neilends

It has been fixed, as confirmed by multiple threads and discussions you can find on the forums. I went and searched out confirmation because I had downloaded an add-on as a temporary fix, and wanted to know if I should now delete it. The answer was yes, go ahead and delete the add-on.

Pain in the butt to do it but so often that's the magic that was needed!

I tried to set up Virtual Desktop months ago, and it broke my computer. Is it pretty easy to set up now? Any links for instructions?

Post-update I took a full flight from KFFZ Mesa, Arizona to Chandler Municipal KCHD, after scoping out the Phoenix metro area for a while. Flying over my house, over my alma mater ASU, that sort of thing. I used the VR headset. Did not experience the problem you describe, or any other abnormalities.

Though I am no spring chicken, I am thankfully still able to travel internationally and love doing so. I got my wife completely addicted to it also. Regarding your question, I am a little confused by it and am not sure I understand it. As I've said before, MFS most definitely motivates my travel ambitions. We are still being cautious due to the pandemic but have started real discussions in the family about some of the destinations that got into my head thanks to MFS, such as Tonga and Samoa. Wherever we do end up going on a family trip in the coming year, whether it's exotic and special or not, I will definitely scope out the area by flying through it on MFS. I will probably even download add-on sceneries, maybe even paying for it if needed, to help educate me about the area.

First, I assume you've configured everything to match the advice here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/quest-2-2080ti-link-fs2020-set-in-ultra-best-performance-simple-setup-guide/346291 As for your problem, I experience it too every now and then and am still trying to figure out the the optimum fix for it. Very often it seems to be simply using the Oculus app on the desktop, going to "settings," and hitting the "restart Oculus software" button. That works often but then sometimes it does not. When absolutely nothing works, I do a full reboot of the PC and of the headset, but that only happens maybe once a week (I play every day).

I can confirm that the VR tweaks they've made are a great improvement. Most importantly, I can now zoom in on the instrument panel.

Welcome! This is a fun game, and in terms of the simulation it can be as realistic as you want it to be. I am both an aviation lover and a geography lover, so the realism of the visual scenery has me totally hooked.

For simming purposes, I just google the POH for the make and model at issue and there are a few PDFs out there on random websites. They very likely won't match the exact year of your MSFS plane, so you obviously couldn't rely on them in real life, but for sim purposes it's at least a helpful guide.

FYI, the company has announced an update to the Piper. “We're letting you know that new software is now available for the aircraft, providing many updates and fixes. These include new icing effects, improvements to the flight dynamics, VR compatibility fixes and much more.”

Not that techie. It integrates very well. The only slightly-techie thing you might want to do--and even then it's optional--is follow the app's advice for being able to use the elevation profile. You might not even want to use the elevation profile but I found it to be really cool, and the directions for making it work were not that hard to follow. It took me about 5 minutes.

I absolutely love using ForeFlight on the iPad, which amazingly syncs up with MSFS. However, ForeFlight is pricey with the basic plan starting at $99 per year. I justified the expense for myself because I am actually taking flying lessons in real life. $99 for 12 months isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Seeing it actually used by my CFI last weekend was super cool. Not sure I would pay for this if I was not a RL student pilot.

There's not one spot that stands out, in my opinion. A recent one that many have purchased a Piper Arrow model from is Just Flight: https://www.justflight.com/ Nels Anderson from this forum writes a lot of detailed reviews and you can check out other sources from that: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?4-reviews

Haha, I hadn't even noticed that! When I modified the barometer, the popup data showed up in US measurement so I only looked at that. I did not look at the actual numbers on the dial, which as you note are QNH (I don't know what that is, but it's not US inches). I guess the plane is what it is.

I've never used the MSFS tutorials so I honestly can't speak to them. Sounds frustrating. What I *have* used plenty of are the dozens of real pilots on YouTube who have taken the time to produce some pretty good training videos, using MSFS. Have you tried any of those? I'm mostly familiar with the C172 so I don't have C152 videos handy. But a quick search popped up some promising ones:

I have a similar concern. I intend to address that concern with the points Larry just mentioned about attitude. I am a hobbyist so I will never have sufficient hours for ace status. I intend to maintain modesty and humility in my flying habits, and emphasize safety in my training and ongoing education. I’ve already signed up for the FAA Wings program, for example, which will give you a certificate in safety-focused training if you keep up with the course work. I can receive IFR training but choose never to fly in IFR conditions. To the point you made about spins and stalls, I intend to specifically train for those, both as a student and regularly afterward. I can afford the training. If I couldn’t, this would not be the hobby for me.

Excellent advice and valuable tips, Larry, I appreciate it. Although the CFI and I did talk about a possible over-dependence on panels, I don't know if I actually worked on breaking it in this first session (I realize there are plenty of more sessions to go). Maintaining the same direction seemed to come pretty comfortably, but maintaining the same altitude made me pretty nervous, causing me to constantly glance at the altimeter. There's no magic to this though, I guess. The same reason stable direction was relatively easy is probably the same reason stable altitude will be. I also should mention that the one maneuver that made me the most anxious by far was climbing, because (a) I couldn't see in front of me with the nose up, and (b) goofing on MSFS has shown me how to stall, so I was worried about the climb rate getting so high that I would reach that point. I never actually did but the fear was there. Practice will make perfect.

Exhilarating. My real-life airplane for my first actual flight lesson today was a 1969 Cessna Cardinal 177. My CFI performed the take-offs and landings. While at a comfortable and safe altitude, he then turned the controls over to me to perform several controlled turns, ascents, descents, and work on maintaining level flight. I also got lots of introductory practice to taxiing, which seemed harder for me than actually flying the plane. We flew from KFFZ (Mesa, Arizona) south to KAVQ (Marana, a suburb of Tucson), back up north to land at KCGZ (Casa Grande), before heading back to KFFZ. I also got plenty of excellent instruction and demonstration of pre-flight inspection procedures, fuel management, flight briefings, and more. Did almost 40 years of flight simming help me? Probably not except at the most introductory level for purely academic concepts. Sure, I know what the throttle does already in concept, but I had zero muscle memory on whether pulling it or pushing it increases or decreases power. In fact, I increased when I wanted to decrease and vice versa several times in the beginning. Use of the rudder is another stunning difference between simming and flying, because in the sim you can almost forget that there even is a rudder. A novice simmer who is not intentionally trying to fly realistically will never, in fact, bother using the rudder while turning. You just point the joystick in the direction you want to go and the ailerons do their thing. The average non-pilot simmer will not notice the effects of adverse yaw, and therefore will not care about it, ever. Although the sim does force you to use the rudder to taxi, the average simmer hits a button to automatically appear on the runway ready to take off. The rudder is an after-thought. Now, suddenly, I can barely maneuver the airplane without figuring out how to operate it, much less with my feet. Most jarring is the feeling of flying that simming can never compete with, except I assume for high-end professional simulators used to train real pilots. Although the air was moderately good today in Arizona, there were enough "bumps" to get my attention. Keeping the plane straight and level required constant attention and input, far more than what's needed with an MSFS flight, most of which we sim fans fly heavily on autopilot anyway. I also barely use the trim when simming, thanks to over-use and being spoiled by autopilot. That is another area of weakness if you ever want to transition from simming to flying. I was surprised to see how much muscle--literally, muscle--I needed to exert to move the real plane the way I wanted it to move. A simming joystick removes that effort completely, making it artificially easier to turn, ascend, descend, or fly straight. MSFS is a huge help in a couple of regards that might give me advantages over other student pilots. From the moment I climbed into the plane I was instantly very much at home with the entire dashboard, especially of a Cessna Cardinal which is very similar to the classic Cessna 172 used in MSFS. An airplane dashboard is intimidating to most non-pilots, and would probably freak me out if I'd never seen it before. But everything was immediately familiar and recognizable. One of my favorite aspects of simming is using old-school navigation techniques, so I sim a lot using ADF, DME, and VOR technology even when flying planes with glass cockpits. So there were my old friends, right where I expected them to be: the VOR dials, communication and frequency panels, the numbers on them, etc. There's no turning back now. I will definitely keep on simming, but the PPL is certainly a firm goal now.

I really enjoy this creation quite a bit. It probably has some kinks to still work out but by and large it's great. They have some work to do on the VR though. It actually seems like they've kind of ignored VR. First, since MSFS and Oculus have not perfected the resolution for VR in Flight Simulator, most of us are unable to easily read dials on the dashboard without zooming into them. But for some reason, my zoom function on the mouse refuses to work for the Piper. This hasn't happened with any other plane I've flown on VR. The Piper being new to me this made things pretty hard. Second, when flying at night, the view looking out of the left glass windshield appears to be weirdly diminished. Looking in front everything looks normal. Looking left, diminished in brightness. This reduces the realism factor a bit. Not sure if it will happen in daylight flying which I mostly do. Third, since I couldn't zoom, the lighting was also a problem. In the C172 at night, MSFS gives me an automatic headlamp on my head to more easily see the dash--if the interior lights are off. In the Piper, no headlamp showed up, and the dash was too dark for me to find any switches to turn additional lights on (if there are any). Fourth, the mouse cursor is showing up twice, indicating a problem with how the plane has been reconciled with VR. With the cursor not being synced up with my eyes, I don't actually have a mouse cursor with which to hit switches etc. I have two, so I have to guess which one is the correct one, each and every use. That's a lot of gripes but I am just pointing out the defects that show up in VR only. Other than these it's a really cool airplane, and I especially enjoy the realism of it being "aged" a little not and very high tech.

*Twilight Zone music* Who really knows? :eek: I do a lot of ocean flying, mainly in the Pacific. There's a strategy to planning it to avoid too much boredom. There are a lot of stretches of blue water, yes. I try to strategize so that I minimize the risk of something going wrong like a fuel shortage and not having a place to land. This is sometimes impossible, and once I actually did run out of fuel and crash landed in the water. But I try to route things so that I can land on land in an emergency, and fly high enough so that I have more glide distance. Also, the weather effects in the Pacific are amazing with MSFS graphics, and even more so with VR. I always fly live weather and it's often a challenge. That too will keep you on your toes on the long stretches.

I use FS ATC Chatter and am pretty happy with it. ATC chatter from regions all over the world. https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/fs-atc-chatter-overview/ Note: It does not replace the actual ATC voice when speaking to you. It is background chatter only.

I don't fly the Bonanza that often so I'm not sure, but as I recall there is a button or switch to hit on the left side of the dashboard. It's either a master battery switch, or one specifically for avionics. If you mess around enough on those left switches you will find it. If you really cannot, the livery might be screwing things up within the program.

This forum can be helpful for you if you give us some more specific questions. MSFS 2020 is actually very similar to the 1982 MSFS I started playing on as a kid, in that the basic controls of the Cessna 172 are not different at all. The flaps are still the flaps. The throttle is still the throttle. You can manipulate all of those things with your mouse. You said for example that you have trouble starting the plane. You can start it by pointing your mouse at the ignition, and clicking so that the key turns toward the right several times until it reaches "start." Once you hit "start," the engine should start. To skip all of that realism, you can also just hit CTRL-E.

I don't think that's the case with any of the challenges--there are tons of people attempting them. Top 10 is bragging rights! Your practice and technical skills are clearly paying off.

Read a lot of reviews, some by real-life pilots. All are favorable. Decided to take the plunge.