MSFS - Screenshots

Fun fact: For the weekly news update in the Alpha forum, they used to pick from member submitted screenshots. Someone posted a real life one and it got used. It lasted about 2 weeks before anyone noticed, and only then because the watermarks used the wrong font.

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Yeah, the main give away for some of those shots is that the plane is simply too clean; no weathering or stains.

Impressive for both the shooter and the sim.

At the risk of being banned from all flight sim forums ever: the visuals in this sim do a better job of immersing me than better system and flight models/lesser visuals would.

Fight me.

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@Navynuke99 had asked to post a few screens of Charleston and during the short flight that I took late last night, I snapped a few. It’s interesting from a technical standpoint, because being that there are no custom objects here (conjectured), you can see how the graphics engine renders the area and interprets how the objects should appear in depth.

Approaching the eyesore that is the WestRock paper mill that I drive by on the way to the brewery crossing the Don Holt bridge. A reasonably good rendition of a complex structure. The bridge could be better. The engine seems to struggle with bridges as you will see later.

Pretty good job with the North Charleston Terminal that is adjacent to the paper mill.

Further down the Cooper. DoD contractors at work?

The Ravenel Bridge. Yikes! It is such a beautiful bridge IRL, I was hoping that this might get custom object treatment. Real version below for comparison.

And our ladies the Yorktown and Laffey at Patriot’s Point. Not quite up to DCS Supercarrier standards :grin:

The east side of the battery. Could be worse.

Here’s where I think that it does pretty well. Passing over Bulldog stadium and beyond to the Citadel (Military College of South Carolina) campus.

The Civil War’s first shots were fired at federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter below, by Confederates holding…

…Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island. Pretty good rendition IMHO. Fort Sumter in the distance giving you and idea of how far the cannon balls flew.

Anyway, that’s my home town now, which out of the box looks pretty good. Some of the major landmarks need love, like the Ravenel Bridge and Patriot’s Point.

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Oof, I can smell that first screen- I lived in Hanahan when I was in Prototype, and went into the weapons station via the back entrance off Remount Road. 19 years ago there was forget all for pollution standards, so on bad days we’d choke at that part of the drive in. But still better than the dude I sometimes had to give a ride to.

Actually, I have a story about that…

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Ha! Good one. When I was a kid and we’d drive through Charleston, and to a worse extent, by the paper mill in Georgetown, it was rotten egg city. It’s not bad now, although on a rare day, if the wind is right, we catch a wiff on the patio. They are shutting down one of the mill’s 3 paper machines this year. That’s welcome, although I feel sorry for the folks losing their jobs.

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Flying down Thud Ridge.

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Nice! But you know that just makes me want a…never mind :frowning_face:

I’m A Thud Pilot

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First free airports are arriving, so thanks for the heads up from @ffly. Just a zip you drop into your ‘Community’ folder and it appears with a :star: on the World Map.

Not sure what sort of deal is going down by the car there…

Good to see Drzewiecki Design getting going.

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That’s the back side of the weapons station- those are roll on/ roll off cargo ships, some Miltary Sealift Command, some contracted through the Army- we used to see the coolest things loaded on trains going onto and off those ships.

If you loom further up river, you can just see the staff support barge for NPTU (Nuclear Prototype Training Unit, the two converted subs that are now trainers).

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There is a paper mill on the final approach to the ILS 35 in Augusta…about two miles and 600’ high on the ILS. When you are in the soup, you can smell it as you fly through the smoke from the stacks and it comes through the ACM (you also get a little bump).

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On the ramp at Orcas Island (OrbX). The animated line crew are a nice touch.

Sunset, on the way to Ketchikan, Alaska.

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Went to visit Port Stanley, Falkland Islands and looks like the bomb craters from the Black Buck mission are still there in the satellite imagery…

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Playing with some liveries this morning. They’ll be in the Marketplace for free if you wait, but if you want to drag/drop folders then info here (plus on how to create new liveries, plus assign AI flights proper paintwork)

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A gloomy day at SEATAC, prepping for a Delta A320 flight.

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Haha…that’s hilarious…great minds think alike. I just wrapped up a couple hours of flying - SEA down to PDX…

Took me a few minutes to get the plane started up…but probably took me about 15 minutes messing around with pages in the MCDU trying to hit enough buttons to get me where I wanted to go. By the end I had settled on the HAROB6 departure off 34R, but it turns out those ending waypoints are far too south for the transitions to PDX, so I ended up with a bit of a mess of a flightplan…oh well…

Picked a grey and rainy day…got the engines started up and pushing back…

The reflections of the taxiway lights rolling down the fuselage and the reflection of the pushback truck’s flashing yellow beacon…mmmm…delicious…

Nervously trying to figure out if I’m in the correct modes for everything. What the heck…power levers forward…

So I was busy making sure my airspeed and altitude stuff was working out, and forgot I was in HDG mode…so the plane didn’t follow the RNAV SID (ooops…SEA has a phone number for me to call…!)…

After futzing about with it, I relented and just finally managed to get the plane to fly to SHAFR, the initial approach fix for the ILS 28L at PDX

Absolutely love the broken layers, rain, clouds…just spectacular…

Doubt I was at the proper MEA on this route…came down to 10K a bit early and noticed Mt. St. Helens rolling down the right side…

Did an autopilot descent (managed by me, not the MCDU)…the plane flew the lateral profile just fine, and probably could have done speeds and altitudes as well…

On the final leg to intercept the ILS…wasn’t real sure when I could get away with arming the APR mode, so I waited until the needle came alive. I’m a little weirded out by seeing magenta LOC and GS indications…I’m not sure that those shouldn’t be green…

Another awesome feature of MSFS…rain shafts that obscure visibility. They are shadowed really well and this is what we often see in real life when the conditions are showery…

I also love that there is some randomness to the conditions. Sloping cloud decks and variable visibility. Here you can see 28R came into view from several miles out, but 28L was in the soup…a couple hundred above minimums…

Couldn’t figure out how to set DH…I’m sure I missed a knob somewhere. The autopilot flew the whole flight and approach perfectly. I used speed hold on the autothrottle and just put out flaps and managed the speed with the knob the whole way down…

Landed and taxied in to the gate. The rainy conditions truly feel miserable and it almost made me feel like I need to put on a coat to exit the sim…really nicely done Asobo!

Airbus functionality is…good enough in my opinion. It isn’t a systems-feast, but nor should it be. It gives a fair “Airbus Pilot Experience” without getting bogged down too much. I felt a bit bogged down in some areas…so there is still stuff to learn. No, all the ECAM screens don’t work correctly, but the general stuff works fine…and is what we should expect from this sim in my opinion.

I’d love to see us get a classic 737 or 757 at some point.

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Did you use the ATC yet? I find that if you delegate it to the Co-pilot (it’s about the only thing they can do without killing you) then it’s nice background noise and low effort. It does tend to put you at the bottom altitudes of any STARs (which around where I live is a little too close to rocky mountains) but it’s a not bad effort.

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VR and a PMDG 737 (due Q1 2021 apparently) is pretty much it for me. :slight_smile:

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No, I haven’t given that a whirl yet…it is a bit outside the scope of my “assignment”…but maybe I need to give it a look since it might factor into the overall piloting experience… :thinking:

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Which model 737 are they doing?

I also wonder if they can do HUDs with the base engine of this sim. There are few sims that get HUDs in VR done as well as Aerofly FS2 - that HUD in their Q400 is superb…