Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

[jztemple2]

A short video of a helicopter flight where I flew a passenger in from Long Island NY to the east side of Manhattan. Highlights to be noted; I skipped taxiing which in a helicopter is actually done at a few feet altitude! I also skipped the boring part of the flight, the straight and level stuff. I did some panning around at the destination, you can see how rough a lot of terrain looks when it is based on a satellite photo rather than a biome interpretation. Still, a lot of fun.

[El Guapo]

My son tells me that his classmate was recently ranked as #1 in the world in Flight Simulator. I am...highly skeptical. But I am curious about one thing - does such a thing even exist? Are there sufficient competitions such that someone has a claim to be #1 in the world?

[jztemple2]

My son tells me that his classmate was recently ranked as #1 in the world in Flight Simulator. I am...highly skeptical. But I am curious about one thing - does such a thing even exist? Are there sufficient competitions such that someone has a claim to be #1 in the world?

There is a challenge section of the game but I haven't looked at it yet. It might have a multiplayer component.

[jztemple2]

I take a client on a sightseeing trip in New Jersey to overfly three parks. Things go badly, with two crashes, some bumps and a vocal leap! In this video I didn't skip anything except the initial start-up so folks get to see the full experience.

[Unagi]

I'm just 27 seconds into the video.

Is it safe to handle a helicopter like that?

[jztemple2]

I'm just 27 seconds into the video.

Is it safe to handle a helicopter like that?

You'll just have to watch the rest of it to find out!

[Unagi]

I'm just 27 seconds into the video.

Is it safe to handle a helicopter like that?

You'll just have to watch the rest of it to find out!

I watched it all now. Fun time!

I was speaking to how the game loaded your aircraft into the scene - how it was just dropped in like a little toy.

[TheMix]

I'm just 27 seconds into the video.

Is it safe to handle a helicopter like that?

You'll just have to watch the rest of it to find out!

I watched it all now. Fun time!

I was speaking to how the game loaded your aircraft into the scene - how it was just dropped in like a little toy.

The best part is the nonchalance with which the guy turns and looks back.

[jztemple2]

I'm just 27 seconds into the video.

Is it safe to handle a helicopter like that?

You'll just have to watch the rest of it to find out!

I watched it all now. Fun time!

I was speaking to how the game loaded your aircraft into the scene - how it was just dropped in like a little toy.

The best part is the nonchalance with which the guy turns and looks back.

Yup, like that happened all the time . Actually that's the only time that happened. I did have a mission where the aircraft wasn't in the hanger at all.

I did a few more missions. I truly suck at helicopters, but part of the problem is that I have to use the keyboard for the collective and I haven't got the knack yet for picking the right setting at the right time.

I got my tailwheel endorsement certification and did rather well at it:


But I flew a tailwheel mission and managed to bend the aircraft a bit, resulting in a bad rating:


I'm going to have to grind a few more missions to get my letter rating above a "C" where it sits now. At one point I had it up almost to an "A", but then I started flying that damn helicopter...

[Unagi]

So I was a little upset when your helicopter tour revealed that you had two passengers, inside that two-seater.

Kinda breaks the suspension of disbelief.

[disarm]

So I was a little upset when your helicopter tour revealed that you had two passengers, inside that two-seater.

Kinda breaks the suspension of disbelief.

I'm more bothered by the fact that they require a helicopter to taxi around the runways like it's a plane. Seems like a pretty simple thing that they could have corrected for helicopter missions, but shows that they lazily slapped a different aircraft into the same structure as a plane flight.

[gbasden]

So I was a little upset when your helicopter tour revealed that you had two passengers, inside that two-seater.

Kinda breaks the suspension of disbelief.

I'm more bothered by the fact that they require a helicopter to taxi around the runways like it's a plane. Seems like a pretty simple thing that they could have corrected for helicopter missions, but shows that they lazily slapped a different aircraft into the same structure as a plane flight.

When I was flying helicopters out of my local tower controlled field, we had to "taxi" to the runway and then take off just like a fixed wing plane. Especially in built up areas, departing along the runway gives more chance to land safely if you suffer a power failure or have some other emergency. Direct departures can also in some cases conflict with other incoming traffic.

[jztemple2]

Flew some more missions. Here's one that didn't work. I took off and rather than fly the transit leg I opted to jump ahead to the decent for landing... things got messy. I edited the video down to just the pertinent buginess. I did restart the mission and the same bug occurred, I left that part in too.

[jztemple2]

Another flight. Things go well till I skipped ahead to the descent and the game almost dropped me into a hillside, but I managed to avoid the crash. I uploaded the whole mission as this is a new plane for me and also the landing airport is in a mountain valley with snow everywhere.

[jztemple2]

The good news is that I got another certification, and among the new planes I'm now authorized to fly is the De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver. The bad news is that on my first mission to fly a DHC-2 I crashed, twice, while sitting at my starting parking spot . I'm getting a little frustrated with all these bugs.

[Unagi]

The good news is that I got another certification, and among the new planes I'm now authorized to fly is the De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver. The bad news is that on my first mission to fly a DHC-2 I crashed, twice, while sitting at my starting parking spot . I'm getting a little frustrated with all these bugs.

Crashed to desktop or the game registered your plane as having crashed?

[jztemple2]

The good news is that I got another certification, and among the new planes I'm now authorized to fly is the De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver. The bad news is that on my first mission to fly a DHC-2 I crashed, twice, while sitting at my starting parking spot . I'm getting a little frustrated with all these bugs.

Crashed to desktop or the game registered your plane as having crashed?

The latter. I've been using CTD to designate the game crashing, which it has done a couple of times at least. This is what the game registering my plane as crashed looks like (I'm using your description, it's very good)

[Unagi]

Hmm, that's super annoying.

[jztemple2]

I've given up on the Career mode for now, between the bugs and that it seems so grindy. Instead I'm trying out Free Flight, here's a short video of me flying a Cessna 152 Aerobat above Rome at night. I've left on the landmark indicators to help pick out what's there. The instrument panel on this 152 looks pretty much like the ones in the Cessna 172 I learned to fly on decades ago.



And this is a review of MSFS2024 from PC Gamer. They give it a 90 out of 100 with this to say in summary:

And this sim is also not without some quirks, glitches, and oversights. One issue I ran into multiple times was at some of the smaller, procedurally-generated airports you might fly out of for certain missions, where my plane would spawn with one wing partially stuck inside of a structure, making it impossible to take off. Other times, I'd get dinged for infractions like using my flaps at too high of a speed when my plane was standing completely still with the parking brake on. These issues tend to be small, infrequent, and with an easy workaround of simply picking a different mission. But they are still annoying.

None of that gets in the way of what Flight Simulator 2024 represents in its entirety, though. It takes the mind-boggling ambition of the 2020 sim and executes on it even better—launch woes notwithstanding—which is already a massive accomplishment. Some of the new things it tries to do work better than others, but the core of what makes this long-running franchise great is stronger than ever.

I agree with the review. It's a really good game that's just going to need some updates to clean up the bugs and glitches. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with MSFS2024 and it does a whole lot of things right.

[jztemple2]

Flying in a Cessna 152 Aerobat at low level over San Francisco during the day.

[jztemple2]

Sometimes these big jets don't know where they are going



I just did a free flight from my local airport to the Orlando Executive airport, which is where the video above came from. I used the Electronic Flight Book to plan my flight and layout my RNAV waypoints, which worked well. My Cessna 152 doesn't have a GPS unit on the instrument panel, but in the upper left of the screen is something you'd see with a modern Garmin PFD (Primary Flight Display). I consider that this is just a portable GPS unit I'm carrying. I'm sure there is somewhere in the settings where I can turn that off if I want to go old school.

Speaking of old school, I wanted to use VOR navigation for training, but while I eventually found out where to turn on the NAVAID display on the in-game map, I couldn't find any frequencies. I finally found a list on the internet.

By the way, for those familiar with Orlando, that's the main UCF campus down below.

[jztemple2]

And finally for this evening, I take my Cessna 152 over Walt Disney World. This flight starts off over EPCOT with some circling and low passes, then moves over to Hollywood Studios. Then a short transit and some circling over the Magic Kingdom.

[jztemple2]

If you missed April's total solar eclipse, you can see it in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Back in April, North America was treated to a rare celestial event: a total solar eclipse. Observers from Mexico to Maine witnessed an amazing sight as the moon passed in front of the sun and made it as dark as night in the middle of the day.

I don't live in the path of that eclipse so I didn't get to see it in person, but I made up for that today. If you've got a copy of Microsoft Simulator 2024, you can experience an amazing simulation of April's eclipse whenever you want.

[jztemple2]

Release Notes – [1.2.7.0] Available Now

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 update 1.2.7.0 includes the ability to enable/disable Marketplace 2020 ported content on a per-item basis. To ensure that you have full control over your own library, available non-Microsoft ported content is disabled by default so you can choose what to have active in the simulator.

After taking update 1.2.7.0, aircraft that was previously available to select will need to be enabled in My Library to become visible again. More Marketplace 2020 ported content will be made available soon.

Note: Initial loading into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on Xbox Series X | S may take longer than usual due to the deactivating of Marketplace 2020 ported content.

If you are playing on PC, outdated packages in your Community Folder may have an unexpected impact on the title’s performance and behavior. If you suffer from stability issues or long loading times, move your community package(s) to another folder before relaunching the title.

There are also a jumbo jet sized number of items in the change list.

[jztemple2]

So I've been trying out a number of aircraft and locations since the latest update. Things do seem to be working better now, although I did pass on going back to career mode. And if you just want your flying to be low stress, there's always flying a hot air balloon above San Francisco International