FS11 Wishlist- What would you like to see in FS11?

[Brett_Henderson]

Monitor the autopilot ?

[IndioBlack]

My intention was to crack you up Brett. I felt a poke with a stick was what some of you smug self-satisfied FSX civilian pilots needed, to understand how angry we military pilots are about Microsoft.

Microsoft wilfully destroyed the military flight Simulator market through corporate greed, by continually imposing new computer operating systems that were not backwards compatible. As such, a whole host of excellent military simulators like iF-22 Raptor, Jane's USAF, F/A-18E Super-Hornet, Total Air War, AH-64 Apache  were rendered unusable at a stroke by the introduction of Win XP.

At one point there were three full-detailed, fully functional F/A-18 Simulators out there: Digital Integration's F/A-18E Super-Hornet, Jane's F/A-18 Hornet and i-magic's F/A-18 Hornet. Whilst all of these military simulators worked on Win 95 or Win 98, for which they were designed, none of them work on Win XP. The only one that actually loads up properly, crashes incessantly due to incompatibility issues that the erroneously described "compatibility wizard" included with XP fails to address.

So if you wish to fly an F/A-18, post Win XP, what are your choices?
Your first is the amazingly popular sim-lite: Strike Fighters, where the F/A-18 is a free third-party add-on. Unfortunately being a sim-lite, any ideas of featuring complex avionics systems and electronic warfare, are immediately discarded in favour of easy targeting and situationally unaware hostiles. As the author himself said, when challenged on-line about the simplicity of his sim-range: "I thought all you wanted to do  was take-off and shoot down lots of planes". A view of the military simulator fan, shared by most of you civilian simulator chappies, no doubt.

Your second, and only other choice of flying an F/A-18 Hornet post Win XP is Microsoft's own FSX. But of course this version completely fails to model electronic warfare and weapon delivery, settling for take-offs and landings, which in themselves are not enough of a fully-rounded experience for military simulator pilots to enjoy. A carrier landing is a pretty easy thing once you've mastered it, but not so easy at the end of a combat mission where you've had to use all your skills to put weapons on target, are probably worn out by having to avoid enemy surface and air threats, and may indeed be coming back with a damaged aircraft. Attempting a third-wire trap under those conditions is quite different to the simple take-off, fly-around-sightseeing, land-when-ready routine that Microsoft offers.

I'd like to think that one day Microsoft would come up with a modern military flight simulator that has all the features that FSX enjoys, but I'm pretty certain that they couldn't pull it off. Modern aircraft have very complicated, radar, targeting and weapons delivery systems, and these would have to be properly modelled for each aircraft - a much more diffcult task than simply coming up with an aircraft that is capable of moving around in a virtual world. I think that's why Microsoft, when they could be bothered, kept their trilogy of Combat Flight Simulators comfortably ensconced in World War II, where the only extra features they had to worry about were bullet-trajectories, and destroyable buildings.

But anyway, the question was "what would you like to see in FS-11?"
And my answer still is: aircraft that can fire bullets, drop bombs, and blow things up.

[Brett_Henderson]

But anyway, the question was "what would you like to see in FS-11?"
And my answer still is: aircraft that can fire bullets, drop bombs, and blow things up.

I have empathy.. honest

[ShaneG_old]

http://www.flypfc.com/pcatds/cat%20iv/CAT%20IV.html

Now, I know the old saying, " If you have to ask, you can't afford it."

But WOW!! What does something like that cost? I think my heart may have skipped a couple of beats upon seeing this thing!

[Brett_Henderson]

Yeah.. it's nothing short of amazing.. Shoot a 1/2-mile visibilty ILS in a Baron with an engine out in that thing.. and you'll need to go lie down for an hour (after showering and changing your drawers..lol)

I'm not sure about the total cost.. I think it's $36/hour to use it.  I'll find out more (and get a photo of me sitting in it), next time I'm in Columbus..
8-)

[ShaneG_old]

[quote]Yeah.. it's nothing short of amazing.. Shoot a 1/2-mile visibilty ILS in a Baron with an engine out in that thing.. and you'll need to go lie down for an hour (after showering and changing your drawers..lol)

I'm not sure about the total cost.. I think it's $36/hour to use it.

[Brett_Henderson]

do you ever fly into the Dayton area?

Many times..

[ShaneG_old]

Definitely! It would be nice to tour the museum for a change with someone who's actually into aviation.

I always drag my family there, and they just don't seem to understand my enthusiasm for things with wings.

With all the unused runways there, you'd think that would be a great way for them to pull in some extra upkeep cash. Air Force security reasons I suppose.

Looking forward to it. 8-)

[Schnyd]

Well I know there are some virtual airlines out there and some other sites that incororate this but I have always wished there were some RPG features. Like Lemonade stand, where you could own an aircraft and fly it around carrying cargo and people to make money.

[IndioBlack]

Now that's what I call skyjacking.

[Ang2dogs]

If they ever get back to making the next gen flight sim, the act of shooting down civillain aircraft , would be dispicable! But it shaw would be a great option to use in multiplayer to kick out disruptors!  ;D But what I'm reading is the more realistic asspect of the sim, as far as the unexpected,,,, like a bird strike,,,,, Can YOU put it down and save everyones life in 3 minutes? Actually 90 seconds from impact to landing! The option would be to have a maintance program were if you don,t maintaine your aircraft, your propeller might blow off, like what happened to that fella in Aspen, Co. SO, Try this for fun, I set my failures like this,,,, open your failures tab and choose an option ( instruments, system, radios, ect. ), than choose " Random componet failures " . Next were it says Number of componets to fail choose 1. ( just to save time I've already tried this half and to the max, try any formula you want but this is the basics to fine tune it. ), the next thing to do is set the time." Failures begin after " I set at 15 mins ( I wanna at least get off the ground ) , now here's the fun part , on "Failures end After" set it to the max 600 minutes, thats 10 hours,. Now the odds are that you should be able to make a 4 hour flight with no problem, and that's because that's as far as i can sim with out taking a break . But now here's the really FUN part, IF YOU rember to reset your Failures, your doing maintance, so reward your self and let that failure that hasen't fail yet, ride, and start a new failure ! and stay on it and if that engine has 8.5 hours on it and it has'nt blown than reset it. Belive me , you'll be holding it in, untill your absollouty sure everything is running smooth, before you even think about taking that piss break,. Have fun

[Milo1272]

Hey IndigoBlack,

Forgive me if I misunderstood you, but we have another option if we want to fly the F/A-18E: http://www.vrsimulations.com/index.htm.

[IndioBlack]

No I haven't seen this before. But what I have seen in FSX is a load of combat aircraft that carry weapons, and even allow you to drop bombs, but the bombs don't do any damage, and you have no proper targeting system to get them to go anywhere you want to. There's an excellent Lancaster that does just that. I remember speaking to one of the designers at an airshow, and asking him about the bombs, and he explained how you could make the bomb bay doors open, and you could see the weapon drop, but they didn't do any damage. I asked him why they didn't have a version for CFS3, and he said that there was more money in FSX, because CFS3 was dead.

I had a look at your link, and it read like a lot of the other combat aircraft pages for FSX.: "Realistic weapon loadouts" etc. But I couldn't see any reference to how "the AI disappears from radar".

It made me think of that WWI FSX add-on which promised dogfighting in authentic aircraft, and realistic bullet trajectories. But seems to have been held back by "FSX limitations".

I'll try and track down more information, but I don't believe FSX really supports the full use of military aircraft in combat simulation. Which is why I'd like to see that in FS11.

Incidentally, graphically rendered explosions are available in both lite and heavy combat flight simulators.  

The difference between a heavy combat flight simulator, like LOMAC or F-16 Falcon, and a heavy non-combat flight simulator like the FS series, is that everything you do in FS is available in the combat simulator, but then you also have the added strain of combat operations.
What FS has, that lots of combat flight simulators don't have, is lots of shiny new military aircraft. Which is quite ironic, when you consider how pacifist the die-hard FS fans are.

[Brett_Henderson]

Which is quite ironic, when you consider how pacifist the die-hard FS fans are.

I can't speak for all

[Anxyous]

I'll try and track down more information, but I don't believe FSX really supports the full use of military aircraft in combat simulation. Which is why I'd like to see that in FS11.

That's what CFS is for