Microsoft Flight Simulator X for Pilots - Real World Training

FSPilotShop: Hello Kevin and Jeff. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today about your new book. 750 pages is quite a lot of material! What other books have you written on simming?

10. I wrote Combat Flight Simulator 2: The Inside Moves for Microsoft Press several years ago. That was great project: part historical research, part beta testing, part flight instruction, and part combat flight training. I had no combat experience (real or virtual) so I had to interview combat experts (both real and virtual) and then try out the techniques for myself.

11. This is the first flight simulation book I've written, but I was the technical editor for Flight Simulator 2000: The Inside Moves for Microsoft Press.

10. Actually, I do far more real-world flying than simming. I had been mostly using Flight Simulator with instrument students and hadn't spent much time at the controls myself for a while when I started this project. I had forgotten how much fun it was.

11. I'm an active real-world flight instructor. I'm also a member of (virtual) WestWind Airlines. And until a few years ago, I was actively controlling on VATSIM as a part of Seattle ARTCC, including a year as the Air Traffic Manager.

10. I hold a Commercial pilot single-engine and multi-engine land and single-engine sea for airplanes. I am also a flight instructor for single and multi-engine airplanes and instrument. (Editors note - also called a CFII.)

11. Commercial pilot single-engine with instrument rating for airplanes. Flight instructor for single-engine with instrument for airplanes (CFII). I have about 1200 hours of flight time, most of which is teaching. Most of my flight time is in Cessna and Cirrus aircraft.

10. I belong to a club that co-owns one plane and is working on acquiring a second one.

11. As an employee of a flight club/flight school, I have access to (and have flown) many kinds of airplanes, including Cirrus, Cessna, Mooney and more. (Editor added) I do have a commercial Piper Malibu airplane that's really nice, but I didn't have to pay for that; I won it during a Poker Run event on VATSIM a few years ago.

10. Wiley (the publisher) asked me. No, seriously, I was approached by my book agent about writing a book on Flight Simulator for pilot training. I knew that the actual real-world training utility of flight sims was good, but there were places it didn't help that much or actually hindered. I also knew that many folks would be interested in virtual flight training with no intention of flying real-world airplanes. That's how the idea to take the reader from student pilot to ATP in the virtual world was born.

11. When Jeff was asked to write the book, he realized the deadlines were such that he needed a second author. He called on me because we taught at a flight school together and we also currently work on other aviation writing/editing projects. Plus I have extensive flight simulator experience and could bring that to our project.

10. Depends how you count it, but it was about four and half months with both Kevin and I working on it simultaneously.

11. Don't forget there was another two months of editing and proofreading!

10. I love the FSX visuals and find FS9 looking a bit clunky when I go back to it. The utility for training is about the same, though. I don't like the hardware demands of FSX. It's just not practical to run it on anything but a hot, new computer.

11. In fact, I couldn't run FSX at all on my five-year-old computer, but we were able to borrow some screamin' gaming machines from Alienware and WidowPC just for the time we were writing the book. I sure miss that computer now ...

10. Eaglesoft's Cirrus and Columbia aircraft are favorites of mine. There are some great warbird aircraft out there too.

11. Mostly I just download airplanes and liveries from my virtual airline or other online sources.

10. That depends on what their goals are. Get the fastest computer you can, but post on the sim boards asking what constitutes fast in people's experience. Dual hard drives in a RAID array can boost performance more than a faster core duo processor.

11. As we say in the book, there are some parts of flight training that can't be adequately simulated on a PC; the things that can be done well on simulators (instrument training, for instance) don't require ultra-high graphic details, so you can turn down the details and get a higher (and more comfortable) frame rate.

10. Really, they're a different animal. Legacy flight training devices (FTDs) like the venerable Frasca 141 don't even have visuals. It's just a set of instruments you fly. Some more modern FTDs have basic visuals, but nothing like FSX. More advanced FTDs have visuals as good or surpassing FSX (some use a commercial-grade version of X-Plane to drive their visuals, actually) and wrap-around screens. Some even have limited motion. Most of these use real cockpit shells, avionics and controls. They also cost north of six digits to own. In aviation, a true flight simulator has full motion and usually an enclosed cockpit. The best are so realistic that pilots can pass a certification test to fly a jet using just the sim -- they don't have to take any of the test in the real jet.

11. One thing FSX (and other flight sims) can do -- and real training simulators don't do -- is connect to other flight simmers and virtual air traffic controllers. For people who are just doing this as a game, online simming with good ATC is as real as you can get.

10. I don't know that I'm the best person to answer this. You should get at least a decent yoke or stick with a throttle quadrant and rudder pedals. Beyond that, it's really up to what you like. Two sound cards is great for voice use while simming.

11. Of course, if you're going to do voice communication, a headset is pretty much required. Advanced level simmers will want an extra screen, assuming your video card can handle it. (Editor's Note - Great advice! Try the MATROX Triple Head To Go, no need for an additional video card. Also, check out our headsets).

10. Probably the things where the model breaks down, such as stalls. You can't get realistic responses.

11. One of the biggest challenges of PC flight simming is that you don't "get a feel" for the airplane. During visual (VFR) flight training, we help the student develop a "seat of the pants" feeling to keep the airplane coordinated. This can't be done on a PC simulator (and is really hard in a full-motion simulator, too). During instrument (IFR) training, we show students how to ignore their kinesthetic (motion) sense because it can be wrong when the only visual sense they have is the instruments. This, too, can't be properly learned on a PC simulator.

10. Aerobatics and combat. Funny thing, my six-year-old likes those best too.

11. I usually end up flying short airline routes just for the realism. But my favorite activities are the fly-ins where there are lots of planes and realistic air traffic control all the way from clearance delivery through multiple center controllers.

10. Is there anything else besides flying? Reading about flying? Daydreaming about flying ...

11. Besides real world flying and flight simming, I've been known to spend time in an online space adventure game or two ...

Editor's Note: Our own reviewer Andrew Herd was the technical editor for this new book! You can also check out what he had to say about the book here.