Hi guys,
I haven’t really paid any attention to the in-sim flying lessons until now, I find the quality quite poor to be honest, I’ve only did two so far so I’m not sure how the status of the rest. So far I’m not impressed. I’m trying to put myself in the seat of someone with absolutely no clue, someone using flight sim for the very first time, I don’t think I would understand what is going on at all… Just look at the amount of detailed briefing material and instruction were available in FS2004:
Instead we have landing challenges which teach the wrong technique, spot landing on the aiming points. The educational value available from previous flight sims is missing.
- The information before starting the lesson (in the menu) is missing detail and accuracy. The flight path vector on the Airbus is called “the bird”, this is not jargon and not the way to teach someone new what a flight path vector is. During the lesson its being called a “velocity vector” which is also an inaccurate term.
- During the approach no real guidance is being given on how to fly the approach, while being exactly on PAPI (two white, two red) the objective to remain on glide path is not green anymore and you’ll get a subtraction of points, sorry but a PAPI just isn’t more accurate.
- Around 400 ft AAL you are being told to look at the end of the runway which is way too soon, the focus should shift from the aiming point markers towards the end of the runway when transitioning into the flare.
- I have been a instructor for years both in the aircraft and in the classroom, but I had trouble to understand this one, I don’t know how this is supposed to help. How is power + attitude equal to performance? What performance are we talking about? The whole schematic is not very didactive, my first thought was that those arrows were representing forces.
- The lesson landing the C152 starts with a weird saying: “the best part of flying is landing in one piece”, I guess this is the butchered version of “every landing you walk away from is a good landing” or so. Anyway, not much help from the “instructor” explaining how to fly a proper approach.
- Telling you to cut the power to idle even before the threshold, little early if you ask me
- Look to the end of the runway (thats a good tip), and set the nose slightly above. That is way too high for the beginning of the flare, it also depends on the players eye-height .
- The lessons are affected by the weird altimeter smoothing they’ve introduced. When spawned into the air the altimeter can be seen slowly climbing and takes a long time to stabilize.
I remember the fs9 and fsx (copy of fs9) flight lessons were really detailed, loads of good information and advise. You could actually learn to fly using those if you want to. These MSFS lessons are quite poor in my opinion. Is a real and experienced instructor writing the scripts for those?
Lets see how long it takes for the FS-academy guy to post his ads here 
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We have this awesome sim, with some development put into those flight lessons it could become a awesome tool for learning about aviation and how to fly an aircraft. What about a whole training course from start to finish baked right into MSFS as below?
- Core flying skills
- Introduction and exercise up to first solo
- First solo flight
- VFR navigation
- Introduction to basic IFR
- Night flying
- Upset Prevention Recovery Training
- Basic phase
- Introduction to multi-engine aircraft
- Introduction to multi-crew concept
- Basic IFR
- Advanced IFR
- Intermediate phase
- Acts like a bridge between relatively simple GA aircraft to airliners
- Introduction to airline flying
- Advanced Upset Prevention Recovery Training
- Advanced phase
- “Type rating” course for the Airbus A320
All with accurate and detailed briefing material, good and precise instructions.