Every airport should have a Pilots Lounge/Chat Room that anyone on the ground can quickly log into.
Every airport should have a Pilots Lounge/Chatroom that anyone on the ground can quickly log into, just like cafe’s at real airports.
I was recently bush hopping around New Zealand and I came across some folks getting ready for a group fly. Since I had no idea who was leading the group, I couldn’t really join.
Not only would having ground chatrooms make organizing and joining group flights easier, it would be a great way to make this place more social. I’m 2/3’s through my world tour, and I would have loved to chat with locals as I made my way.
Turn on multiplayer tags in game, find someones name, then open xbox chat, type that in search users. If they have it set to accept messages, it will allow contact.
I imagine have a seperate chat room for 40,000 ish places, could be a little hard to control😉
A little different take, not so much in the live-connection vein, but it would be cool to have any building designated as an FBO in the default scenery be able to go in and interact. Sit by the window and watch planes, do flight planning, get weather, purchase fuel, etc. Or simply start there and walk out to the plane (which could be an on-the-rails action or not).
Could also have a pilot guestbook there, of course filtering out or reporting unwanted words/characters. Or it could be automated - date/time, user handle, aircraft, tail number, number of takeoffs and landings. With the ability to not participate, of course.
This could increase the immersion. You could hear the other planes or the rain/thunder/wind while planning (even if it’s just a facsimile of the world map screen). Press a button to hear the audio of the AWOS played, or see the digital readout. Also could provide opportunities for third-party scenery designers to integrate these features into their FBOs. Could be a lot of fun.
And just maybe, the tags of any other participating pilots in the room or on the ramp could be displayed and you have the option to ping them with a friend or temporary flight request, even if it’s just aircraft type and destination.
Expanding on this further: airports without a designated FBO could simply have a post with a (weatherproof) logbook on it and a simple park bench to act as the meeting spot.
The flight request would be for any aircraft on the ground (I could be convinced this could be available to any aircraft within 5 miles, almost like a MULTICOM thing). A person has the option to accept, decline, or offer a different idea.
When both parties have accepted, it puts you in a group with special tags that can be seen in flight, but also disabled. Up to 8, 12, whatever can join.
The ability to start right in the FBO would be an option, with aircraft and world-map planning to be selected later. If you are the first to offer and others accept your plan, you become the “leader” and their flight plan merges with yours and that becomes sticky to anybody who joins the flight, merging everybody’s plan with yours (independent of the aircraft you choose). If the leader drops connection, it goes to the next one who accepted, but the flight plan remains the same unless it’s modified by whoever is leading. “Updated flight plan, view?” Accept, decline. Then view it, accept, decline. Always an option to leave the group. Always an option to not participate in that aspect, but still interact with the other “static” FBO offerings.
Just spitballing. Hope it’s not inappropriate to the thread.