While we in the community appreciate all the great new features this sim has brought to the sim world. One glaring issue is starting to become apparent to me advancing through career mode and a lot of other people have noted this as well. But largely, I can only speak for the aerial firefighting portion of this directly. But I have conversed with some simmers in the agriculture operations and they too are noting the same shortcomings in the mission sets involving the missions themselves, the aircraft, and a number of other small details that are either overlooked, missing, aren’t used properly, not at all, and it’s apparent to us that really Asobo/Microsoft…
Has not communicated much if at all with any Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on a number of these niches included in the sim. It almost seems like mission creation is entirely AI generated. And it comes off that way due to the watered down and arguably incorrect usages or non-functionality of a lot of equipment (or lack thereof) and even the aircraft themselves.
I realize that the sim is still new and things are still being added, but the missions that do use these niches like ag operations or aerial firefighting are sorely hurt by the haphazard way the missions are thrown together, how aircraft are configured incorrectly, or the fact they have inoperative or non-existent equipment that’s needed to do the jobs they are doing IRL.
I strongly encourage the community to push Microsoft/Asobo to reach out to SMEs to help their mission creation team to create better missions and ensure the aircraft they are using for these missions do in fact, have all the correct (and functional!) equipment, performance, to do the real world operations accurately. Because currently, at least in aerial firefighting and ag operations, it is not the case at all. It’s quite possible this is also apparent in the other niches as well.
Please, for overlapping proof of issues of these shortcomings of equipment not working or is missing on certain aircraft or the aircraft themselves not performing how the real airplanes should, please look at the AT-802, S-64F, CL-415 aircraft threads and any threads involving firefighting or ag operations and you’ll see a common theme starting to emerge there in regards to this.
2 Likes
In other words, get people in that know what there doing, and how it should work.
3 Likes
Yes exactly!
The sim needs SME involvement to make sure these missions don’t continue to look like ChatGPT has created the missions based off an inaccurate and vague interpretation of a wikipedia page, article, or something similar. And address some of the performance issues with the airplanes/helicopters doing these missions. Obviously not saying it’s like this in all the spaces in the sim, but at least in a number of them, it feels this way.
1 Like
I think there is some room to make the starter missions fairly basic to help introduce users to some of these missions while adding complexity for “advanced” missions where the parameters are more strictly enforced and more realistic constraints are added.
I made an Ag Nav lightbar that can follow a flight plan as accurately as a realistic GPS system could and this could be a future mission with the right support after a pilot has become accustomed of the basic idea of crop dusting.
This could be a possible future for the career missions. To not only be a points progression but also a skill progression as pilots learn new technology and techniques.
2 Likes
I think that’s a great idea. Using the missions built how they are currently is a good way to train pilots in the very basic uses of airplanes/helicopters in those roles. And as you suggested, as they advance they can choose to do the more realistic “advanced” missions with that specialized equipment.
Revisiting this topic and moving it up the list after flying in career mode for some 20 days to take note of all the errors and bugs associated with Microsoft/Asobo’s AI generated mission building system. In my experience in both freelance and other missions. It’s become evident, none of these missions, except maybe the special mission unlocks were ever tested by anyone. My experience has been from the rotary wing side of this sim and this is what I’ve experienced.
1/3 SAR Missions are bugged bad enough to cause mission failure. 33% of missions not completable due to placement of victims in areas that require a hoist rather than a physical landing.
2/5 Ag missions are bugged from either airport issues, ai generated buildings destroying the helicopter, or misplacement of the chemical truck landing pad into groves of trees preventing mission completion. 40% of missions non- completable.
3/5 Hook cargo missions bugged due to poor ai generated scenery. Oil rigs, supply ships put onto land or crush helicopter on helipads. Other heavy hoist missions helicopter spawns on rooftops and fails mission before even loading into it. Or having to drop cargo or pick up cargo altitudes are incorrect causing mission failures, damage to helicopters. Or inability to place objects due to drop locations being bugged several feet underground or inside of a building, etc. So 60% are not able to be completed safely or at all.
This just proves at how poor the AI generation of the missions are for these mission types. For fixed wing, it might work out. But not for how dynamic rotary wing missions are and how specific things need to be. SAR, Hook, Ag spraying, etc. All need to be vetted by people who make these missions. Firefighting too. Just having some AI algorithm spawn a fire somewhere is going to cause similar issues if/when they try to implement something complex like a wildfire.
The issues if people reference the inaccuracy and underperforming AT-802 and espeically the CL-415 in firefighting missions also speaks volumes at how much these AI parameters need to be adjusted. Like for example, the missions for the CL-415 telling it to scoop at 60 knots is inaccurate to the real airplane. It’s telling people to scoop 8 knots below the airplane’s real life stall speed. The 415 should be scooping no lower than 80 knots. That’s just 1 thing on the list that’s wrong with it. That list is incredibly long. SME’s need to be used to fine tune a lot of this stuff. Just using AI isn’t going to cut it and is going to cause more irritation than anything.