striker wrote:Just a few things that I can't seem to be able to easily do
1. Change aircraft during flight
2. Change location during flight
3. Easily end flight and start over
4. How to pause flight (this will be an easy one but 'P' should work!)
One thing that seems obvious. This is not really Microsoft Flight Simulator in the way MSFS has been for more than 25 years that i've been using it. I do wish they had paid attention to the past sims a bit more! But then this is not really MS is it.
1.) I believe this is unsupported in regular gameplay, but it might be possible in Developer Mode.
2.) If you move your cursor close to the top of the screen, you should see a small white triangle appear. Hover over it and you'll see a row of icons appear. One of them is labeled "Travel To" and you can use that to automatically travel to another phase of flight (if you have an active flight plan and enough fuel to actually fly it). I'm afraid it doesn't allow you to select a completely new takeoff airport like FSX, a feature that remains unsupported at this time, but it's useful if your game just crashed on final approach and you don't want to fly an 8 hour route all over again.
3.) If you hit "Esc" during a flight, the flight will pause (more on that later) and you'll get options to adjust General, Assistance, and Controls settings. At the bottom you should see a button to restart you flight, but be aware that you'll be subjected to the same long loading times you get starting a flight normally. I seem to recall that Asobo is working to improve performance, but I'd never expect it to be equivalent to running FSX on the same hardware.
4.) While hitting "Esc" certainly pauses the flight, there's another option on the previously mentioned pop-up icons. This is "Active Pause", which allows you to interact with the airplane's systems while the airplane is suspended in mid-air. Be aware though, that AI and multiplayer traffic is NOT paused, and although I haven't tested this, I strongly suspect that the clock keeps ticking for the simulator's time of day (as in, the Earth keeps spinning and the sun, moon, and stars will appear to keep moving across the sky if you remain on active pause long enough.) I also seem to recall that the aircraft's airspeed can still change depending on what phase of flight you're in, but I'm not entirely sure how this works. All I know is that it prior to the Japan update (and maybe even now, IDK) it was incredibly useful for catapulting the B748 down a short runway like a carrier jet. I don't recall the default key assignment for Active Pause, but it should be easy enough to change, although I do agree that it should be "P" and there should be some sort of "Simulator Paused" message like in previous MSFS installments. I can't tell you how many times I activated Active Pause and forgot it was on.
People Eating Tasty Animals.
