7 ms·

Aside: I wish FS2020 had more indepth tutorials, more focus towards learning how to fly properly and a ground school with missions. The built-in tutorial is so

Aside: I wish FS2020 had more indepth tutorials, more focus towards learning how to fly properly and a ground school with missions. The built-in tutorial is so lacking, it doesn't even teach you how to use a VOR for navigation. I think they've done simulation/realism of the physics right and the way the airplane feels is very real - just the education part should be more of a focus than the pure entertainment bits.

aaomidi 6y ago
And just more specific tutorials for plane types. But YouTube has been great for that.
mhh__ 6y ago
DCS is quite like that, in that if you want to learn the systems there are some decent lessons for some planes but none of them cover things like BFM or (server!) etiquette. Luckily there is a thriving online community to help you learn the ropes, although it is rather annoying sometimes to be just fumbling around. The F-14's AI RIO "Jester" can actually guide you through startup, which is very cool
- ethbro 6y ago
  DCS? https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/ ? (It's been Janes-90s since I sim'd)
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Yep. It's a bit of a rough diamond but it's a good game nonetheless.
- kitteh 6y ago
  DCS has put some great training tutorials that come with it. That combined with Chuck's super detailed and colorful PDFs guides for each aircraft as amazing. Agree that multiplayer how-to's is lacking.
HenryKissinger 6y ago
It's called flight school, and it's not free.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Neither are airplanes. Why would a sim not teach you how to use the sim?
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Even if you could afford it not everyone is medically able to fly a plane.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Neither is the sim!
ShellfishMeme 6y ago
I was doing the takeoff tutorial and was wondering why 10 minutes in it still seemed impossible to get to the desired altitude and speed. Turns out they never mentioned that you need to eventually move the flaps back. Once I figured it out by myself I pretty much instantly made it. What kind of tutorial is it where you need to already know how a plane works to learn how a plane works?
- g_p 6y ago
  The current training "missions" seem to be straightforward "ports" of the old training missions from FSX/FS 2004, but without the ground school written material to match. I'm hopeful with the advent of YouTube and high quality video capture and streaming, we'll see video-based ground school lessons emerge that can partner with lessons. Who knows, perhaps there's a mini business model here for creators to sell (via Patreon or even the built-in store?) curated mission lessons that go along with their YouTube content? I believe MS has confirmed you'll be able to make mission packs and distribute them via the store. And given how fast the modding is taking off, you probably already can drag a folder into your Community packages folder and have it work.
  - Nexxxeh 6y ago
    I'd be surprised if we don't see a proliferation of online flight schools where you stream and your instructor walks you through it. Similar to FPS games coaching. Instead of getting into your region's Platinum rank in Overwatch, you learn to solo fly a new type of aircraft with AI assistance turned off.
    - g_p 6y ago
      I think this could well happen, especially given the current unfortunate levels of lay-offs in commercial aviation. There's a load of qualified ATPs and others out there starting YouTube channels, and I think online flight schools would make sense. A "shared cockpit" remotely controlled plane mod to facilitate training in flight school would probably be helpful, but then if you start going down that route, you'd likely want a force feedback stick/yoke (and something like FS Force) to give you the ability to see and feel what's happening. The only part I'm unsure of is if it's difficult enough to fly solo without AI assists to merit all this? Very hard to gauge when you can do it already. But still will be interesting to see what happens.
Poacher5 6y ago
There's an excellent book called "Flight Sim X For Pilots" that's essentially just a walkthrough of flight school, starting in a piper cub and gradually progressing through to instruments flying and multiengine flying. I think it's probably a bit dated now, but it's an excellent source of information for how to do things properly in a sim, since it's aimed at real aspiring pilots.
- keriati1 6y ago
  I think the tutorials are not so useful in the game, however they gave me some basics. I spent some hours on YouTube and from zero flying knowlege, I can say I am now familiar with the Cessna 152 Takof, landing, navigation and also with the 172 with G1000 (including ILS). Wish all this introductions would be in the game. However the overall experience is still very Beta. I got a lot of freezes, bugs on map (like a big bump on some runways that flip the airplane and game over) sometimes the nav get unresponsive (partial freeze of the game) Even worse is that after you buy the game on steam, any in-app purchase is done on steam but download would be from microsoft and that just doesn’t work for a bunch of people. At least this free models are just working when people copy them in place, while payed content is not even showing up at the moment.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
g_p 6y ago
Flight Sim 2004 probably was the peak of tutorials - they effectively had a full "ground school" of how to fly, with content by an actual flight instructor (Rod Machodo). That content had written lessons (something also makes me think video lessons, but I may be remembering wrongly) that took you through the theory and practice of things like VOR navigation. I'm not too optimistic for it appearing on Flight Sim 2020, (it probably required too much attention span and understanding of geography/navigation), but I imagine that the community will step up. Already the community is doing a great job "fixing" the default A320 and implementing bits of the avionics systems that Asobo left "inop". There's a mission editor that should enable setting up interactive "lessons", and with the number of youtube videos on how to fly VORs and similar (some with flight sim footage and explanations), I imagine the content is all there for curating together.
- kebman 6y ago
  Why make it yourself, when there's a ton of creators who would do it for you, and for free? Just let the best ones get the ad revenue and Patreon profits. I call it passive outsourcing.
  - leoc 6y ago
    "Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers."
dmd 6y ago
I want the opposite. I don't really want to control a plane - I want "dream flight" - just basically a 6-axis controller that lets me move however I want - but in the gorgeous FS2020 world. I think MS should make that available on the web as part of Bing Maps.
- sio8ohPi 6y ago
  I've not installed FS2020 yet, but from what I've seen in reviews, I believe "drone mode" can be untethered from your plane and allows you to do just that.
  - k12sosse 6y ago
    I believe the flying without physics mode is referred to as 'slew mode', and it's in there.
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      There’s a slew mode where you can move your aircraft about without constraint but there is also a drone camera mode which you can move about anywhere.
- gearhart 6y ago
  I used the google maps VR app the other day and it is exactly this. It’s incredible.
  - dmd 6y ago
    Not quite - I want the full FS2020 rendering experience. Weather, water, moving vehicles, etc.
    - sixothree 6y ago
      FS2020 is literally like $5 if you just want to try it. Xbox Game Pass for PC is $1 for the first month then $5 after that (while still in beta).
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
I wonder who is the person doing the voice over in the built-in tutorial. She sounds like the same person who provided the voice of Delilah in Firewatch.
0134340 6y ago
Or I wouldn't be opposed to a printed manual. I remember the first flight sim I bought, one of the Jane's series, had a huge binded manual with it that I used to read during study hall at school. Just reading it and learning about the basics and physics of flight I found more interesting than the game itself. I miss those huge manuals from big box PC games.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Back in the DOS days, Flight Simulator had an awesome printed manual, with detailed how to fly instructions and, IIRC, a whole bunch of airport maps. More generally, the manuals of 80s-90s simulation games were often quite packed with detailed real-world info.
  - ascagnel_ 6y ago
    I love old PC games that include printed manuals, but flight sims often were the best. Falcon 4.0 shipped with a nearly 600-page manual that dug deep into basic operations of the airplane. https://github.com/tpn/pdfs-flightsim/blob/master/Falcon%204.0%20-%20Original%20Manual.pdf https://github.com/tpn/pdfs-flightsim/blob/master/Falcon%204...
rogerthis 6y ago
I think FAA has some nice material publicly available.
blt 6y ago
X-plane is also pretty bad for this. It has VOR and ILS tutorials, but nothing more advanced navigationally (like navigating to the intersection of two VOR radials), nothing about crosswind landing, nothing for the more complex aircraft, etc. However, the flip side is that the simulation is generally realistic enough that you can use instructional materials for real world piloting. The VOR frequencies match the real world, the real SIDs and STARs are in the simulated Garmin GPS, etc. Not sure how much this holds for FS2020.
- strogonoff 6y ago
  Have you come across “How to fly”[0]? X-Plane does have some guides, though they tend to be maybe too expansive sometimes. That aside, there are folks who work on their pilot licenses and stream flight sims, I have learned a fair bit from watching them on YouTube. Ideally as you say one should just be able to use real-world pilot training materials, navigational charts and aircraft checklists (for B737, for example, there is an unofficial iOS checklist app). Then all that’s left is documentation of sim’s limitations—a good sim should tell you in what aspects it fails to simulate the real world. It’s actually really rewarding to be able to figure out (mostly) on your own how to complete an IFR flight, given just the charts and the 6 basic analog instruments. (Same here, X-Plane and no MSFS—as far as I heard, the 2020 version is still outdated as far as simulation of the actual physics of flight is concerned and seems to not have changed much from FSX days.) [0] https://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/index.html#modernmeansofnavigation https://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/index.html#modernmea...
  - aaronmdjones 6y ago
    The Boeing 777 [1] and 787 [2] have an integrated Electronic Checklist screen. Any decent simulation of these aircraft will have that; I know PMDG's 777 [3] does. [1] https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2006/april/photos/apr_i_ca3b.jpg https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2006/april/pho... [2] https://i.pinimg.com/736x/64/54/bb/6454bb2b0f28a0c77dc287f144cfd43b.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/64/54/bb/6454bb2b0f28a0c77dc287f14... [3] https://pmdg.com/pmdg-777-200lr-f-base-package-for-fsx/#product-tab-description https://pmdg.com/pmdg-777-200lr-f-base-package-for-fsx/#prod...
tamrix 6y ago
That's what youtube is for these days.
towndrunk 6y ago
Free from the FAA. https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/airplane_handbook/ https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
megablast 6y ago
Why bother with VOR when we have GPS? they are decommissioning VOR stations for that reason.
- tjohns 6y ago
  The are decommissioning some of the redundant VOR stations. The VOR network will remain operational as a backup to GPS. (See: "VOR minimum operational network") When it comes to life-critical systems, you never rely on a single point of failure. GPS is potentially a single point of failure. It can and does have errors, either due to military jamming exercises, satellite failures, or other interference. I've personally had the GPS system in my aircraft completely fail due to interference. It's also worth noting that the FAA considers VOR navigation a required skill. It's part of the core material on the test as a private pilot.
bradgessler 6y ago
Focus of 2020 was to put together a solid simulator experience, which it seems like they’ve mostly done. Gameplay improvements and educational material were stated to be coming in subsequent releases.
Pfhreak 6y ago
I haven't found it that bad, I started with most assists on, then figured out one thing at a time by googling or YouTube or watching a stream. Like, flaps, what are they? Oh, generate lift, used in takeoff and landing. Oh, the cabin is marked with settings for to and land. The autopilot was a similar adventure. Step one, turn it on, crash. Step two, I can figure out hold altitude and heading settings, now I can take my hands off and Google the rest of the settings while the plane flies itself. Garmin has a manual you can reference. Right now I'm working on figuring out autopilot approach and landing and nav data stations.
skykooler 6y ago
It's also missing aircraft help data. In FSX, you had a checklist that contained stuff like takeoff speed, landing speed, climb rate, ideal flap settings, and so on. In FS2020, the checklist basically only contains instructions on how to start the engine.

aaomidi 6y ago

And just more specific tutorials for plane types. But YouTube has been great for that.

mhh__ 6y ago

DCS is quite like that, in that if you want to learn the systems there are some decent lessons for some planes but none of them cover things like BFM or (server!) etiquette. Luckily there is a thriving online community to help you learn the ropes, although it is rather annoying sometimes to be just fumbling around. The F-14's AI RIO "Jester" can actually guide you through startup, which is very cool

ethbro 6y ago
DCS? https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/ https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/ ? (It's been Janes-90s since I sim'd)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Yep. It's a bit of a rough diamond but it's a good game nonetheless.
kitteh 6y ago
DCS has put some great training tutorials that come with it. That combined with Chuck's super detailed and colorful PDFs guides for each aircraft as amazing. Agree that multiplayer how-to's is lacking.

HenryKissinger 6y ago

It's called flight school, and it's not free.

Shared404 6y ago
Neither are airplanes. Why would a sim not teach you how to use the sim?
mhh__ 6y ago
Even if you could afford it not everyone is medically able to fly a plane.
freeone3000 6y ago
Neither is the sim!

ShellfishMeme 6y ago

I was doing the takeoff tutorial and was wondering why 10 minutes in it still seemed impossible to get to the desired altitude and speed. Turns out they never mentioned that you need to eventually move the flaps back. Once I figured it out by myself I pretty much instantly made it. What kind of tutorial is it where you need to already know how a plane works to learn how a plane works?

g_p 6y ago
The current training "missions" seem to be straightforward "ports" of the old training missions from FSX/FS 2004, but without the ground school written material to match. I'm hopeful with the advent of YouTube and high quality video capture and streaming, we'll see video-based ground school lessons emerge that can partner with lessons. Who knows, perhaps there's a mini business model here for creators to sell (via Patreon or even the built-in store?) curated mission lessons that go along with their YouTube content? I believe MS has confirmed you'll be able to make mission packs and distribute them via the store. And given how fast the modding is taking off, you probably already can drag a folder into your Community packages folder and have it work.
- Nexxxeh 6y ago
  I'd be surprised if we don't see a proliferation of online flight schools where you stream and your instructor walks you through it. Similar to FPS games coaching. Instead of getting into your region's Platinum rank in Overwatch, you learn to solo fly a new type of aircraft with AI assistance turned off.
  - g_p 6y ago
    I think this could well happen, especially given the current unfortunate levels of lay-offs in commercial aviation. There's a load of qualified ATPs and others out there starting YouTube channels, and I think online flight schools would make sense. A "shared cockpit" remotely controlled plane mod to facilitate training in flight school would probably be helpful, but then if you start going down that route, you'd likely want a force feedback stick/yoke (and something like FS Force) to give you the ability to see and feel what's happening. The only part I'm unsure of is if it's difficult enough to fly solo without AI assists to merit all this? Very hard to gauge when you can do it already. But still will be interesting to see what happens.

Poacher5 6y ago

There's an excellent book called "Flight Sim X For Pilots" that's essentially just a walkthrough of flight school, starting in a piper cub and gradually progressing through to instruments flying and multiengine flying. I think it's probably a bit dated now, but it's an excellent source of information for how to do things properly in a sim, since it's aimed at real aspiring pilots.

keriati1 6y ago
I think the tutorials are not so useful in the game, however they gave me some basics. I spent some hours on YouTube and from zero flying knowlege, I can say I am now familiar with the Cessna 152 Takof, landing, navigation and also with the 172 with G1000 (including ILS). Wish all this introductions would be in the game. However the overall experience is still very Beta. I got a lot of freezes, bugs on map (like a big bump on some runways that flip the airplane and game over) sometimes the nav get unresponsive (partial freeze of the game) Even worse is that after you buy the game on steam, any in-app purchase is done on steam but download would be from microsoft and that just doesn’t work for a bunch of people. At least this free models are just working when people copy them in place, while payed content is not even showing up at the moment.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

g_p 6y ago

Flight Sim 2004 probably was the peak of tutorials - they effectively had a full "ground school" of how to fly, with content by an actual flight instructor (Rod Machodo). That content had written lessons (something also makes me think video lessons, but I may be remembering wrongly) that took you through the theory and practice of things like VOR navigation. I'm not too optimistic for it appearing on Flight Sim 2020, (it probably required too much attention span and understanding of geography/navigation), but I imagine that the community will step up. Already the community is doing a great job "fixing" the default A320 and implementing bits of the avionics systems that Asobo left "inop". There's a mission editor that should enable setting up interactive "lessons", and with the number of youtube videos on how to fly VORs and similar (some with flight sim footage and explanations), I imagine the content is all there for curating together.

kebman 6y ago
Why make it yourself, when there's a ton of creators who would do it for you, and for free? Just let the best ones get the ad revenue and Patreon profits. I call it passive outsourcing.
- leoc 6y ago
  "Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers."

dmd 6y ago

I want the opposite. I don't really want to control a plane - I want "dream flight" - just basically a 6-axis controller that lets me move however I want - but in the gorgeous FS2020 world. I think MS should make that available on the web as part of Bing Maps.

sio8ohPi 6y ago
I've not installed FS2020 yet, but from what I've seen in reviews, I believe "drone mode" can be untethered from your plane and allows you to do just that.
- k12sosse 6y ago
  I believe the flying without physics mode is referred to as 'slew mode', and it's in there.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    There’s a slew mode where you can move your aircraft about without constraint but there is also a drone camera mode which you can move about anywhere.
gearhart 6y ago
I used the google maps VR app the other day and it is exactly this. It’s incredible.
- dmd 6y ago
  Not quite - I want the full FS2020 rendering experience. Weather, water, moving vehicles, etc.
  - sixothree 6y ago
    FS2020 is literally like $5 if you just want to try it. Xbox Game Pass for PC is $1 for the first month then $5 after that (while still in beta).

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

I wonder who is the person doing the voice over in the built-in tutorial. She sounds like the same person who provided the voice of Delilah in Firewatch.

0134340 6y ago

Or I wouldn't be opposed to a printed manual. I remember the first flight sim I bought, one of the Jane's series, had a huge binded manual with it that I used to read during study hall at school. Just reading it and learning about the basics and physics of flight I found more interesting than the game itself. I miss those huge manuals from big box PC games.

dragonwriter 6y ago
Back in the DOS days, Flight Simulator had an awesome printed manual, with detailed how to fly instructions and, IIRC, a whole bunch of airport maps. More generally, the manuals of 80s-90s simulation games were often quite packed with detailed real-world info.
- ascagnel_ 6y ago
  I love old PC games that include printed manuals, but flight sims often were the best. Falcon 4.0 shipped with a nearly 600-page manual that dug deep into basic operations of the airplane. https://github.com/tpn/pdfs-flightsim/blob/master/Falcon%204.0%20-%20Original%20Manual.pdf https://github.com/tpn/pdfs-flightsim/blob/master/Falcon%204...

rogerthis 6y ago

I think FAA has some nice material publicly available.

blt 6y ago

X-plane is also pretty bad for this. It has VOR and ILS tutorials, but nothing more advanced navigationally (like navigating to the intersection of two VOR radials), nothing about crosswind landing, nothing for the more complex aircraft, etc. However, the flip side is that the simulation is generally realistic enough that you can use instructional materials for real world piloting. The VOR frequencies match the real world, the real SIDs and STARs are in the simulated Garmin GPS, etc. Not sure how much this holds for FS2020.

strogonoff 6y ago
Have you come across “How to fly”[0]? X-Plane does have some guides, though they tend to be maybe too expansive sometimes. That aside, there are folks who work on their pilot licenses and stream flight sims, I have learned a fair bit from watching them on YouTube. Ideally as you say one should just be able to use real-world pilot training materials, navigational charts and aircraft checklists (for B737, for example, there is an unofficial iOS checklist app). Then all that’s left is documentation of sim’s limitations—a good sim should tell you in what aspects it fails to simulate the real world. It’s actually really rewarding to be able to figure out (mostly) on your own how to complete an IFR flight, given just the charts and the 6 basic analog instruments. (Same here, X-Plane and no MSFS—as far as I heard, the 2020 version is still outdated as far as simulation of the actual physics of flight is concerned and seems to not have changed much from FSX days.) [0] https://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/index.html#modernmeansofnavigation https://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/index.html#modernmea...
- aaronmdjones 6y ago
  The Boeing 777 [1] and 787 [2] have an integrated Electronic Checklist screen. Any decent simulation of these aircraft will have that; I know PMDG's 777 [3] does. [1] https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2006/april/photos/apr_i_ca3b.jpg https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2006/april/pho... [2] https://i.pinimg.com/736x/64/54/bb/6454bb2b0f28a0c77dc287f144cfd43b.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/64/54/bb/6454bb2b0f28a0c77dc287f14... [3] https://pmdg.com/pmdg-777-200lr-f-base-package-for-fsx/#product-tab-description https://pmdg.com/pmdg-777-200lr-f-base-package-for-fsx/#prod...

tamrix 6y ago

That's what youtube is for these days.

towndrunk 6y ago

Free from the FAA. https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/airplane_handbook/ https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

megablast 6y ago

Why bother with VOR when we have GPS? they are decommissioning VOR stations for that reason.

tjohns 6y ago
The are decommissioning some of the redundant VOR stations. The VOR network will remain operational as a backup to GPS. (See: "VOR minimum operational network") When it comes to life-critical systems, you never rely on a single point of failure. GPS is potentially a single point of failure. It can and does have errors, either due to military jamming exercises, satellite failures, or other interference. I've personally had the GPS system in my aircraft completely fail due to interference. It's also worth noting that the FAA considers VOR navigation a required skill. It's part of the core material on the test as a private pilot.

bradgessler 6y ago

Focus of 2020 was to put together a solid simulator experience, which it seems like they’ve mostly done. Gameplay improvements and educational material were stated to be coming in subsequent releases.

Pfhreak 6y ago

I haven't found it that bad, I started with most assists on, then figured out one thing at a time by googling or YouTube or watching a stream. Like, flaps, what are they? Oh, generate lift, used in takeoff and landing. Oh, the cabin is marked with settings for to and land. The autopilot was a similar adventure. Step one, turn it on, crash. Step two, I can figure out hold altitude and heading settings, now I can take my hands off and Google the rest of the settings while the plane flies itself. Garmin has a manual you can reference. Right now I'm working on figuring out autopilot approach and landing and nav data stations.

skykooler 6y ago

It's also missing aircraft help data. In FSX, you had a checklist that contained stuff like takeoff speed, landing speed, climb rate, ideal flap settings, and so on. In FS2020, the checklist basically only contains instructions on how to start the engine.