FS Flying School For FSX And FS2004/FS2002

or the past few versions, Flight Simulator has come with built-in lessons, which are included in an attempt to make the program more user-friendly. Long term users will raise their eyebrows at the idea of Flight Simulator being complicated, but if you imagine what it is like getting to grips with one of the world's most sophisticated pieces of software, while at the same time having no idea of how to fly an airplane, then you can begin to understand why so many copies of FS do little more than take up space on hard disks.

The problem with the lessons is that they only go so far, leaving new users going, 'And...?' leaving many users astonished to discover that although they are regarded as fit to fly a 747 in the sim, they struggle to land a real 172 at the local flying school. It is an uncomfortable fact of life that Flight Simulator is much more forgiving than the real world (short of opening the case and grabbing the power supply, killing yourself in the sim is much harder than it is in an actual airplane) and this opens up a credibility gap that many simmers yearn to close.

One way around the problem is to read one of the many excellent books on the subject, the best of the bunch being Microsoft Flight Simulator X for Pilots, an in-depth approach that does much to highlight and fill in the gaps between Flight Simulator and the real world. But the trouble with books is that reading one, even if it includes a CD full of missions, isn't the same as having an instructor in the cockpit with you, nagging away at your right elbow. FSX does, of course, offers some interesting on-line possibilities, now that it is possible to hand over control of a plane during an on-line simming session, but unless you can find a friend with the time and the experience to help you out, a virtual instructor is the best compromise available right now - and that is exactly what FS Flying School sets out to provide.

The product is available as an instant download from the Pilot Shop and for all its power is a tiny file, amounting to little more than 20 megs and if you want to try before you buy, it can be downloaded and run as a demo, which restricts you to flying in a small area around Chicago. The good news is that it should run on any system that can run FSX or FS2004, given that it doesn't impose any additional graphics or physics processing overhead, although the developers suggest at least a 3.0 Ghz processor with 2 Gb of RAM and a 256 Mb graphics card, which is sound advice. For what it is worth, I reviewed version 1.7.1 using FSX, on a 2.66 Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM and a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX under Vista and everything ran fine. Installation is painless, apart from the need to complete a multi-line registration screen and a quick check of my system when everything was done showed that I had a new icon on the desktop and an FS Flying School program group, containing links to the app itself, the manual and an uninstall routine. The manual is a 36 page pdf and demands a thorough read if you are to understand what FS Flying School (FSFS) is about and how best to use it. One additional point is that Pete Dowson's FSUIPC is necessary to run FSFS with Flight Simulator and a freeware version of this app is installed during setup.

The product first saw the light of day a year ago and has been updated seven times since, most of these being enhancements to the product, which owes its existence to Jeff Preston, a professional programmer who - judging by FSFS - has a unique perspective on what simming ought to be about. Jeff works with a colleage, John Jones and the help of a dedicated team of volunteer testers.

Using FSFS is reasonably simple - all you have to do is start Flight Simulator, then launch the FSFS app itself, creating or selecting a flight using one of the planes supported by FSFS, then switch back to FSFS and press the 'connect' button. Assuming Flight Simulator is not paused, FSFS will then detect which phase of flight you are in (taxiing, takeoff, cruise, or landing) and start its virtual instructor. Hot keys allow you to make corrections should FSFS get the initial phase of flight wrong because if you don't correct the error, some strange instructions are liable to result, but once it has been setup correctly, the app should be able to identify all the subsequent phases of a normal flight. The default installation includes support for all the default planes in FS2004 and FSX, with the exception of the helicopters, gliders and aerobatic planes - an extended set of supported aircraft, running to around a hundred and including many popular payware addons, is available on the developer's website. If your favorite plane isn't up there in lights, it isn't too difficult to create a new profile, but FSFS won't play if a profile isn't loaded. Just about the only other things which are liable to upset FSFS are: slewing the aircraft during a flight, changing the time of day, or dragging the plane to a new location on the map, but otherwise, you can fly as you choose, although the instructors don't exactly reward inattentive flying.

FSFS works best if you create and load a flight plan, because this gives the virtual instructor something firm to work around, but you can fire up FSFS at any time during a flight, letting you practice landings, takeoffs, accuracy of navigation, or whatever takes your fancy. With the app running, not only do you benefit from being able to choose from a team of instructors who advise on your flying technique, but you also get a detailed post-flight evaluation, and if you have created an FSFS pilot, his flights and associated scores are racked up in the FSFS logbook. More than seventy different flying skills are evaluated and if you use the FSFS 'career analyzer' it is possible to focus on particular areas, such as your performance in turns, or landings. The great benefit of FSFS over using a book to learn from is that the instructor tells you what you are doing wrong, as you are doing it - and when say I tells, that is exactly what he does, speaking to you, just like those nice guys in virtual ATC.

The neat thing about FSFS is that the instructor doesn't just concentrate on the basics, like maintaining height in turns, or how close you pass to waypoints in your flight plan, or how well you maintain altitude on each leg; all sorts of subtleties are considered, such as the amount of G you pull and how well you trim the plane if you have a sprung or pressure feedback yoke. Simmers who are not real world pilots will find this side of FSFS a real education, because these are exactly the sort of things you need to get right to fly a real plane and yet they must be the easiest areas to forget to pay attention to in the sim. Take taxiing in a wind, for example, which concentrates the mind so wonderfully when it is a) your plane and b) you are a long way from home and on your own, but which is a matter of small concern to the average simmer, especially if crashes are turned off in the realism settings. In FSFS, the best post-flight scores come from flying well, by hand in challenging conditions, the worst come from a slap-dash approach and constant use of the autopilot.

To give an idea of the depth to which FSFS goes in its analysis, let's take a look at taxiing. In between completing the preflight checks (limited in the current version to control surface movement checks and the main exit) and before you have reached the threshold, the instructor will be looking closely at many different aspects of your piloting skills, including:

1. the quality of your turns
2. your use of throttle and attention to speed
3. how hard you are on the brakes
4. your use of flaps
5. your positioning of the control surfaces, if there is any wind

The instructor is even more critical of landings, in this case examining your performance over a dozen parameters:

1. vertical speed
2. touchdown speed
3. whether the wings are level or not at the moment of touchdown
4. how close you are to the center line
5. pitch angle at touchdown
6. how well the nose is held up after touchdown
7. whether the throttle is idle at touchdown
8. quality of steering after landing
9. how well the glideslope and localiser are held prior to touchdown, if used
10. use of spoilers, if fitted
11. landing with gear extended on water in amphibians
12. use of flaps

... which, combined with the rather squirelly ground handling of the default planes means that it can be quite difficult to pull off a faultless landing in FSFS' book. Take a look at the following report, which relates to a landing at KBLI which would have been pretty hair-raising in a real plane! Most of the advice in the report is good, but FSFS didn't take account of the fact that the wings weren't level because the plane was brought in upwind wheel on first to allow for a gusting crosswind and because the nav radio wasn't tuned to the ILS, neither has the app passed judgement on the approach profile. In this flight, the 172 was loaded at the threshold of Friday Harbor, with the result that FSFS failed to identify that the plane was making a takeoff run until I advanced the flight phase using ctrl-shift-z. The climb, cruise and descent phases were accurately identified.

LightSpeed piloting Cessna Skyhawk 172SP Paint1 ended 02 December 2007 at 17:31

Aircraft: Cessna ID: G-BAFM Airline: Flight:
Flight plan: KFHR TO KBLI NAV1: YYJ
Failure(s): None at landing

Landing Score:0.00

Landing was successful in the following areas:
* Good landing speed - not too fast.
* Good pitch control after touchdown.
* Good pitch at landing.
* With flaps - good job.
* Throttle(s) idle.
* Good controlled final descent to touchdown.

Landing included the following problems:
* No glideslope information was available on visual approach.
* No runway alignment information was available on visual approach.
* Too hard - may have damaged your landing gear.
* Wings not level - danger of clipping the ground or damaging your gear.
* No glideslope - could not compare flare to glideslope.
* Nowhere near the centre line - get lined up and keep it that way.
* Touch down not aligned with the runway - let's point down the runway.
* Poor steering after landing - stay on the centre line.
Definite room for improvement...

Flight Score:74.11

Flight commended in the following areas:
* Smooth turns.
* Nice banking.
* Correct matching of flaps to speeds.
* Comfortable G forces.
* Smooth pitch control.
* Flown within aircraft's maximum speed limit.
* Gentle taxi turns.
* Smooth braking during taxi.
* Smooth climb during takeoff.
* Well coordinated turns.
* No stalls.
* No flying dangerously close to stall speed.
* Smooth comfortable descent rate.
* Pitch not too high.
* Pitch not too low.
* Flaps down on time.
* Approach speed not too fast.
* Low altitude speeds not too fast.
* Good clearance of obstacles.

Flight included the following problems:
* Poor steering during takeoff - stay in the centre of the runway.
* Late rotation - when Vr is reached - take off.
* Flaps down while taxiing - get them up.
* Poor elevator control during taxi in wind - danger of flipping.
* Poor aileron control during taxi in wind - danger of flipping.
* Poor attention to taxi speed - dangerous to yourself and others.
* Throttle and brakes during taxi - bad for many systems.
* Wings not level near ground - danger of clipping a wing.

Definite room for improvement...

Needless to say, all this sophistication comes at a price, that price being that by default, FSFS assumes a default setup - if you want to use any addon planes or scenery, you need to tell the app about it. I have covered addon planes above, but addon scenery can cause problems, by altering runway positions (they aren't all correct, even in FSX), runway orientation, or even adding new runways and airports. FSFS is clever, but it isn't that clever and if fed duff information, it will make duff decisions. However, the manual provides good explanations of how to alter the FSFS configuration so that you can use the addons of your choice and still get the full benefit of using the program.

In use FSFS is not perfect, but shows great potential. One problematic area lies in the interaction with ATC, or rather the lack of it - if an ATC call comes in, it 'tramps' on your instructor's voice, so there is potential to miss out on his or her pearls of wisdom. This is a particular problem in the circuit and during takeoffs and landings, especially at busy fields, where air traffic is talking to other planes all the time. It makes circuit training in the 747 at KLAX with 100% AI traffic something of a challenge, but then again, what is Flight Simulator for, if not to provide challenges? Another issue with the instructors is that their annunciation of alphanumerics, like runway headings, can be slow and it would be good to see this speeded up, although the developer tells me that he has never heard any comments about this before.

A limitation that real world pilots will notice is that FSFS only allows left-hand circuits at present - hopefully this will be addressed in the next version, because circuit handedness is increasingly determined by noise limitation considerations and a substantial minority of airfields have right handed circuits in operation these days. The app also assumes that circuits will be flown at a height of a thousand feet, which isn't always the case in reality, either. The lack of support for helicopters and gliders is under consideration for a future version, as are touch and go landings and the correct use of lights - at present you can fly around in the dark without a glimmer of illumination and the instructors don't notice. Also in the pipeline are emergency procedures, a training briefing, foreign language support (German will be the first), difficult weather triggered by FSFS, and possibly combat training support. One omission at present is the lack of attention given to engine management, but given that FSFS is under continual development and has been progressively upgraded over three versions of Flight Simulator, I am reasonably confident that these issues will be addressed, not least because the developer actively encourages feedback aimed at helping the development of the product.

Although I didn't think of it at the beginning of this review, FSFS offers simmers who have tired of boring holes in the virtual air a new way of enjoying Flight Simulator. The points system in FSFS is weighted to give higher scores for piloting heavier, faster planes accurately in worse weather conditions, so that if you want to get into the high scores, you have to fly more difficult planes, like the jets. The icing on the cake is that once you have racked up some scores to be proud of, you can gain kudos by using FSFS to submit them to the developer's website, so that we can all see how well you have done. You aren't finished once you have hit thhe high scores, because FSFS can be set up to generate and monitor how you cope with random failures and you can even get it to set up 'airmanship challenges' to pass the time during normal flights, during which the instructor will feed back on how you are doing.

Verdict? FS Flying School is a complex product that is only a year old and yeah, it is by no means perfect, but after using the app I can testify that it is a very neat idea. Provided you are prepared to be patient with some of its idiosyncrasies, the program has a tremendous amount to offer, not least because of the pace at which it has been developed - users have so far been treated to a free upgrade every couple of months. Perhaps the best thing about FSFS is that it has attractions for simmers at every level: beginners can use FSFS to develop their skills; while the old hands can use it to add a new lease of life to their use of the sim.

Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com

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