Overhaul suggestions for World Map page

User Support Hub User Interface & Activities
, ,
1

The World-Map is still very basic and frustrating to use on a regular basis.

It does not help people to either

  1. Discover more interesting places and content
  2. Configure and repeat favourite flights around their regular (payware) airports and locations

These are 2 massive use cases.

I suppose Asobo would say use the Activities or Challenges to discover new content. But why shouldn’t this be part of the World-Map? This would mean 1 place to go to start a flight when you aren’t yet sure what you want to do. It could show you where new content has arrived (World Update) or provide a way to present interesting flights (not just locations).

The current view is a bit of a mess, 1000s or airports and POIs with a little spanner indicating it is a custom airport but offering no information (is this a MS airport or one of your own custom bought locations) and no way to filter what is being shown. Now we have a place to buy new aiports which is something but none of the fundamental problems with this page have been addressed in 2 years.

image
image1920×1009 127 KB

Here is my list of issues with the World-Map

Clunky plane selection
Frustration experience customising aircraft, liveries and call sign (doesn’t stick to each plane)
Only 3 recent airports?
…that only save/update if you turn the engines off at the destination airport which doesn’t always happen, especially if you are flying on somewhere else
135+ recommended airports in a drop down (built from custom airports somehow?)
… that are NOT even in alphabetical or regional order making it impossible to navigate?
Not accessible in-game, meaning additional minutes of menu’s and loading screens for no reason (see XPlane)
No way to favourite airports or planes (lots of clicks)
No way to filter world map to custom airports (I dont want to see a church!)
No way to save favourite locations or favourite aircraft
No way to easily load/save flights
No way to start a flight from a previous log book flight
No way to create groups of flights “My GA flights”, “European Airliner Flights”
No way to easily design or plan multi sector flights or sight seeing trips (Multiple Airports, Navaids etc)
No way to access new content easily e.g. Filter map by World Update 9/10, Integrate Activity flights, Showcase content, Challenges etc
Sorry I just have to go into more detail on the Recommended Airports drop down a personal pain point. How can a designer think an “unordered” list of 100s of Airports is acceptable in 2022 especially in one of the MOST prominent places in a game?

Given the quality of the rest of the game how little love has been given to this key process of starting a flight is unforgivable.

Perhaps it is because game designers don’t actually play much so they are only ever thinking of their own use case, open sim, scroll around a cool looking world map, click airport, configure weather, start a flight, for this I think it works well, but for anybody is more than a very casual user, it isn’t good.

The Activities page does a good job of providing new you access to new areas and content after each update but in a very restricted sandboxed way. The World-Map page could also help users experience new content but at the moment it hinders it IMO.

We should be able to

filter the World-Map to recommended flights, activities and challenges.
filter the World-Map to show all my previous flights and integrate with the Log-Book
filter the World-Map to show Real flight plans and then just fly them, Jorg, if after 2 years you still haven’t sorted out the legal side of it, just let us customise this page and give us the SDK to make this possible.
The current save/load to you hard disk (after having to click MORE) is ridiculously bad. Please fix this and promote it to a first class citizen within the game “My Flights”, New Challenges etc. all accessible in the World-Map.

Basically the World-Map just needs some love and a brainstorming session with people who actually fly the sim regularly.

1 Like
3

and in which way you need support here from the community ( “Community Support” ) ?

That some of your wishes are already exists ( where you able to vote ) and that you can create new whish-topics for the points which not exist, was already mentioned in your original post: Overhaul World Map / Create Flight page

so, what we can discuss , how we can help here ?

4

I’d like to know – how do I make this “fun” when trying to use the world map – here’s an example experience. Where did I go wrong?

I was trying to follow the 787 tutorial (from here: edit: as a new user I’m not allowed to post links…) and I got so frustrated that I gave up and then tried to post here. (That was another frustrating experience, but I digress)

I selected the 787 in the world map. Dutifully set up the fuel/weight/etc. Picked KORD. First issue is holy moly is it horrible to pick the gate. There are probably a hundred entries and it shows 4.5 at a time, and as you scroll it has to render them so you can’t scroll too quickly. There’s no search for the runway/gate.

(I can only post one image, as a new user, so see below instead…)

I kick off the flight, and the FPS is horrible, probably because it’s O’Hare and I had it set to live traffic, which, from what I’ve read, is a CPU hog. It’s not worth the performance hit for this experience…the only way I know of to turn it off is to quit back to the main menu and set it up again. However, nothing I’ve done is saved.

(First question then: is there a better way to change these settings than going back to the main menu and starting over again)

I dutifully/tediously set the weight/balance again, and set up the airport/runway again. It doesn’t even put KORD in the recent list.

I wasn’t really sure of the difference between live players and all players. I think to myself, I’ll be clever this time and save the flight. Which, for some reason, is hidden behind that [Space] More?

Well, it won’t let me save because I haven’t picked an arrival airport as such. I pick KIAD and “save” the flight plan.

Performance is still inadequate, so I jump back to the main menu.

I load the flight plan. For some reason there are two, the PLN and FLT.

(Second question: what’s the difference between these plans?)

If I load the FLT…everything is locked in! I cannot change the flight conditions. I cannot change the airports.

(Third question: is it crazy for me to want to start with a “baseline” set of settings and modify them? Why is this not possible?)

Ok, I’ll try the PLN instead. That one lets me modify after the fact (hooray!) BUT all the weight and balance info is gone so I need to tediously set that up again

ALSO, if I clear out the destination airport, it also resets the “from” runway…why on earth?!

image
image1007×506 59 KB

Final questions:

  1. do people use the world map much? how are people setting things up?
  2. how are people loading/saving/modifying?

I feel like I must be missing something: it seems like the world map would be the starting point for anything that isn’t a built-in “activity”, so it seems like people would use it all the time. But it’s so clunky to use (and hasn’t improved much that I’ve noticed in the 2 years I’ve been using the sim). This time I was so frustrated that I decided to write here. I’d rather have spent the hour learning the plane instead of all this.

  1. Is there any way to change the flight setup without having to start all over again and put everything in from scratch every time?
1 Like
5

Also – “TAB” doesn’t work to go between any of the fields either, right? Is there any way to set all this up without clicking all over with the mouse?

1 Like
6

Speaking of saving and loading. The aforementioned 787 tutorial, since it became a multi-hour project, real life intervened. I saved the flight and hoped to resume it later. Today I resumed the flight by loading the FLT. And it appears the CDU is blank and is missing everything I painstakingly input so it’s not really resuming. Is that expected – after 3 years, we can’t properly load/save flights? :face_with_head_bandage:

1 Like
7

Sorry Mark but its an absolute mess, the whole map experience, you are just touching the surface of the issues. How about the suggested destination airports never saving or being 10,000KM away and yet you have selected a Cessna?

The list of awful design UX choices is endless and it is clear now Asobo have no intention of improving the world screen in FS2020, it isn’t even on a roadmap, to them its great, and hey look now you can spend money in the map.

It doesn’t work for any serious simmers, we just suck it up, it is purely aimed at casual XBox users (this is why TAB doesnt work), but even then it really sucks quite badly, the opportunity to show some creativity, to help users find new flights and explore the planes, world and sim is completely missed. A big jumbled mess of nasty dropdowns, click points with no context and no history. How about integrate the log book into the world map so we can just reload any old flight?

If they would just open it up and let talented simmers customise and even sell a product it would at least be something.

I think UI/UX design courses should use FS2020 as an perfect example of how poor a design can be if you don’t really understand the users requirements.

The only improvements Asobo have made in 3 years is adding the ability to spend money in the world map. Says it all doesn’t it.

So no you aren’t missing anything, it just sucks massively. You could try zooming in to the airport and then selecting the gate on the map, instead of scrolling, again though its flakey. If you save a flight now you cant modify after reloading, again totally pointless and frustrating limitation. There is a recent bug where sometimes you select the gate and it fails to show or save it and you end up starting on the runway. Now you have to EXIT THE ENTIRE FLIGHT, RE-INPUT ALL THE EXACT SAME THINGS YOU JUST SPENT 15 MINUTES PAINFULLY CONFIGURING BECAUSE THEY DONT SAVE (you have to complete the flight first before Start/Dest save WTF) AND THEN RELOAD THE ENTIRE GAME. 10-20 minute delay, to just change the gate caused by the awful UX bug.

So yes in terms of flight setup in game, no, Flight Sim in 1993 had it but not 30 years later.

The only hack you can try is loading the Development mode and moving the aircraft to a new airport using the tool in the menus, but it doesnt really work because you need to setup navigation again, although perhaps rely on the aircraft MCDU to do that. Its all a big mess but they don’t care, its revenue generation now, onto the next Sim and marketplace.

Once you just accept the UX is awful and they will never improve its actually just funny. I have got used to how bad it is but yes the designers of the UX clearly have never actually played the game or read the feedback. What is weird is that the beta testers feedback either wasn’t very good or it just got totally overlooked. Ship it, its fine.

1 Like
8

I have voted and I wasn’t able to create a new whish list item (it was closed) or update the Overhaul World Map / Create Flight page with my suggestions so I started a community thread.

But thanks for the constructive comment Michael MMA👍

1 Like
9

Thanks – at least I feel like I’m not going crazy. By the way I set up the FMC again (fun and easy to do while en route and close to or past T/D!)

After doing that and getting close to E/D: CTD ([Polls] Sim Update 13 (1.34.16.0) Discussion - #2139 by darkmark327) So at least another hour down the toilet. :upside_down_face:

Maybe it’s to reflect the heartache and frustration and teach the patience and perseverance skills that necessary for aviation in general? Here I was hoping to get away from that part by using Flight Simulator :laughing:

1 Like