FS24 VFR ATC much improved experience over FS2020: Night Flight KLNA to KPBI 10R

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When I want realistic ATC, I fly VFR GA with IVAO and VATSIM, but I do like to see what MS has put together for me. Tonight I took “My Cabri G2” for a short night flight, taking off at the uncontrolled Lantana KLNA airport headed to the short GA 10R runway at Palm Beach International KPBI.

In the air, MS offered “Request Flight Following”. Flight Following confirmed radar contact at 500 feet and I proceeded “VFR as filed” toward the KPBI airspace.

MS offered “Tune Nearby” and after tuning KPBI Approach, offered “Request Full Stop”. After selecting to land, Approach gave me "clearance for left pattern to land on my filed runway, with advice for caution since 10L was in use. Then handed me off to the tower. (again fidling with the mouse to ack, flying a heli takes both hands and feet, so doing the MS ATC thing is always inconvenient).

I ignored the “left” part and continued toward a right base. The tower gave me two traffic warnings that I again had to mouse ack for while slowing down and descending from 500’.

When I was almost over the threshold at 50 feet or so, tower told me to contact ground??? I don’t remember if I had to ack that. After I set her down gently, I tuned ground and asked for “taxi to parking”.

Ground gave me directions to GA parking which was nice, and I made my way hover taxi to the parking. I have all assistance turned off so I don’t actually know where they wanted me to park, but I parked between a cessna and a heli. Luckily I didn’t lose control as sometimes surprises me.

All in all, a pleasant improvement over FS2020 treating me like IFR is the only game in town and vectoring me for ginormous IFR approaches. FS24 VFR ATC was closer to reality than FS2020, and actually quite pleasant for a 15 minute night hop.

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Over the pond, we don’t have Flight Following for Civvie GA VFR.

We contact the destination aerodrome in advance for ‘Prior Permission’.
I take this as filling in the Destination Airport in the setup mainscreen.

On the route, we tune to each airport we pass for 1/ Announce our position and destination. 2/ ATIS. 3/ Request Transit if needed.

Item 1. above is not in MSFS2020 for airfields with ATC ???

In the Real World, when Transit is accepted, a new Squawk is issued. This doesn’t happen in MSFS2020.

In MSFS, there is still too much left for our imagination to correct for . :rofl:
This effectively gives non aviator gamers a rough time trying to understand what’s happening and what should be happening.

I would estimate 3/4 of all buyers simply fly around ‘willy nilly’ for a couple of weeks and get fed up, to move on to the next game.

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That really ruins the “as real as it gets” possibilities. So many are flying “clear and calm” so any runway is as good as any other, and with MS ATC being so often screwy it is understandable that most folks ignore it.

I simply cannot fly without announcing at uncontrolled fields, and contacting ATC everywhere else - there was no “learn to fly first, then worry about the radio” option to getting my PPL, so when I’m not flying IVAO or VATSIM, I simply Have to use whatever ATC MS provides even when it is totally screwy.

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When flying to a strange aerodrome, homework is necessary on Runways, Taxiways and parking Ramps.

Navigraph.

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