I’ll say that my experience with the FSAcademy products has exceeded my expectations. I’m not a real-world pilot, but have spent a lot of time with free and paid online ground-schools, reading manuals, flying with GA pilot friends, and generally geeking out with simulators.
FS Academy doesn’t have the content of a $300 ground school or the personalization of a $100/hour instructor. But it’s also only $22! Not sure if the other guy really expected to be ready for his certificate for that price.
For me, many of the points in the lessons were reinforcement of what I’d already learned. Some of the things (like mountain flying) were relatively new to me. And the final VFR trips/tests were just plain fun!
So, rather than criticize what’s not included, evaluate whether it’s worth the $22 price and whether you’re in the market for $22 of training. For me it was worth it and I went back for the IFR installment as well. I appreciate the time you put into these, @FSAcademyLTD , and will look at the Jetliner module in the future.
I’ve purchased both your VFR and IFR training mission packs and was also planning to get the Jetliner pack but wanted to know if and when you were planning to update both of them with further features or any changes to make the training easier. I’ve only flown a few missions from the VFR pack and, to be honest, found some of them quite frustrating. The slightest deviation from the course leaves you flying endlessly without any idea of whether you’re still in the training mission or not. I fly in VR and spent hours redoing just one mission (VFR 04) as I just couldn’t get the triggers for the next section. It was almost like stumbling across each trigger and remembering that for the next retry. Given my experience with the first few missions I never completed the VFR pack or even started the IFR one, let alone go ahead and purchase the Jetliner one. These are training missions and therefore supposedly targetted at new simmers and novices, but in their current state they are quite frustrating for such learners and appear to be work in progress. I hope this can be accepted as constructive ciriticism and the packs updated with more features and training improvements. Thank you.
Thanks for your post highlighting your experiences so far. I am in the process of updating IFR then VFR to be include the latest features found in Jetliner. These include camera options, on screen objectives, full subtitles etc, which will make the missions even more accessible to new sim pilots.
It appears that the latest update from Asobo has introduced an issue with the altimeter at the start of missions. The altimeter grossly under-reads at mission launch. Asobo are aware of this and are working on a fix, but in the meantime a rough workaround is to launch the mission, hit pause and then Restart the mission. This should work in the majority of cases.
Thanks for your patience in the meantime. Support page will be updated.
In other news, the update to FS Academy - IFR is going well and introduces many new features and improvements. More on this soon.
Quick update for the IFR update.
All is going well, but it was a much more major undertaking than expected. Hopefully finished in the next couple of weeks, pending SU6 adjustments and testing.
Full info once it’s ready!
Also, SU6 will indeed fix the altimeter problem, so that is good news and resulted from Asobo and ourselves.
Do you have an initial list of changes/fixes, or if not, would you say it’s worth waiting for the update to arrive before doing IFR for the first time?
I have all three courses. I loved the VFR one, I’ve done it several times (though I understand the above frustration about triggering the next objective sometimes), and I’m looking forward to doing IFR and Jetliner, but I can wait a few weeks until the post SU6 updates if it’s recommended.
Yes sure, I expect it won’t be much longer than a week from now for IFR v1.4, so you could well wait until then so that you get the best experience.
Expected changes:
In game Markers
On-screen objectives
Updated imagery
Correct menu ordering
Cleaned voiceover
Full subtitles
Improved and more intelligent mission ‘triggers’
Adjusted time of day for instrument legibility where needed
New mission steps and monitored parameters
Fixed ending to IFR11
Added into cinematics
Toolbar enabled
Improved briefing screen information
Plus more…
think I will fly them all again and then do the final flight as well.
Never started the final flight, because some thing I had not understood.
But will give it a new chance.
You may well have seen the exciting announcement of Flight Simulator - GOTY.
Part of this update is set to include new tutorials for Bush Flying and IFR.
I’m taking this announcement from Microsoft as a greenlight to further announce that these tutorials are developed by FS Academy, forming a partnership with Asobo and Microsoft.
Really looking forward to putting the finishing touches into these missions. I’d like to stress that the new IFR tutorial set does not eclipse or step on the toes of FS Academy - IFR and is aimed to co-exist, aimed at purely newcomer simmers and presents the topic in a much more basic and ultimately accesible form.
I’m currently uploading IFR v1.4 to all stores.
This is a major quality of life improvement, adding multiple new features and fixing minor issues:
In game Markers
On-screen objectives
Updated imagery
Correct menu ordering
Cleaned voiceover
Full subtitles
Improved and more intelligent mission ‘triggers’
Adjusted time of day for instrument legibility where needed
New mission steps and monitored parameters
Fixed ending to IFR11
Added into cinematics
Toolbar enabled
Improved briefing screen information
Plus more…
This was a bigger undertaking than initially expected, as I have rebuild most of the missions and essentially re-engineered the entire mission pack. I think you’ll like it! Plus, the previous ‘do not pause’ issue has been resolved.
Marketplace will lag behind other stores, as it goes through their systems before publishing. Other stores will be updating asap.
This is great! I bought all of the FS Academy add-ons a little while ago but only got around to doing VFR and Voyager. By the time I thought about starting IFR I knew there was an update coming so I held off.
I have been working through the IFR ones over the last few days and I am really enjoying them - thanks so much for making these!
The only thing I noticed which might be considered a bug is in the VOR/NDB lesson in the 172 with the G1000 is that the CDI was set to GPS, and the bearing indicators were not enabled so I had to go in and do that. I’m not sure if it is possible for you to have that preconfigured in the add-on? If you can’t it might be worth adding a voice instruction to set the CDI to VOR1 and to enable both bearing indicators for VOR1 and ADF before taking off. (It is possible that was there and I missed it so let me know if that is the case too).
That’s covered in the ground school book, though if it was supposed to be like that it’s good to point out.
@FSAcademyLTD , same as above, I have been doing IFR all night and really enjoying both it and some of the features you’ve added in that VFR currently lacks. About to start Section 5, Holding, and you’re absolutely right it’s confusing and intimidating. I’ll be sure to have a good cry before takeoff.
The main feedback I have is that there is no mention anywhere that I can see about how to do a Rate 1 turn in a glass cockpit. There is still, obviously, the rule of thumb of 10%+7 bank angle, but the analog cockpits have that handy mark on the turn coordinator. There’s the purple arc on the top of the HSI which, when it reaches the first tick mark, is a Rate 1 turn (I believe), but I would guess that most people doing the course for the first time won’t know that. It would be a major benefit to mention it, or (as I’m no expert) any other way to tell.
Also, given the prevalence of the WT NXi mod on the Marketplace, if there are any major differences a note in the ground school manual would be appreciated.
One final thought: to reduce workload while tinkering with the G1000 in Section 4, I turned the AP on to control the climb and was greeted with “autopilot off, please.”
I did the “holding” lesson last night. I used to be really confused by the different entry procedures but actually performing them in the lesson made them seem really straightforward and it was a lot less intimidating than I thought! I’m planning on getting my private IFR rating IRL soon and I think these sim lessons are invaluable in getting an understanding of the procedures before going up in real life and trying it.
I second the rate 1 turn indication on the G1000 as well. I was already aware of the purple indicator but agree that somebody not already familiar with that would probably be confused if it isn’t pointed out to them
That’s funny, as the BRG needles and CDI always launch correctly for me with the C172 G1000.
MSFS has many issues with correctly loading a saved flight (which forms the basis of a mission) so I have had many issues during development of other packs to get this sort of thing working. I’ll keep an eye on it. Thanks.
