Will the missions and activities in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 be like video game missions?
The missions and activities that are being included in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 are authentic re-creations of those performed in real-live aviation fields. We are working with a variety of organizations — such as firefighting, search and rescue, and coast guard organizations — across the planet to make these activities as accurate as possible.
(from the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 FAQ https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/12702272798364-Microsoft-Flight-Simulator-2024-FAQ)
More than a year after 2024 release, let’s take a look at just how authentic helicopter agricultural spraying missions are.
Disclaimer: I’m not a pilot IRL, so all my knowledge is from YouTube videos and from this great topic here on this forum More Realistic Agricultural Aviation Missions . And from just plain common sense.
Ok, let’s go flying, first thing is to pick a mission from the map. You have to do your due diligence here before clicking Accept. If you happen to be doing this in the winter, make sure the area you select is not covered by snow. Yeah, why would anyone spray acres of snow? Who knows, the game, for whatever reason, uses the current date and happily announces in December that it is now spraying season in Kansas, or wherever you happen to be, so you can have your fun trying to find some visual reference when flying above a homogeneous white blanket of snow in this
authentic re-creation of real life aviation…
You also want to check for buildings and trees, the less the better, otherwise you may find the refill truck under a bridge, under trees, buildings, powerlines, or, for some variety, in a ditch, or a hillside, tilted 45 degrees and not landable (I managed once a toe-in refill in such a scenario, just for the authenticity’s sake).
After you select a mission that looks ok, don’t forget to check the field boundary, you may get some weird concave polygons, even if the field appears to be a perfect rectangle.
The game does not let you pick livery, (but hey, at least now there is an aircraft filter), so you may end up authentically crop dusting in Kansas with a H500C of the Italian Forestry Service.
And here comes the most annoying part of the experience: the “Operational Manager” who surely would be banned from these forums, for violating the Harassing or Defamatory Content part of the Rules of Conduct if they made the same “color inside the lines, just like in school”
kind of comments on my flying.
She (yes, she, 90% of the cases that person has a female voice, even with male first names) has like 5 scripted sentences, always the exact same sentences. No, there’s no generative AI to bring some variety, no, it is the exact same text, every single time.
Looks like we are ready to go, but now she says “Let’s go over last minute details before you start”.
What last minute details? What changed? I’m in the aircraft, engine running, ready for take off. Shouldn’t we have had a briefing this morning at the base? Or the night before?
“Don’t know if you worked in this area before, but Madame X’s crops are located 5 NM south from here.” Why are you saying this? I already have the EFB set up, I see where the field is. What is the value of giving me a useless piece of information? Also, you just told me a second ago I’m to fertilize farmer Y’s fields, now she’s Madame X? BTW, farmers are somehow also 90% women, just like in real life.
Now I am finally allowed to take off. But no matter where I am, there is a script to follow. So even if I am at an ag strip somewhere in the US Midwest, basically just a meadow with nice flowers (yes, I like those), with nothing around just farms and fields, with no discernible runways or taxiways, I’m still expected to announce taxi, then hold short before taking off.
There are two variations of this: I have to taxi like a mile over that beautiful meadow to get to the “runway”, or I have to taxi about 10 feet, hold short of three dandelions and then take off. All extremely authentic.
I usually just ignore all this (I couldn’t care less what my reputation is) and just take off in the direction of the field.
Now I hear my Operation Manager saying: “Remember, our clients are counting on us to improve their crops” Thanks for reminding me, I only heard this about two hundred times, and every single time, your wisdom amazes me.
“I assist you from the ground as much as I can, teamwork for the win”.
I’ll get back to this “assistance” later, for now we continue flying towards the “refill” truck. Yes, “refill”, because the only thing you can’t do with that truck is to refill. You can fill your tank once before you start spraying, but if you run out of product, you are sent back to the base, no matter if half of the field is left uncovered ( Helicopter agricultural mission ends when out of spray instead of refilling ). Just like in real life.
Anyhow, I get close to the truck and there’s some weird phraseology going on there, such as “greenlight requested” or, my favorite, when the woman on the truck tells me to “prepare for descent”, seriously? I just told you I’m going to land there, what do you think, if you don’t tell me to prepare then I’d forget to do whatever you mean by “prepare for descent”?
After taking off the truck, my Operation Manager is giving me unsolicited advice on how to do my job. Yes, same 3 scripted sentences, for the hundredth time. Tractor, field wide open, stay below 30 ft, yadayada.
The field boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, usually a polygon that rarely has two parallel edges, even if the actual field on the map is a perfect rectangle ( Helicopter agricultural mission field problems ). Also, these arbitrary boundaries can’t follow the elevation, if there is a hill, the blue lines disappear underground, and since they do not follow the natural, visible field boundaries, you can’t easily tell where they might be. Being a little late or early turning the spray off/on will result in hearing “Better manage the start and stop … it’s all about efficiency”
This is extremely annoying, as one IRL ag pilot put it in the More Realistic Agricultural Aviation Missions topic,
Also, makes you wonder, how does she even know where exactly I started or stopped spraying? Where is she? How can a person on the ground judge what I missed half a mile away? Or whether I turned the spray on or off a second late at the other end of the field? There is also the million dollar question: why would an ag aviation enterprise pay someone sitting there all day nagging the pilot, instead of installing a guidance system like this in their aircraft:
Lightbar Guidance For GPS Navgiation .
Thanks to Taog and sal1800, we now have the H500C with just such an ag computer installed so we have a career mode aircraft to fly somewhat more realistic spraying missions. The H125 and the R66 don’t have one and it is not possible to add it in a way that it would work in career mode.
With any aircraft other than Taog’s 500C, good luck finding the next swath, often there is little or no visual reference at all. Yes, you have the EFB but that is just guesswork and again, as the same IRL ag pilot said:
One could use the crop rows to give at least some reference for the direction, but if you have grass turned on in the graphic options, Asobo will generate a homogeneous carpet of plants (although only in a couple of hundred meters radius, which looks really bad), hiding all the rows or vehicle
tracks that may have been present in the aerial tiles.
I already mentioned that if the field is so big that you run out of product, you can’t use the refill truck to refill, that would likely be too authentic I guess. They won’t let you finish the field even if you do not run out of product, when there are about one or two passes left, the woman declares that the field is now completed and sends you back to the airport.
There are many topics on how career mode incorrectly handles helicopters like airplanes, and all the other entertaining bugs like downwind landings, jumping hold short boxes, fork lift trucks driving on the taxiway, etc. so I’ll skip those.
The last thing is the evaluation: it is really hard to get under 90%, you’ll need to screw up big time to get there, so there is not a lot of value in it if you want to know how you actually did. The ag nav computer can do better: you can see how many acres you covered, what percentage are the
overlaps and the gaps. That, with how much fuel I burned would be a much better indicator than this unknown algorithm, or the Operational Manager or whoever is speaking at that point saying “don’t get a big head but X says you did great out there” (regardless of how well you really did).
I don’t have high hopes that any of this will be fixed any time soon, but for heaven’s sake: at least fire this Operational Manager! Whatever that person is saying is repetitive, annoying, insulting, useless and completely unauthentic. (BTW, the same applies to the copilot in the sling load missions, plus they also add weight).
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