The immersion feeling is missing... Any hope to improve?

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The sim itself is a blast! It is exactly what I dreamed about. But there are major issues which kill the immersion. IMHO

  1. Raind drops and wipers. I saw many cockpit vids and when an aircraft enters precipitation area the rain drops cover whole windshield and nothing is visible out of the window and wipers wipe out the rain from the windshield. In the sim rain effects are very low and besides that the wipers don’t affect the rain drops unfortunately… Which kills the immersion.
  2. Heavy clouds with precipitations. In real life the pilots avoid such clouds. In the sim no matter how cruel cloud is , you can easily fly through with no severe turbulence effect. Of course there might be a slight turbulence in the sim, but not enought to be scared of…
  3. Ground roll. In reall life when an aircraft is taxiing, taking off, landing - it is shaking. In the sim an aircraft is going like on butter smooth and nice. It is the major immersion killer for me…

Of course, AI traffic is the must have. But hopefully we will get some sometime.
Also, would be nice to have an option to turn the copilot on or off. We have some mods where we can enable the copilot, but I don’t understand why such thing is not by default? For example, when I observe an airplane from external camera, I see a copilot. But what can I do if I don’t want to see him? There is no option to change that…

Those above mentioned things are not hard to implement (I think), so why the developers don;t think about such fundamental things?

What do you think , guys?

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For point one I agree the rain effects are limited,
The turbulence effect was turned down according to the Devs so that users would have a better experience.
Certainly for point 3, using a motion platform and buttkicker I get plenty of vibration and movement from acceleration and deceleration, braking, bumps in the taxiway and quite a thump through the backside from a less than smooth landing. So the effects are generated by the sim.

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Does working Flightplanner and APs also count?

And while we are at it. Overly optimistic glide performance. Unrealistic stall performance. Wrong turbine engine Mgmt. Incorrect leaning behavior (or was that fixed?) ….

At least breaks the immersion for me. ;-).

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Not an immersion killer for me at all. Runway surfaces on large airports are usually pretty smooth.
I really dislike the often exaggerated artificial shaking and rumbling in some add-ons.

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Leaving near the Gulf of Mexico I love flying inside hurricanes, and I can tell you the “no turbulence” issue existed since day one. If you have ZERO turbulence while in a hurricane, then there is a problem. The only one that addresses the issue is Rex Weather, but I prefer MSFS weather.

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I agree. The extreme turbulence of hurricanes was non-existent from the start. But they did have other effects like up and down drafts when flying over mountains. In some cases, severe to the point it could crash planes. They’ve since toned that down significantly.

I remember last winter flying at FL300 over the Rockies in the TBM. I didn’t think I’d make it due to all the currents rocking my plane around. They’ve since toned that effect down significantly as well. A flight in such rotten conditions is a relatively smooth flight now.

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I hope so. Every time I jump into the cockpit there’s some issue that pops up that either distracts me, frustrates me or causes me to get bored. The only time I get immersed is when I fly low and slow VFR or find a scenic place to do some patterns. Even then, I find that Google Earth can be just as satisfying.

I want to fly jets properly. I want to fly in weather that looks real. I want to fly over scenery that doesn’t look blurry or poor-quality imagery that’s very old.

Lighting is bonkers, especially at altitudes above 10000, unless it’s the golden hour. Don’t even get me going on night lighting…

Clouds were fun in the beginning, now they’re bland, repetitive and you can see the same tricks used in X-plane to fill the skies once you stare at them long enough. Heck, you can even do the same thing when playing with weather presets.

Detailed cities look better than generic ones, but the photogrammetry needs a ton of work, and both kill the immersion for me…

IFR and jet flying is a big headache, visually and technically, which is really sad because these things are integral to aviation. You’d think it would be included in world-class flight simulator funded by a company like Microsoft. Yet, today we have what, ONE jet that actually has some kind of legitimate VNAV? We only have a couple of jets with decent systems. Still no weather radar that devs and community have been begging for, and it took, what, 6 months to get rid of that ridiculous icing effect?

It is what it is. I got my money’s worth but Asobo lost my trust. I was spectacularly excited when MSFS was announced, and just as disappointed now as I was when Alpha opened up. I fly it, but I don’t get immersed in it, and if the past year is any indication, I fear it won’t get much better for a long time…

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Yes can confirm the turbulence or lack thereof. I think it was even stated by the devs that it was tuned down, since day one.

However I can’t say if it the weather / turbulence model or the susceptibility of the aircrafts to turbulence. I hardly seen so steady ASIs at least where I fly.

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Why is that a problem? You just said one should avoid such clouds anyway :wink:

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I am recently returning to Flight Simulation, and here’s my thoughts:

  1. Multi-monitors really help with immersion. Win to XPlane 11 for having three monitors around me, if I had that hardware and wanted to be able to feel “snugly wrapped up” by monitors showing me an 180 field of view. Maybe MS FS will get this some day?

  2. It feels to me that XPlane 11 planes “pull and tug in annoying ways that non-pilots wouldn’t expect”, both on the ground and in the air. I feel the rotation of the plane prop wanting to rotate me out of control on a Cessna 172, in XPlane and don’t get that feeling in Flight Simulator, maybe I just don’t have that option set realistic somewhere. The default MS FS model feels like a combat arcade game.

  3. From what real pilots (3 on youtube anyways) that talked about it said, neither XPlane nor MS FS is accurate about turbulence and small single engine planes like Cessnas bouncing around in the air or on the ground in any way realistically. I would like the chaos to be able to be turned up, on the ground and in the air. A more realistic landing and takeoff and flight with more chaos, in any way that real pilots have to encounter, please. It would be more immersive to me if I had to fight my plane to make it look smooth. As it is, I could almost land a Cessna 172 with the throttle off and one finger holding my flight stick without moving, then rotate, and land, with my eyes closed. I don’t get the idea that it’s that easy in a real plane. Where are me cross winds and down drafts? Where’s the plane trying to rotate on me, and where is a realistic model of rudder input?

Warren

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In my view, there is too much stuff not working to even approach any level of immersion. No, I am not expecting “study level” aircraft included. But I do expect the avionics to work at a basic level, meaning entering/editing/modifying/flying flight plan.

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Flying through clouds doesn’t feel like flying through clouds any more. It did before SU5. Now the aircraft is in bright sunlight, even when in thick cloud.

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It’s not related to the ground, but many patches back the vibrations caused by engines at low RPMs was increased. This caused smaller GA aircraft to vibrate a lot. One clever way to illustrate this is in the Islander which has a loop of curly cord hanging from cockpit ceiling. This jiggles while at low idle.

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Yes, I experienced this too. When entering thick clouds everything is covered in a super bright and super unrealistic looking light. It is terrible.
Before the last update flying into clouds was much better in terms of lighting. They just need to bring it back and add some turbulence inside clouds and then it would be great.

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Have you flown in any aircraft? No matter how smooth the surface there are always cracks, runway lights which make an aircraft shutter. Or at least watch any cockpit video nd you will see how the pilots jump on their seats during take off or landing roll :slight_smile:

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Yes, the turbulence over mountans exists and works pretty much well for me. But I really miss the idea of not flying through the heavy cloud because it may bring trouble. Now you just pass trough any cload no matter how severe it is and with no concequenses at all… I emagine how cool it would be to ask a control to make a detour because there is a heavy cloud on the way. But for now I can use my emagination only…

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but in caase if you delayed with leaving the area, then it could be really nice to have consequences. That is the immersion I am talking about.

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The odd crack or bump, but the surface condition of the maneuvering area is generally maintained to a very high standard (if not only to cover the airport managers bum).

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Do you have noticed that if yo fly a roll, first the plane starts to roll an then the horizon starts to tilt sideways. In my opinion this is an immersion killer too. i`m surrounded by 3 big tv´s and the feeling of flying and movement is much stronger when i put the camera outside of the cockpit so that i only see the landscape

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Watch this vid from 2:03. That is what I am talking about. Look at the pilots shaking on their seats… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mSSFCamk0I