I have wondered about several things that I notice people doing all the time.
How do you:
Walk around inside or outside an aircraft?
Many aircraft have wonderfully detailed interior and exterior models and I would really like to see and enjoy.
Walk around inside or outside buildings, like an airport terminal building?
Same as above - there is a lot of work there waiting for me to enjoy.
Switch POV while flying, without crashing and without using developer mode?
In X-Plane there is a drop-down menu that you can select from the cockpit view, and you can program individual buttons to specific viewpoints.
In MSFS I can switch between specific âcamerasâ but how do I assign a particular camera to a specific POV like âchase planeâ?
Is it possible to âresetâ the simulation to the most recent takeoff?
For example, in X-Plane I can âresetâ the sim to the most recent starting point. If I do something stupid, I can stop, go back, takeoff and try again.
Are there other essential UI features, (aside from flying the aircraft), that I should know?
And before everyone jumps my bones yelling âRTFM!!!â, Iâm the type that normally reads manuals cover-to-cover - but the MSFS manual is incredibly âchewyâ, (in the same way War and Peace is chewy), and anything longer than 10-15 minutes gives me a pounding headache to the point I cannot even use the sim.
Perhaps thereâs a âQuick-start guideâ that summarizes the manual with references to specific chapters in the main manual for more information?
I donât mean to be lazy, but I donât think a 16 credit-hour college course on the basic operation of the sim is good either.
I can try and offer some answers to some of these questions to get you started. (There is a lot in MSFS that is âburiedâ deep within its features, for sure) I am sure others will be able to add better and more full answers as well.
(Donât forget to click the little triangles beside âimportant shortcutsâ to expand the post)
There are probably quite a few youtube videos out there now as well about using the drone camera.
I use buttons on my joystick to activate exterior and drone camera views. I do use an xbox controller which makes operating the drone camera a lot easier.
I donât think exactly what you are after is available. The closest may be when pressing Esc there is the option to Restart Flight. However, this literally does exactly that, restart the same flight as if you had pressed âFly Nowâ from the world map.
Also, something thatâs not always obviousâŠ
Once youâve flown a route and itâs in the logbook (any flight, not just the most recent), you can click on that flight entry in the logbook and it will give you the option to refly that route. It generally just sets the routing again, so you might still have to set fuel, load, etc.
Regards
Note that this is a âmeâ thing. Your mileage may, and probably will, vary.
One thing that totally burns my biscuits is being redirected to a YouTube video. Itâs not that I object to YouTube per se, but 99.9999999% of the allegedly âinstructionalâ videos cram five minutes of useful instructions into a fifteen or twenty minute video which drives me BATTY!
In my case, I read extremely rapidly and it frustrates me to no end to wait 20 minutes to find out something I could have read in 30 seconds. Of course thatâs probably me channeling my inner aspie.
Now I admit that there are some excellently done videos out there, but they are so very rare as to truly be exceptions to the rule.
Written instructions, especially if I can print them and refer to them while doing something, are far superior (IMHO).
I discovered that after I posted the question which is essentially identical to the restart I was requesting. Different terminology, same effect.
More important, I can assign it to a button (if I remember correctly).
Continuing the discussion from How do you. . . .?:
[N.B. The original topic, (this one), had closed so I spawned a new topic continuing it, which was then re-merged with this original topic, re-opening it.]
How do you. . . .
Take screen-shots and/or videos of a flight, either while in-flight or later on after the flight is done?
(I seriously covet the nice screen-shots and videos I see others doing.)
How do you. . . .
RTFM?
Is there some kind of comprehensive documentation somewhere - hopefully well indexed - that people can use to look things up?
I know from personal experience that searching these forums, even with a carefully crafted search, often returns virtually nothing of interest. Likewise, doing a web-search is equally futile on many occasions. And itâs really frustrating to have someone chime in to a topic and say something like â. . . and how difficult is it to âctl-eâ anyway?!!â - as if I even knew what that was. . .
Makes it very easy and itâs very customisable to how you want to use it. Free (open source).
It can make date named folders to organise your collection automatically etc. It can upload screenshots to a cloud service automatically if you want.
I set it up to take full screen shot with ALT+Space bar, so itâs easy to just smash those keys whilst flying (and that combo isnât used for anything else).
As for âafterâ a flight you could use something like SkyDolly to record the whole flight then go back through and find the bit you want, change cameras etc then use ALT+ Space. Job done.
For video I use OBS Studio but itâs pretty complex. Nvidia has a built in recorder that you can just start with a shortcut - but only if you have the GF Experience installed (I donât, hence using OBS).
Though these are all excellent ideas, one of the things I really want to avoid is loading a lot of extra stuff up onto my flight sim system that will consume my systemâs limited resources. Ideally, I wold like to find ways to do this within the sim itself.
Hmm good question. Iâll have to check later but there will be a way. What controller would you want it to work on?
Understandable but I have very limited system too and have not noticed any negative effect from having that installed. And with a lot of other stuff I have in memory too Iâm pretty amazed I donât have any issues lol
The built in windows way is this:
Depending on your hardware, you may use the Windows Logo Key + PrtScn button as a shortcut for print screen. If your device does not have the PrtScn button, you may use Fn + Windows logo key + Space Bar to take a screenshot, which can then be printed.
But I think that just keeps it in clipboard so you would need to stop flying and save each one before you take another one. Or it might dump it on the desktop with a filename. Not sure. I had used the Snipping tool before but that is even more interrupting to flying so I went with this ShareX in the end.
@Jimrh1993 To help prevent this thread getting autoclosed again I moved it to the most appropriate community support area of the forums and removed the 30 day autoclose timer.
I know that windows+prt-screen auto-saves the desktop to the âscreenshotsâ folder in the userâs Pictures folder - but I donât know if that can happen within the closed environment of the game itself, especially if run full-screen.
But does that work while in the game - especially in full-screen mode? (and my keyboard is usually stuffed somewhere outta the way so I have room for the controllers)
Actually I find for screenshots I just have to press Win+PrnScr. And yes it does work with the game in full screen mode. I am not sure if this is basic Windows functionality or part of the game bar functionality that is always active with the game.
One hassle is that it captures BIG .PNG files, so I convert them to .JPG afterwards
Yes, but I canât use Win+PrnScr because I have 2 monitors and that command will take both.
The commands I suggested above come from Xbox Game Bar ( I have MSFS Store version and not Steam).
And using Matric on the tablet I have not to reach the keyboard.
