Make it impossible to spawn on runway in Live mode

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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@NaylorSweden @CurriedCat @KevyKevTPA

In my opinion any “enforcement” is bad. It is bad because it is causing grief, and it is bad because it doesn’t change habits. Instead, people will fly away from the enforced place and nothing will be solved.

Instead, there are multiple issue I can see and it is not easy to solve because these are orthogonal concepts:

The main reason people spawn on runway might be to save taxi time, but I believe it is more because the aircraft is ready to fly with all startup procedures already done. I personally don’t want to always start it all up and I like being able to quickly jump in and fly for example. I’m not saying my point of view is the same for everyone but I wouldn’t be surprised the main reason people do spawn on the RWY is because this is the only option for starting the simulator with an aircraft up and running. When I do spawn on the runway for this reason, the first thing I immediately do when pressing the “READY” button is pressing the Y key (slew mode) and quickly shift the position aside to free the RWY.

The other problem is people of different skills and different flying objectives. Some are just having fun and others want to fly by the book.

Because of these 2 main problems, you end up with a mix of people disrespecting the others, holding the runway fort and frustrated pilots.

This is why I believe it won’t require much for addressing these 2 main orthogonal issues:

  1. Use a nudge to drive same minded pilots to the correct existing lobby. There is no need to create a collection of lobbies, the 2 existing are already sufficient for this. Eventually a 3rd one only for people flying with online networks like Vatsim or Pilotedge so that they don’t interfere with the other same minded pilots wanting to also fly by the book but under the FS2020 ATC system.

  2. Prevent spawning anyone on the RWY. This is just common sense and I don’t care pilots piling up on the threshold instead of the RWY end: the most important is to preserve the landing pilot from obstruction first and foremost. Furthermore, in taking the habit of spawning on the threshold, especially if the “FLY NOW” button also displays a “LOOK FOR AIRCRAFT LANDING PRIOR ENGAGING ON THE RWY”, pilots will slowly but surely learn it is important to pay attention to this.

  3. Add the option to start in the cockpit engines running and startup procedures done. This will refrain people from having to start at the RWY threshold only because otherwise they’d have to start from C&D cockpits.

With only this, not much to code and implement actually, it would already make a difference.

PS: the 1st option above is just changing the description text in the UI, the 2nd option is just changing the spawning point and the description in the UI, the 3rd option is just adding the code you’d run in the actual “spawn on runway” case. You see, not much to code and even test prior release. Can be done in 1/2 day by a single developer from the existing code base.

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