In my personal experience (only mine, others will give much better advice) I fly from EGPE and EGPF regularly.
EGPF can have ground or approach on occasions. EGPE very rarely.
Both are quieter than EGPH, which mostly has a ground, tower or approach presence - and this is usually much quieter than EGLL and the likes.
That’s for ATC assigned to the airports. For Scotland in general, EGPX/SCO_CTR (Scottish Control) are on a good few times in an average week, and they would happily control EGPE or anywhere else in their sector.
For instance, I’ve flown at times from small airports like EGPO into EGPF on a C172 and it’s all good.
The UK in general is pretty well served any given night (zulu time).
Europe is always on, somewhere. I avoid the usual suspects of EDDF, LOWI, EHAM, LFPG, LEMG etc.
Whether you have a go on VATSIM or not, it’s all good.
Getting back on topic, for my input, spawning on the runway isn’t a red line for me. I roll my eyes a little and get on with it. If MSFS were to ‘hide’ the option to spawn on runway if multiplayer is set, I wouldn’t get upset either.
I had less than 15 hours on Vatsim. I did enjoy the time on there. But I’m lucky if 3 hours of that was actually with live ATC. There’s just never any controllers on where I fly, when I fly. That’s why I use Pilot2ATC.
But I did enjoy that there were other pilots on unicom, everyone following the rules, much like you’d encounter IRL. To me, that’s realism in multiplayer, not the shared world of All and Live players where to have to deal with too much BS. It’s the quality of the MP experience where everyone is trying to fly a simulator, vs the quantity of traffic where a large number of the participants just want to play an airplane game. They’re free to do as they wish. And the tools are there for me to not have to deal with them. So I’m good.
I dont care where people spawn or how they play,but it would be nice if the “live players” option would force people to spawn on the ramp/parking, so there would be a realistic choice for those that dont want to see people spawn on the runway. Then the ones that want to spawn wherever they want, could choose the “all players” option. Problem solved and everyone could be happy…
Would make sense because the “live players” option was kinda marketed as a realistic feature for those that wanted more true to life experience…
Like myself sometimes I just want to test things and spawn in the runway, I try to remember to turn off MP so I dont annoy people… If that “live player” option would not let me spawn on runway, it would make me remember to switch of MP or go “all players” and join the flying circus.
I’d just like to point out that controlling where people spawn is not how you fix multiplayer. In fact, it’s the worst thing you could do.
The fix for multiplayer is to fix multiplayer, and bring back everything we had in FSX for multiplayer, including the ability for people to host servers, the whole ATC interface that it had, etc… Multiplayer worked great in FSX.
Of course, the argument Asobo likely had internally was now you would only see those flyers who are on any given server, and the number of online flyers visible at any moment for any particular player would be greatly reduced… that’s ok.
If they fixed “Live” aircraft and AI aircraft, that’s the last thing anyone would care about, since, most likely, they only want to see those flyers anyway, and there would be plenty of other traffic in the sky for those who want it.
The latest discussion in this thread is pretty silly and I can prove it.
Imagine if I complained about people spawning at the gate.
“I keep spawning on the runway and people who spawn at the gate keep rolling their planes through me to take off while I set my altitude and systems for flight. People shouldn’t be able to use MY runway when I spawned on it!!!”
The Live sandbox is just an option. You can turn it off, or you can leave it on and see other players around you. That is your choice.
What is NOT your choice is how other players decide to use THEIR sim.
We control what we do and WHO we see.
Frankly, I am often impressed by how many folks in MP DO start and end their flights at the gate. I see them ALL the time while I am barnstorming their airports in my Tiger Moth.
In the last two weeks, I’ve had 4 people over who’ve never even seen MSFS, never mind having any flights sim experience. Being able to start in the air from a specific area (we did San Francisco first) lets them get used to working the controls.
Of course, the guy has a VR setup at home for car racing, with steering wheel and pedals, and was jerking the control yoke all over the place, over-controlng. And crashing. (good thing the rudder pedals weren’t connected or it would have been worse). The three women listened when I said “gentle, soft control inputs, wait a few seconds to see what happens, don’t panic, the worst you’ll do is crash.” So of course they were all able to fly under the Golden Gate Bridge on the first attempt, then do sight-seeing, either in San Francisco or in other cities…
It’s much easier to learn if you start with just a control yoke and throttle quadrant - in the air - and then after you’ve gotten used to it, throw in the rudder. And it’s this ability to “ease into it” that creates an enjoyable experience for both the instructor and the new pilot - one that will keep them coming back.
And by the time they’re ready to fly “in the cockpit” instead of an external view, I’ll have picked up a radio stack and switches, and 2 more screens dedicated to pop-out controls, so they won’t have to mouse around so much in the cockpit.
Because “legacy mode” with the mouse really is “legacy.” Gotta keep it fun.
And “spawning over a place” is part of that. Isn’t that a good thing?
I’ll give Asobo well-deserved credit here. They’ve certainly improved the quantity of live traffic over the past couple of updates. I’ve found myself no longer even running the AIG or FSLT traffic injectors, as MSFS was generating generous amounts of traffic in the areas I fly. It’s still nowhere near as much traffic that there should be, but it’s at least double what I would have seen before. It makes flying much more enjoyable and realistic.
The quality of the live traffic has improved somewhat to a lesser degree, but planes are now clearing runways more promptly. I’ve seen less planes getting stuck. It still happens, but less frequently. Some of the wonky AI stuff has been at least somewhat tweaked to make it less bad. Traffic needs a huge makeover. In fact, whatever traffic and ATC code they have now needs to be take out behind the barn and put out of our misery. And it sounds like that’s exactly what’s in the process of happening.
Once Working Title get the entire old flight planning / nav system excised from the sim and fully replaced with their new system that powers the new avionics, then the new ATC and AI traffic can be built upon that. That’s the key. You can’t have a new ATC built on the old foundation that won’t be just as messed up.That’s kind of like remodeling a condemned building right before the wrecking ball comes.
So I can certainly understand why Asobo are not putting heavy work into this part of the sim atm and only giving small partial fixes where necessary. It’s probably much better to just have resources directed at the new system.
Along those lines… I’d like to see an option to spawn on the ramp/parking but with engine(s) running and ready to taxi.
Assuming some people avoid parked start-ups because of time constraints (takes time to run the checklists and start complicated aircraft) this might reduce the number of pop-ups on the runway.
Had my home theater cranked (“muh immersion!”) and got pretty close to needing a change of pants.
I don’t mind Multiplayer at all, really. Makes the “world” feel more alive, however, I will shout to the ends of the earth that Asobo needs to figure out the model matching issue.
Floating nametags with no visible plane and A320s in place of F-18s is just…disappointing.
Yeah, but cmon, how hard is it to ctrl-e? If time really is an issue… Or like I suggested, joining “all players”? Another thing I noticed, not many use the “live player” option, very rare to see people there, maybe forcing that one to be ramp only, so everyone thats want to see something more plausible could start using it. And I think, those that spawn a 747 at a 1000 foot runway will stay on “all players” because of the hassle too ctrl-e the engine and taxi. I would atleast be very happy to get rid of thoose ones…
That assumes that newbies like me even know what “ctl-e” does - I’m still learning my way around this beastie. IMHO memorizing the street map, bus routes, and subway map for all of NYC would be easier than the college-level course that would be required to really understand your way around a program of this magnitude.
Though this really deserves to be a separate thread, what I’d really like to see for MSFS 2020 is a:
A “How do you. . . .” document, not unlike a FAQ, that would allow a user to look up how to do things like in-flight photography, screen captures, videos, and the thousand and one other things that people need to know, when they need to know it.
A consistent and searchable documentation package. As it is, anyone who wants to know something about MSFS has to either search here, (good luck!), or do a web-search, (don’t hold your breath!), and hope someone has posted something. Or, run the risk of raising everyone’s ire by re-re-posting a question that could not be found.
How about having say a 45 second max waiting time allowed on the runway to take off ,after that your plane becomes invisible on the runway until airborne,too complicated maybe ?
This thread seems to have divided itself into two aspects, (sub-threads):
The original topic which was:
It’s not fair to gripe at how others do things if you’re willingly going into a known “sandbox” open multi-player environment - or even if playing in single-player mode.
Belittling people because they don’t fly the way YOU want them to fly is a Bad Thing, (IMHO).
The present implementation of multi-player in MSFS is a poorly controlled, (a “sandbox” and/or “The Wild West” as someone else called it), environment.
If you really don’t like a poorly controlled multi-player environment like the one MSFS provides, then VATSIM and/or IVAO are better suited for a more rigid rules-based flying experience.
There’s also flying without multi-player turned on, with AI turned up if you want traffic to keep you company.
Perhaps someone should open a thread on “What needs to be done to fix the present MP implementation in MSFS” - assuming that it should or can be fixed.
I think it’s a natural evolution of the thread, because your initial question was ‘what’s wrong with spawning where you want and using the sim as you wish?’ and that invites people to both suggest what they think is wrong with it (assuming they think there is anything wrong with it) and also what they think can be done to fix it.
But if there were a thread to talk about specific changes / improvements to multiplayer, I’d be happy to contribute to it…
I’ve been simming for a bit less than a year. I had no idea you could instantly start/configure any plane with a keyboard stroke (can’t wait to try this next flight though )
FYI, (at risk of being accused of advertising my own posts), I opened a generic “How do you. . .” thread here:
. . . that might be useful for folks to use to ask generic questions about how to do something specific, like using the drone, taking pix, etc.
The idea was to create a place where people who wanted to know “how to [do something]” would have a list of prepared answers to their questions, all in one place - like a “FAQ”.
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