, the Phraseology is different between countries/regions.
Which probably explains why FSX/FS9 had their own ATC language, they probably either didn’t want to confuse non-serious players, or they couldn’t figure out how to create an ATC system that changed based on what region you are in.
“Maintain” is required by the .65 and especially necessary in many cases so the pilot does not continue a descent via published altitudes or a profile descent or climb through an interim altitude. It may be understood and unnecessary but I’m sure some FAA workgroup or lawyer decided it was needed! Just take a look at the VISTA3 STAR into KLAX. We would have many foreign pilots coming up from south of the border going to KLAX that would continue descending after JLI on this arrival. And it’s not even a profile descent. The chart plainly says “VERTICAL PLANNING INFORMATION” for al altitudes but unless we stressed “Cross JLI at and MAINTAIN FL240” you could bet on it that almost daily someone would continue descending after JLI. This was bad because they would descend into a sector that did not have a handoff or point-out and doubly so as that same low sector would routinely have aircraft climbing to FL230 at or near JLI!
I am not bashing “MAINTAIN” which is of course a vital instruction, but the “CLIMB/DESCEND TO AND MAINTAIN”" which is an unnecessary bloating of the transmission. In over 30 years as air traffic controller I never had a pilot continuing further climb or descent when I used the standard “CLIMB FL60” or “DESCEND TO ALTITUDE 3000ft”.
If Microsoft wants its simulator to be the new benchmark they strictly should use standard phraseology in ATC communication, not some home made or Vietnam era chopper slang (“COPY”).
It is easy, there are books for that.
Agreed, there is a lot of lingo from old school controllers and military that is prevalent and unnecessary - I’ll just end by saying, “Roger that, over and out!”
And the ATC is not reacting to other planes, last time it gave me a landing clearance on the runway where a plane was literally starting in my direction.
they should have rebuild the whole ATC system form scratch and not import that buggy mess from FSX. its just more work on the long term.
I could deal with old phraseology but the ATC is just awful. It always wants you to descend form 35,000 to 3,000 50 miles from the airport with no vectors. FSX at least had this right.
Maybe this is where an addon would come in and do the job?
I don’t know what I expected. In P3D I use PRO ATC X. It does a very fine job, just sad that the community didn’t do more accents and voice sets, so I am recording my own
Their development has ceased unfortunately, but something similar could be done by MSFS, should they choose to do so, even better their SDK could make expanding and improving it even easier for the community.
Now we do have VATSIM for real ATC, but it would be amazing to see ATC grow into a real simulation with variations that are easily editable, making it possible to nurture local customs, and rules.
I would like to know if crossing runways operations are possible in the new MSFS?
Working on this some more today, it seems once you’re passed off from tower the rest of the communication is pretty much “hard coded” in sadly. There is 1 approach item to change but that’s pretty much it as well. Also fixing the flight levels for FL180 and above to be correctly called out instead of the actual altitude. This will give you better experience though at least from the perspective from clearance through take off and at least the descend via for the approach.
Edit: There was 1 approach item I thought but looking at it now they string all the approach information together so changing that 1 item would make it less realistic. So sadly it looks like for the approach we’re stuck with what we have for now (fingers crossed since Asobo has this in their list it will get fixed proper!)
If you want to download and try what I have in for clearance, ground, tower and the flight level changes as well as fife to five and tree to three download link below. This goes in the Official\OneStore\fs-base and please backup your original as I haven’t found a way to get it working in the community folder.
Removed link as there are changes to this file as of patch 1.8.3.0
I had to shut ATC off. I couldn’t stand them telling random aircraft that they were 20 000 ft above their assigned altitude. How do you get 20 grand over your assigned alt and not notice?
I’ve never used the “on takeoff climb and maintain” as phraseology. So I liked it up and I could not find it in the 7110.65 .
Usually, it’s just “maintain [altitude] expect [requested altitude] 1-0 minutes after departure” without the “on takeoff” part. Although, if it’s an RNAV SID, you just say “climb via SID expect [requested altitude] 1-0 minutes after departure”
I agree with you ! but they will never make a tool as powerful as the pilot2 Atc software which is very developed and which works for all the well-known airplane simuses.
It is continuously updated and is compatible with MSFS 20 with fuispc 7. In addition, designer is very attentive, and he responds quickly to emails that are sent to him.
this software is the best Atc software that I know.
Try its demo it’s free for 7 days and if you haven’t had enough time, send a little email to be extended it will almost certainly be done.
