I find the multiplayer channel “live players” quite useful, because then all players are forced to fly with live weather.
So no pilot lands in an other direction, because he/she is using a manual or no weather.
But one thing I highly dislike and which is really not useful, that is to be forced to “live time”.
Because it means to me (I’m working all day and flying in the evening) that I have to do every flight in nighttime!
I can’t see the beautiful landscapes and VFR flying is also almost impossible.
So my wish to Asobo is, to remove the time requirement from the “live players” channel!
Everyboy who likes to fly at night time can do so, but everybody who like to fly in daylight should also be allowed to do so!
Would that even be possible in an environment like that?
IMHO, (as a punter, not an expert), is that a common environment might be a requirement for something like that.
“Time of day” is (IMHO) a fundamental aspect of any flying environment. If you are going to share the environment, it only makes sense to have to share all the environment’s attributes too.
Maybe you need to find a multiplayer group that flies where you are so you can fly during daylight?
To put it simply…If you’re flying at night and another pilot is flying during the day, you’d never really know. Right? I feel like shared weather conditions would be more of a must have. I don’t use the live time option, because I prefer to fly during the day. But, I’m a stickler for pilots using the correct weather. I ALWAYS double check on FR24 what runways are in use in real life and plan accordingly. It amazing how many people don’t use RW weather or at least disregard it on multiplayer.
Depends on how deterministic the weather engine is, since recent major updates have sunlight impacting thermals and winds. If Asobo is sending basic live weather data and allowing the player’s machine to determine the weather knowing that it will result in similar results across machines, then the player’s time setting can’t be uncoupled. This is more likely than the live weather servers sending complex data on in-game conditions, in which case local time setting wouldn’t matter
That’s exactly what I meant.
Many players are using “clear skies” without any wind and they takeoff from wherever they like. Often someone came right the opposite direction for the approach than me.
That’s annoying!
So I would like to use the “live players” channel, because there you can’t change the weather.
But like I said:
I don’t like to do all my flights at night time. I want to change the time.
Imho the daylight/nighttime has almost no impact to which runway is used.
Maybe there are some very rare cases, where certain runways are closed during night times.
Okay, but that is 1%.
And the thermals have almost no impact to which runway is used.
That’s only for glider flying and is does not matter for airliner and also for general aviation.
AND BY THE WAY:
Disallow spawn on the runway at least for “live players” because that’s annoying as well.
Two other good ways I think this could be achieved:
Have another main multiplayer option:
Live Players (as it now) Live Weather (Forced live weather with custom time)
All Players (as it is now)
Group Only (as it is now)
Synchronised ATC for multilplayer (based upon live weather conditions), that way everyone would be using the same runway etc. irrespective of their ‘local’ weather conditions.
I think an ‘open group with rules’ feature would be a possible solution here. Create a set of options for rules like ‘must fly with live weather’, ‘can’t spawn on runway’ etc, and allow the creation of permanent groups which apply a set of rules and any player who joins that group gets those rules enforced whenever they fly in that group. Current groups (which have never worked properly for me) are strictly ad-hoc and require a group owner to be present at all times. These would be more like a virtual flying club with rules. This mechanism worked well in Elite: Dangerous to tackle some of the more egregious player behaviour they were seeing.
I think the live weather issue is a wider one, though. Plenty of people are in OP’s boat and want to fly in daylight when it’s night-time in that part of the world (me among them). But flying with night-time live weather in simulated daytime is problematic if you’re looking for truly realistic weather. Temperature changes affect winds, thermals, and plenty of other factors. Depending on the location and time of year, where the temperature difference between night and day can be significant, the effect can be profound.
It seems to me that what we really need is both enforceable rules for multiplayer groups, and the ability to generate realistic but not-live weather for the time and location you choose that evolves dynamically, can be shared between players, and is not global and static like weather themes. Then people can fly where they want, when they want, with the weather they want, and with like-minded people who will abide by agreed rules. But that implies technology that we don’t have and which might actually not be possible at the local PC level (because that kind of simulation requires a lot more computing power than you have on your desktop).
Personally, I fly with multiplayer off unless I’m explicitly joining a group / fly-in / flying with friends. Generated AI is enough company in the skies for me. Although AI regularly uses the ‘wrong’ runway anyway
While to this I would say pick another airport elsewhere in the world (I’ve been in the same boat, but look at it as a way of forced exploration), I do understand wanting to adjust the time while still allowing live weather multiplayer. You got my vote.
Yeah, but no, but yeah. VATSIM is great, but it’s primarily an ATC network rather than a multiplayer network - that’s kind of a side-effect - and there are way too few controllers most of the time and in most of the world, and players are left flying into towered airports like they were uncontrolled. So you find most of the players where the controllers are, I’d imagine (have never flown on it myself)?
As much as I’ve been skeptical about LLM-based ATC, I imagine anyone who could make an AI VATSIM controller that could seamlessly integrate into the network (via voice both ways) and fill in the global coverage 24/7 would be quids in. Whether VATSIM themselves would be comfortable with that idea, I don’t know… part of the attraction of VATSIM is getting real human controllers who know what they’re doing.
Well, that’s one approach. If your perspective is real-world flying only in the sense of the real weather and the real time because that’s how you’d have to fly in RL, and you want to do a particular type of flying, then sure, you can just pick somewhere where it’s the right time and has the weather you want. If it’s winter in the Northern hemisphere and you want summer weather, go to the Southern hemisphere. I get it.
But… there are plenty of us who want to fly scenarios, I think. At one point I wanted to fly the never-actually-happened BA CityFlyer route from Southampton to Berlin, which was to be a summer-only route, and it was January here in the UK. Live weather isn’t going to cut it for that, and live time isn’t either.
Anyway, I’m drifting off the topic. No idea if OP would consider VATSIM as a viable alternative for them, but it’s certainly one way to fly with people who will (generally) follow the rules.
The great thing about this sim is it allows us to what we want when and where we want to…
As to global coverage ATC which is actually useful…. (Sorry Asobo your ATC model sucks). There is new addon coming soon, I believe it’s called beyondATC, it uses AI and has speech recognition, Overkill has done a few vids on YouTube.
It looks very promising…. But…. How will it work in reality? How will it interact with other players??? So many questions to which I don’t think there is a good solution. Hoping though.
My honest opinion is that no-one will ever write a complete global ATC add-on that is completely accurate and effectively perfect. I doubt it can even be done, ATC is such a complex domain which is always in flux as standards evolve, and human understanding is really required to do it properly. But I’m hoping BATC will do a better job that the rest of the current add-ons, and not become abandonware like one particular package I could mention (but won’t).
So far, I’m impressed by their attitude and communication. But many projects start out well and end up failing nonetheless. When BATC is available to us to try out, I will make a judgement call on whether I want to use it or not. Until then, there continues to be P2ATC.
to be fair, VATSIM CoC only requires you to have live weather. You can still fly at another time of day if you choose. It’s more important for the weather to the same for everyone than it is time of day
Plus, how are they gonna know you’re flying at 3p in game when it’s 10 o clock a night?
VATSIM is a great network. But I do like to fly along with my friends in a groupflight without the stress, that VATSIM generates to me. I’m no so proficient in talking on radio and I often can’t understand, what the controller wants from me, because they talk very fast, have bad microphones and use their own dialect. So VATSIM is stressful to me.
But it does not matter to my idea, to simply remove the time requirement!
Ah and that multiplayer groups already exist in MSFS since day 1, but also since day 1 they are bugged AS HELL and simply completely unusable!!
And annother one:
I’m based in Europe and I mostly like to fly in Europe. I don’t like to be forced to fly all time in America or Australia (etc), when it is only a simple task for Asobo to change the rules.
Hahah, so true. We were in the pattern the other day, and the controller forgot we were there and gave clearance to land to another aircraft on 9 mile… so we called in, and got it sorted…. Just goes to show even professionals can make mistakes. Situational awareness is key.
of course this all depends on where you fly. I know in the US if you put something like “new pilot” or “newish to the region” or “non-native english speaker” most controllers are more than happy to accommodate. There’s absolutely no shame in asking a controller to repeat their last. It might seem like a bad thing but in the end it’s better to ask than not know.
But I completely understand where you come from. It’s just the nature of an international community and you find ways to work with it or work around it.
And while it’s less desirable, you can always fly in uncontrolled airspace with your friends. You might be the only traffic for 2500 miles, but at least you won’t have the same issues as flying in controlled airspace dealing with the aforementioned stressors.
It might be worth your time looking into JoinFS. It’s kind of a hackjob vatsim for a lack of better way to explain it. It’s all peer to peer/cloud based but you’d effectively be able to set your own time and weather parameters without dealing with the forced in-game MP settings since they are joining off of you instead of a central server. You can do group flights and even some shared cockpit (but i’d still stick to Your Controls for that).
