That content had written lessons (something also makes me think video lessons, but I may be remembering wrongly) that took you through the theory and practice of things like VOR navigation.
I'm not too optimistic for it appearing on Flight Sim 2020, (it probably required too much attention span and understanding of geography/navigation), but I imagine that the community will step up.
Already the community is doing a great job "fixing" the default A320 and implementing bits of the avionics systems that Asobo left "inop". There's a mission editor that should enable setting up interactive "lessons", and with the number of youtube videos on how to fly VORs and similar (some with flight sim footage and explanations), I imagine the content is all there for curating together.
I'm hopeful with the advent of YouTube and high quality video capture and streaming, we'll see video-based ground school lessons emerge that can partner with lessons.
Who knows, perhaps there's a mini business model here for creators to sell (via Patreon or even the built-in store?) curated mission lessons that go along with their YouTube content? I believe MS has confirmed you'll be able to make mission packs and distribute them via the store. And given how fast the modding is taking off, you probably already can drag a folder into your Community packages folder and have it work.
I personally played FS2020 and gave up after completing the tutorials because I didn't know what I was doing still. I feel like I could enjoy the game a lot, but a good tutorial makes or breaks a game for me. If I have to do a lot of work outside of a game just to enjoy the game it seems pointless to me.
You do not need to buy extra content, controllers, etc to "play the game". But you can spend a lot of money to make it as realistic as you want.
Many of us who are playing today also got our start with very simple and forgiving sims. When I got into them, there was no mixture, no prop pitch, no spins, no torque, and no p-factor (which was good, because I didn't bother binding rudder controls). It's a lot easier if you enable that stuff a few at a time, once you get the hang of the basics.
Unfortunately they missed quite a few important things in the missions (another commenter mentioned not being told to retract flaps after takeoff).
I do wonder if part of the interesting aspect of this being a sim is that you can actually go online and watch or read a real flying lesson. Perhaps that's the direction they're trying to go in? So far, the community has been doing really well in fixing up scenery, perhaps Asobo are hoping for others to fill the gap with mods.
Re needing to pay, I'm sure there would be excellent free content on learning it (in fact there already is online), but with value added structured lessons as a potential mini product.
Similar to FPS games coaching.
Instead of getting into your region's Platinum rank in Overwatch, you learn to solo fly a new type of aircraft with AI assistance turned off.
A "shared cockpit" remotely controlled plane mod to facilitate training in flight school would probably be helpful, but then if you start going down that route, you'd likely want a force feedback stick/yoke (and something like FS Force) to give you the ability to see and feel what's happening.
The only part I'm unsure of is if it's difficult enough to fly solo without AI assists to merit all this? Very hard to gauge when you can do it already. But still will be interesting to see what happens.
Pun intended?
seemed about 70% mixture gave me best performance.
I think MS should make that available on the web as part of Bing Maps.
The F-14's AI RIO "Jester" can actually guide you through startup, which is very cool
(It's been Janes-90s since I sim'd)
Agree that multiplayer how-to's is lacking.
More generally, the manuals of 80s-90s simulation games were often quite packed with detailed real-world info.
https://github.com/tpn/pdfs-flightsim/blob/master/Falcon%204...
Like, flaps, what are they? Oh, generate lift, used in takeoff and landing. Oh, the cabin is marked with settings for to and land.
The autopilot was a similar adventure. Step one, turn it on, crash. Step two, I can figure out hold altitude and heading settings, now I can take my hands off and Google the rest of the settings while the plane flies itself. Garmin has a manual you can reference.
Right now I'm working on figuring out autopilot approach and landing and nav data stations.
However, the flip side is that the simulation is generally realistic enough that you can use instructional materials for real world piloting. The VOR frequencies match the real world, the real SIDs and STARs are in the simulated Garmin GPS, etc.
Not sure how much this holds for FS2020.
That aside, there are folks who work on their pilot licenses and stream flight sims, I have learned a fair bit from watching them on YouTube.
Ideally as you say one should just be able to use real-world pilot training materials, navigational charts and aircraft checklists (for B737, for example, there is an unofficial iOS checklist app). Then all that’s left is documentation of sim’s limitations—a good sim should tell you in what aspects it fails to simulate the real world.
It’s actually really rewarding to be able to figure out (mostly) on your own how to complete an IFR flight, given just the charts and the 6 basic analog instruments.
(Same here, X-Plane and no MSFS—as far as I heard, the 2020 version is still outdated as far as simulation of the actual physics of flight is concerned and seems to not have changed much from FSX days.)
[0] https://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/index.html#modernmea...
[1] https://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2006/april/pho... [2] https://i.pinimg.com/736x/64/54/bb/6454bb2b0f28a0c77dc287f14... [3] https://pmdg.com/pmdg-777-200lr-f-base-package-for-fsx/#prod...
(Personally I have the B737 checklist app on iOS, even though I haven’t really flown it in the sim yet.)
However the overall experience is still very Beta. I got a lot of freezes, bugs on map (like a big bump on some runways that flip the airplane and game over) sometimes the nav get unresponsive (partial freeze of the game)
Even worse is that after you buy the game on steam, any in-app purchase is done on steam but download would be from microsoft and that just doesn’t work for a bunch of people.
At least this free models are just working when people copy them in place, while payed content is not even showing up at the moment.
When it comes to life-critical systems, you never rely on a single point of failure. GPS is potentially a single point of failure. It can and does have errors, either due to military jamming exercises, satellite failures, or other interference. I've personally had the GPS system in my aircraft completely fail due to interference.
It's also worth noting that the FAA considers VOR navigation a required skill. It's part of the core material on the test as a private pilot.
But YouTube has been great for that.