Shock and Awe Shucks!

Yesterday I completed the upgrade to MSFS 2020 after three tries. My first attempt was to install it on my windows 8 machine, but that failed. I tried again after applying a windows 8 to windows 10 upgrade, but the simulation would not run on that hardware.

 

After pondering for a month or so, I decided to invest in a "high end" gaming machine. I wound up in an online chat with a salesman at Dell. I told what I was trying to do and how much I was willing to pay and went with the Alienware Auro RA R11, with some upgrades which came in just under $1500 plus tax.

 

The Specs:

10th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 10700F (8-Core, 16MB Cache,

2.9GHz to 4.8GHz w/Turbo Boost Max 3.0) Windows 10 Home, 64-bit,

English NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 2070 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 (OC Ready)

16GB Dual Channel HyperXâ„¢ FURY DDR4 XMP at 2933MHz;

up to 64GB (additional memory sold separately)

256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)

 

Not sure what all that means, but there it is for those who are interested

in that sort of thing.

 

When the computer was finally delivered, I plugged it in and as soon as I could, I installed STEAM, downloaded Flight Simulator and started the lengthy process of downloading all of the updates. That took six or seven hours, I reckon, but I got a chance to play with it a little bit and make sure the game was working. I learned how to work the throttle and the ailerons, crashed three times, then I went to bed.

 

This morning I tried a flight out of Ellington Field (KEFD) in the Cessna 152, the same plane I got my SEL rating in some 40 years ago. My home field, back in my flying days, was Houston Gulf, which lives on in FS2004, but alas no longer exists, so I selected Ellington where the astronauts come to play with their T-38 jet trainers.

 

This was my first flight in FS2020 that did not end with uncontrolled flight into terrain, but it was something of an adventure, nonetheless. I could not get my CH yoke to work, so I put that aside and headed southwest along a familiar course, toward Victoria Regional. I chose that route because I happen to remember the nav frequencies for Victoria and Palacios. It took me awhile to figure out how to work the nav radio. Fortunately you can do most things with the mouse just by touching the knobs in the right place.

 

I was well on my way before I noticed that the fuel tanks were only half full. There were plenty of places to refuel on the way, so I pressed on, however, I failed to pay attention to the gauges and ran out of gas near Victoria. My first successful landing was an emergency landing in a grassy field. I did not want to abandon that flight, so I used the menus to put some gas in the tanks (let's pretend a local farmer showed up in a pickup truck with a barrel of 100LL in the back).

 

With that I managed to take off and fly on to my ultimate destination, which was Beeville. When I spotted Chase Field out the left window, I decided to set her down there instead of continuing on to Beeville Municipal on the other side of town. It was a pretty good landing, considering, except I am not sure I really cleared that tree at the approach end of the runway. MSFS let me get away with it, anyway. It took me awhile to stop because I did not know how to work the brakes. With the throttle closed, the darn 152 rolled and rolled and seemed like it never was gonna stop. I finally resorted to putting on the parking brake and that was that.

 

Notwithstanding the many horror stories I have read on this forum, I am looking forward to a lot of fun this holiday season with FS2020. I intend to avoid updates for awhile, if possible.

Hi, good post. Thanks for sharing.

I’m glad you’ve got it working & it certainly sounds like you’re enjoying it :)

It takes a bit of getting used to but I’m sure you’ll sort out the controls etc soon.

Happy flying!

 

Regards

Steve

I'm not sure you can avoid updates. Generally, they make it better anyway.

Great post, man! By the way, I'm originally from down your way and went to many, many air shows at Ellington Field back in the day. Fond memories seeing the space shuttle Enterprise when it landed there on 747 piggyback!

If you are having trouble with configuring CH yoke or rudder pedals, like me, there are several helpful videos on youtube. Search on "CH flight sim yoke fs2020" and take your pick.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite the overly sensitive pitch and roll control, the sim seemed easier to fly with the USB controls than with the keyboard and mouse only. My biggest problem with landing using keyboard controls was getting lined up with the damned runway, but with the yoke and rudder pedals, it was a lot easier. Heading in to runway 36 at Scholes field, I had no trouble maintaining runway alignment or descent angle. My only error was I had clearance to land on 32, but nobody's perfect.

The new Update includes Presets for the CH stuff according to the Release notes.