Not sure where to post this, however hoping for some eyes on or recognition for anyone that cares enough for it. Feel free to move it to whatever forum is suitable.
I have a few issues and comments on improvements with the Pelican which I’ll list here in hopes that they will be addressed.
- The cockpit/canopy glass is straight up opaque from the exterior. Not only does this make it look like a ‘toy’, the Pelican model clearly looks to be taken straight from Halo Infinite which already had a clear glass cockpit, allowing you to see in from the outside. Not sure why this wasn’t carried over into the MSFS model, and I hope that an update can be made to resolve this, either in FS2020 or 2024.
(What the Pelican would look like with a glass cockpit)
- Thruster visual bugs still exist since launch when changing flight modes. Depending on your throttle, pitch, roll and rudder input when changing from hover into cruise, the thruster visuals will remain as a static snapshot of that throughout the remainder of the flight.
To best describe this, it is clear that the visuals of the thrusters is not based upon what flight mode you’re in, but rather whatever input state you’re in when changing flight modes. This leads to oddities such as flying straight in a cruise with full vertical thrusters and no forward thrusters as I changed to cruise from hover whilst ascending.
To fix:
When in cruise, there should be little to no vertical thruster effects, with the forward thrusters being the only ones ‘on’.
When in hover, unless the throttle has been cut to 0% there should be some vertical thruster effects keeping it in the air or slowing it’s descent. Currently at a hover which is 50% thrust/idle there is no vertical thruster effect. Totally ungrounds the aircraft and makes it looks like it’s being slewed instead. Imagine a helicopter hovering with its rotors stopped for example.
- Hover mode sucks lol. Seeing the love the ornithopter got with its crazy animation set, different flight modes and boost visuals, the pelican seems like a cheap product in comparison. I understand you can’t ‘simulate’ it as in reality it would fly like a brick but the hover mode is literally a disguised drone/slew mode. Changing from cruise to hover just shows how awful and jarring this is.
To fix:
Replace the current ‘hover’ mode with some sort of helicopter/tilt-rotor-esque flight model, which will translate much more believably from each flight mode, as well as give the pelican some believable weight.
To Add:
The pelican sits so high up in game. The image above shows how it should sit, with the landing clearly fairly perpendicular to the ground, allowing for the ramp to be accessed.
In game, the pelicans landing gears sit much higher up, meaning the ramp has to be extended and thus sits at a crazy angle of like 45+ degrees at 2m+ high to reach the ground. Not even master cheeks could walk up that thing let alone the average joe who isn’t 7ft plus.
Alright enough rambling. As a big fan of the Halo series and I’m sure many others are too, especially of the pelican (community’s been trying to fly them since CE), whilst it’s nice to have it finally represented in game like MSFS, there are a few thing I believe that could definitely boost its quality.