I’m new to FS2020 on Xbox Series X and after playing dozens of hours I have few burning questions:
(for context, I have been mostly flying with A320)
Why do airports look so empty? Is there a way to add more traffic? I barely see aircraft on the taxiways and I never had to wait to get to my runway. Not very realistic unfortunately.
Why can’t the tow truck put my plane on the taxiway correctly? Is that normal we have to go back and forth with ATC ground to give directions to the truck?
Can AI controlled planes leave the runway faster after landing? I’m getting so many go around instructions from tower because planes are so slow…
Can ATC tower give me speed instructions to keep distance from other planes ahead on finale approach? I only get sometimes instructions like flying at 210 knots but only for max speed.
Can you prevent your copilot to request pushback as soon as the APU starts? Also can you make sure he’s not going ask for end of pushback while your still few feet away from the gate?
Does your plane usually fall from the sky after pressing play when your flight was on pause for few minutes? It happens to me almost every single time…
And I assume the replay mode will never be available on Xbox, right?
Since you’re on Xbox, I can only answer your questions based on the default MSFS features.
You can add more traffic by going to your Options from Main Menu. Then go to General → Traffic. You can set the Aircraft Traffic type to Real-Time Online where the sim will download real air traffic data from online and render them in your session. And also change the slider for Ground Aircraft Density to maximum. This slider will populate your airport gates with parked aircraft. Then when you start a flight session. Make sure you set your Traffic mode as Live Traffic.
Because the pushback tug can only do basic movements. If you want to place the tug on the taxiway correctly, you need to do a bit of practice. Look at your tail and time the moment where you click the ATC menu choice to turn the aircraft left/right. The more you practice, the more you’re used to the dimensions of the aircraft, and you’ll know when to actually hit the turn button. Then once you’re lined up just stop the pushback via the ATC menu.
Not at the moment, the AI speed on landing has been a problem since Day 1. I heard there’s some development involved for a future update where the AI behaviour will be adjusted accordingly, but I’m not sure when that will actually happen.
No, ATC is very basic. They don’t do traffic spacing. You need to space it yourself, or follow the ATC instructions to Go around, or just YOLO and keep landing anyway. Up to you.
Yes, you can prevent copilot to request pushback prematurely. It’s very easy to do. First thing’s first. Go to your main menu Options, and open Assistance. Then open the Piloting category and Disable AI Radio Communication (ATC). This will disable the copilot radio as a default state. At this point, when you start a flight, open the Assistance menu from the toolbar, and make sure the AI Radio Communication (ATC) is also still off in there before you do anything to your aircraft. This again, make sure the Copilot is silent when you’re doing your preflight flows. When you’ve pushback and ready for taxi, you can open the assistance toolbar and enable the Radio communication, then your copilot will takeover from there. At the end of your flight, before you make the final turn to your gate, make sure you open the assistance toolbar again, and disable the AI Radio communication option. This will make the copilot stay silent as you parked and won’t ask for another pushback again.
Yes, when you want to pause your flight, don’t use “Active Pause”. This is simply freezing your aircraft in place but the entire flight simulation engine are still running, so when you unpause it, it can sometimes try to “catch up” which causes all sorts of issue. If you want to pause, do a “true pause” where you can see a menu with your Options and stuff. This is a true pause where the entire simulation is stopped. So when you resume it, it just picks up where it left off.
No idea about the replay mode. I never even use it on PC.
Even with the sliders set to 100 or using real-time online traffic, I find the airports frequently sparsely populated or nearly not at all.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to sit in a queue during taxi or waiting to takeoff, and in those times it was behind a single aircraft.
I’ve seen screen shots on this forum of long queues of aircraft on taxiways, so it must happen for someone, but I’ve never seen it on an Xbox.
