Free Flight is a better training environment if you are trying to learn actual aviation skills and procedures. You can learn more from actual pilots from YouTube content creators from IRL. Their knowledge applies to Free Flight without the redicoulous penalties impossed within Career Mode.
I consider Career Mode and advanced random Flight Plan and aircraft addon selector so one doesn’t have to think too much about it.
The only thing Career Mode provides is a metric to compare your “success” or “devotion” to the game compared to other players. The metric is fictional, but it does provide a metric in which players can compare their acheivements. In game flight hours are meaningless. People may have 15000 hours, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect their skills, experience, or knowledge.
I enjoy the Career mode because it makes it simple to choose a location, a choice of reason to fly, and a choice of aircraft (albeit limited at the moment). Career Mode is definity not the medium to learn how to fly within any remotely credible aviation operation (simulated or real). It’s still a game. You might enjoy it more if you learn form IRL and credible sources. IRL information from actual pilots is definitely applicable in many cases in MSFS and makes the experience satisfying to be able to apply real techniques in game. IRL Information applies to the game, but not vise versa. If MSFS embeds their “training” seed into people who eventually persue a real career in aviation, the skys will become a deadlier profession and passengers will pay the ultimate cost with their lives for pilots who considered themselves heroes in MSFS.
Remember, an IRL instructor cannot train someone that thinks they already know everything.
IMO
Oh, I’m not a real pilot. I’m only a casual simmer.
This sounds like a data error, like a wrong flag for the facility. It would probably help to include the ICAO identifier.
Which instrument are you talking about there? Are you talking about the info line in the EFB? The airspeed indicator can be affected by wind, so a gusty day with strong winds might lead to something like that.
I don’t think this is true. That 40 kt headwind I’m just flying in is exactly what I see on windy.com. I seem to remember reading somewhere that live weather only starts when you obtain a specific certification (Instrument Rating?). Also, the “golden” missions probably have a fixed custom weather so they’re not blocked by bad weather.
[edit: I was talking about employee missions, there. But I’m pretty sure I had live weather in the few flights I did as a freelancer before I crashed my company plane.]
This is working for me, most of the time. Maybe if you explain the issues you’re having, we can figure out what’s going on.
Here is my summary of the debacle called Career Mode.
THE CONCEPT:
It is a new and exciting part of the simulation world off game play that is an entire mystery because there is no manual or instructions. If it were intuitive and well designed I could forgive that oversight. But it is just plain old laziness and disrespect to the community. In reality it is far from intuitive, and far from well designed. It is, in fact, a mental torture of fail after fail, confusion and frustration piled on top of more confusion and frustration and more fails.
THE CONFUSION.
How do you work to create a company? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
How does the insurance work? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
How do repairs work? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
How do you purchase a new aircraft? Check youtube. Disrespect from the devs.
Why can’t you fly missions when you passed your certification? Because you have to find a special golden icon somewhere on the planet first. It’s obvious right?
Why is your new aircraft and company not getting any missions when you have all the certifications, the pilot, and the plane all in one place? Because THOSE missions are on the other side of the planet you fool. Isn’t that obvious too?
God I could go on all night. Don’t even get me started about pressing ENTER and not getting any response because it is bugged to hell and just failed and dropped from a high S to a low B in reputation.
I am truly afraid to attemp to link up my pilot in NZ to my Vision Jet missions in Europe because I fear I will never see NZ again. The bugs SCARE me.
I am putting Career mode in the wardrobe to gather dust until 2026 when the all clear sounds. This is just unaceptable Microsoft/Asobo. What an absolute disgrace.
I have been working up in the Career mode and to add to your posts there should be some better mission development. It is of course randomly created but frustrating when the airports selected are bush airports (not a bush style mission) or no IFR procedures or charts…again really. I am continuously amazed how the missions that I get for a Caravan Cargo flight end in a tiny airport not even wide enough to do a 180 on the runway without a penalty and of course dont get me started on a 1 star flight that ends with a 40kt wind ripping through the mountains.
I fly for my actual career… and this should be fun and relaxing not the other…
To go in reputation from S to C in one flight is amazing… lols… and no I dont suck but what are they trying to build here, something that is fun or something that will just frustrate people. This is not the kind of “game” that should have impossible boss fights, IMHO
I hope they manage to fix this and add aspects that allow for more control…
Straight up there should be an “experience desired” slider or something that allows you to tone it down a bit. Once I am allowed to make my own topic I will get some more thoughts out.
The MSFS career mode has great potential, but right now, it lacks immersion and continuity. The biggest issue? You don’t start where you land. Instead, the system randomly places you elsewhere for the next mission, breaking the sense of realism.
What Needs to Change?
Aircraft repositioning should be realistic. Planes should stay where they land, with no magical teleportation. If a player needs their aircraft elsewhere, they should be able to assign an AI pilot to ferry it to another airport. This should take a realistic amount of time. For example, if a PC-12 takes 1.5 hours to fly from Miami to Jacksonville, it should actually take 1.5 hours in real time before it is available at the new location.
Player repositioning should respect time progression. If a player decides to travel to another airport, they should not instantly teleport there without consequence. Instead, the sim should show a stylized time progression in the menu, like a clock fast-forwarding, so the player sees, for example, “I just flew 9 hours from Miami to Paris. It is now 7 AM in Paris, and my next mission happens in real-time at 7 AM.” If a player travels across time zones, the in-game time should adjust accordingly.
There should be no more random mission locations. Missions should be based on the aircraft’s real-world position, not on some random algorithm. Just like in ETS, players should be able to take jobs based on where they actually are. If there are no good missions at a small airport, the player can choose to reposition their aircraft or themselves realistically.
ATC and route freedom should be improved. AI-managed ATC like Beyond ATC should replace the limited stock ATC. There should be no more forced blue brackets for approaches, allowing pilots to plan their own flights.
Why This Matters?
A true career mode should feel like being a real pilot, not just jumping from one mission to another with no logical connection.
The solution is simple: Keep aircraft where they land, allow AI to reposition them in real-time, and let players reposition themselves with realistic time progression.
I wish that they fix the atc thing, i mean you send the flightplan to the atc before a misson and now that v-nav actually work in the 737 MAX-8 it would be nice if the atc actually let me decend the way its planned in the fmc. Instead of forcing us to decend way to rapid later on.
I wish they would fix it…
No matter how strictly you follow procedures and how smooth your flight was, you will never get S when flying 737, because Airline procedures is broken, it never gives more than 75%
Have you ever been in real-world transportation? I haven’t been in aviation but I have several hundred thousand hours of ground transportation in transport trucks then busses spanning over 65 years.
Transport trucks may have a central base or several bases. Let me show you a typical day for me: Leave the base with an empty trailer. Drive to a destination and pick up a load. Leave there and deliver the load to its destination. Leave that place empty (there is very, very, very seldom a load to take from that particular place!) and go to another destination to get a new load. Some of these places may be very far apart: Leave Toronto with an empty trailer; drive to the New Jersey docks and pick up a load; drive back to Toronto with the load and deliver it to wherever; drive back to the depot and park the truck. This would take place over 2 days.
Now, owner/operators are on their own to drive wherever a load awaits, delivers that load, then finds another load as close as possible to start the cycle all over again. Gee, isn’t that what the “Freelance” mode of career mode sounds like?
Driving busses was a little different in that I might drive empty to a destination, load a group, then drop them off at their destination, and deadhead back to the depot. This typically took place over 1 day. Another scenario, and the more common one, was to drive empty to pick up a group, take that group to their destination, and wait - sometimes hours - to take them back to their pick-up point after which I would drive empty back to the depot.
In all cases the vehicle seldom, if ever, actually moved fully loaded with cargo or people from the depot to Point A to Point B to Point C and back to the depot.
To your request for planes to be ferried either by you or some other pilot to the place where a new mission starts: Find the mission you want; look at where the plane currently resides (Point A); look at where the mission starts (Point B); go to Free Flight and fly your plane from Point A to Point B. It would take you your realistic time that you wish and it would give you the immersion of deadheading between the two points.
Well, you could just sit at your kitchen table for the amount of time you feel the “trip” would take then fire up the sim and fly your mission. Or, just sit in front of your monitor/TV for the required time.
As for the mission starting on time I can tell you I could probably count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I left almost immediately after arriving at the loading dock or, in the cases of bus driving, picking up my group at the pick-up point.
Man, this is the reason I drove anything but transit bus which is what you’re describing you wish this simulator did. The whole definition of driving anything but transit bus is that no two days (missions) are the same with very little “logical connection.”
Okay, my suggestion might not be 100% realistic either. Nobody wants to sit at the kitchen table or in the cockpit just waiting. But immersion is better with a stylized clock showing realistic repositioning time than with magical teleportation.
And I should still have the choice to fly the repositioning flight myself—within career mode and earn points for it, unlike in Free Flight. This way, realism and gameplay rewards go hand in hand.
How fast would this stylized clock move? Twice as fast? Four times? Ten minutes per thousand nautical miles? Five minutes per thousand nautical miles? Are any of those times realistic? Perhaps try thinking of the “magical teleportation” as you sleeping on a plane taking you to your destination. As a kid I was put in the back seat of the family car In St. Catharines Ontario, Canada at 4 in the morning and waking up several hours later up in Muskoka. To me no time had elapsed at all. Magical teleportation! (This was back in the early '60s when kids were even allowed to curl up on the rear deck against the back window of the family sedan! Anyone else remember those days? I’m 71.)
Okay, in Career mode you want to fly your plane from Point A, where it’s stationed right now, over to Point B where a job awaits and you want to get paid for the move. You obviously own your own plane. In what world would an owner get paid to fly his own plane empty from Point A to Point B? If anything the owner would have to pay the cost of the fuel and maintenance required due to hours flown and, if having an employee fly it for him or her, pay the employee plus. When you reposition a plane in Career mode you pay credits for the move based on distance - the further the move the more you pay. Hmmm. That sounds like real life to me. Actually I think there aren’t enough credits taken for the move between airports but hey, at least it’s paying something. And your fuel and maintenance are not affected which isn’t realistic.
I recently reset my career mode and when i was trying to take my PPL it woldn’t allow me to walk around or enter the aircraft and i have noticed this happen before the reset when i would try to do a 737 mission as a employee it would do the same thing is anyone else having this issue? and how long will this bug be fixed?
Career mode in general needs much improvement. Here are some examples…
Will taxi to hold short (mostly after landing) and you can’t request parking, you press the reply button/key and it doesn’t respond, the only choice is to move out of the hold and get a violation.
The heli assists (collective, rutter and cyclic) work on all helicopters except the Erickson. It is impossible to get to a hover (unloaded and loaded), when all the other helicoptes work just fine.
In the SAR missions, you will fly over where the person is and they won’t be there, then you fly near that spot again and they put up the smoke. This usually results in loss of reputation for taking too long to locate. Also, in the pre-hoist missions there will be people in the trees and the only way to pick them up is to hover very close over them risking striking trees. The mission tells you to land close to the person.
The reputation system is way too strict. It dings you for things that you should be docked for, like example above…another example is on taxi your ground speed will be under 20 KT, but when you are moving with a headwind the speed shows 25KT and you get pinged for overspeed.
These are just a few examples, the career mode…like much of this game needs much work. It’s a great game, and there are some nice features and the graphics are better than 2020, but at this point if you love 2020 don’t switch to 2024…too many bugs needs to be worked out.
Ok, that’s something new:
Just made a flight to Dubai. During approach, landing and taxi ground textures were completely blur, but no any messages about slow internet (I checked internet just in case, it showed 80Mbps download and 135Mbps upload speed).
Flight ended as appropriate, they showed xp and money I earned but then I noticed that my account is unchanged, same amount of credits as before flight. And airplane returned back to departure airport.
What was that?
I think what they should do to make it feel more realistic to real world scenarios. Is in freelance remove the notion of unlocking and “airport and it’s radius” This gives this notion of just wanting to unlock the whole country to view missions. No real progression of where you are and your planes position. You should only be able to see locations of your aircraft’s with specific identifier for each so you know where each one is.
You should only be able to view the airport that you are in. And every airport should have some kind of mission for it, ranging in credits based on difficulty and distance.
And in the mission detail screen it should also show you and say something like, oh your arrival airport is KLAs and these are the available mission for this airport. That way you’ll know which are beneficial for you financially. And each mission should include real time hours of availability to take on this mission.
But since we are given this option of “unlocking” everyone is just choosing the highest value mission they could find near them and just bouncing back and forth with no real sense of progression of where you were your headed.
Someone compared it to a fairy buss transport business. I think he had great points of the “magically transporting yourself to a place” you really can’t have someone waiting in the kitchen for 2hrs for your plane to arrive. lol we would do one mission a day lol and granted that is true in real life but would the fun out of simming and it would start feeling like a real job hahahaha. The only thing way to meet both ideas together is to increase the cost of transporting your plane and having a cost of transporting yourself. If you move yourself to an airport where you don’t have one of your planes then your only option will be to take hired mission not freelance. This would prevent that bouncing back and forth just chasing the biggest payout.
At the end of the day this is suppose to be a Simulation!! not an arcade game to get to and end game. So people need to think about that.
and it would start feeling like a real job hahahaha. The only thing way to meet both ideas together is to increase the cost of transporting your plane and having a cost of transporting yourself. If you move yourself to an airport where you don’t have one of your planes then your only option will be to take hired mission not freelance. This would prevent that bouncing back and forth just chasing the biggest payout.