Start flight without walkaround (MSFS2024)

Then do a “Free Flight”?

I wish there were more formal preflight checks.

You still start in walkaround mode and have to remove the covers in “free flight”…

Well, while you’re outside kicking the tires and removing the covers, could you also bring a chainsaw to cut down the trees in the runway, and maybe a road grader to get rid of the crazy anomalies in the tarmac?

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There is one “kludgy” way of eliminating the walkaround in Free Flight. When starting the options selection for the flight in the world map, klick on an open spot on the apron somewhere of your desired departure airport, NOT on a parking spot, and select that as your departure. In the options at the top of the screen, this will now show up as a custom, airborne departure. Click on the starting point selection box and select “on the ground ready for takeoff”. When you start the flight, you will now be in the running aircraft at that spot on the apron without any chocks or covers. You can either then just start the flight like that or, if you want to go through the startup sequence, you will have to shut the aircraft down and then do the startup sequence.

Is this any less of a hassle than the walkaround? I don’t really think so. But it is at least a “different” option FWIW.

And before you ask: if you start the flight cold and dark in this way at an unofficial starting point, the aircraft still has the chocks and covers.

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Or maybe assign that lazy co-pilot to do the walk around for you?

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Gotta chuckle at some of the comments here implying that not wanting to do a pre-flight in a simulator is anywhere near the same as not wanting to do a pre-flight in real life.

If you needed a simulator to remind you that you have to pre-flight a real airplane, you should 1) get a refund from your flight school and 2) not be a pilot.

Plus, the sim teaches bad habits. Like, in the planes I’ve flown so far, it makes you take the pitot cover off - but it doesn’t make you check for blockages. Or it has you move the ailerons, but it doesn’t make you check if the attach bolts are loose, or if the lugs have cracks. So you’re just naively clicking on click-points without really understanding why those checks are necessary.

I mean live and let live - if you think virtual pre-flights are cool, have at it. But there’s absolutely no issue with making it optional.

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It’s a game. It deserves the ability or option to disable the walk around!

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Comment doesnt make sense. Its a simulator, so folks just want an approximation of real life. With your logic, we should stop using the sim because its not real life.

I think you’re projecting what you want from the sim onto other “folks”.

If you want to do virtual pre-flight walkarounds, cool. Me and at least 1000 people who voted on this thread do not. And there’s simply no good argument for not making it optional. Simple as.

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Thos. And furthermore: even in real life the captain of an airliner starts in the cockpit and either delegates the walkaround to the FO or does it after powering up the cockpit and finishing preparation.

So either way, the walk around is highly unrealsitic. At least for airliners.
But it should be optional for everyone who likes to walk over the apron and port to the cockpit instead of taking the jetway.

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The latest Spad.neXt update supports directly reading / writing the COVER ON values, so you can now remove all the covers (and auto-press shift + C to enter the cockpit) from Spad via a button or automatically at flight start with the script panel. SET_COVERS still doesn’t work but apparently that’s an issue that’s being fixed shortly, and since setting COVER ON:x to 0 does the same thing, it’s not a problem.

This is an option for anyone with Spad to automatically skip the walkaround until Asobo gives us the option.

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Not projecting, just reading. Are you projected for others, that they dont want the walk around?

Bump. Make it optional so I can turn it OFF.

I’m pretty sure he simply said to make the walkaround optional…

Hey, look at that, the very last bit he posted.

As a guy that enjoyed doing the walkaround IRL…I find the in game equivalent unhelpful (if you infer that I mean a waste of my time, you infer correctly.) I speak only for myself lest you incorrectly infer that I speak for others.

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It’s not projecting when this topic has 1000+ votes…

At this point, 1000 people is a significant chunk of the player base.

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As with many other things, why not make it a option?

This “realism” argument is goofy as usual. What part of a B738M walk-around has you walking around removing static, probe and engine covers before every flight?

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