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My big sticking point is the lack of headtracking. Until that gets implemented I'm waiting, that was what kept me off the alpha for the most part, and the really bad keymapper when it first released. It looks fantastic but I won't play without headtracking, it's such a basic feature of flight sims that I'm shocked not to see any mention of it beyond "We're working on it" throughout the whole alpha release.
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Jul 13, 2020 22:37
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Blue On Blue posted:Anyone else find it weird they chose the 'Canada' feature airport as billy bishop over the official largest airport in Canada , CYYZ? I kinda like this move, it'll be pretty cool to have all the detail around town. Meigs Field for the strong and free.
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Jul 13, 2020 22:42
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hobbesmaster posted:If you're not willing to do this are you truly a flight sim fan? Honestly I tried this workaround initially when it was only 3DOF and it was horrible, but this appears to support 6DOF so maybe it's worth it. Even with the old 3DOF vJoy/FreePie workaround you had to move your head directly back to what it figured was center or you'd just keep spinning around, coating the cockpit with vomit and berating any priests onboard.
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Jul 13, 2020 22:55
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Looks like headtracking finally made it into FS2020, staring down the barrel of an 80GB download just to strain my neck for fun again.
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Jul 25, 2020 19:56
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There are varieties of trees depending on how they’re derived from landscape data. If I fly around Atlanta, where trees are very much part of the city, they feel accurate, and when I fly around Revelstoke, BC, they seem to be inferred by the landscape, and I see varieties of coniferous and deciduous as you would expect in that environment. One comment about the ATL trees, they’re a bit blocky I suspect on account of their 3D-ness being derived from satellite data as scenery, but at 2500 feet in a C152 it looks uncannily similar to what I’ve seen in real life flying over town. I just checked out the head tracking with TrackIR and they nailed it, here goes $120.
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Jul 25, 2020 21:46
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MrYenko posted:I will say for people not currently in the Alpha/Beta; If you’re expecting a completely bug-free launch, you may want to wait a bit. There’s just a ton of little stuff that needs to get worked on in the beta(?) as it stands now. Yeah, there are absolutely bugs in it all over the place, especially with the UI. It's not necessarily game-breaking by any means but it's noticeable and can get annoying. I can only imagine when the player counts go up there will also be network issues to contend with. I think the alpha may have done a decent job at weeding those out and providing data for scaling for release, but there's absolutely no way that they'll get it all right. Honestly I haven't played much of the alpha due to the lack of headtracking and the amount of control mapping fuckery I had to do each and every time, but what I have seen is promising and today's little session gives me confidence that the release won't be a total poo poo show. On the other hand, I've been loving with flight sims for 25 years so I'm used to working around annoying poo poo, so my opinion on anything should be had with a huge block of salt, if at all.
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Jul 25, 2020 23:31
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I give it a month before 3rd party developers start ruining the party, once PMDG lands a jet or two watch the DRM bugs run out from under the fridge. EDIT: to be clear I'm all for it, but aside from the laughable performance problems in most sims, the DRM and update paths that different developers take are the most frustrating thing in flight simulation. Gomez Chamberlain fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 25, 2020 23:37
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Combat Pretzel posted:What pisses me off a whole lot currently is the MSFS trailers claiming real-time capture of game footage at 4K60, and so far no one on the alpha managed to do so. Not even the guys with 5GHz overclocked i7-9900K and a 2080Ti, and not even running the highest graphics settings and at 1440p. I did just fine earlier running an i9-9900K stock, 2x RTX 2080 (not the Ti) at 3440x1440 with the latest update to the alpha/beta (whatever it is at this point). I'm not actually sure dual 2080s is doing anything for me in MSFS2020 but for the most part I've been getting good performance, when I started the recording though it did drop a bit briefly and there were noticeable drops when network got a little slow, which I imagine is going to be a big problem at first. That's not to say it hasn't been a problem for the duration of the alpha, but on the latest update it seems to have worked fine. This is the first time I've tried though, I'd share but I'm not really sure what's up with the NDA, or really what consequences really mean at this point since it's like 3 weeks away from release. Is Microsoft going to reject my dollars for saying their product is worth buying a few weeks early?  sudo rm -rf posted:how does KATL look as a 'non-enhanced' airport, relative to real-life and to the enhanced airports? Compared to real life, about as good as PDK does, which is stellar in the sim (the restaurant is really hosed up though and merged with the tree blob, but it's there). Compared to a flight sim addon like Nimbus's KATL for X-Plane I'd say it's about 90% of the way there, the Nimbus has a lot more going on IMHO as far as activity on the ramps. Major features like the I-285 underpass below runway 10/28 are excellent (I've never seen this done well in any payware KATL addon), as is the tower and most of the buildings on and around the airport, including the Porsche Experience track and the Delta Flight Museum. If I had to choose between them I'd pick MSFS's non-enhanced version any day. ATL is really just a very large version of a generic airport, you really don't have the kind of features like LAX or JFK, or even DFW. Get the boxy terminals right and spam Delta everywhere and you're there. As for the state of VR in flight sims, I exclusively play DCS and IL2 in VR these days on a Rift S and have very little issues related to resolution (DCS itself on the other hand is a dumpster fire). The only reason I don't in X-Plane or P3D is mostly implementation. X-Plane gets it done very well natively but performance is awful in many situations, and the keymapping for it always seems to get hosed up. P3D doesn't work well at all, natively or with FlyInside which just brings a host of problems that I never felt like dealing with. Others have and love it, but I'm not going to sit there with a hunk of plastic strapped to my head to fly the 748 with nothing to look at. That said, I love taking the Airfoillabs King Air up at Tacoma Narrows in VR, everything is gorgeous. If someone can tack down performance in VR in a decent civil flight sim I'll be all over it, but until that time I stick to TrackIR flying tubeliners. Though the presence of being in an MD-88 cockpit is a real good feeling. Gomez Chamberlain fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 05:29
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ethanol posted:Track ir just really sucks for me looking up or down. I seem to be able to calibrate for one but lose the other. It’s a relatively small issue for something that adds so much though. Also I think I could maybe solve this by getting the led clip and not using the hat clip but I keep forgetting to buy it when I can I have a tip for this, had a similar issue until I brought it closer to my face, but without doing that, in the TrackIR settings, increase the sensitivity of your pitch axis on both extreme ends of where you experience it loving up, and a small dead-ish zone in the middle, it worked wonders for me. Experiment with turning TrueView on and off. I leave it off for combat sims and on for civil (sometimes).
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Jul 26, 2020 18:38
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I very much doubt that will happen.
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Jul 27, 2020 15:04
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Maybe they will put it on Steam eventually, but I don't know how soon. My expectation is that they'll milk the 3rd party cow for as long as possible before letting Gaben have a cut. Halo MCC and Gears are probably seen as loss-leaders to bring people to the MS Store for the new ones, not to mention the game pass that's actually been clutch for me to try out things that I ended up not liking. Steam's refund policy is great but going 5 hours deep into outer worlds and still being able to nope out was great. Regarding VTOL VR, I go through phases of playing it for hours and then dropping it. It's a nice break from DCS as a kind of sim-lite experience. The F-35 analogue is pretty cool to setup and frankly having the BRRRRRT on a machine that can hover is a god-like power to be used with wanton disregard for ROE or your own safety. I find I can usually slip right in to the weirdness of the control scheme (so long as I have hardware rudder pedals), and missile evasion tactics learned in DCS seem to have a far better success rate. It's great for dealing with ED-invoked tilt.
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Jul 27, 2020 17:24
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Huh, well, I'll stop speculating. Cursory Google search says FS2020 on Steam is on the table, just no date, so that's interesting. Apparently that's Microsoft Gaming's thing now.
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Jul 27, 2020 17:54
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Sagebrush posted:You just can't TRUST companies like $team or Micro$$$$HAFT to not screw you over!!! Or to keep your information secure!!! I heard that you can get your account hacked and then it might get BANNED and all the things you own will be GONE!!! Anyway so yeah if you wanna buy this 727 just paypal $185.00 to david.s.johnson@aol.com and I will email you a link to a private FTP server I run out of my garage This is such an accurate representation of Avsim.
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Jul 27, 2020 20:41
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If you had more Hornet slots I'd probably be all over that.
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Jul 28, 2020 18:59
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ethanol posted:Just fly free dcs plane and wait for 50% off imo. Alao consider this: the russian planes are far more interesting Yeah, it was my new rabbit hole before I got bitchy about the state of things in DCS a month or so ago. The Jeff is fun too.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:22
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Zero One posted:I know we were making fun of the "big trees" guy earlier but when my city's airport (Orlando) showed up I could immediately tell the trees were way too big. If you had not pointed this out, I probably never would have noticed. Part of me wants to fly through a forest of redwood-sized palms now though.
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Jul 31, 2020 01:25
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Could equally fly with real sectional charts found free online, but there's a map in-game.
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Jul 31, 2020 15:29
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Yeah, I really hate giving them money after reading their really pretentious and condescending posts, too. The NG3 update is a good example. Yeah, it looks great, it's exciting. Is it a "Faustian Bargain" to have to rewrite it for a new platform? Bob Superlative Randazzo posted:I try very hard to stay away from superlatives, but in the case of seeing our prized 737 appear within MSFS it is hard not to dump them judiciously into paragraph after paragraph. I suddenly remembered his post about taxi steering and how hard my eyes rolled reading it.
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Aug 1, 2020 20:32
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Fuzzie Dunlop posted:I haven't played it but Stormworks has decent reviews. https://store.steampowered.com/app/573090/Stormworks_Build_and_Rescue/ Was absolutely coming to recommend this. Without the building there's an easy-to-use workshop pipeline for downloading other people's creations and it really does scratch the Search & Rescue games itch. The building part will absorb you though, I've been in development hell putting together a research vessel for months now and I love every second of it. EDIT: is there a stormworks thread somewhere? that's a good one I'd love to gush more about without derailing something else. Gomez Chamberlain fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Aug 4, 2020 |
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Aug 4, 2020 00:28
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Sagebrush posted:Yeah, I actually can't think of any civilian flight sims where the planes get bent up and damaged when they crash (with the notable exception of perpetual vaporware Deadstick). The point is not to crash...so crashing is always just a game over or a bounce. I also can understand that there'd be real squickiness about having realistic damage with the accurate scenery. One kid crashes a virtual 747 into his school in a big fireball and the PTA will lose their minds and the headlines write themselves. I think some of the problem is licensing as well, I vaguely remember this used to be a thing for Gran Turismo licensing cars for the game--they weren't allowed to show them damaged (this may not be true but it scans). There was a setting in FS2002 you could apply in a given aircraft.cfg that enabled a damage model of some sort, but it basically just meant large, clean chunks of the plane would go missing and/or start emitting flame/smoke-like particles if you hit stuff. I remember doing it with the default 737-400 and crashing into stuff as a teenager.
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Aug 5, 2020 00:46
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For what it's worth, the Washington Monument did look like that for awhile until recently. In an earlier version of the alpha it was there with a specific model, but it was sitting at an extreme angle that was pretty funny to see. Same with the capitol building. Something must have regressed since then, I haven't flown in the area since around February or so.
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Aug 5, 2020 00:58
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Nyogel.
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Aug 9, 2020 01:03
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Sagebrush is correct, this is a procedure for flight under IFR. VCOA's are for meeting obstacle clearance minimums when the required climb gradient can't be met. If you're flying a VCOA (again, under IFR with Visual Meteorological Conditions 3 statute miles (SM) around the airport), it means you have: - Determined you can't meet the published minimum CG (climb gradient) for the Take-off & Obstacle Departure Procedure - Weather within 3SM of the airport that is at or above VFR minimums - Asked for it/told the controller you're doing it VCOA's only exist when there are obstacles outside 3SM of the airport that require a CG of greater than 200 feet per NM. EDIT: here's a handy-dandy guide to fall asleep to: Instrument Procedures Handbook You can see on the sectional chart that there are indeed obstacles off the DER marked with little mountains. EDIT again: More fun links because sectional charts are so cool. Gomez Chamberlain fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 02:39
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Zochness posted:Any verification that TrackIR works in the release build? I don’t know if I’ve seen that confirmed. Yep, they stealth-added it a few weeks ago.
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Aug 17, 2020 16:00
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After many, many crashes during download/install, I finally got going only to find that the keymapper has gotten so much worse. It absolutely refused to detect key/button presses or axis moves, so I had to manually figure all that out and select from a dropdown for each controller. Then the ATC just barely worked, I figured 90% of the time I was listening for clicks to open the window and see if it was for me. God help you trying to listen to the ATIS, the text wouldn't scroll until it started playing it audibly. This was working fine in the alpha/beta so I can only assume capacity issues. Then there were random bugs that I distinctly remember reporting during the alpha that still exist, such as the artificial horizon in the C152 randomly quitting until you switch views or, hell, the autopilot issues everyone has been bringing up on the forums. I know I spent too much time filing stuff about the CJ4 only to have the release some how regress more. I honestly don't know why it had to release today, I feel like they could have let it bake a little more. I remember thinking that when they announced the release date and just presuming there was a jesus build kept away from the alpha/beta branch but drat, some things actually got worse. I know they'll figure it out and it's day one, but I'm pretty underwhelmed. Runs buttery smooth on ultra at least, and it's nice not having my name plastered all over the screen.
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Aug 19, 2020 02:27
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If you dig really hard you can occasionally find things at 10% or less markup. I had some success buying an x56 sealed in box on ebay a month or so ago, and I know some folks who have managed to get ahold of Logitech pedals in the past couple weeks. I have some spare peripherals I might be willing to part with for cheap in North America, including a T.16000M setup (sans pedals) and an older x56. It's a matter of getting the energy together to ship it and lol leaving the house now that FS2020 is out.
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Aug 19, 2020 15:05
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Inner Light posted:Bumping for the new day, anyone know a way? Just curious. If you're familiar with them sure, but otherwise only if it's very obviously generic. I've tended to fly around with a heavy suspension of disbelief after years of flying in flight sims so most of them fool me.
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Aug 19, 2020 15:09
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To add, you have basically three classes of buildings here: photogrammetric (scanned with lasers and cameras aerially or otherwise nearby), AI-generated from satellite and/or aerial photography (model determines a certain flat shape in a picture resembles a 2D representation of a 3D object, extrapolate and wrap it with the 2D image), or just plain, old "I'm putting a boxy 3D shape here because it looks like there should be one."
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Aug 19, 2020 15:14
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lobsterminator posted:My Azure ATC speech is not working. I only hear radio clicks when ATC is speaking but no speech. Anyone else had this issue? Yeah, it's an ongoing thing since launch. Allegedly you can turn off the azure stuff and it'll work but I haven't tried it. I'm going to give things a few days before trying to get deep into anything as a lot of the cloud-based stuff is not in a steady-state right now.
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Aug 19, 2020 21:49
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Yeah you are solidly lucky there, I downloaded yesterday on my gigabit fiber connection and it constantly crashed. It resumed where it left off at least, but it was a bit of a shitshow, took about an hour and half.
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Aug 19, 2020 22:51
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It seems that FS2020 implements steering for everything, I haven't seen the need for differential braking on anything I've flown yet (which is basically the C152, CJ4, and Shock Ultra). I'd have expected to need it for the Shock Ultra but I didn't read anything about it before flying so maybe it has steering gear for the tailwheel, but generally if the pedals don't do anything, try the brakes. Carefully.
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Aug 19, 2020 23:21
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Anime Store Adventure posted:To be honest, and it is absolutely petty, but the more modern interface and application that is OnAir makes me not want to use FSE. It's just enough flashy poo poo in my eyes to make me ignore the fact its just third party numbers going up. Not petty, FSE is just relentlessly awful. Even signing up is such a slog, just to be greeted by generated UI and 11+ year-old databases of aircraft and airports. I look forward to giving OnAir a shot once they work out some of the issues in FS2020, and maybe we get some good 3rd party planes.
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Aug 21, 2020 02:45
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It makes me so drat happy to see so many new people coming in to the hobby and digging it. I haven't seen anything like this in all my years of setting money on fire for plane jpegs.
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Aug 21, 2020 04:59
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I'll mention it again since this thread is moving so fast these days: I have a T.16000 HOTAS and a Saitek (early iteration) x56 HOTAS, both in perfect working order, if a little dusty. I don't have any spare pedals, but both have twist sticks so good enough to get a couple folks going (the x56 creaks). I'm not in need of cash so I'd be willing to part with them for a donation to a good cause.
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Aug 21, 2020 05:08
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cmpterjones posted:I'll mention it again since this thread is moving so fast these days: T.16000 is claimed, would like to get rid of the x56 at the same time to save a trip if anyone wants it!
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Aug 21, 2020 05:35
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sum posted:How do I ILS? I've figured out how to get the nav points all setup automatically from the flight planner and hit the "NAV" button on the TBM but reading an ILS plate is a loving mystery to me. Is there like a youtube series or something Here's Joe Pera talks to you about approach plates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fElkNeuKoh0 And Joe Pera goes into the minima: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-V3JGdH1cQ And also Joe Pera talks about the profile view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu0BO2C0HiI  I'll attempt to channel Sagebrush here. Both the video and the attached are examples of FAA plates. You will also come across Jeppesen plates (probably more often than not) but they are not substantially different. The top is the marginal data, with frequencies for the localiser/DME (this one has that in the upper-left-most box), the final approach course in the next box to the right, and then important information about the length and altitude of the runway. In this case, we have 5,826 feet available for landing, the Touch Down Zone Elevation (the height of... the touch down zone at the end of the runway) is 613 feet Mean Sea Level, and the airport elevation is 620 feet MSL. I'll note here that Jeppesen charts don't include the runway available landing distance on the approach plate, but they do include TDZE and airport elevation. The next row includes the also-important Missed Approach Procedure, but we're YOLO'ing in this simulator so lol go-arounds. This tells you what to do if you get down to the final approach fix and can't land. The next row below that is a bunch of important frequencies. The sim auto-tunes them for you and this plate is 15 years-old, so skip it. Planview The dominant section of the plate is the planview, oriented so that up is north. This shows a top-down view of the procedure for approaching and ultimately landing at this runway, and also the rough path of the missed approach from runway heading. I'll talk about it clockwise from top-right. Top right is a handy list of runways at this airport and their lengths. This isn't all that useful here unless we get asked to take an alternate runway and circle-to-land or something, which rarely happens (especially at Midway), but chances are you can call up the chart for that runway anyway. It's here, but not on Jeppesen charts. At middle right, there's a label and a dashed circle going around the whole chart telling us beyond this point you are talking to enroute facilities, such as Chicago ARTC (Chicago Center). Not important in the sim, you get auto-handed-off and even in real life you'd be told to switch. This does demarcate the enroute area from the approach area. Lower right gets more interesting, I'll walk through it from the bottom. The speech bubble here is the IAF, or initial approach fix. There's another speech bubble to the left, but this one is the IAF because it says so at the top. This is where the procedure starts, and all instrument approach plates have one. The speech bubble is telling us the frequency to tune on the nav radio (114.2), the three-letter identifier (CGT), and the morse code pattern you'd hear if you turned on the audio from your nav radio that's tuned to that frequency. Chan 89 is for military jets (specifically those with TACAN receivers), VORTAC means Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Range (VOR) TACtical Air Navigation. This just means that this VOR/DME is also a TACAN and the channel here is for Viper drivers to tune and home in on it. There's a thick line heading NNE from the VORTAC, this is the course from the IAF. Written over the line is the minimum altitude (5000' MSL), the magnetic heading from the VORTAC (011 degrees), and then in parentheses the distance over the ground from the previous fix (the IAF) to the next fix. To the right, "* 2200 when authorized by ATC" is an alternate minimum altitude for this leg of the approach. Probably not important to us here but good to know it's an option. Middle-bottom is another speech bubble for yet another VORTAC. This one is Peotone, on frequency 113.2, with ID EON. Channel 79 again for those using TACAN. This one is important for the aforementioned missed approach procedure. There's a racetrack pattern (notably a right-turning racetrack) to tell us how we should hold here in the missed approach procedure. A line drawn heading north northeast denotes R-001, or radial 001 from Peotone VORTAC. This is mentioned in the missed approach. Were we to fly the missed approach, we are expected to climb straight ahead on the final approach course to 1100' MSL and then turn left to heading 150 while continuing to climb to 2100' MSL to radial 001 on EON, tracking that until IGECY. This line is telling us how to find IGECY. IGECY is the intersection of R-001 from EON and R-300 from CGT (Chicago Heights to the east of Peotone). There's a neat shortcut here and cool bit of symbology to remember. If you follow the R-001 line from EON, there's a lightning bolt line pointing to where IGECY is. We could locate this by tuning one nav radio to 113.2 (EON) and another to 114.2, dial in the OBS for the EON-tuned radio to 001 (or its reciprocal heading 181) then tune another nav radio to 114.2 (CGT) and turning it's OBS knob to 300 and we'd know we got there when both course needles hit dead center. But we are given a DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) of 20 at IGECY. This means if we're tuned to EON and tracking the 001 radial (or more easily course 181, R-001's reciprocal) and we were bang on the 2100' MSL altitude restriction, once the DME readout to EON says "20," we know we're at IGECY and should now climb to 2600' MSL. All that wall of text just to say that if you see a rectangular box with the round right side and a number in it, this is telling you a slant-range distance to a particular radio fix! More importantly, to the left of that rectangular round box is the fix to which the distance is measured. Notice I said slant-range. That's not distance over the ground, DME measures a straight line distance to a radio navigation aid in nautical miles. It's close to ground distance at these altitudes, but we are flying so if you're at 20,000', 20NM on the DME is going to be less actual distance over the ground. The lower-left circle is telling us some more important info, the MSA, or Minimum Sector Altitude. This is important when flying IFR as you should never go below this altitude (unless told to by an approach procedure). In this case, the MSA is referenced from the CGT VORTAC: "MSA CGT 25 NM" means that for a circle of radius 25 NM from CGT (diameter of 50 NM), these altitudes are your minimum. Inside the circle, we see the VORTAC symbol and a couple bearings. Above that, a box with 3400 and below a box with 2800. These are the MSA's for the respective sectors within 25 NM of CGT. The sectors are denoted by radials, in this case R-270 and R-090 of CGT. Note the arrows pointing TO the VORTAC symbol. CGT being the IAF you're likely to be flying TO it, so it gives you reference with that in mind. This tells you that if you are flying to CGT with a heading between 090 and 270, you should be above 2800' MSL, and if you're flying to CGT with a heading greater than 270 or less than 090, you should be at least 3400' above sea level. Above that, middle-left of the planview there's a rounded rectangle with information for the actual localizer beacon for runway 31C at Midway. It tells us that it's a localizer, it's on frequency 109.9, its identifier is I-MXT (It has glidepath information, I-(3-letter code)), its morse code ID, and a channel again for the troops. You have probably noticed the little triangles with numbers near them. These are important obstacles and their height in altitude above sea level. There are various short ones all around the airport, and a couple big ones to the northeast near Lake Michigan. I wonder what they are. Let's talk about the big shaded arrow now. This is the final approach course. At several points along the arrow there are lines pointing with more data about the approach. These are also referenced in the profile view which we haven't even gotten to yet. These are approach fixes. If we go back to that stuff about CGT being the Initial Approach Fix (IAF), and follow the line from it to where it intersects the arrow, we'll find the second fix on the approach, HILLS INT (HILLS intersection). Written below HILLS INT is I-MXT and another rectangle with a round right side with 14.1 in it. This means at HILLS, you are 14.1 DME to I-MXT, the localiser beacon. Following the approach path, which is the bold line, you would turn left to the final approach course (315) and continue flying it in. The next fix after HILLS is GLEAM, at 11.2 DME to I-MXT, but before that another line is drawn up to an altitude restriction (4000' MSL minimum), a course (315, our final approach course) and a (3) in parentheses. This 3 means that this leg is 3 NM long. Next in the arrow you'll see in big bold numbers the final approach course of 315, above that a minimum altitude restriction (2500' MSL), and below it another parenthetical distance (4.4 NM this time). This means between GLEAM and the next fix (RUNTS), you will travel 4 NM over the ground (NOT DME) and you can descend as low as 2500' MSL. At RUNTS we will be at 6.7 DME to I-MXT, and after that we can descend as low as 1700' MSL and will travel another 2.5 NM over the ground to the Final Approach Fix (FAF), HOBEL. The FAF here is marked by a football shape and LOM (Locator Outer Marker). Crossing HOBEL, you may hear a beeping in the cockpit and a blue light may start flashing somewhere in the cockpit. This is caused by a beacon on the ground signaling it to tell you that you've reached the final approach fix. More on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marker_beacon From there, you just follow it down to the runway, or to a missed approach. All those altitudes along the path are pretty hard to decode, but that's why we also get a profile view down below. The profile view has the most relevant information once you're dialed in on the final approach course. This one is read in sequence right to left, starting at HILLS as previously seen on the planview. At HILLS, you can be at a minimum altitude of 5000' MSL. This is denoted by the underline below the number. You may sometimes see an underline and a line directly above the number, and this means that you must be at EXACTLY that altitude. Another alternative would be a line above the number and nothing below. This would mean to be at or BELOW that altitude. In the case of this approach, all the altitudes are just minimums but you should probably just be at 5000' MSL crossing HILLS. Note that these altitudes also have an asterisk next to them. This means in this case that an alternate minimum is given below, in this case 2200' MSL when approved by air traffic control as stated below the profile. Next fix is GLEAM, and it's at 11.2 DME from I-MXT, our handy-dandy localizer with glide path information. These minimum altitudes are helpful, but chances are the glideslope indicator is already alive by now, and you should start following that for descent. If it's not, the rest of these altitudes and distances are here to help guide you down safely by referencing a DME (which is a number you are supposed to be able to get if you're flying this approach). The next most interesting part is that fix marked with an X, HOBEL. That is how the Final Approach Fix is symbolized in the profile view (and matches where the football shaped LOM marker was on the planview). By this point, you should be stable, configured, and on glidepath (and guided by the ILS glide path signal). If you're not all of those things, go-around. Finally, at the far left, GS 3.00 is telling you that the glideslope for this approach is 3 degrees down. Most are, some are steeper, but this is where it'll tell you that. I'm going to gloss over the rest of this, but there's an important call-out in the box below the profile view. You see 4 categories denoted by letter codes. These categories correlate to aircraft approach speeds, with A being the slowest (90 knots indicated airspeed or less at runway threshold) and D being the fastest. This is only important because this table gives you minimum decision altitudes/heights. MDA/H's are the altitudes/heights at which you MUST have the runway in sight, otherwise you have to go around. There's a lot of complicated regulation around minimums beyond the already wide scope of this post, but these tell you what to dial in to make a decision about landing. The left number, 863 is the altitude (barometric, your standard altimeter) in feet MSL to decide to land or go around. The number of the slash, 40, is the Runway Visual Range x100 minimum to land with this procedure (4000 feet visibility, RVR is complicated-ish). The smaller number spaced out the right, 250, is a height above the ground for minimums. If you have a radar altimeter, you'd dial this in and it'll warn you when you get there. It's coincident with the altitude, but measured directly from the ground with microwaves! The number in parentheses here is for military pilots, ignore it. The rest of those boxes are minimums for other conditions that might exist, such as no glideslope information or doing a circling approach. The most important parts in the sim for at-a-glance YOLO'ing an instrument approach are the planview and the profile view. The planview shows a top-down view of the approach, and the profile view is a side-on view of the decent profile with waypoints matching those shown in the shaded arrow shape on the planview. This example doesn't even have many other symbols and paths you might see, and there's no Procedure Turn (those are fun to learn), but that's the gist of reading an approach plate. This particular one is a precision approach, but there are non-precision instrument approaches as well. This should get you started decoding and flying them, but it's a very interesting standard symbology that even carries over to SID's and STAR's (Standard Instrument Departure for leaving a terminal area, and Standard Terminal Arrival Route for entering one to land). I think I will leave the effortposts to Sagebrush who has likely beaten me on this one. Gomez Chamberlain fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Aug 21, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 08:13
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Sapozhnik posted:This is an extremely good post, thank you for posting it. I learned a huge amount from it and it's actually a lot simpler than I expected. Big oof, yeah, I fixed it now. More about RVR: https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/weather/how-runway-visual-range-rvr-works/ EDIT again: Yeah as in no, 40 x 100, or 4000'. Gomez Chamberlain fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Aug 21, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 18:57
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Joe Pera explains DME arcs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp4RfU5tlrU The world of IFR procedures is deep and engrossing. You'll love it.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:18
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Popete posted:Dumb question time. Yes, you will land such that you fly the heading implied by the runway's designation to land, in this case probably something in between 235 and 244. Wind direction can be determined in a couple ways: Tune to the ATIS (Automated Terminal Information System) frequency, and it will tell you the wind in degrees and knots. Note that this is the heading FROM which the wind is coming. So continuing to use runway 24 as an example of the active runway we've been assigned, let's say we tuned to the ATIS frequency. "Goon Airport information Charlie 1600 ZULU Weather. Wind 256 at 5. Sky condition few clouds at 1500...". This tells us the winds are blowing from heading 256 at 5 knots, so a bit of a right crosswind is implied when landing at runway 24. The next way is to overfly the airport and identify the windsock. It'll be pointing away from the wind direction, so with wind 256 at 5, it'll be pointing somewhat toward the runway threshold of 24. The amount of the windsock that's parallel to the ground gives you an idea of wind speed. They are designed to be fully extended in a wind of at least 15 knots, and most if not all are striped orange and white, which each section inflated being 3 knots of wind. A third way is that ATC in the game will also often give you the winds with a landing clearance. Air traffic control does this in real life, too.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:50
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karma_coma posted:Does anyone mind posting the goon airsim discord again? I want to do some VOR stuff at 1pm EST https://discord.gg/d7YsZX I just joined yesterday, it's nice.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:51
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