18/08/2020 - MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR 2020 - The sim is here

Well, at around 20:00 last night I started the download of the new sim.  I had ordered the Premium Deluxe version of the sim on the day pre-orders became available. 

The install was somewhere north of 100 Gigabytes but thanks to a reasonable download speed, it was all installed by the time I woke up this morning.

 The next challenge was to connect up my peripherals to provide the most realistic flying experience.  That took around 90 minutes, but I dare say that I will be tweaking these settings well into the future.  There is a lot to like about what the developer has done with the camera mechanics.  Compared to its predecessors, this sim is massively customisable.

One day i will get off my lazy backside and do a video on my setup and how I have configured the sim.  Anyhow, it was time for my first flight, and as I have done with the last few iterations of any flight simulator, my first flight was out of YPJT (Jandakot Airport), my local GA airport.

YPJT in the sim is a default airport and as such has all the runways, taxyways and pretty much most of the aprons modelled reasonably accurately.  The buildings leave a lot to be desired, but thats more scope for a third party developer in due course.

So the first flight was from YPJT to YMUL which is Murray Field only about 25Nm away to the south.  It was great flying a C172 with steam gauges, most of the flight spent getting my view selection sorted and then configured on the buttons of my Saitek yoke.  The flight was made in low cloud (real weather) but all the visual landmarks from around 2000' altitude were clearly visible and enabled VFR flight.

My first landing or Rwy 23 was a bit agricultural, but it was on centreline and I was able to pull up well short of the other end and taxy to the parking area.  This sim is incredible, have I mentioned that before?  I then flew down to YBLN (Bussleton) and then back to YPJT accumulating just over 2 hours flight time.

I have now decided that I will be starting my Around the World flight sometime during the day on Thursday and it will be in the C172.  Why Thursday? Well seeing that I fly in real time, real weather and the actual time of the day, I want my first few flights to be completed during the day.  I have Thursday off from work hence my first flight.

Later on as we get closer to summer, I will be able to get in some flying time after work into the dusk hours.

15/08/2020 - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 - Not long now

Wow, not long now for the official realease of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (or whatever it's going to be called).

There has be a whole load of previews available on You Tube with the official release version breaking ground about 24 hours ago.

The excitement is building and I am going crazy planning my first few legs out of YPJT (Jandakot airport).

The plan is to head north to YGEL (Geraldton) then Shark Bay and so on.  Seeing as I will be starting off in a Cessna 172, it's going to take a while.  I will probably be transitioning to a Cirrus SR22 sometime down the track, but one step at a time.

Anyway, 3 days to go... 

11/08/2020 Flight Simulators - what do I do?

Back in the early days of Flight simming there was a real need to stretch the imagination to get a sensation of flight.  Imagining the wire frame hills representing some geographical construct was tough, but as the sims developed this became steadily easier.

In the early days, sims consisted of representations of small patches of the real world that were not connected.  A sim pilot would have to end a flight in one region, then restart in another.  Subsequent versions enabled the addition of "scenery packs" to improve the experience.

But like the mountains, this got better over time and suddenly we had a representation of the whole world.

This enabled us to simulate trips between countries, across oceans and to neighboring continents.  FS2004 was the first Microsoft Sim where I started my "Aroind the World" flights.  It was the first sim where I was able to use real weather which added a more challenging aspect to my hobby.

Simming to me needed to involve a purpose.  I couldn't be bothered to simply take off, do a couple of circuits or a short hop and then land.  I really wanted to see how the sim represented the world, and to do that in a challenging weather environment.

Since FS2004, with every new sim that I bought, I would start the use of that sim by familiarizing myself with its new features by flying around my local area.  Living in the South West of Western Australia, I always set my home airport as YPJT or Jandakot airport.  I would fly short flights for a few weeks to places in the SW region like YNUB (Bunbury), YBLN (Bussleton), YMGT (Margaret River), YCUN (Cunderdin) or YGEL (Geraldton).

Once I was happy with my knowledge of the various aircraft and its systems, I would on a pre planned day, head off on my next ATW (Around The World) flight.

Another limitation I placed on myself was the class of aircraft that I flew on the ATW flight. Seeing that my simming had a couple of objectives, those being firstly simulate flying, and secondly sight seeing, I very much preferred the low and slow flight mode.

To this end, I restrict myself to flying single engined props and GA (general aviation) light twins.  This limitation often requires me to carefully plan my flights, especially with the introduction of real weather.  Real weather added another level of realism to flight simming, however this at times was not implemented well and introduced difficulties that wasn't representive of the real world.

Anyhow, the ATW flight generally starts in one of two directions, either northerly along the Western Australian coast via Geraldton and Carnarvon or via the south coast to Albany, Esperance and then on to the Western Australian border.

The flights then either head along the Indonesian archipelago through South Asia and into the Middle East and Europe, or Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, Russia and then across to Alaska.  In my previous flights, I did not spend a lot of time in either South America or Africa.  The default scenery in those continents have not been great and hi fidelity add on scenery packs not been readily available.  Roll on FS2020 with its wonderful highly detailed rendition of the whole earth.

Anyhow, back to my flight.  Given that I am still working I don't have a huge amount of free time for my flights.  Mostly I can put aside about 3 or 4, one to one and a half hour flights a week.  This means at the most, I get about six hours of flight time which is around 1200 kms of distance in a week.  This makes for a long journey, but with this latest sim, one of discovery and great interest.

I hope to document each leg of my latest ATW flight in this blog, with some flight details and hopefully a few screen shots.  Stop by often for a look at my progress.  Comments are welcome.

Only 7 days to go now

02/08/2020 - Flight Simulators - Why?

Ever since I was about 4 years old, I wanted to fly.  Growing up as a kid in India, as long as I remember, my parents and I travelled mostly by plane (Indian Airlines mostly), as well as one memorable trip to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, flying Air Ceylon.

Flying in an assortment of DC3's, Fokker F27's and Vickers Viscounts were to me, one of the most exciting things I could imagine.

Then in 1973, at the age of eleven, my parents and I migrated to Australia.  This involved a trip from Madras to Singapore, Singapore to Jakarta and finally from Jakarta to Perth, Western Australia.  B707's and DC8's were our  "modus itinerantur" which at the time must have driven my parents to despair, given my excitement.  A visit to the cockpit on one leg (911 was a very long time in the future) absolutely confirmed in my mind, flying was what I was going to do.

 The next six years for me was an opportunity to prepare for a career in either the Air Force or Army, flying.  Flying anything, transport, rotary wing (helos), fast jets, anything.  

My academic results were ok, not exceptional, just ok. However I still held onto a hope that enthusiasm, a significant level of aviation knowledge and you know, enthusiasm would get me through.

Anyhow, to cut a long boring story short, I did attend a recruiting office appointment to be assessed for entry into what was then Officer Training College, Duntroon (now ADFA) to train as a Army pilot.  Well, that did not end well.  Unfortunately, to my great distress, I failed the Ishihara Test and the subsequent Lantern Test confirming beyond all doubt, that I was colorblind.

Being told that the only thing I would qualify for in the Army would probably be a kitchen assistant did nothing for my state of mind.  What it did do, was to make clear to me that my dreams of flying were over. This was in the late 70's, after which I sought and found employment in fields much different from the career I had originally envisioned.

In the mid 80's, I was working in the engineering department of a large agribusiness when one day, a graduate engineer installed a genuine IBM PC XT on a desk not far from where I worked.  A few weeks later during lunch, this engineer installed a copy of SubLogic Flight Simulator on the PC XT.  I was hooked.  This was absolutely amazing to me.

For those who experienced this early flight sim, you will understand how addicted to flight I was, given the tenuous connection to flight that this sim had.  Wire frame hills, land and no external view.  Blocky mono graphics depicting instrumentation and click, click, click sound for the engine might seem incongruous to the non simmer, but for me this was incredible.

Anyhow, that was incentive enough for me to save like crazy for my first PC XT clone, and my own copy of the sim.  It was the start of an incredible journey of discovery, of learning about computers and computing, all in an effort to make my simming journey more realistic.  I have lost count, but I believe I have built or had built around eight or nine PC's to facilitate my addiction.

I have spent manby thousands of Dollars on peripherals all in an effort to replicate the sensation of flight.

A few years ago I spent a couple of years training for a recreational pilots license with the hope that I would one day be able to buy my own ultralight and fly under these restricted conditions.  At the time my income level fully supported this plan, and to this end I was able to solo in a reasonable timeframe.

Ok, so just like "any good plan not surviving first contact with the enemy", not long after soloing, I was made redundant, so ended my plans for real world flight.  Back to flight simming it was for me.  But this time with a lot more knowledge of what it should be like, both procedurally as well as physically.

So what's next... What do I do while "simming".

Around 377 hours to go for the release of FS2020...

01/08/2020 - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 - A little history

Those who know me well, know that I am a computer gaming tragic.  More specifically I am a Flight Simulator tragic.

My first flight sim was SubLogic Flight Simulator, that I ran on a IBM PC XT Clone that I bought in the mid 1980's and from the first day I flew the sim, I was hooked.

As a very much wanna be pilot, this was definitely one way I was able to fulfill my dreams that I was unable to do so professionally due to colour blindness.

The early sim was a challenge due to there not being the availability of todays plethora of peripherals, flying the sim via a keyboard (no mouse), imagining the wire frame hills and checker board land below was something approaching reality, was a bigger challenge.

Despite that, every couple of years, a new and slightly improved version was released which gave me hope that true VFR (visual flight rules) flight would be possible.

In the Microsoft world, the last complete release of Flight Simulator was on 13th October 2006.  That pretty much was the last time I was really excited anticipating the release of a new sim.  FSX promised much and in the long run, with the aid of some very talented third party developers, actually delivered quite a reasonable flight experience.

However by the time that occurred, the core sim was quite long in the tooth and was in fact showing it's age, despite some significant computing power being thrown at it.

For around the last five to six years, I have dabbled with some of FSX's competitors, but none gave me that same sense of wonder I felt with each new version of MSFS. 

Then in September 2019, everything changed.  One evening while surfing around You_Tube, I came across a video that completely blew my mind. Initially I dismissed it as a fake, one of the many purpoted "next great thing in simming" video that infected YT on a regular basis.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this was the real deal.  Microsoft and Asobo Studios were announcing their collaboration to deliver a new iteration of Microsoft Flight Simulator.  The original preview was so amazing that I couldn't quite accept this was actually possible.

But it was...

(More tomorrow) Around 400 hours to the release of FS2020