neilends

I really don't know. I am not much of a software expert. All I can report is that I have had no problems with either of the two downloads, or with content manager.

My Oculus Quest 2 has just gotten better and better since I first began using it. Even my past start-up issues are basically gone. I just turn the game on, turn the headset on, and off to the races I go.

Looks like another new update this morning, in part to address "packages in your community folder that may not have been updated..."

Everything works great. I have not tested Paris yet.

Appreciate all the responses. After some head scratching I figured out that it was actually my VR headset that was causing some weird issues. I dug into some threads with advice and realized that the recommended settings for Oculus 2 have been significantly updated, because of the O2's updates. I was going off of old recommended settings. With the new settings, everything's working like a dream again.

The Piper Arrow III by JustFlight definitely deserves mention on this thread. It's modeled after a gently used plane, not a brand new one, and does not have a glass cockpit. I like flying in it a lot.

I've been patient with MSFS hiccups over time, but the last few days my aggravation level is getting pretty high. When approaching any particular airport, my PC seems to choke up and suddenly fall into some low-performance mode with a lot of stuttering. This is not even for a large metro city, mind you. I took a screenshot of Task Manager during one of these moments. Is there any data here that points to the problem? I notice that a few levels are showing up as at or about 100% usage, which seems problematic. Any ideas?

I was about to answer similarly: the realism factor dictates that you shouldn’t actually be flying from whatever runway you want. Instead, wind patterns dictate it and the ATC AI reflects that realism (by and large).

Regarding my link above, MIT has posted the entire lecture series here for free: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-687-private-pilot-ground-school-january-iap-2019/class-videos/index.htm

I literally am in ground school, en route to earning my private pilot's license in real life. I've also taken a couple of in-person flight lessons, though I've put a pause on that while I finish ground school and pass my written exam. This week I completed the coursework, so now I am studying because I want to maximize my exam score to as high as I can muster (the pass grade is 70%, my practice scores are in the high 80s). Having done all this has given me a new appreciation for many of the nuances of MSFS, and for flight simming in general. Primarily, I appreciate now the importance of flying under visual flight rules that is fundamental to learning how to fly. This is not something I had much of an interest in when I was a simmer-only, because I became overly reliant on staring at my instruments and learning how to use high tech navigation aids. There are tons of free materials out there depending on which specific aviation topics you want to dive into further out of general interest. When doing my coursework, I noticed that my ability to answer FAA questions about aerodynamics concepts was pretty weak, even though the FAA requires a very minimal understanding of aerodynamics. So I stumbled upon this excellent lecture by an MIT professor of aerodynamics (she is also a pilot btw, prefers Cessna 172s) in which she provided a slightly turbo-charged overview of the subject to dig in just a little deeper, aimed at pilots in training:

Here in Arizona, MSFS is barely trying to be accurate with vegetation. Phoenix and Tucson are surrounded by giant saguaro cacti, not by trees, but the sim has lazily only created trees for us desert dwellers. Oh well.

That's correct. The green diamond shaped bug did not show up. I have seen it before so I'm used to seeing it. I initially thought this meant that I was somehow dialed in incorrectly and that the glideslope would not actually work, and not guide me down. But it did work, and guided me all the way down, so I don't know what to make of it.

C'est beau! Tu viens de cette ville?

I was at exactly 2,000 feet. As I said, I did not have a problem locking in to the glide slope and using it to land. The issue I noted is that the white/green bug on the G1000 never showed up.

I've created a shortcut to refuel by just hitting Control-R, so I can instantly refuel in mid-air. But I opted to exercise my sim brain muscles to simulate an emergency instead.

I appreciate the info Larry. Ground school coursework on the ILS is pretty non-technical and superficial. Guess I will have to dive into it more later. To answer your questions: In the sim, I was flying what appears to be a circa 2019 or so Cessna 172 with a G1000 and glass cockpit. The autopilot locked in to the glide slope even though the gauge showed no indication of the glide slope, yes. I am a little unsure of your last question, but I used the G1000 "Proc" button to "activate" the Ahmedabad Runway 23 ILS approach. I noticed when I did so that the NAV radio auto-adjusted to the Ahmedabad ILS frequency as listed in your approach plate (which I did actually look up as I was approaching). Maybe this means that I was using the GPS? I also confirmed using audio morse code that the autopilot was tuned to Ahmedabad ILS 23.

I just tried flying into Ahmedabad, India using ILS. Although I did get locked in to the localizer glide scope, the white or green diamond never even showed up.

I'm a dual US-Canadian and Vancouver Island is one of my favorite places on earth. I've been there a few times (and I even have an ex from there but that's a different forum), but never had the time to visit the isolated, western side of the island. So I decided to journey from Alert Bay up north to one of only two airports on the western coast, Tofino. I flew a Beechcraft Baron because icing threat is severe right now, especially in the sim which makes icing worse than real conditions. Landed at Tofino uneventfully. Handled some phone calls, work stuff, other goofing off stuff for a long time while leaving the plane idling. Then decided to fly direct to Victoria, which is British Columbia's capital city. Except I forgot about fuel management. All that idling, see... While I was cruising and literally finishing up a class session for real-life ground school, I heard the engine sputter. I instantly knew what I had done wrong. I decided to try and handle the situation with as much realism as I could, without cheating. A CTRL-R would've just fueled me up and kept me on my way to Victoria. Instead, from 11,500 feet I had to quickly decide where I could land. Scanning nearby airports on the G1000 confirmed that none were within reach. I was about 40 nm from Tofino where I had taken off from. This stretch of Vancouver Island was truly desolate, and mountainous. As I kept up a safe gliding airspeed, with a descent of about 1,000 feet per minute, I picked out a potential landing area. It was close to a road. Once I got lower perhaps the road was wide enough to try and land on. But there was also a patch of somewhat flat terrain not covered by trees and forest. It was a bit challenging to line myself to land on it with no power, and a little suspenseful. I needed one 360 turn to lower myself sufficiently, and it was hard to gauge whether I'd make it. The landing patch, not being a runway, was also angled awkwardly. The road was not an option. Landing gear down or up? I have no academic training on this question. An experienced pilot I heard talk about this on YouTube suggested that landing gear should be up when crash landing. So that's what I opted for. Flaps fully retracted. Airspeed about 90 knots as I approached and slowed down to 80 as I hit the ground, with the stall warning going off. In my opinion I nailed the landing as safely as it could be nailed. I checked Google satellite imagery with my coordinates to see whether I really could have landed there. It turns out that the patch was real. It looked like a tree-cutting operation had created the bald patch, and many others in the area. Hope this never happens to me in real life ever, but I do intend to self-educate, train, and prepare for it.

Are there any good seaplanes out there already? Besides the Ikon and Grumann Goose I mean. The Goose is super cool btw.

I suspect you perceive there are "not a lot of people bothering with them" because you rank so high and they don't show you what a low rank looks like. I tried the Lukla challenge right now and placed about 40,000. Then I tried St. Barth and after 3 tries got to about 20,000.

Thanks! The update has considerably improved performance.

You work so hard at the technical aspects of landing on the sim, I would really love to see you just run through all the MSFS landing challenges and tell us your highest ranks! I'd put some cash on you in Vegas. :D

I probably missed a memo somewhere. Am I supposed to be doing something with my PC to update my NVIDIA driver? I believe I have the following specs: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Driver version: 27.21.14.5709 Driver date: 10/22/2020 DirectX version: 12 (FL 12.1).

I fly almost exclusively on the 172. ILS seems to work fine. It can be buggy now and then but by and large it works.

Interesting. Could be a bug. But I'm enrolled in ground school for real-life flight lessons and the message for VOR stations was: First, make absolutely sure you are tuned to the correct station. Second, you need to double check ahead of time to make sure that the VOR is actually up and running. They may be down for repairs, maintenance, etc. So hey, it's frustrating that these may be buggy but that's apparently the way it goes in real life too.