Game Discussions Microsoft Flight Simulator

[Ralph Vargr]

Actually, you can engage the autopilot on alt hold and that will trim out the aircraft for you.

As long as you check that the trim wheel is set to the TO position before you do take-off then your trim should not be too hard to handle manually.

Trimming the airplane is something I've been doing since age four. Pushing the buttons to do it is what gets me in trouble, nowadays...

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I've been committing Heresy:

I'm flying in Elite, waiting for the patch.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I don't think you can save your position. That said, if you're not setting up a full flight plan in advance, you could just do it manually, so starting at LA and flying to Dallas (or whatever), then next time you log in going from Dallas to wherever and so on across to NY.

Since I'm still playing around in Cessnas to get the hang of flying, I did that from San Francisco down to LA, via Monterey, Paso Robles and Santa Barbara, each of which is around an hour, and simply picked up from where I left off. Might at some point do a cross continent flight in the same manner, but would be better probably in the Citation.

Since it's an online and potentially real time game, I understand why there's no option to speed up time. That said, it could be a bit of a weak point for any but the most hardened realists. Certainly for me, I'm unlikely to do any really long flights - doing them in real life back when you could drink your way across the Atlantic as a passenger was bad enough, but can't really see the point of watching my plane autopilot itself for six hours...

But having all sorts of fun with the small planes, and I have been surprised at how reasonably I'm able to land, something that very much eluded me in previous versions of the sim. I'm rarely right on the center line of the runway, but even so I've had quite a few really smooth and gentle touchdowns thanks to watching Squirrel's excellent guides.

Edit:- Well, apparently I'm wrong, there is a way to either accelerate time, or possibly skip phases of the flight... No idea how to do it, but will definitely be investigating.

I gave it a go and... well... I think it's supposed to work (saving your 'game'/flight mid-way that is). I set up a flight plan between 2 airports, and landed on an airstrip that's not part of my flight plan.

Went back to the menu, then loaded the .flt file - this showed the map with the original flight route, and the location where my plane is ('custom' POI marker).

Problem is, after I click "FLY", it starts loading, but at around the 85-90% progress bar mark it crashes to desktop (my first since I bought the game....). This happened now twice in a row, and given the load times involved I think I'll play something else now. Hope this gets fixed.

As for skipping to sections within a flight, I did manage it previously, but can't remember how - was pretty neat though. So that might be an option for long haul flights (which I never had the stamina to do).

 

[Faded Glory]

As for skipping to sections within a flight, I did manage it previously, but can't remember how - was pretty neat though. So that might be an option for long haul flights (which I never had the stamina to do).

If you do remember, please let me know! I'll probably get in the game for a while later today and have a quick look...

I think with regards the saving and continuing a flight plan, at least for now I'm pretty happy doing it manually, simply breaking a long flight plan into smaller bites. I haven't used autopilot yet as I quite like flying the planes, and while I do like to use ILS for approach and landing, I still manually pilot the plane using the systems as a guide.

 

[Juniper]

Edit:- Well, apparently I'm wrong, there is a way to either accelerate time, or possibly skip phases of the flight... No idea how to do it, but will definitely be investigating.

What would be useful is a way to get your current GPS coordinates and save them. And then you either restart using those from either in the air, or on the ground. That's all you really need IMO.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

What would be useful is a way to get your current GPS coordinates and save them. And then you either restart using those from either in the air, or on the ground. That's all you really need IMO.

The custom waypoint the game tracked after I saved my flight(plan) showed the coordinates. But there seems to be a bug as I got two CTDs in a row when trying to load that save point.

 

[Para Handy]

The custom waypoint the game tracked after I saved my flight(plan) showed the coordinates. But there seems to be a bug as I got two CTDs in a row when trying to load that save point.

Worked OK for me: an earlier saved game, after selecting it I got the nav screen:



and by selecting "fly" I got:



Clicking on "ready to fly" took me to the cockpit, in flight, autopilot disengaged and by the time I had properly stabilised the ATC got fed up asking me to squawk and cancelled my IFR clearance - abandoned me to VFR.

Pleased to note no CTD (touch wood).

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Worked OK for me: an earlier saved game, after selecting it I got the nav screen:

View attachment 186231

and by selecting "fly" I got:

View attachment 186232

Clicking on "ready to fly" took me to the cockpit, in flight, autopilot disengaged and by the time I had properly stabilised the ATC got fed up asking me to squawk and cancelled my IFR clearance - abandoned me to VFR.

Pleased to note no CTD (touch wood).

Did you select the custom POI which represented your plane? I didn't do that, I wonder if that caused the problem on my end.

 

[Jenner]

If you do remember, please let me know! I'll probably get in the game for a while later today and have a quick look...

I think with regards the saving and continuing a flight plan, at least for now I'm pretty happy doing it manually, simply breaking a long flight plan into smaller bites. I haven't used autopilot yet as I quite like flying the planes, and while I do like to use ILS for approach and landing, I still manually pilot the plane using the systems as a guide.

This is the "Travel To" option in the top screen menu. The icon looks like a map pointer. In there you can advance to different stages of the flight, like Cruise, Descent, Final, etc.

When I've used it the results have been mixed. Often times I appear in a wild attitude, nose pointed down at the ground or something.

There is also the option to increase/decrease the 'sim rate' in the game. This is basically speeding up time.

Microsoft Flight Simulator – How to Boost Speed or Slow Down the Rate

A guide on how to speed up or slow down the simulation rate in Microsoft Flight Simulator. How to Boost Speed or Slow Down the Rate This super simple guide will show you how to speed up or slow down the simulation rate. This is not well documented in the sim. Guide to Time Travel

gamesgds.com

Be warned - there is no on-screen indicator of what your sim rate is, and I think it remains where you set it from one flight to the next.

 

[Fishy]

Thought I'd fly a Grand Caravan in the Colombian mountains, and it was nice for a while:

Spoiler

But then, the engine kept choking and cutting off. I guess it might be due to mixture/altitude, but would have thought that the auto-mixture setting would have taken care of it. Could restart it a couple times while gliding down, but it just kept happening. Ended up gliding my way through a sloped grass landing.

Spoiler

Wish I could get off the plane and push it around to face the downslope now!

 

[Para Handy]

Did you select the custom POI which represented your plane? I didn't do that, I wonder if that caused the problem on my end.

No - just clicked on the yellow "Fly" button.

 

[AkenBosch]

Electrical storm brewing around my place...time to put the live weather feature to test.

 

[Juniper]

The custom waypoint the game tracked after I saved my flight(plan) showed the coordinates. But there seems to be a bug as I got two CTDs in a row when trying to load that save point.

Good to know.

If you open the .flt file in Notepad and copy the coords, you can just paste them into the flight planner & create a new plan from there. That should work until they fix that bug.

 

[Ian Skippy]

The custom waypoint the game tracked after I saved my flight(plan) showed the coordinates. But there seems to be a bug as I got two CTDs in a row when trying to load that save point.

Save games can get corrupted. Generally it works, but sometimes it'll stop working and you need to start a new flight from wherever you saved last time.

 

[Kemo]

finally crossed the North Sea from the Shetland Isles to Norway, in the DA40, in my bid to travel down to Morocco (via Germany/S.France) and possibly beyond - Norway has proven to be the biggest challenge yet, especially as I decided to go pick my way through the valleys through the NW of the country. Looking up the small towns and villages on Google maps on the way (love a street view me!) - it's a stunning country.

Unfortunately there are quite a few errors in the terrain, looks like the AI struggles to tell the difference sometimes on whats a hill or lake and deposits either a huge hole or some odd monolith instead, or at least I hope it has!

Still, some beautiful shots to be had..

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Faded Glory]

I wonder whether they do some live tweaking... Doubt it, as it's all on our computers, but for the first time today the game felt very, very buggy.

Decided to test out the sim speed thing, which works fine. ATC comms today is all over the place as in the window scrolling then snapping back making it very challenging to select a response (this is at standard speed), landed and requested fuel, no fuel truck in sight so cancelled - I think that is quite common, requested pushback... Nothing, operator just sat there. Gave up and taxied through them and made for the runway, just as I'm about to get to the turn from taxiway to runway the plane noseplanted! When I looked there was the tug operator pushing me backwards, and no option to cancel the pushback!

Still, a fun game, and I'm having fun learning the processes and systems in the basic Cessna's 152 and 172.

Just out of interest, what controls do people use for vertical trim? I have mine bound to a hat on my stick, but it's not great and takes me quite a long time to get the plane trimmed. That squirrel fella makes it look very easy...

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Nice to see everyone having fun with wrestling various bugs in this sim.

I had also my dramas today. Chose the CJ4 to cruise from the Philippines to Oz, and cought ice around 30k feet (was cool though, first I noticed that my speed reading is gone). Easy I know, just turn on de-icing and pitot heating - but then the mouse did no respond to my clicks. Found a workaround on the forums (open and relocate the ATC window, smh), so after losing 20k feet I started climbing again.

Then, despite tinkering with the Citation CJ4's file to adjust fuel flow, I realized above Indonesia that I will barely make it to Australia, so I started a managed descent from 45k ft towards Darwin, trying to save as much fuel as I could. I reached the airport on the fumes, but my fuel ran out while taxiing to the parking!

But anyway, I am pretty satisfied with my first jet landing that was also an emergency landing...

 

[Jenner]

Just out of interest, what controls do people use for vertical trim? I have mine bound to a hat on my stick, but it's not great and takes me quite a long time to get the plane trimmed. That squirrel fella makes it look very easy...

I use the default for the x52, which is the stick hat. Works fine for me so far.

 

[AkenBosch]

Just out of interest, what controls do people use for vertical trim? I have mine bound to a hat on my stick, but it's not great and takes me quite a long time to get the plane trimmed. That squirrel fella makes it look very easy...

As I wrote here a few posts ago, the default scheme for the Hotas X has it conveniently mapped to the rocker axis on the back of the throttle, so I can easily add positive/negative trim with the left fingers. Of course anyone not having this device won't have anything like that, no idea how it's mapped on others.

My live weather test got mildly disappointing results...just light cloud cover, quite strong low level crosswinds but no trace of large cumulus or thunderstorms...the night view was still a sight to behold though, not to mention I could literally saw my house from up there:

As for the rest, as someone doing just some casual visual flight with utter disregard of any kind of ATC or proper VFR rules...I'm still utterly amazed and in total awe. Only 10 years ago I would have struggled to imagine something like this rolling around in real time on my pc. Today I did for the first time a complete flight, starting from an airstrip and landing at another nearby, just flying around the valleys and Prealps around the city, with real time and live weather. Total awe.

Spoiler

 

[Mole HD]

As I wrote here a few posts ago, the default scheme for the Hotas X has it conveniently mapped to the rocker axis on the back of the throttle, so I can easily add positive/negative trim with the left fingers. Of course anyone not having this device won't have anything like that, no idea how it's mapped on others.

My live weather test got mildly disappointing results...just light cloud cover, quite strong low level crosswinds but no trace of large cumulus or thunderstorms...the night view was still a sight to behold though, not to mention I could literally saw my house from up there:

As for the rest, as someone doing just some casual visual flight with utter disregard of any kind of ATC or proper VFR rules...I'm still utterly amazed and in total awe. Only 10 years ago I would have struggled to imagine something like this rolling around in real time on my pc. Today I did for the first time a complete flight, starting from an airstrip and landing at another nearby, just flying around the valleys and Prealps around the city, with real time and live weather. Total awe.

Spoiler

I have my elevator trim on one of the rotaries on the X56 (pinkie one on the throttle) but I turned the sensitivity way down...gave me some major pucker factor 9.5 moments when it was set at default....it was less like a trim wheel, more like a suicide dive brake on a StuKa.