It would be great if there were events that occur in real time with natural or man-made events that occur in the real world, such as forest fires, volcanic eruptions, floods, earthquakes, space launches, etc.
Seeing a solar eclipse or meteor shower at night would be awesome
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Some things are probably technically do-able. I would imagine putting volcanic eruptions in there would be technically achievable and a nice idea. They should probably concentrate on getting the sim working well before putting that sort of thing in it though.
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I’d definitely like to see this! I’m just curious about where the data would come from.
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Depending on the type of space launch, Virgin Galactic’s launch base in NM is covered by FlightAware ADS-B receivers and the mother ship and rockets are ADS-B equipped. With FS2020 able to display real-world ADS-B aircraft, it might be possible to watch the Virgin Galactic launches and see two Bonanzas in tight formation and one scream up after launch.
There was a test flight almost two weeks ago (N202VG Flight Tracking and History - FlightAware) and it looks like the ADS-B somehow misinterpreted the altitude during the zoom climb. I bet that would also show like that in sim too until whatever bug there is in that data reporting is worked out. Note - if you don’t have an account you may not see this history since they limit viewable history if you don’t.
Edit - FlightAware doesn’t show GA flights but there is a mod called Enhanced Live Traffic that gets flight data from Flightradar24. They honor requests by owners to hide aircraft but you see all aircraft (aside from those that request not allowing their flight data out). The data is not delayed (FlightAware delays their data 5 minutes).
And we have models of the mothership and rocket from Flightsim Squadron (Current by flightsim-squadron). They have a flyable mated version but made them separate models for our purposes. (Huge Thanks!)
So all bits are in place. I sorted how to call the 3D models so we can watch accurate representations of these guys fly. I was testing ELT over Oshkosh as aircraft arrived in real life and it was amazing to see real aircraft in the sim arrive in formation, break, and land.
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Earthquake and volcanic data is instantly available if you search for it. Weather events are already in the game. One of the first thing people did when the game was first released was explore a hurricane that hit at about the same time.
Space launches are all pretty much announced, that could be tracked. Obviously Solar eclipses are well known, meteor showers are probably relatively easy to do, though I’m sure people will complain that it’s not perfect. I think there’s already a way to do northern lights? Forest fires are easily searchable, for instance, take a look at the MyRadar app on your phone.
What else were you thinking?
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FlightAware shows GA flights. I use it all the time to see what traffic is out there when I’m about to go flying for real (I’m in the U.S. Northeast). Some of the places I like to fly get pretty busy, so I like to be aware of what to expect (I get flight following, too). You can see planes doing pattern work, all sorts of stuff.
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Yeah, I think implementing World Events would be amazing. Floods, Wildfires, Earthquakes, Riots (police helicopter missions) and so on. They can even use big events to trigger VIP missions (taking Phil Spencer to Gamescon LOL).
Eathquakes! get that ground moving!
and volcano activity for specific regions! Lava streams!
The one type of world event they could realistically do is volcanos erupting. There are good world maps of all the active volcanos, so the data is certainly all there. Aircraft do monitor volcanic eruptions so it wouldn’t surprise me if we see it as a career activity in the future.
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Personally, I would like my primary real world event to be a fully implemented METAR system.
Bijan, of the Seasons fame, has just released a new version of his mod that covers volcanos, forest fires and more. Available at simMarket.
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