We used to have the same, but much more heated discussions in sim motor racing forums. However, back then, using an external view was deemed to give drivers a considerable advantage in term of situational awareness and so was frowned upon. I was squarely in the cockpit view camp.
Same here for flying. I use VR and can’t imagine how immersion killing it must be, to just jump outside of your plane in the final moments of landing and therefore wouldn’t dream of doing it.
If you can’t do it IRL then don’t do it in the sim, is my Motto.
I agree, VR is optimal, followed by a large screen or three with proper FOV.
I can’t use my car sim rig for flight, so I am on a pretty potato system for MSFS. Those external views come in HANDY when you don’t have optimal gear.
Always cockpit, 98% of the flight. The other 2% I spend looking at outside camera at cruising level for views. I do often change the camera in the cockpit to give me a little height on the inside when I first spawn in.
Cockpit for me on landing. I only switch to external view for the view of what it looks like from outside. But for actually landing the aircraft is definitely cockpit. Because I need to listen to the Radio Altimeter callouts and my timing and distancing between my eyeline and the runway is easier to measure when I’m inside the cockpit. I always timed my flare wrong when landing using exterior view.
I wouldn’t bother with the in game recorder. Pop along to flightsim.to and pick up Flight Recorder. Great little App for recording and replaying flights.
I always fly from in the cockpit. I mean, nobody ever landed a plane in real life while hanging onto the tail from outside did they?
I would absolutely love the ability to replay a landing and watch it from outside, but sadly this is not possible on xbox. After rotary wing, replay would be my #1 feature wish for this sim.
The only time I jump outside is if I’m on a scenic flight, I’ll enjoy the view from outside, or from the drone, while the plane is flying itself (usually trimmed level as I’m not using autopilot much). If I need to fly it again then I do that from the cockpit.
I fly end to end in cockpit view with track IR, i also run the freeware flight recorder utility alongside. When flight is over i review the recorded flight take off and landing and any interesting pois/views along the way from drone cam, from there I take some scrrenshots for my desktop wallpaper folder to preserve my ventures.
Otherwise it just feels wrong like playing stuff from my childhood. Out Run, Afterburner etc. Thats the stuff with the camera outside behind the car/aircraft.
Doesn’t mean I don’t use outside views for looking at the aircraft or doing screenshots or simply for some fun to see myself flying under a bridge.
But when I fly seriously stay in the cockpit and try to do stuff the right way. Probably couldn’t even land a plane in the outside view.
Yeah, everyone who has used VR before knows that 3D vision is invaluable for spatial judgement. Looking at a 2D screen racing 1m above the track is extremely difficult as yoy will only see turns very late. In chase view you can oversee a lot more in advance and can plan ahead further.
In flightsim the external view has the downside of losing situational awareness actually, you cannot judge your attitude anymore, aiming for a landing spot and judging the glide slope becomes even harder than in a 2D cockpit. 3D however, VR, is a completely different world. Car racing or flying, the spatial vision makes the whole situation natural and our body simply knows from experience what we have to do. It becomes obvious when we need to start the turn into final, how fast we need to descend, when we have to flare to break the descent etc. In flight sim the difficulty decreases with an increase of realism, no matter which setting you change. If it becomes more realistic it also becomes easier.
This was my first introduction to flight sim. I started out flying only 3rd person.
One time I saw someone make a comment when asked the question the TS asked, and their answer was “well I’ve never seen someone land an airplane in real life from the external view”.
At first it sounded like a pompous answer. But the more I flew, the more I progressed and wanted to challenge myself. Now, I totally prefer 1st person flying. Feels a lot more immersive and it’s not as difficult as it is at first once you practice.
Just like 3rd person flying when you are brand new. Your landings won’t be smooth, but with more practice, they will get smoother. Transfer that same logic to 1st person flying.
I still do some 3rd person flying, but for takeoff and landings, I generally do 1st person.
Cockpit only for both take off and landing. As others said, external views are great to see scenery and make a screenshot or two, and while I do love to rewatch my landing afterwards, for me that´s a topic for the replay functionality, not while actually performing the landing itself.
