I created this topic to understand the intentions of the bush trips. It maybe an odd topic but I cannot get my head around the intentions (maybe its the wrong word) of the (later) bush trips. As I started with the initial bush trips like the balkan it is a lot of fun to navigate your way using the clues from the navlog, together with heading and timing. Finally reaching and finding the destination airport using these clues feels like a nice achievement while in the meantime learning from the area flown.
However, especially in the later bush trips I see that you need to be familiair with the surroundings in order to navigate as it relies on village names or similar of which you cannot know which is which when flying in unknown areas. Also the routeplan is already enterted into the computer simply ruining the navigation part. Coming back to the question, what is the intention of the bush trips, how should we fly them and wouldn’t it be fun to make them based purely on visual navigation?
Having said that, I also think it is a missed opportunity to not use FS POI’s in the bush trips. They make of great reference points and locations to fly passed in a bush trip.
I started on one bushtrip, the one in the Balkans, but abandoned it because continuing in a later session does not yield the same state as when you stopped. Stuff is different but you don’t know exactly why or how. I feel the sim lacks the interface, especially in VR, for bushtrips. In a perfect world, you would just be able to stop bushtripping at any point, and continue later, maybe with a voice telling you about the visual cues and airports, instead of having to scroll and read long pages of text.
But maybe I am also doing it wrong
The original and early bush trips were indeed using VFR for navigation. Then for a while, when Perfect Flight first took over as the content partner that produced bush trips for the World Updates, what you experienced was happening. The community made mention of that problem, and the last like 3 World Updates, the bush trips are again back to VFR navigation.
If you are on PC, there is an addon on flightsim.to that will end up showing the purple navigation line, and for those bush trips that were done referring to location names, you can just follow the path to see the sites. Or make use of the heading and the timer.
Bush trips used to save the time that you ended. A couple sim updates ago, that broke. If you start a leg and continue, you will advance along time as normal. But if you end the bush trip, and come back to it later, the starting time will be the starting time of the original leg.
So in other words, if leg 1 starts at 6:05am, you get to leg 2 at 6:26 and continue. You then get to leg 3 at 7:02. You then exit. When you come back, you should start leg 4 at 7:02, but instead you start at the beginning of the runway and it will be 6:05am.
There are some bush trips that this can be annoying. The Iceland trip, they start you early in the morning so you can experience the sun breaking over the mountains, which is visually stunning. But saving the bush trip and starting legs in a later session, the surroundings are too dark yet to sight see. The bug has been logged, and hopefully it will be fixed at some point.
I don’t think it’s been broken, I think re-setting the start times was a conscious decision. People were complaining it was dark by the time they finished some of the longer trips, the original Alaska one was one example, as was Iceland.
As with the re-fuelling issue Asobo took the simplest solution even though it’s not the most elegant. I hope the current changes are just placeholders while they come up with proper fixes.
The solution to the darkness problem is not to reset all start times to dawn; it’s to allow the user to adjust the time as a few bush trips do. While you’re at it, allow weather adjustment also. Bush trips are sightseeing trips, so how does it make sense to start at dawn, when sights are not visible. Worse, start at dawn and fly east, right into the sun. Flying into the sun is unpleasant, even a virtual sun. Broken clouds only serve to reduce one’s ability to see the sights. Let us control the weather. Others can make the trip as difficult or unpleasant as they wish. No one forces anyone to use the autopilot. I want an autopilot so I can sightsee. I also don’t want to see the sights at 160 knots. If you let the pilot choose the plane, he can fly a Caravan if he wishes. I want to fly a Kitfox. Recommend the Caravan for a more challenging trip if you want, but don’t force it on us.
I think something has happened. Take a look at the Adriatic and the Danube trip. There you can set the weather and time. The selection of another aircraft is, as far as I am informed, technically not possible.
Thanks for the response. I noted that the weather and time are adjustable in a few. I don’t care much about about choosing the aircraft . I just think it’s silly to sightsee at 160 knots. The time, though, is important. Taking off toward the mountains at dawn into the sun is way beyond silly. Why make it so artificially difficult. You’d never begin such a VFR flight in real life. If you haven’t, try Mediterranean Coast. No reason to go east. Just having the trip reversed would halve the vision problem and make the trip much more enjoyable.
I can only agree with you there, danakes.
I hope that there will be more choices for users in the future. Hoping that the older BTs will be updated to that is probably unrealistic. But you never know …
I do feel that the bush trips have been abandoned somewhat. It’s a shame as they can add purpose to the sim when really it’s mostly up to the user to entertain themselves.
I can only agree with other posters about the time problems, they are almost deal breaker. I’m currently flying the Balkans bush trip and starting at 04:00 UTC is becoming old very quickly. It’s not dark, early morning twilight but the terrain is covered in mist. It’s not the best time to sight see. Hopefully the option to set date/ time will be added to,all the bush trips. Even better would be an option to specify start time or re-start from the time at the end of the previous leg.
Re-fuelling should be allowed at airports with fuel. An option to start each leg in the same state as previous would add challenge, but re-fuelling needs to work.
The older longer bush trips are far the best. The new ones with only a few legs are quite dull. I understand there were performance problems with large numbers of waypoints but can’t these be fixed…? Please can we return to longer bush trips, or at least a variation. A couple of really long ones would be excellent.
