Hello,
First post here so i hope i am not breaking any rules or not asking something that has been asked 1000x times
Just getting into the game slowly and while i consider myself pretty independent when it comes to learning and did my fair share of gaming/sims in last 25 years i am hitting few obstacles in MSFS as aviation is entirely new to me.
I’ll try to keep it simple and brief:
I have clocked in around 40 hours, set up my stick and throttle, went through all the training lessons and around half of the landing challenges.
I am able to start up the plane, either with keybinds with easier planes or following checklist with more complex planes, taxi, take off, cruise and “somewhat” understand where i am headed and follow that, and land on, mostly correct, runway
The skills and knowledge the game teaches in trainings does not even cover 10% of what I feel like I am supposed to know, which I presume is fine, its a realistic sim and i am spending at least half the time on youtube or web reading guides and learning, which while being fun, can get a bit frustrating but it takes time and not the primary reason of posting this thread.
What I have issues with is setting up an actual flight plan, using the world map I feel like i need a bit of hand holding, i can choose departure and arrival, but it has turned out to be a catastrophic experience due to me being a noob, I either spawn on runway that is too short for my plane selection, or I fly to destination that is a point of interest and not an airport, I make a flight that is completely unrealistic for the plane and fuel tank and end up being lost or I have no options in ATC to ask for directions, taxi, landing etc as there is apparently no tower comms at that specific airfield i have chosen.
Is there some “EASY TO USE” service, app, addon, website or anything that can help me with the basics to set up realistic flight plan, maybe career, or a journey that actually is possible, makes sense and is doable and enjoyable? From A to B, duration for one go, plane that is suitable with proper taxi take off sequence and landing to gate/parking? Once i understand when to use VFR/IFR/VOR 2 VOR and all those things I think i can create my own but at this point i would really like to just follow some scripted flight to keep learning.
It’s a must… but you might find it a little overwhelming. It’s incredibly feature rich, but you only need use a little bit of it to do your flight plans.
Sim Brief and Little nav map are both great but if the guy is having trouble using world map they are going to be of no use .
i m so sorry i dont have time to explain world map but rather than choose the airport as departure you can zoom into the airport and choose a parking space ( white dot) that will give you a cold and dark state
For your arrival airport its easier to begin with by using the main airport icon as you have been as they will then show you which runway its using by default at that time. there is a big difference between POI icons and airport icons by selecting more in the lower menu then filters you can turn poi markers off so you dont see them and can recognise which are airports and which are poi’s
Definitely little nav map, if you have a second monitor you can put little nav map on second monitor and track your flight whilst your flying
Also try sticking to a ga plane to begin with easier to learn and bigger planes can be a bit overwhelming at first as there is a lot to do and remember and they were intended to be piloted by two as opposed to one pilot.
decision making for a faster plane means you have to be well ahead of the plane. A smaller ga plane is easier to make adjustments and control
try a flight in your local area and do a vfr flight where you can follow a major road or navigate via familiar land marks such as hills rivers.
Next step try a flight plan that includes one vor so destination airport vor then arrival airport.
Cessna 172 is a great plane to start with, great visibility due to high wing and use the steam gauge version if possible as it’s easier to setup than a glass cockpit
As @secretfarmerGal says, maybe get used to the world map first. By default, the scroll wheel on you mouse will zoom in and out. Zoom right into the airport for departure and you’ll see the runway layout and all of the parking spots. Pick one and select it as the departure. Next, select the destination. You can use the mouse wheel an world map again, or if you know the ICAO code for the airport you could put that in the search box in the destination window.
While I won’t offer specific advice, I do want to offer encouragement to “keep at it”.
Each new flight will give you new experience. Your description of how you started from scratch is familiar to all of us who had no aviation background when we started.
There are great YouTube tutorial videos that are worth the time to watch, such as Squirrel.
I’ll second this, and even go so far as to say don’t feel pressured into getting them just because everyone else seems to use them. They have their benefits, but are by no means required to enjoy the sim. I’ve put a lot of hours on and only recently started using Simbrief. Even then it was more out of curiosity than anything, and I could get by just fine without either add-ons.
For general learning of how to use the world map, this video does a decent job of it starting at around the 7:40 mark.
Don’t worry that it’s an IFR focused video if that isn’t your thing, and much of the info before and after the world map planning section isn’t needed for beginner purposes. Setting up a flight plan like this does two things. One, yes it will preload the flight plan into your plane’s flight computer if equipped with a NAV mode in the autopilot (not just heading mode).
The other is if you pull up the VFR map (default key binding is V), it will show you the flight plan you setup in the world map. If it has multiple waypoints, the leg you are currently on is shown in magenta, and it will track you as you fly. This way you can fly around VFR while still having some guidance.
When it comes to talking to ATC, it’s not uncommon in the real world for smaller airports to be uncontrolled. In other words, there is no tower to contact. Pilots just tune to the local frequency and announce intentions to anyone else that may be in the area. This is modeled in the sim and likely explains why you aren’t getting landing info. In the ATC menu is an option to tune nearest airports. When you find one with an active tower frequency, you would get an option to request the airport direction.
One final note about watching video tutorials. Make sure you include the specific aircraft you are wanting to learn about. Not only do the stock aircraft have different ways of doing things, but they are starting to update the avionics in some, and there are many popular third party aircraft and mods that are of the same type as stock aircraft but with extra complexities. You wouldn’t want to search how to do something in the stock A320 and watch a video on how to do it in a third party alternative.
I’m going to buy Flight Simulator for Dummies (released Feb 2023). I do better with books and hope it can help me.
Edit. Book will not be released until March 20.
Thanks, another thing i did not know! I do zoom in on the airport i want to arrive to but i didnt know there are filters to disable POI which would make it much easier to navigate. great tip i dont know how i missed that
thanks that is great, i will go through the vid i dont think i have seen this one yet. with ATC i do admit i have issues as sometimes i approach the destination but start talking to ATC too late and i am not sure if its AI is advanced enough to take into consideration my status etc, i need to do a bit more research on the matter, i often am on the correct landing descent or “base leg” whatever its called and it sets my route from far past, tells me to go 16000 ft etc while i have completed the aproach already.
One question though, do you recommend rather spend more time in 1 aircraft and learn everything about it, or use few for the flights if i am not that experienced? I feel like the propeller planes and Cessna are quiet straightforward and i get lost in the A310/737 but maybe i should learn the ins and outs of a single plain first? is there a recommended “difficulty” tier list of planes to fly in MSFS or community perception for “starter” and “advanced” planes?
The ATC isn’t great, so I’m not surprised you’re having issues with it. I haven’t had the climb to stupid heights after entering final approach, but I’ve heard of others having that issue. Not sure why it happens. A lot of people will ignore and not use ATC due to various problems like that.
As for which way to learn, I guess it depends on how much realism you are wanting. If you are wanting to keep it realistic, then yes you would want to start with simple props and work your way up. Personally, I didn’t do that. I’ll occasionally fly different aircraft just to bang the stick around, but my favorite is the Cessna CJ4 business jet. So what I did was jump straight to it and just learned what I needed to fly it competently. If you know there’s only one or two planes that interest you, then I would say have at them and learn all you can about them. When it comes to the various systems, there isn’t much comparable between something like the Cessna 172 and an airliner. Even the flight dynamics are wildly different. So my opinion is why learn the 172 if all you want to fly is something like 747? It’s not like you are putting real money and lives at risk jumping into the deep end, and the only downside is the learning curve you’ll go through anyway starting with a 172. Obviously that advise doesn’t work in the real world.
One thing to note about the A310 is it is a “study level” aircraft. Most of the others have simplistic controls and many inoperable functions, but the A310 was added last year for pilots wanting extra immersion without going to one of the third party offerings. As such, it’s going to be a much harder aircraft to fully understand. I just want to make sure you temper your expectations accordingly for that one. The CJ4 was one to get the avionics update, and it’s now much more in depth when it comes to flight planning and working with the computer inside the cockpit. It gave many of us a lot of frustration, but I can help you get acquainted with it if you need. Helicopters are also just plain difficult to control, to the point I think they are not modeled correctly (I.e. Spinning out of control regardless of control inputs). It can be done, but takes a lot of work and tweaking controller settings.
thanks for the additional info and clarity, it makes sense. and i can actually vouch for that A310 complexity, i had to do one landing challenge and i had to read a manual to understand why the hell it made throttle to 100% everytime i tried landing to understand this TO GA and A/THR to turn it off, shame it cant be bound to a key and i need to use mouse everytime, i got like 150 keys on throttle i can use for it. With the dashboards in the cockpit, the monitors, i do have one question. would you know a good guide or video tutorial on how to load the plan properly into planes computer and also if copilot can be set to follow it? sometimes i see my proper heading etc on the monitor and sometimes i dont, must be one of the things i dont understand yet.
Have you looked in the settings at the keyboard control options? If a key binding doesn’t already exist, you should be able to create a custom one for all the controls. I haven’t really explored the A310, so not familiar with its specifics. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can help you with that.
Now you are getting into some of the more nuanced territory. If you are creating a flight plan in the world menu, then it should directly import. When you jump in the cockpit and get everything fired up, it should populate in the flight management system (FMS) so all you need to do is turn the autopilot on. NAV (or LNAV) mode tells the plane when to turn left and right based on waypoints or GPS direct route. VNAV controls the vertical position based on altitude restrictions. HDG mode aims the plane at a given heading and doesn’t change, and also doesn’t correct for wind drift. Altitude hold (ALT) keeps the plane at a specific altitude and you would use vertical speed or flight level change (FLC) to initiate a climb or decent. Not every plane has every option, and there can be minor differences in how they operate in each specific plane. This is where searching for plane specific tutorials come into play.
You can also set up a flight plan from scratch in the more advanced aircraft. Again, this is very plane specific, so this is only generalized info and you’ll want to search for tutorials specific to what you are flying for more info. You select your airport to depart on the world map as usual, either ready on a runway or cold and dark in a parking spot. Once fired up, there’s often a boot sequence to wait on, then position initialization you have to set to confirm the plane’s location. Then you enter the 4-digit code of the origin and destination airports. Some aircraft require little else, some want you to enter departure and arrival routing for a specific runway (SID and STAR respectively). I don’t have a great video on this off hand because I more or less figured it out by trial and error after reading a lot. If the CJ4 interests you, I did make this video to address the changes of the avionics update as it applies to casual fliers that don’t care to be super strict about everything. It’s almost two hours long, but covers a lot, including starting cold and dark, creating a flight plan from scratch in the FMS, and navigating with the autopilot. I tried to keep it easy to understand and address new pitfalls like the dreaded discontinuities in a route.
I don’t really consider the sim to have a co-pilot, at least not in the traditional sense. There are some “co-pilot’ish” accessibility options, but I find I prefer to just do everything myself. If using the autopilot system, there isn’t much to do most of the time anyway. Lol
As it was said above Little Nav Map is essential. Because it:
a) lets you decide from where to where to fly and quickly zoom into the airport to see if the runway is long enough for your aircraft
b) shows you the progress of your flight on the map as you move along. If you get disoriented you can see which way to turn back to where you were going
Once you have decided from where to where you want to fly you open the world map, enter departure airport. then the parking gate. then the arrival aiport. then the type of flight. (VFR, IFR hi or low) Then select the departure procedure (SID) Not really necessary in the beginning.
I would decide on one aircraft for now and practice with that one.
choose one with an autopilot, it gives you more time to check things and prepare yourself for whats next in the flight without having to worry about trimming the aircraft all the time.
find a short route ( I did Vancouver - Seattle I don’t know how many times) and fly that repeatedly. It makes you more familiar with the aircraft and the route of course. ( familiarity is key)
do not worry about things like TOGA at the beginning. In my close to 3000 hours I did the take off and go around (TOGA) exactly one time. and you can instead always push the throttle to take-off power, retract the gear and suck in the flaps. Its very similar
I fly the CJ4 mostly on Vatsim and for this aircraft there are plenty of youtubes available. ( just search MSFS CJ4 programming the FMC for example) I suspect there are youtubes for other aircraft types as well.
Hope this helps a bit.
As has been stated LittleNav Map is a really a useful tool but when I first used it I was i overwhelmed with it and parked it. So as another pilot has said just concentrate on learning the world map process until you are comfortable to move onto something new. I would be lost with LNM and have never used the world map for planning - its def something to aim for.
Happy for you to contact me directly if you need any help with anything!
I can not stress the importance of these two YouTube channels enough! They are both fantastically knowledgeable and easy to digest. At this point it’s really about “seat time” sitting and learning. Most aspects of aviation can be dense, pull up a comfy chair.
And as always hats off to these two content creators in particular. They have truly taught me everything I know, and I wouldn’t get the enjoyment out of this Simulator if it weren’t for their expertise!
if you are not willing to get a navigraph subscription right now, I suggest you airmate.aero their chart arn’t uptodate but they provide chart for most of airport around the world allowing you to get familiar with procedures ! it s definitely a good source when you start
I would suggest not trying to learn everything and do everything “correctly” all at once. Pick one thing at a time to work on – such as how to fly a specific aircraft correctly in terms of appropriate speeds and attitudes, when to use flaps and how much at what speeds, etc. Or how to fly a circuit and land in a GA aircraft in VFR flight. Or how to use VORs for navigation. It’s not realistic to expect to jump right in with no prior knowledge and fly an IFR flight in an airliner. It may be best as well to just turn off ATC at first until you feel more confident in what you are doing.
