Spot Landing Challenges: Recent Scores close to 2 million points: caused by a bug, or something else?

[RevampedSine732]

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NO

Brief description of the issue:

Recently, in Spot Landing Challenges, several scores close to 2 million points have appeared in several landing challenges. Notably, they are all multiple of 200, meaning the landing Smoothness was 0 fpm. As I wanted to see with my own eyes how to land at 0 fpm, I searched for videos on the web, mostly on YouTube, but couldn’t find any! Which I found surprising: why wouldn’t such brilliant pilots want to show their exceptional abilities???
Then, finally, I found one video. But there is a problem! See below…

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

It was hard to find THE video showing the problem.

Here is how I went to investigate this:

I like doing spot landing challenges. Recently, I managed very good scores at the Kingston Nevada landing challenge:

Kingston Nevada Spot Landing Challenge: World Top 3. Microsoft Flight Simulator

But I noticed scores close to 2 million points that are multiple of 200, meaning the Smoothness can only be 0 fpm

In the last few days, several more scores close to 2 million points have appeared in this challenge:

and in other challenges too:

and even in the Strong Winds category like Nanwalek: those 3 scores are multiple of 200:

or Donegal:

or Southampton in the Extra still windy conditions:

And in several other landing challenges too (just look at other challenges).

But this video shows there is a problem:

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Just select some landing challenges and look at the scores.

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

Not relevant.

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

Definitely 1.25.7.0, but it could have happened before; I wasn’t checking for this in particular before…

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[PopsMcDaddyo]

Thank you for doing such a detailed, thoughtful writeup on this!

I hope your topic gets recognized by a Moderator or Community Manager for escalation to the Devs. Great job on pulling the information together. It’s obvious that you put a lot of time and effort into it.

Thanks again, greatly appreciated!

[RevampedSine732]

Thank you!!! I did indeed took hours to find that video! Over days of searching and searching…
I am contacting some moderators.

[PopsMcDaddyo]

Perfect! If this went un-noticed, I would’ve pinged one of them myself

Thank you!

[RevampedSine732]

You can also help, I have only contacted one so far. I am a slow typer: I lost my left hand in a rocketeering accident…
EDIT: Trying to contact a second moderator is blocked:

So, any help is welcome.

[PopsMcDaddyo]

Oh man… that makes the quality of your post even more amazing!

[tamalien]

@RevampedSine732 I got your message. Thanks!

I will chat more in the private message thread.

[DeepFuture2568]

Thanks for reporting as this is now getting out of hand . Well done, I’m really glad MSFS are awear of this.

[wanchaibanzai]

World # 6 Ranked Landing Challenge, Kingston, Nevada

At the end of the video (Kingston Nevada) the stats and leaderboards are shown. 25fpm is as close as I can be bothered to achieve after approx. 12 attempts - with a 7ft ground roll and 17ft landing precision. I was # 6 at the time of posting the video but am already out of the top ten (showing as # 9 in the leaderboard photo posted in this thread). On the plus side - at least the leaderboards & scoring seem to work OK on the spotlight challenges - unlike the other landing challenges (relieved to see that this issue is now showing as ‘bug logged’ finally).

[c2h5cl]

Does anyone else have this issue?
after a near perfect landing in Nevada landing challenge, the brakes just dont work. Throttle mapped and joystick also mapped for braking + parking brakes, none works!!
any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

[RevampedSine732]

This happens if you go too fast.

[RevampedSine732]

Easy to know if Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

I take the top 10 of a few days ago:

I use Excel:

for each of the 10 scores:

1,992,400 : Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

1,991,600 : Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

1,989,800 : Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

1,989,600 : Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

1,978,000 : Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

1,969,600 : Smoothness is 0 fpm, 200 points:

1,920,018 : OK

1,920,000 : OK here I think: smoothness likely to be 192, cheats go for higher scores

1,907,033 : OK

1,881,117 : OK

I just did my smoothest landing there: 11 fpm giving 196 Smoothness points:

[c2h5cl]

I doubt it as during any other landing after a regular flight, the brakes work just fine. I have used the same plane as well as others to test it. There is something in my config that may be messing it up. Not sure what!!
thanks for your suggestion, though..

[wanchaibanzai]

I see a reply to a comment on the #1 ranked Kingston, Nevada video referred to above and posted to YouTube by ‘naskjbfse’ essentially admitting it was faked saying “can you not take a joke”…

[RevampedSine732]

Hi @c2h5cl

Yes, I see. Just in case he deletes the evidence, here it is:

When I last checked FS this morning, the Kingston Nevada Landing Challenge had this top 10:

So the first seven have a trick to do 0 fpm!
And no action from Microsoft…

[DeepFuture2568]

0fpm is impossible in my opinion. I hope Asobo can sort out this.

[RevampedSine732]

Indeed, at 0 fpm you won’t go any closer to the runway: you stay parallel!!!

Hence, it completely stupid to need 0 fpm to get 200 points!

[WideTracking]

It’s a game and players will eventually figure out the tricks to beat it. It happened with Space Invaders, Pacman, Ms Pacman, Mario 1,2,3…, etc when patterns were discovered. Decades ago I got a little paperback book that published a pattern for Pacman. It ruined the game for me once I knew it.

[RevampedSine732]

Yes, but I think there should be a system to ensure that any cheated score would get automatically removed.
Mind you, this could have bugs and wipe everything as well… The Bugsmaggedon is upon us.

[Ads9587]

Yes, I was doing it as a funny thing as it was a bug that I found out about with a friend, if you would like information on it you can dm my discord: Ads#6969