More Realistic Agricultural Aviation Missions

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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It seems silly how you load up an AT802 with 400 gallons, spray off 50 gallons or so, land, then shutdown. Doesn’t make any sense. That scenario would literally never happen in real life.

I’d like to know how many acres we have to spray and take the appropriate amount of product. How about multiple loads? If I have 600 acres to spray at 2 gallons per acre, let me do it in two loads of 600 gallons. Or how about I have three 100 acre fields and I do it in one 600 acre load? My point is I wish it was more fleshed out.

Loading pad operations are a big part of the job in real life, it’s a shame they missed it for the game. Deciding how much product to take based on acres, runway conditions, weather, aircraft performance is essential.

If there are cargo missions that take 3.5 hours, why can’t we have more fleshed out ag missions that take longer?

Also, why does the game insist on flying exactly at 110 knots over the field. If you look at Air Tractor’s website, that’s below the “typical working speed”. Can we just get rid of the naggy AI voice. I’m an ag pilot in real life. If they put an AI in the airplane that nagged me every time I turned my spray on slightly late, ect I’d quit.

I won’t get into it too much, but the lack of GPS guidance systems is also disappointing. In real life we have a GPS system, usually mounted on the nose that keeps us lined up in the field. It’s a shame they missed it, since it’s an essential, critical piece of equipment that nobody is going without these days.

Also, why are we spraying liquid fertilizer on dirt on every mission. Usually when I spray in real life I’m spraying plants of some sort. Usually corn or soybeans. How about some dry work? Dry fertilizer on timber for example would be cool.

I really do appreciate it that ag aviation has been represented. It’s missing a lot though.

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This post makes me wonder how well thin client can be modded, becase the Ag life sounds fascinating if someone went hardcore with a mod and accurate avionics. Keep giving your feedback, somebody smarter than us will absolutely kill to make this happen if its even possible. I just dont know if 2024 is capable of modding in this way.

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Agree. Was hoping they’d have the fully-modeled Ag-nav or Swathstar lightbar, etc. I kind of doubt it’s going to be a standard package, but hopefully someone will be allowed to mod it.

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It is nuts that this smart wish by a pilot experienced in the field and that would promise to make the sim even more entertaining gets 3 votes. Yet “beards” (BEARDS!?) gets 130.

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I don’t disagree that this one should have a lot more votes, but ag is a very niche field when it comes to subject-matter expertise, and is largely unknown to most simmers because we’ve never really been exposed to it. Compare that to beards, which is noticeable to most simmers because we all have to do the avatar personalization and it’s an obvious miss that probably doesn’t require too much effort or subject-matter expertise. I think we can push for this without slamming that.

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Makes perfect sense.

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I agree that ag is a niche field. So I definitely understand why it’s not more fleshed out. And to that point, they missed a lot in the other career paths too. For example, the IFR procedures make no sense at all lol. The ATC in game really has me scratching my head a lot of times. I bet that skydive pilots and banner tow pilots have their fair share of complaints too.

But man, the ag flying is just missing so much. But then again, it’s a game.

I used to be an infantryman, and now I can’t watch movies or play games without calling out all the non-tactical nonsense. The same thing is now happening to me in aviation.

Again, I really am happy that ag flying made it in though. The fact that an Air Tractor and a Cessna 188 made it into the game is really cool.

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I have a beard in real life too so am not opposed to that. haha Although I never attempt to make characters in game look like me. I usually just try to make my character look like a huge goof ball because I think it’s funny.

But yes, I would love some more votes on this topic!

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Absolutely agree with everything you said. I hope you stick around and lend your subject matter expertise into making it better! And thanks for your service.

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Well said. Time will tell!

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I made a mod for the air tractor to test out my ideas for an AG Nav lightbar. It’s not the complete solution, but I think this shows some interesting potential.

A small download and instructions are on this link: AG Nav Lightbar

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Looks great!

I was working on an Ag addon but shelved it until 2024 matures a bit more, especially the SDK.

Too many issues that make the current development experience highly unpleasant and difficult to realize certain interaction elements that I think would make great Ag (and other activity) gameplay.

I only have so much hair left to give in the service of addon development😂

Otoh, came across this great film the other day:

"
@DonGuy
11 years ago

I shot this documentary in the 1970’s just north of Greenwood Mississippi, in the delta area. It was produced for a PBS series at the time called “American Dream Machine” However I have lost records of what the pilots name was or followed his whereabouts.

The pilot was John Walton (yes, one of those Waltons!). He was also a silver star Green Beret in Vietnam. https://sogsite.com/john-walton/
He was killed in an experimental a/c crash in Jackson Hole in 2005.

@TheRogerhill1234
2 years ago
The National Transportation Safety Board determined Tuesday that the probable cause of the 2005 crash of Jackson Hole philanthropist John Walton’s experimental airplane was his improper reinstallation of an elevator control device. The board released its findings in a three-page report more than a year and four months after the fatal crash just north of Jackson Hole Airport. Walton, 58, had taken off from the airport to the south, climbed to an estimated 800 to 1,000 feet, turned his CGS Hawk Two Place Arrow east, north, then west as he began to land. Witnesses saw the aircraft descend normally until about 200 feet above the ground, when it dipped into a steeper angle and crashed into the sagebrush. Walton, an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, died on impact. The board’s determination followed an exhaustive examination of the wreckage by investigator Aaron Sauer of Denver. Based on his reports, the Washington, D.C.-based panel concluded that Walton lost control of his aircraft in flight. Key to that determination was Sauer’s discovery that a component of the aircraft’s control system was out of place. Known as a “locking collar,” the piece is critical to maintaining tension in a cable system connecting the control stick to the plane’s elevators. The elevators - horizontal flaps on the tail of the plane - are the surfaces that control the pitch, or nose attitude, of an aircraft. Without correct tension in the cable system, proper control over the elevators cannot be maintained and the plane’s ability to climb or dive can be compromised. The board put the blame on Walton for not properly reinstalling the locking collar following repairs to his plane. Walton damaged the light craft in Nebraska when he had a “hard landing” while attempting to transport it from its assembly location in West Virginia. He had to truck it the rest of the way to Jackson Hole.

RIP. He lived an interesting life!

I thought his handling of chemicals was a bit dodgy though.
Some of the comments are really interesting:

@olgreywolf9688

3 years ago (edited)

Yeah … well, this is almost like some anti-cropdusting promo ad for FDA and OSHA! I flew ag work for 20 years … 14000 hours … in the sixties, seventies and eighties … starting in a converted, metalized two holer with slipper tank in front seat on cotton out of Clanton, AL and ended in the mid eighties in Bull Stearmans (Pratt 600hp) and Air Tractors on rice in south Louisiana at Morgan Crop Service. Oddly, this video does not reflect the life and work I saw in those days. Our operations were much cleaner. Though I always directed the operation, I but very rarely ever mixed a load myself, and the mixing operations were never out of five gallon cans!! We had mixing vats and large chemical holding tanks that were plumbed into loading/mixing tanks. And, had loader trucks with water tanks and mixing tanks on the back for operations on strips away from home field, as well as loading booms for dry material work. Also, I never saw a flagger in a cotton or bean field! Ever! First working flaggers I ever saw were on rice in Lousiana!! Those years were a dream come true for me … all I’d ever wanted to do since I was a kid … in my eighties now, I still look back and share with wingmates that are still around, our time together back then. That remarkable camaraderie, I think, will be here, until … Always hour-long+ phone calls! Interesting video … the reality of that ol’ big-■■■ radial in front, and the low-level work is wonderful … really brought back some great memories. Thank you for that.

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I figured I wasn’t the first person to think of this. I only made this small part to scratch an itch and see what the experience would be. The complete nav systems are much more complex and detailed.

I think it’s great that they added at least some agriculture aviation to the sim. The included missions seem too simplified to fully capture the essence of the operations. It is always fascinating to me to watch professional Ag pilots executing perfect turns and passes over and over. That is a skill that seems worth pursuing in the sim but you do need the right equipment.

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This looks like a great start!

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I ventured over here from the aerial firefighting niche out of curiosity to see if anyone else in these niches was noting any sort of shortcomings with how it’s represented in this sim. And we too feel the lack of detail and lack of real world applications this niche has. Instead we get a very watered down version of it seems like either, aerial firefighting or ag spraying operations. I feel in the aerial firefighting point of view, and maybe from people in the ag spraying field maybe agree, that the missions we get are more or less training missions rather than how it actually works in the real world. It does seem in either niche there is a definite lack of SMEs giving the developers info and/or have insight into creating these missions. As we don’t even have fully functioning firefighting aircraft either (no helicopter firefighting can be done, see the S-64F and AT-802 threads as examples) and it seems like, most of the ag aircraft also are missing a lot of their GPS equipment.

There is so much potential here, but it seems like they took a wikipedia article to build these niches and didn’t have much real world advice into how things should be setup for these types of ops. Or better yet, have the aircraft completely functioning how they should be. The capacity of these aircraft, performance, and a number of other things I’ve also pointed out as issues too.

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I couldn’t have said it better. I joke that some of the scripting of cargo and pax missions, to airport pairings, mission names, pax and dispatcher conversations, etc, sounds like the developer asked ChatGPT for help with what that might sound/look like. There are so many SMEs out there, why does it seem like so few are involved?

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It definitely does seem that way. It seems like they took basic, very basic information and sort of applied it in house, without any outside help, information, or really testing to make sure things were at least accurately represented. So instead, as stated before. You get a very generic watered down almost arcade version of what you’re trying to represent. And really, it comes off as hokey and horribly buggy/inaccurate to those of us that want to do these ops because we’re familiar with the real operations. That either someone who does it as a profession, or people that are hardcore enthusiasts. It’s coming off as you stated, like a ChatGPT description wrote the mission sets and what not. It starts to look more and more rushed in that sense.

It would make a huge difference to have some SME’s involved in some of these niches. Aerial firefighting, ag operations, and probably commercial aviation, SAR, etc. Just to make sure it doesn’t continue to exude, “Hi, we’re Asobo/Microsoft and we rushed this and instead of using real SMEs we used ChatGPT to make this for the community!”

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I added a comment in the vote topic because I agree that to include some of these more niche aviation missions deserves to try to capture the real experience better.

Maybe the ultimate solution is that we just mod the aircraft to do the correct thing in free flight and don’t worry if career mode can catch up. We have most of the tools already. It just takes dedicated people.

I’ll pool my time and resources to anyone who want’s to join this journey. All feedback is welcome. The good news is that the sim is quite malleable and can do a lot more than just what Asobo and Microsoft does.

When you see the sim as more of a sandbox it opens up possibilities. Xbox users might get left out at first until it’s sorted.

I have been in touch with another developer working on Ag planes and I have more to work with in regards to Ag Nav systems. This could result in something good. Let’s keep collaborating in this area.

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For the past couple of days, I was doing some experiments with plotting out the swath lines for a field. I was able to find all the relevant geographic functions to calculate everything and it’s given me a good idea if it’s possible to actually make this a reality. I was able to get my prototype to generate several of the common patterns and this is filling in one more piece of the puzzle.
The next step is to move this code into a instrument for the sim and see how it works to set the A-B line during flight and eventually to be able to use this data for the lightbar.

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I took on the next development step to build it into a MSFS instrument and gave it a bit of UI treatment. This is running in my mock environment so I can quickly reload and make small changes. I have it so you mark the A and B positions while you fly to set the first line, then fly to the opposite boundary to mark the C point and also spray the last line. Then it will plot the rest of the lines in the sequence you choose. That seem simple enough for most people to be able to figure it out.

I’ll make an input event so you can trigger the mark with the start of the spray and end mark when finishing the first line. And we could have additional events for next line maybe tied to the brake button since that will not do anything else in flight.

My testing will continue and when I have a viable system, I’ll open it up for testing.

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