It looks to me like the active pause merely removes position changes from the step calculation. It does not appear to remove any other forces acting on the plane. Since those forces are still being applied to the plane’s attitude while being held in a single position, the forces add up and can lead to outrageous effects on the airframe. I’ve had a plane crash WHILE IN active pause.
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Hmm, really? I’ll need to check again, but I remember using ESC to get to the controls/assistance/etc screen on an approach, and my plane didn’t smack into the ground 10 minutes later when resumed.
ESC is a ‘hard’ pause. Active pause is something else, but I see that some are questioning which type of pause the ESC key initiates.
Just disable the crash detection and overstress damage detection in the options. These two functions never worked properly so there is no reason whatsover to keep them activated.
You’ll know when you have crashed the aircraft, because, well, you’ll see it touch the ground and tumble in an unplanned manner. And if you fly your aircraft realistically you never should come even close to overstressing them.
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I find it funny to consider it “completely broken” cause you can’t fly it unrealistically to get a made up achievement. But that’s just me… Also just press Esc don’t use active pause.
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Tried to get a storm going so you could see the plane dance a little more, but the lightning is a dead give away
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If pressing Esc takes you to the main menu then I assume that is the “hard” pause.
I’ll have a play around with this tonight, with the weather idea I suggested. If its a hard pause, then I should see no change in the clouds no matter how long I leave it. If I do, then either it is not pausing the weather simulation at all, which would lead me to question what else it isn’t pausing, or it does, and the simulation instantly updates when press Esc again to unpause.
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If you use ESC , also hit load/save and choose load or save. After the windows style window pops up, your GPU will idle too. Saves energy/GPU’s.
Edit: hit cancel and resume to return to the game.
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It’s a bit funny how off-topic this got.
The discussion about pause & active pause, while interesting (no sarcasm), isn’t really what my issue was — perhaps indirectly, yes, but I’d not made the choice to pause the game.
The solution to turn off the Xbox idle option that displays content is what cured the Xbox’s automatic pause feature.
Clearly, after reading these pause discussion points, I will be far more careful pausing the game manually, should I choose to do so. Thus far, I’m pretty nerdy in my approach (pun!) here and try to behave as though I’m actually flying my aircraft in real-time and without assistance or pauses.
Not sure where anyone said anything was “completely broken”.
If you’d read what I posted, I was intentionally attempting to “cheese” the achievement after the wasted effort at doing it the correct way, and yet that wouldn’t work, which bemused me.
Lastly, I had no choice here on the pause — the Xbox automatically paused it.
Reading for comprehension…
I’ve noticed this too.
I guess it begs the question for those people that don’t like the active pause, what does the “hard” pause offer you that active doesn’t?
If it’s about saving your machine from overheating I get that, as well as possible AP complications.
The weirdest part here is that it wasn’t even paused for more than a few seconds.
I was sitting here monitoring the ATC, and since I hadn’t had a radio call in quite some time the controller went to sleep. Strange that my Hotas One and TFRP rudder pedals didn’t keep the Xbox awake.
Once the Xbox automatically paused, I saw it immediately, woke the controller, unpaused and the plane was out of control.
The sim wasn’t paused for more than a handful of seconds. That was an extremely short time for the autopilot to lose control of the aircraft during a paused state.
I can’t believe we are even having to discuss this nonsense.
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If the XBox went to sleep, that sounds a bit more serious than an active pause anomaly.
Is that different on the XBox version perhaps or windows store version?
Esc definitely pauses the game, same as using Set Pause On.
(Bind a key to Set Pause On and Set Pause Off, it’s the real pause, never use active pause)
However pause only pauses your plane and its systems. The world moves on. (At least with live weather/traftic/multi player).
Sim rate is also inconsistent, it affects your plane and fauna, but not cars, plane traffic. Sim rate does affect time progression, but not weather progression.
Set Pause On works for your plane at least. Most you’ll get is ATC getting impatient, as in telling you to expedite your climb/descent when resuming.
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The Xbox didn’t go to sleep, the controller did.
There’s a function in the Xbox OS whereby the controller goes to sleep after a preset time with no input, then the Xbox will dim the screen after a user-selectable time, then — if this is set to on (default) — the right side of the screen will fill with a pane that cycles through various things such as a nearly reached achievement or some other type of game-related info — when this pane appears, the Xbox OS pauses the game.
It is this latter aspect that threw my game into pause — the equivalent of ESC on PC or pressing the Menu button on the Xbox controller. Disabling the displaying of this data overrides the Xbox’s automatic game pausing function, allowing the controller to fall asleep without pausing the game whatsoever.
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As far as I understand they behave the same (I’ve got a PC, too, but MSFS performs far better on my Xbox).
The default pause on the Xbox is the Menu button on the controller, which is the same as ESC on PC. Active Pause isn’t even keymapped to the controller by default.
@hobanagerik
Using ESC to pause the sim only pauses your aircraft. There is no progression of controls or trends. For all intents and purposes the aircraft is frozen in the world. When you unpause you will continue on as thought the ESC button was never pressed.
That said, the world continues as though you were never there. I have paused during an afternoon flight and was “summoned” for something more important. Hours later I returned to complete my flight only to find it is now very dark out and a weather system seems to have moved in. No biggy, just missed the approach at sunset which I really enjoy.
As far as the world is concerned, there is no pause. The logbook still only logs your actual flight but in those “time warp” instances, I see part of the flight logged as day and the rest as night.
Since release, I have never used the Active Pause. Day one users complained that the physic continue in the background and I wrote it off right there. There was even a post where someone took off with a 172 and while still accelerating in the climb they Active Paused. Left it for an hour and unpaused to a 172 flying hypersonic at 250,000 feet. Crash and stress off obviously or I am sure it would have resulted in an instant black screen. 
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Now I am just disgusted with this sim.
I tried this flight again — TBM w/unlimited fuel from LFBD-to-KSEA, occasional use of assist on ATC, 14+ hours real-time — I landed on 16C at KSEA and mid-way down the runway, I collided with an invisible object, which sent the aircraft straight up and I crashed.
Game over.
This is absolutely madness.
There needs to be a mega-thread “The MSFS 2020 New Pilot’s Guide to Flight Destroying Bugs and How to Work Around Them” that outlines all the bugs and ways to avoid them.
Apparently, we are supposed to load the destination airport as a departure, taxi down the runway at takeoff speed to find any potential invisible objects, so that we can select a different runway or airport.
On top of all this my 14+ hour, 4539 NM flight neither unlocked “Saddle Sore” nor “Look Ma, No Hands!” in spite of the fact that I flew a turboprop and used autopilot from shortly after takeoff to 300 ft. above touchdown.
I don’t even want to discuss the loss of “Frequent Flyer Miles”.
Just disgusted.
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In theory this is what is supposed to happen. However, myself and others have discovered instances where unpausing finds the aircraft in a loss of control situation — in my case an unrecoverable and instantaneous crash.
Checking the runway beforehand won’t help
It can happen when the server is slow or you’re flying ‘too fast’ for the terrain to resolve. Sometimes flying over the runway first can help but with the way LOD now works people have crashed while sitting stationary on the runway and moving the drone cam around (away from the plane).
Just do yourself a favor and turn all damages off. It’s broken and meaningless, not worth the frustration. You can fly straight through certain bridges and buildings with damage on, but touching an invisible twig or fly under a bridge can end your flight. You can stress some planes all you want, yet go perfectly stable and barely touch that overspeed zone, game over.
There is only one achievement that requires having damage etc on (My Way) and that one is hopelessly broken anyway.