Am I disappointed? Yes, however, I’m going to try to keep this civil and not rant about the plethora of shortcomings the sim has in my opinion. This is by no means all inclusive, just the major observations that I have made with the short time I spent with it.
*Some of this may be included and I just can’t find/don’t know how to use.
1.) In sim UI. Please consider ditching the current expandable buttons for navigating in-sim menus. It’s a bit annoying to use the buttons for some things and hitting escape for the others. Take the dev mode ribbon at the top and place everything on something like that. That is pretty much how all other sims work and it works well, there wasn’t a need to fix an already almost perfect system.
2.) The camera… where to begin. This is another item that needs to be completely scrapped and re-imagined. It is too complicated, you can move this camera, but not that camera and the free camera takes 12 buttons to operate. Please, if there is an adventurous person on the dev team, buy X-plane, look at the camera system and… do that. Basically, the camera should function like a no-clip fly mode in an FPS. Also, please release the internal camera from cockpit jail.
3.) Scenery, mostly good, however some smoothing where photogrammetry meets autogen. There is a clear visible line at the seams, at least in the area I was flying. That and, I’m sure this will come, more consistent photogrammetry coverage, I was flying through an area I know has the data, but, sadly it was not in the sim.
4.) Planes. Do you guys have something against round instruments with needles? The sim is sorely missing vintage aircraft. The airliners need more functionality, for example, only two buttons work on the Airbus’s ECAM. Also, and yes, I know some people will roll their eyes and sigh, but the airliners need their cabins modeled, this will be especially important for VR immersion.
5.) VR, ASAP and for all HMDs, not the new one nobody owns. This really should’ve been a much, much higher priority. Also, when you go to implement this, do not lock the camera to head position. Allow the camera to be adjusted independent of the HMD location, I hope that makes sense.
6.) SDK, not good. Again, please send out that same adventurous dev to look at X-plane’s WED. Also, paintkits for default planes, while not essential, would really help navigate the messy UV maps. Lastly, at the very least a model viewer so as not to have to wait through all the loading screens just to look at the paint. There is more that needs to be done here, but I haven’t dived into models yet, textures are enough of a chore for now.
That’s all I’ve got for now, I know there is more, but I can’t think of it at the moment. It seems like a good foundation that was release too soon, but the weather is great.
