This sim may not be doing enough to make sure casual users are not excluded or left behind

Discussion Hub General Discussion
294

In my case, as much as I would like to get a ppl, I will never be able to pass the flight physical, so a ppl isn’t going to happen.

What do I do?  I sim, that being as close to a ppl as I will ever get.

  • Atari 8-bit cartridge:  Wow!! Lookie what I can do!!
  • FS 2000:  Holy Christmas!  (Time to upgrade from my AMD Pentium clone.)
  • FS 2004:  Holy Christmas!  (Time for more memory and a better video card.)
  • FSX:  Cool beanies!  (Time for another system upgrade, and then a couple of hundred bucks for a hot video card.)

MSFS 2020:  Will someone help me get my jaw off the floor?!!  (Time for a major system upgrade and The Video Card from Hell.)

If nothing else, MS’s flight sims have given me the push to “get with the program” and upgrade my hardware.

Suggestion
Anyone who wants to dis MSFS 2020, just go back and play any previous version - try replaying FSX for example - and you will feel like you’re playing a retro game console.  Earlier versions?  Fuggeddaboutit!

Every new version has been a jaw-dropping experience compared to the previous versions and it was "bleeding edge " compared to what came before.  Each version was so much more realistic and the enjoyment factor was better and better.
 

 

This version has opened entirely new vistas within the sim.  Now it’s more than “just flying”, it’s flying in a, (almost), realistic world allowing you to “boldly go where no flight sim has gone before.”

Now, pure VFR pleasure flying is a possibility.  Punt the procedures, let’s go sightseeing!

Florida, Boston, Worcester (Ma.), Moscow, Podolsk, you pick the place!

Of course, some places are better than others.  Beregrove on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula, Heregrova (sp?) in Egypt, etc., leave much to be desired, but it’s getting there.

Even better:  Now people playing game consoles can join the fun which was not only not available, but not even possible with what came before.

This opens whole new vistas for people who want to sim, realistically sim, instead of playing first person shooters or trying to wreck as many cars as possible.

Who is simming “properly”?  In a word, everyone.  Everybody gets to play and everyone gets to play/sim whatever way they want.

There are Xbox players who fly virtual airlines.  There are maxed out PC gaming rigs that only, (mostly), fly VFR single player without ATC.

It’s all good.

Bottom line:
You should be having fun.  If you’re not, you’re doing the wrong thing.

Rock on and “keep the blue side up!”

3 Likes
295

You can stream from series x.

https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/friends-social-activity/live-streaming/how-to-stream-on-xbox

2 Likes
297

Probably my biggest gripe, tbh. I’ve been on that since the sim launched Day One. The A.I. Pilot continues to under-perform or is simply AWOL. I don’t expect it will ever get fixed. I’m a casual flight simmer; I was hoping to have the game fly me around the world. I don’t touch the sim so much these days.

2 Likes
299

You said you need a PC to stream - I showed that you don’t; you now say you need a pc to grow your viewer count. This wasn’t the original argument and I’m not even sure it’s true. What is it about the Xbox streaming experience (that you weren’t even aware of it existing until i pointed it out) do you feel falls short of the pc experience such that you won’t grow your viewer count?

Edit: nvm different person to the original respondent but still.

2 Likes
301

 

 

Will someone please explain to me, (and others), how this is relevant to the original topic?

As fast as I understand it, (e.g. IMHO), the ability to stream to YouTube, Twitch, TickTock, or even a custom podcast channel, has nothing to do with “making MSFS fully accessable to the widest variety of users”.

Viz.:

I am simplifying this to mean “making MSFS accessible to the widest variety of users and use cases”.

Again, IMHO, comparing PC’s to Xbox, or this type of user to that kind of user is counterproductive, trolling, hijacking the thread, and grossly disrespectful.

This isn’t what the rest of us want to discuss.

I would like to humbly suggest that you fork a different thread for Xbox vs PC discussions, as I don’t want the moderators to close this thread because it keeps being hijacked.

=============

Back on topic:

IMHO, there are two major aspects to making MSFS more broadly accessible.

  1. Making the game more platform agnostic.

  2. Making the game “more playable”.
     

Making the game more platform agnostic:

Ideally, MSFS would be entirely platform agnostic, and would run on any platform that could meet the operational specifications.  Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen, (make that read “a snowball’s chance in Hell”), because of Microsoft’s OS alignment.

That being said, opening up the game to console users, (specifically Xbox), goes a long way to achieving the goal of being platform agnostic.

Making the game available to Xbox users opens a whole new market of potential simmers who can’t, (or don’t want to), fiddle around with the intricacies, (and expense), of a higher-end PC.

It doesn’t matter if they want to play with a gamepad or a fully tricked-out cockpit; they CAN play, something that was NEVER available before.
 

Making the game “more playable”:

Making the game “more playable” brings up the biggest major tradeoff:  Do we emphasize absolute accuracy or do we emphasize playability?

In this case, (based on my own experience with the sim over the years), that decision has already been made:  Playability is the primary constraint, followed by accuracy of the flight model.

As I said in a review of Flight Gear many years ago, MSFS is primarily a game, designed to be fun.  Accuracy has always taken a back-seat to broad playability and Microsoft doesn’t want to disappoint the legions of people who planked down the serious money required to buy the game.

However. . . . .

Any kind of simulation that is based on a real-world activity has to have at least some basis in that real-world’s reality.

There is a “quid” that must be paid for that “pro quo”:  And that “quid” is a basic knowledge of how to play the game.

Driving games start with a basic presumption that the player has at least some knowledge of how to operate a motor vehicle.

Shooters start with a similar presumption that players know how to recognize opponents, aim, fire, and stay out of the way of their opponent’s attacks.

Likewise, any kind of flight simulation starts with a basic presumption that the player knows, (at the very least), something about flying an aircraft, OR is willing to put in the time to master the minimum skills required.

In my opinion, MSFS does this well.

  • The in-game settings allow the player to adjust the realism settings to accommodate their skill level.
  • Though there is, (IMHO), little in-game help for the more inexperienced player, the game is still very forgiving, and there is plenty of help elsewhere - like these forums and other sources like YouTube.

============

In summary:  Is there more that MSFS could do to successfully “make MSFS more accessible to the widest variety of users and use cases”?

Very possibly so, however I also believe that within the simple and reasonable constraints implied by any game, MSFS has done an admirable job of appealing to the widest variety of users and use-cases.

What say ye?

2 Likes
302

All good arguments. Much of the debate about the actual question has interestingly gone further than the OPs original and very reasonable ask that assistant features in the game actually work.

One area where the game could fork is around the ‘live’ experience and what that means in terms of weather and multiplayer experience. (See here for some musings on this topic)

One area where I don’t think it should fork is flight dynamics. These should be as reasonably high-fidelity as possible at the level you describe.

It will be very interesting to see how the A2A Commanche performs in this regard when it hits the market and what it tells us about what is possible with the current SDK.

1 Like
303

I am not convinced that the game should fork at all as that would fragment the userbase, which would be bad for a whole host of reasons.

However, what should fork are the detailed discussions of various game features and/or platforms where they are compared and contrasted.

These are all good discussions, so much so that they really deserve a thread of their own so that they can be fully and properly explored, and discussed.

304

I imagine the user experience desires are stabilizing now that we’re almost 3 years into the sim. We’ve seen what the sim is capable of, it’s been released on the console, helicopters and gliders have been added, so it’s probably not going to attract a huge, new user base again unless there is a major shift in content (like adding combat, which will never happen), making it cross-platform with high-fidelity train, truck, or car sims, or somehow a miracle happens and the FAA decides there’s an avenue to use it for official flight training (very unlikely at this point).

There will always be churn, new users, people leaving for various reasons, etc. So, as you point out, the biggest current opportunity may be to advance people’s realistic use of the sim, if they desire to up their game. The hardest part, besides the logistics and the GIGO effect (like the default instruction), is convincing people there’s important things that can be learned about aviation on the whole, using the sim, rather than the very aircraft or scenario-specific, often rote-level knowledge we see.

1 Like
305

Fork is probably the wrong word to describe what I mean. It’s more about options.

Amen to that. For me personally it’s been a reverse journey away from the vatsim-tubeliner-IFR experience. I’m back to flying a C172 quite often now.

2 Likes
306

 

I entirely agree, and (IMHO), this becomes an argument for a variety of use-cases.

As I have mentioned before, one person’s idea of “realistic” can be, (and often is), completely different than another person’s idea of “realistic”.

Because of that, it is both impossible, (as well as self-defeating), to insist that one particular way of using the sim is “right” and that others are “wrong”.

I am not sure how you use the sim.  Do you fly tubeliners within virtual airlines?  Do you fly a DC-3 in an imaginary scenerio where you transport freight or passengers from one out-of-the-way location to another?

Perhaps you like sightseeing as I do - punt the procedures, let’s just get up there and go exploring!

Maybe you like flying totally “by the book”, ATC, ground controllers and ramp vehicles, frequencies, flight plans, the whole shootin’-match?

Maybe you want to try some of the things “the real way”, like trying to “fly a pattern” or land realistically?

Perhaps, after “playing around with the sim”, (and listening to others on these forums), you might decide it’s time to “get serious” and start learning proper procedures and techniques?

It’s all good!

This is part of why MSFS can attract the following it has - you are not forced into a specific use-case by definition as other versions did - you can do whatever you want.

What say ye?

3 Likes
307

Bear with me here as I’m spitballing ideas, but it would be very nice if there was some sort of credentialing system for specific types of “simstruction”.

The problem as I see it is many users is going for a more type-rating experience in a specific aircraft rather than learning how to fly an aircraft correctly, how to navigate VFR and IFR, how to communicate, how to make aeronautical decisions (based on risks, weather, etc). All of those are pre-requisite for the type rating in 99% of real-life scenarios.

There are a lot of folks out there providing the “how to” stuff, but it runs into several limitations: the difference in fidelity of the sim compared to real life, the inability to properly evaluate and give feedback to a “student” in real-time (depending on format), and the simple GIGO factor because it can be any ol’ body giving “simstruction.” There’s no avenue for quality control other than word of mouth reputation. No laws to break, no risk when things go pear-shaped.

Bottom line, the FAA progression of flight training and instruction exists for a reason - can it be modeled here, tailored to the sim, and useful? The only potential risk would be determining if it would be helpful or harmful to those transferring to real world flying later. And that’s not insignificant - you don’t want to have someone teach someone the wrong way and all that stuff has to be unlearned later, so major disclaimers involved. But VATSIM has this for their controllers, and it’s fairly successful for sim use, so…

Anyway, this idea obviously doesn’t fit everyone’s use case, but there’s potential to lift all boats, erm, planes.

2 Likes
309

 

As far as my “playability” requirement category is concerned, the absence of training, especially in the basic handling of an aircraft, is a tremendous and glaring omission.

I remember in previous editions of MSFS that there were training modules, presented by famous names in flight training, where they explained what you were looking at on the cockpit instrument panel, what they did, how to read them, and how to use them in flight.

They then broke down the various flying skills into small digestible chunks, like “keeping the wings level” or “using the throttle to control altitude”, and so on, where each lesson built on the skills learned before, ultimately resulting in a student who knew what he was doing, while not being overwhelmed by dozens of concepts and skills all at the same time.

Is it like training in real life?  No, but that’s part of the advantage of a simulator - you can do things easily that are impossible IRL.

This level of instruction is sadly lacking in MSFS and, (IMHO), affects the newer user’s ability to enjoy the sim.

2 Likes
310

I must admit, I was a bit disappointed to see Rod Machado wasn’t back. He taught me everything I know… though after that fatal lesson we had in FSX where I broke both our necks landing nose first, I don’t blame him.

1 Like
311

He was a legend and would apparently be very happy to do lessons for this version too.

Passing the IFR check-ride, without cheating with the AP, was fiendish.

1 Like
312

I’ve said it in numerous threads, but the instruction in the sim is pretty much a joke (a 152 in Sedona? Come on). There are many other structural issues, and as you said, with which I vehemently agree, the instruction will actually do more to frustrate learners than educate them.

It makes you wonder if the plan wasn’t just to unleash learners into the world of YouTube, etc. But there’s a lot of garbage out there, too.

1 Like
313

“Was”??

Hopefully he’s still alive.

If he did a payware add-on for MSFS, my wallet would come flyin’ outta my pants pocket so fast I’d have scorch marks on my bum!

Seriously, I thought his tutorials were amusing enough to keep your interest, and good enough to establish good habits and a sense of mastery.

Serious +1 (thousand!) to that.

1 Like
314

He appears to be very much alive and well (see the other thread I linked). His wife was the examiner. Boy I grew to fear her ‘I’m sorry, you have failed this checkride’

2 Likes
315

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.