Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 11:22:48 AM

Login with username, password and session length

'Up above the streets and houses' Flight Simulator 2020.

Started by mobias, August 02, 2020, 08:11:29 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Chedney Honks

I expect it's very similar to the truck zen, albeit I've not played that. There is some gamey stuff in there, challenges and whatnot but I'm not especially interested in making more of a game of it. I just have a think about what kind of flight I'd like to make, Airbus across Europe or little glider over Papua New Guinea, pick a start and end runaway and see how it goes. I put all the weather and stuff on live updates which is cool. I would love to have rockets and Gatling guns and to blow up some castles and stuff but it's nice to have a little change from that. I can return the Xbox within about two months via Amazon so I'll probably be bored by then and get my money back. Seems slightly unethical but if there's one prick I don't mind fleecing... They're wouldn't even have such a stupidly generous policy if they weren't absolutely pillaging every other bugger for max profs.

mobias

Quote from: Chedney Honks on August 01, 2021, 12:34:55 PM
There's a fair bit old disparity between the best and worst times looking locations

Yeah sadly this is entirely dependant on the quality of data being streamed from Bing maps. The tech is pretty interesting. Generally there's two elements at play at any given time. The first is the DEM (digital elevation map) data, which gives the sim its instructions on how the shape and relative heights of the landscape mesh is to look. The accuracy of this data varies massively across the globe. I think the highest quality Bing maps DEM data is only accurate to about 20 meters and the lowest is about 50 to 100 meters. Its why flying around Mount Everest and the Himalayas is currently a bit underwhelming in the sim. Its because the DEM data is only accurate to 50 meters for that area apparently. The end result is mountains look much more rounded than they should.

The second element to how good the world looks is the quality if the satellite imagery coming off Bing. Again in varies wildly from the country to country. Generally Europe and the rest of the Western world is covered pretty well. Its pretty much mostly though quite low resolution photos sadly.

To give you a glimpse of how good the sim can look with the highest quality data currently available. With on the PC version there's some clever mods you can get that re-route the streaming data from better quality sources than Bing. Here's Mount Teide on Tenerife with DEM data which is accurate to 50cm coupled with an 8K satellite image. It looks very very photo real and the closer you get to the ground individual rocks and stones are individually rendered.








Thursday

One thing I'd like is a slightly better idea of where I'm going, I need a better minimap with marked locations on there or something. Especially as the data isn't quite good enough in some small specific towns to navigate by sight.

mobias

An easy way to navigate from point to point on the map is choose your take off location on the map then click another airport and click arrival. The sim will then draw a line to fly. You can check this in the in flight menu on the VFR (visual flight representation) map. Additionally it'll be programmed into the Garmin navigation system most aircraft have in them so you can just see that in the cockpit.

Its worth knowing that you can add as many way points to the route plan as you like. So instead of hitting the arrival button on the map you can hit the 'add' button and it'll create a way point. Once you become quite knowledgeable about how the in plane Garmin navigational system works you can program the autopilot to synchronise with it so it'll automatically just follow your flight plan leaving you to just kick back, pour yourself a drink and enjoy the world go by without having to do anything. You can also program it so the aircraft is at a certain altitude at certain waypoints. Basically this is what real world pilots do. Beyond take off and landing the rest of flight is pre-programmed.

Timothy

Still really enjoying this.

Mobias, do you have any recommendations for good flight sticks?

mobias

Sadly you're pretty limited currently when it comes to Xbox compatible HOTAS for the sim. The most popular seems to be the Thrustmaster T.Flight which is cheap and cheerful and is probably a good beginners set up. I'd probably go for that one. There are others in the pipeline not yet launched and I think more are going to be made compatible out of existing set ups. There will be a growing market for Xbox HOTAS now that the sim is out and proving really popular.

I'd get the T.Flight HOTAS and if you like it but find it a bit limited you can always sell it and upgrade at a later date as more become available. Keep the box it arrives in as you can sell it later to help fund your upgrade. There's a good second hand market on eBay for flight sim peripherals.

The sim is so much better with a good stick and throttle. 

https://www.windowscentral.com/best-xbox-joysticks-microsoft-flight-simulator

Neomod

Quote from: mobias on August 04, 2021, 07:33:36 PM
The sim is so much better with a good stick and throttle. 

I BET IT IS YOU DIRTY OLD BOLLOCKS

Beagle 2

So this is now available to play via Xcloud for those of us with last gen consoles. I gave it a quick bash last night and it worked flawlessly.

No idea what I'm doing yet, I ended up buzzing the startled residents of Blackpool and crashing into a five-a-side pitch. Looking forward to having a proper look tonight.

Malcy

Quote from: Beagle 2 on March 18, 2022, 09:22:30 AMSo this is now available to play via Xcloud for those of us with last gen consoles. I gave it a quick bash last night and it worked flawlessly.

No idea what I'm doing yet, I ended up buzzing the startled residents of Blackpool and crashing into a five-a-side pitch. Looking forward to having a proper look tonight.

Likewise. Did a few short flights and had a look at places I know but found it all a bit annoying to use with a controller. I suppose a bit more practice and having the time to sit and properly get into it will help though.

Was also impressed how well it worked via the cloud.

Neomod

Only just discovered this is now available to us Xboxone plebs via the cloud gaming.

With all assists on and gentle use of the controller flying and landing was fun. A trip around my old southcoast manor taking off from Shoreham Airport, buzzing Brighton and Worthing and then off to Paris.

Might take a trip up to Glasgow this week at dusk.

Beagle 2

Not quite sure what to do next, I've gone through the turorials to an extent but they soon ramp up from basic to perplexing and it's a real ballache trying to manipulate the instruments with a joypad. I also think I should probably start them again from scratch as there's stuff I've forgotten.

So I'm kind of just flitting between the lessons and free flight mode for a bez around somewhere interesting at the moment. Not sure what to concentrate on to get some sense of progression. Trying to land an airbus didn't go well.

Beagle 2

I had a lot of fun on this flying with a friend from Inverness to Oban last night and chatting over discord. Very relaxing. Helps that he knows what he's doing so he could shout things like "take your landing gear up you twat" at me. 

Also had a bash in the F18, reckon I could probably pilot one of those for real now. You know, if I had to.

Neomod

It's a bit like Euro Truck (I imagine) in that it's quite relaxing to just take a bird up for a short-ish flight.

Flew from London City Airport up to Brum last night at dusk with live weather. A nice sunset but sadly it didn't look as if they had modelled the Bull-Ring. Did fly over my old house in Harborne though.

Have mainly flown prop so far. 

Beagle 2

I thought live weather sounded pretty nifty and decided to have a bez around Gibraltar. Unfortunately it was absolutely pissing it down at the time with zero visibility.

Beagle 2

I'm so impressed with how it works on xcloud, I was playing using that in Chrome with a friend who has it installed on his pc, with discord running and me streaming my screen to a third mate who was watching and it was all flawless. I'm a huge convert to cloud gaming now and can't really see the point in getting a new console.

Neomod

Took a flight up from Edinburgh to Pennan.



No red telephone box.

Game Binned.