Just my personal 5 bug-bears for realism/usability, Obviously there’s MANY others out there!
Units - Most of the world, especially Europe, uses “Metric” as follows: feet for altitude, hPa for altimetry, NM for distance, meters for runway lengths/distances and met visability, knots for wind and aircraft speed, Liters and KG for volume and mass (although lb and USG are not uncommon in the GA world). As it stands we’re forced to go ALL imperial (with inches of mercury for altimitry and statute miles for visibility), or ALL metric with m/s for wind, m for altitude etc. Suffice to say this could be easily remedied, and make the experience overall much closer to reality for a lot of users outside the US.
Weather control - Being able to set visibility exactly down to nothing would be REALLY useful for IFR, setting 800m vis and 250ft cloud base for practicing single-pilot ops to minima for example. As it stands the “worst” you can set visibility is still about 1500-2000m, which technically is VFR outside controlled airspace (in the UK anyway)! It’s also hard to precicely set cloud bases. Lastly it would be great if we as users could save a “snapshot” of “real world” weather when it’s just the conditions we need, so we can fly with it later.
Navaids - These could use some work, especially ADF, which doesn’t behave AT ALL like a real one. A range dependent level of offset/noise up to 15Deg either side, plus 10-12Deg of dip depending on bank angle with a 5 second settling time, would REALLY improve realism. Also being able to set ident volume manually so we can actually hear it!
Flight Planning/maps - We get a VFR one in the quick reference, why not an IFR one? That would be super useful. In the flight planning area too, I’d like more manual control to input a route with ICAO standard terms and just have it appear.
ATC - The ATC built in is 100% US-centric (can’t blame the reasoning for that). But now we have that, can we get a European version? The comms as they are are SO different/off compared to the standard phases/clearances/terminology used here, I just turn it off and pretend myself, it’s worse than useless. So effectively ATC is something that for non-US users, is still missing.
Bonus! - “ground roll” IS NOT how far off the centreline you are! That’s the distance from touchdown to stopping during landing. The fact all landing challenges get this wrong is a bit funny honestly. Also it would be good if player tags could be set to appear only within a set range, and state the range of the player.
What do you think of these points? Too late for them to be implemented in MSFS2020, but for the next addition maybe! I think they’d make a real difference to European, Asian and Australasian users especially. Happy simming
I can. It’s called Flight Simulator, not American FS. Asobo is a French company. They should know transition altitude is not FL180 all around the world.
Also atc should give you expected runway and STAR when giving you clearance for a descent, not when you are 10nm from runway.
They also should be able to give you vectors automatically, so you don’t have to ask them for new vector every 60sec. Otherwise they forget about you and you will be flying on the same heading for hours.
If they haven’t improved atc yet, they never will and our only hope will be in Beyond ATC and similar.
Have a couple older regional turboprop airliners and regional jets available in the default fleet lineup like the dash 8 300 & 400 but have some ones that have different ranges and power in the default fleet so so you have a training platform for introduction to airliners without being too difficult and that would make landing challenges more interesting and a lot of simmers i noticed start with 1 - 2 hour flights anyway
marina and bay starts for seaplanes
make Aerosofts pushback system standard
add the cessna 408 pax and cargo models because I’m getting tired of the caravan
default a220 would love this aircraft as a default option because you can fly a lot of airlines in it
I’m reasonably conversant with ICAO standards, there’s a reason meters for distance and visibility and hPa for altitude is ICAO standard. I suggest you give Annex 5, PANS-OPS 8168, and ICAO 4444 a re-read…
Well, for each thing listed (and I’m trying to be informative here, not argumentative, just to say);
Feet. Some parts of the world DO ask for altitude in meters (China and Russia come to mind, maybe N.Korea?), all airliners actually have a switch to change the altimiter to m instead of feet. But ICAO states agreed to use feet as 1. At the time pilots worldwide were familiar with it, and consistency would be more useful. And 2. it works well within the Nautical measurement system, for calculating rate of climb/descent, longitude, angles, distances etc.
Distances in km. For visibility, it is given in km. But flight planning distances use NM because of the relationship to earth angles/lat/long etc.
mm of mercury isn’t metric. That’s effectively saying “How many units of distance of a hydraulic column of mercury, at normal earth gravity and temperature, will it take to recreate the pressure we’re trying to measure?” Metric measures pressure directly, Force (Newtons), per unit area (meters squared). 1N/m^2 = 1 Pascal. Hecto- in latin means hundred, so 1hectopascal (1hPa) is 100Pa. 1atm standard is 1013.25hPa with 1hPa equating to about 30ft, so we drop the decimals as that’s accurate enough.
Wind speed in m/s. Well, you COULD… Again In some places like Russia it is given that way. But ICAO states stuck with kt, to be the same unit of speed that the aircraft uses. A pilot can convert quite easily, sure, but I’m just saying it would be better if the sim reflected what “metric” states actually used (even if that’s not TOTALLY metric)
Well, I meant I can’t blame them as the US would be/is the largest single market. That said it would be good if it SOMEWHAT represented other places, but I get there’s nuances. For any Americans reading, this might demonstate the difference in calls between the US and UK. (Disclaimer, to the best of my knowledge of american comms!) An intital call might be something like this?
“Sunnyville Tower N123AB ready at runway 27, straight out departure”
“N123AB Straight out departure approved, Runway 27 cleared for takeoff”
“Cleared for takeoff N123AB”
“N123AB, contact approach point niner”
“Contact Approach point niner N123AB”
“Sunnyville Approach N123AB with you 3000 request flight following”
“N1213AB radar contact, maintain 3000 VFR” etc.
In the UK it would be more like:
“G-CD ready for departure”
“G-ABCD, squawk 4356, after departure, left turnout cleared to leave the zone southbound not above 2000ft VFR” (readback)
“G-CD readback correct, Wind 250 degrees 6 knots, via E1 Runway 27 cleared for takeoff” (readback)
“G-CD radar service terminates, squawk conspicuity and freecall enroute” (readback)
“Cloudswich radar, G-ABDC request Traffic service”
“G-ABCD, Cloudswich Radar, Pass your message”
“G-ABCD, Darkstar, Sunnyville to Hillyton, 3 miles SW Sunnyville, altitude 2500ft QNH 998 hectopascals, VFR”
Don’t study my example haha, but just to say the terminology is so different.
I have many requests/things that I’d like “fixed”, but there’s really only ONE that really bothers me on a consistent basis… LIVE WEATHER!
I know the changes won’t come soon enough (or in MSFS 2020 at all), but I really, really, really hope that getting live weather correct is a major priority for MSFS '24.
I want the last mile looking good. The roads, the shores, the ground. Flying helo’s in this sim is just not possible with the terrain looking like it does down low.
This video, time stamped, shows what I want most from MSFS 2024. Cumulonimbus clouds basically do not exist in the sim today, just weird lumps with some wisps on top, and I do not remember the last time I saw lightning from an area that supposedly had storms.
I want to see a true anvil cloud during the daytime, I want to fly along a line of storms at night and watch them all constantly lit up like this with silent lightning.
All of the environmental things previewed for MSFS 2024 thus far look wonderful and I am excited to see them, but for me if this one core part of the weather engine is not significantly improved I’ll be very disappointed. I don’t think I’ve seen anything in the previews that directly address this; does anyone know if they have?
Casual VR GA sightseer here. On most of the imperfections that still bother me, Asobo is already working officially (seasons, replay, road traffic) or unofficially (non-functioning wipers). The development of BeyondATC also holds high hopes for solving ATC and live traffic issues in the near future.
5 points that I would still really like to see improved/changed:
Allowing 3rd party software to inject detailed weather data into the sim (e.g., using the same or analogous API that Meteoblue uses)
The idea is to allow, without sharing Meteoblue data, products such as ActiveSky to inject detailed live weather into the sim.
Providing 3rd party developers with API to create weather radars
It’s all very well to WANT all these addition features, (I would love to see many of them as well), but if MS/Asobo are to add all this extra stuff, what will your/my reaction be to Asobo/MS WANTING to charge more for a sim with all these additional feature – many of which, many users may not really WANT, if it is going to cost them more.
In other words, IRL "You get what you are prepared to pay fort’
Well for me the number 1 thing is the career mode, I need some system to drag me to more interesting places and let me do more interesting things than just flying around from A to B in the areas I already know. I also like to have a goal or a feeling of actually doing something fun or useful instead of just flying an empty plane. Followed closely by the ability to do a realistic walk around before starting the engines.
But let’s keep it to things not already confirmed:
Better ground handling, this was improved, but it’s not there yet
Better shaking/sound effects (like what FSRealistic does in X-Plane or allow add-ons more control so FSRealistic can take care of this)
Better windshield effects for rain but also interior fogging with working wipers and defogging systems
Better night lighting effects, especially strobes and landing lights which are way too dim from the cockpit. But the rest of the lighting outside could also use a bump up.
Better VR implementation that lets you walk around and lets you flip the switches with much better precision (I really liked the system that X-Plane 11 used)
Oh and sorry for taking a 6th:
Multi user control of an airplane, I want to actually fly a plane with someone else or be able to get flight lessons from a real person in multiplayer.
100% agree with all this although I think FSRealistic is already on par with XPRealisitc. I do not really see any differences at all between both.
The big one being ground handling, this is where the other side excels completely and I would love to see MSFS match them or even better them to make the aircraft feel more natural on the ground when moving around various surface types, small hills or bumps, etc.
Ah I might have remembered it wrong then, I was thinking XPRealistic was better at simulating head movement because it could control more axis of the player view than in FSRealistic. So that it could better simulate the head being tilted sideways while banking or forward or backward while accelerating or decelerating.
I’m hopeful for the ground handling as they said in an interview you would want to avoid going through the grass instead of staying on the tarmac in the new version. That almost has to mean they completely overhauled the ground handling. Keeping my fingers crossed here
