Microsoft Flight Simulator returns to the skies

[wlbragg]

MSFS Float Capability...

Did you notice the video was across three screens? That works well enough but there is no way to get any angular correction as it is just one large 3000+ screen.
I did get to the bottom of the computer resetting and it was GPU excessive heat. My case had virtually no airflow, a fan in the right place and a little reduced sampling (90%) is all that was needed to run almost all settings detailed and across 3 monitors. I can leave sampling at 100% or even over sample on just 1 monitor.

[wlbragg]

I am dumb, I think I left the gear down, trying it again without the gear down. Everything else still applies. It may let me land and take off if the gear are up,but it still isn't a live water landing.

EDIT:
I was totally wrong, the water landing is modeled at least partially. The wake isn't there and I don't know how well the wave action and the aircraft action are matched.
I'll replace the above video as soon as it is rendered.

[StuartC]

It has Water bergs, just like FG does:-



And the Water appears to be a texture of the landmass surrounding the coast. This is why you see ghost ships that appear to be under the water, there in the texture.

[www2]

Some interesting article about the data that FS2020 use: https://hackaday.com/2020/08/21/microso ... streetmap/

[islandmonkey]

And the Water appears to be a texture of the landmass surrounding the coast. This is why you see ghost ships that appear to be under the water, there in the texture.

One of many disadvantages of using photoscenery I suppose.

[wlbragg]

MSFS Float Capability 2...

Here is a single monitor version showing the action a little more detailed.
As you can see it is repetitive and it is basically pseudo physics, not detailed physics by any stretch.

[Octal450]

OK, I tried MSFS through Xbox Gamepass.

The airliners are terrible. FDMs wrong, systems not there and wrong, weird display graphics. The GA on the other hand is feeling much better, The C172 flied pretty close to what I experienced flying the real thing. First time I see a 172 that felt so good besides the A2A simulations AccuSim.

The scenery is beautiful looking. So that's pretty cool. I agree with wayne the water handling seems a little funky - but I've never flown or researched seaplane physics so my opinion there is a bit irrelivent.

So yeah, mixed bag. There's potential but there's lots of work to be done.

Kind Regards,
Josh

[wlbragg]

MSFS Icing...

I have no idea how well icing conditions are simulated. My selections were simply the quick select "snowing". Unless you turn on the windshield heat you get this. Windshield heat removes it quickly.

[massima]

I see this video of a flight inside the hurrican Laura, and my thought is: "stunning graphics, but no turbolence/icing inside the hurrican a smooth flight with winds which blow at 250 km/h with a propeller plane". So, wonderful graphics and nothing else. Verdict: failed.

[StuartC]

When testing it ( in the DA40 ) The turbulence I was seeing looked rhythmic and scripted. it didnt look or feel like any interaction with the FDM.

[wlbragg]

The turbulence I was seeing looked rhythmic and scripted. it didnt look or feel like any interaction with the FDM.

I did a flight out of Denver International west over the Rockies and I hit more turbulence as I got closer or over the back range. I flew a few times (real life) in airliners to and from CA to KS, and it is a common occurrence to get some big turbulence when you enter the flats after getting over the Rockies and descending into Denver. So much so, the pilot always warns the passengers there will be turbulence when approaching Denver from anywhere west of the divide.
Unrelated, kinda, I sat on a runway in Denver once for 30 minutes waiting for the wind shear to clear. We were sitting in the middle of severe thunderstorms. Talk about anxiety when we were finally given the clearance to leave.

[montagdude]

I see this video of a flight inside the hurrican Laura, and my thought is: "stunning graphics, but no turbolence/icing inside the hurrican a smooth flight with winds which blow at 250 km/h with a propeller plane". So, wonderful graphics and nothing else. Verdict: failed.

I was interested so I tried the same thing in FlightGear last night. Granted, Laura is just a tropical depression now, but I didn't see much of anything that looked like thunderheads or even precipitation, just basically dark overcast skies. Possibly changing some display settings would have helped? I couldn't really judge the wind or turbulence because I was in a hurry and flying through it in the F-14 at Mach 1.5.

[Thorsten]

I was interested so I tried the same thing in FlightGear last night. Granted, Laura is just a tropical depression now, but I didn't see much of anything that looked like thunderheads or even precipitation, just basically dark overcast skies

That (apart from the percipitation) is pretty much what a real hurricane looks like - overcast skies, lots of rain (and I mean lots of) and strong, gusty winds. You need to be pretty high (probably at the boundary of space) to see the interesting structure, as the storm systems are pretty huge.

The hurricane is a hot core storm system - all the action happens close to the eye where the air rises and sucks the rest inward. It's not driven by lots of local convection that'd create thunderheads. They might (like Tornadoes) be spawned on the fringes of the storm system.

Basically FG creates what the METAR report says, and if no thunderstorm is reported you won't see it, if no precipitation is reported you won't see it, if overcast skies are reported that;s what you'll get to see, FG has no concept of a hurricane (I've long ago wanted to introduce one into the offline weather system, but never got around to really do it...)

[wlbragg]

I tried flying in the TS portion last night east Missouri I think it was. I used live data and had nexrad running on the g1000, All I got was essentially fog until I got into the purple on the radar. The green was scattered clouds, orange denser, like fog, red totally fogged in and finally got what I would call light rain (maybe it was heavy?) I couldn't tell when I got into the purple. Turbulence was very light, not even as much as I hit over the Rockies the other day. I thought I saw one streak of lightning when I was changing the time slider from night to day, but that was it. This did not behave the way I was expecting it to at all. Now I don't know if that was because of the METAR report it was getting or what. Maybe I wasn't in the correct location to get any rough stuff? I flew through it from ground level to 10000 with no change whatsoever. I was disappointed, but it may have just been my fault.
Our local nexrad during storm season here has you in some nasty hail in purple, red is torrential rain, orange is heavy rain and green is light rain.

[montagdude]

I tried flying in the TS portion last night east Missouri I think it was. I used live data and had nexrad running on the g1000, All I got was essentially fog until I got into the purple on the radar. The green was scattered clouds, orange denser, like fog, red totally fogged in and finally got what I would call light rain (maybe it was heavy?) I couldn't tell when I got into the purple. Turbulence was very light, not even as much as I hit over the Rockies the other day. I thought I saw one streak of lightning when I was changing the time slider from night to day, but that was it. This did not behave the way I was expecting it to at all. Now I don't know if that was because of the METAR report it was getting or what. Maybe I wasn't in the correct location to get any rough stuff? I flew through it from ground level to 10000 with no change whatsoever. I was disappointed, but it may have just been my fault.
Our local nexrad during storm season here has you in some nasty hail in purple, red is torrential rain, orange is heavy rain and green is light rain.

That was basically my experience as well. I didn't spend that much time with it, like I said, but everything basically just looked uniformly overcast and/or "foggy." I think it must be a limitation of METAR and/or how FlightGear translates the data into sim weather.