Happy New Year Everyone,
I hope that you’ve been able to find some time to sit back and relax in the new sim and enjoy the improvements that have been made since the last update.
For me, I spent most of the time flying at night in the 32N, and I’m pretty happy with the way the night lighting has been improved. I still wish the airports were more-realistic. You don’t see their bright runway/taxiway lights above 10000 feet or so, especially from a distance.
But, the full moonlight is lovely, and almost spot-on when we compare it with pics and clips from the real world.
Snow
I’ve been anxiously-awaiting snow, and was delighted to see it implemented in the sim. Yet, I was pretty annoyed to see how many places were snow-free and green as can be, even though there should have been snow on the ground. Not only that, but it seems that the weather has been off in general (around where I flew in the US) once again. Clear where it should have been cloudy, rain when it should have been snowing, you know, the usual stuff.
Another little annoyance is that most airports plow their runways and taxiways during snow events. We shouldn’t be seeing snowy runways, especially if it’s not snowing anymore. I hope they come up with some way to exclude these surfaces as they tweak the persistent snow effects.
Clouds
Moving on to the other thing I wanted to explore, and that’s rolling back the clouds to the earlier version. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I thought the new clouds had some better variance and definition, despite the potmarks in them. I’m not trying to start an argument, rather just inject my opinion here. No matter what clouds are used, I wish they would be less-saturated. We need a little better lighting on the clouds. The shadow side is nice. The lit side isn’t bright or white enough imo, especially with cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds.
Icing
Icing has been discussed at-length, but nobody seems to want to be bothered to fix it. So, I’m going to keep complaining about it until it is fixed. I can’t stand the visual icing effects. I know this is a debatable topic. So, why not just give us back the option to turn it off, instead? I’m tired of flying an ice cube.
The only workaround now is to constantly set the slider in developer mode to zero because it won’t stay there. It can’t be that difficult to set this to zero and be done with it via a tick box in the menu, sticking the slider, or at the very least, allowing us a line in the .cfg to modify. Any one of those options would be very helpful as we continue to fly through the winter.
The Big Jets
I’m still experiencing problems with the autopilot, particularly in the 32N. I know, I know, the mod isn’t Asobo’s problem. However, most of the problems associated with the mod are caused by Asobo’s autopilot. The autopilot in general needs to be improved more. Swaying, goofy ILS and waypoint captures, it’s been 5 months now folks.
I also want to take a moment and plead with Asobo to unlock the 787 so that it can be further developed. We bought this aircraft at a premium, with the expectation that it would work. While it’s been vastly-improved, it’s still a far cry from what was advertised. So many INOP buttons, no real systems depth. Unlocking it would allow those who really want to make this bird into a freeware study-level aircraft to work their magic.
I’m a tubeliner guy at heart, so realism and some form of depth are important to me in this sim. Maybe next week, I’ll spend more time flying low and slow in VFR, where this sim really shines so I don’t complain so much.
Meanwhile, that’s my take on the week. What was your experience? What did you do in the sim?
