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.
Thankful I searched the site before posting as a new thread. But I was thinking about this same thing today as 2024 is approaching and people are excited to walk around. This is what I was about to post.
“While this could be difficult to concept up, it might be good think tank discussion. And it’s not completely impossible given that something like it has been done FS historically. I get that there might be limitations with the game(s).
The TLDR - As GA (general aviation) in the US has a lot of smaller airports that have a community aspect to them, would it be ever possible to recreate the idea of the FBO? Users can log in to servers/rooms and have a social interaction with others players in the FBO….or even the Ops area if at certain airports with airline services. Being able to fly out or even in.
Thoughts-
Running prefabbed rooms or as host/client, the user spawns into the airport with the FBO or another airport in the game. That’s probably where spawning should be at the core airport, or maybe limiting radius around the core airport. Could prevent people spawning halfway across the globe and just sitting eating up space. My thoughts are that also the airports might have to be dedicated to this unless every airport had a make shift default building as the meeting room.
The User selects the aircraft spawn point and character spans near the aircraft. The user then can either hop in the plane and leave or walk into the FBO to interact with friends or randoms.
I understand that this is probably more of a US thing where people fly to other airports for coffee or chat with friends, but it might be fun to add.
As for the airline aspect, this I feel would be more complicated scenery wise. But spawning an ops area and walking to the plane from there. While going from a hotel to the gate could be more odd. Starting at ops is something more stand it seems around the world. And not just for airline ops.
But it’s the concept of being able to take the chat room further and bringing the aviation community closer to reality.”