my microsoft flight simulator 2020 findings and opinion
Hi guys.
As most of you already know, Microsoft flight simulator has a non talking user interface. It is possible to work with the UI with NVDA and OCR once you learn how to but many would find it Tedious. IF you wanted to give it a try, remember that the loading screen is completely blank and takes a lot of time, the first setup is kind of inaccessible do to the way it's shown, so have sighted assistance for that one, and after that it is quite doable to load your flight, select your aircraft and set a flight plan.
Note, I will be updating my findings, currently my information and findings are limited because i don't have a software or anything to read the aircraft instruments or actually control it. So after i get my hands on that, this will be much more expanded.
Now, let's forget the UI and find out what things can the new sim offer us? What are the new things.
1. Environment sounds. My personal favourite new thing. When you are on the ground, you definitely can tell whether it's day or night. there are city noises for the airports close to a major city and one of the airports that i tried had more birds around chirping since it was a small town. I will have to try more airports, perhaps the ones near the beaches and see the differenses. in any case, on the ground and close to ground, when you are landing or taking off, you can hear the environment, from birds chirping to crickets. I quite like to switch to external view on final approach to hear the landing zone! To confirm, Do different cities sound different depending on where they're located? I know that fs has animals so, we'll see.
2. I noticed quite a lot of nice turbulence sounds both on the air and on the ground. The engine sounds are beautiful and carefully engineered, e.g. when climbing you can hear the engines having to put up more power. Also new high quality switch sounds and also the parking brakes, actually sound like parking brakes.
3. FS 2020 flight planner supports sid, star and transitions now, a huge change. IT seems that the charts data for it is also updated to 2020, this might not be very interesting if you use other fmc software. but it's still a good option to have, specially since navagraph has promised updates for it as well. Heck maybe other aircraft add ons will try to interface their aircraft to the existing flight planner, but in any case, if you roll with default flight planner and don't want to pay extra for other FMC software, then you can tell those angry vatsim controllers that you can perform all these procedures too! Well actually most of them are not that much angry if you don't send them private messages describing how you handle laundries blind! While they're controlling Los Angeles International Airport at peek hours!
4. IFR ATC no longer provides vector guidance on its own, and only provides altitude guidance now. which is sad. probably because they put in sid/stars into the system now, However, Reportedly there's an option always visible in the ATC window called request vectors for next waypoint. Also apparently it has some issues and needs to be worked on. I will provide more info on this.... My laptop does not have a scroll lock key so i can't open the ATC window! OMG.
5. Now to more interesting stuff, AI assistance. This thing is a little bit complex to grasp if you can't look at the screen, because microsoft. But there are two types of assistance in the game. AI full control assistance, and also uh, normal game assistance, I guess i also can't come up with good names lol.
AI full control assistance: Turned on by pressing control+alt+x. This bad boy can do three things, possible to turn each item off:
1. Automatically perform checklist items. Good for getting your aircraft ready instantly for takeoff, because microsoft has only three checkllists, before startup, startup and before taxi i believe. bad for obvious reasons, we want to do these ourselves.
2. Auto handle ATC: The AI will automatically communicate with the ATC. sometimes useful perhaps.
3. Full aircraft control, The AI will completely take over your aircraft and no no matter if you have a VFR or VOR to VOR or IFR flights planned, It will land your aircraft and put it in the gate and shut it down! Obviously not a very exciting aspect for us, cause you know, we want to fly the thing ourselves, but you guys are very naughty and i know you are already thinking about using this to smoothly taxi onto the runway, and after landing taxi your aircraft into a gate, So yes you are very naughty and this is possible. Also if you get lost in an online event or on vatsim, you can turn this on and it will take over and put your plane back on track.
Now onto normal assistance system, I believe Jason and other developers will find this part pretty interesting and if it is possible to exploit the way these work, we can use these to our advantage, specially the navigational aids assistance, because if Asobo does the thing, that thing, making navigational aids assistance audable, then suddenly we do have a very fun and accessible flight simulator!
I am going to drop here the assistance menu and provide a very short description for some of them, so you see how is this new system and what it actually does. each option, except the sections which i put a number before them, have an on and off button.
1. Piloting
takeoff-autorudder. -When turned on, will assist you during takeoff so you won't stray off the runway.
assisted yoke. Will help you to handle the yoke, i assume that it will stop you from stalling the aircraft accidentally.
assisted checklist. -Would probably be very useful if there were more than three checklists in fs, but this will put two buttons next to each checklist item. auto complete, and validate if i'm not mistaking.
assisted landing. Will help you land the aircraft!
assisted takeoff. Will help you with the departure, i assume it would pull the yoke and adjust flap settings etc.
delegate ATC to AI
2. Aircraft systems
Auto mixture
Unlimited fuel
aircraft lights
gyro drift auto calobration
3. Failure and damage
Crash damage
aircraft stress damage
engine stress damage
icing effect
4. Navigation aids, This part is very interesting to me, Imagine if some of these options suddenly became audable, and you had audio cues for each of them, specially taxi ribbon, route and waypoints and landing path. for now let's imagine,
route and waypoints. Will provide visual guide,i assume it draws a big line for you and will show you where the next waypoint is
taxi ribbon. provides visual guide on your taxi
landing path. Shows you a path to follow straight onto the runway. IT'll help you to not miss the glidescope, etc.
smartcam mode
poi markers
city markers
airport markers
fauna markers
5. Notification
piloting and controls notification
aircraft system
flying tips
objecctives
software tips
6. User experience
ATC Panel open at start
show message log in ATC menu
ATC voices
checklist panel open at start
VFR panel open at start
nav panel open at start
Anyways i believe this flight sim is the future and i really hope we can make the UI accessible and have more addons that could help us fly. Please vote on the official FS forums that's about making talking UI and menus here:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/ac … ers/252315
More topics and efforts from me are on the way to gather feedback and submit them to Asobo and other people so our voices can be heard.
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