Airbus pilot tries Microsoft Flight Simulator [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jchxsSdBRLo

by doener • 6 years ago

116 111 6 years ago

prennert• 6 years ago

His voice is unbelievably recognizable a pilot voice. Is this something (commercial?) British pilots learn during their training?

bartvk• 6 years ago

Authoritative and soothing at the same time.

thom6• 6 years ago

I assume it's not so much that, and more that it's another industry with a sub-optimal diversity record.

thom6• 6 years ago

I appreciate the downvotes, but there is a reason that most people in this job (that costs tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to train for) sound reassuringly like a middle class man. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad for noticing the pattern, and certainly not for enjoying planes or computer games, but given that the UK government, industry groups like IATA, and several airlines all admit the issue, let's all take a deep breath.

netsharc2• 6 years ago

Geez, you seem to have a hard-on for this "more diversity!" issue.

Does it matter much for piloting? It's quite a mechanical job. I'd argue diversity matters more if you have a team of movie writers (how many movies have terrible female/minority characters because of the diversity problems?) or UX designers, but I don't think your race or gender matters much when piloting a plane...

Of course there is probably currently an excess of white male pilots, but that seems cultural and a socio-economic problem, if you fix the culture (e.g. if little girls also get asked equally as often as little boys if they'd like to be a pilot (instead of a nurse; or if the same percentage of black folks can afford pilot school as white folks), shouldn't this problem fix itself?

Personally I'd cheer on a pilot scholarship for disadvantaged groups, because it'd be nice to see them having some sort of advantage in reaching their dreams after hundreds of years of disadvantages, but I don't think having more black or female pilots would change the job, since, as I said, it's quite a mechanical job. Whereas having a woman or minority in a movie writing crew would probably make a better story due to a more diverse perspective.

duskwuff• 6 years ago

Given how much pilots and ATCs talk among each other on the radio, I suppose it isn't all that surprising that they would develop an identifiable accent.

dylan6047• 6 years ago

Calm, level inflection with no emotion. Everyone starts to sound the same.

bredren3• 6 years ago

It is often said that many pilots emulate Chuck Yeager's voice.[1] Yeager was a US test pilot and jet flying ace.

Tom Wolfe has a great novel about Yeager and other test pilots called "The Right Stuff."

[1] https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/silky-smooth-chuck-ye...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np272lmVRkU

ojbyrne• 6 years ago

The Right Stuff is non-fiction, not a novel.

FpUser2• 6 years ago

Have never heard of Yeager before but after quick reading of Wikipedia ... OMG, what an amazing man and amazing life.

pmoriarty3• 6 years ago

This reminds me of a story that I think was about Yeager, where due to some human error on the part of a mechanic (I think in regards to fueling his plane) Yeager almost died, and after the accident he surprised everyone by asking for the same mechanic to be assigned to service his plane on his next flight. He explained his choice by saying expected that mechanic would not make the same mistake twice.

I probably butchered that story a bit.. anyone recognize it and have a link to the original?

HenryKissinger• 6 years ago

From the blackbird copypasta:

Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the " Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.

schoen• 6 years ago

In case people haven't read the whole original:

https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...

bhupy• 6 years ago

I think it’s the subtle audio interference combined with the distinctive commercial pilot vocal fry.

dylan6047• 6 years ago

I enjoyed having Harry Kane flying the plane. Good to see he's got a fall back when his footy career ends.

sdfhbdf• 6 years ago

I love his reference to feeling the texture of the seat just by looking at it. Pretty relatable

bjarneh• 6 years ago

That was unexpectedly interesting.

kergonath• 6 years ago

The best kind of interesting!

Jerry24• 6 years ago

Just yesterday I watched a few "real X pilot flies X in a simulator" videos. One of my favorites was a real Rafale pilot flying a Mirage 2000C in a dogfight in DCS [1]. Amazing instincts and skill.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlM53d9g9q4

pmoriarty3• 6 years ago

Are there any good videos like this where the dogfights are many-on-many instead of just one-on-one?

I'm not a pilot, and my knowledge of dogfighting is next to non-existent, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd expect that it would be much harder to utterly dominate one's opponents when there are a lot of planes in the air, any one of which could take you out when you think you've got an advantage on someone else.

A busy dogfight would probably be more exciting to watch, too.

Jerry24• 6 years ago

Are there any good videos like this where the dogfights are many-on-many instead of just one-on-one?

Something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWa7NrSd55w

unoti• 6 years ago

Are there any good videos like this where the dogfights are many-on-many instead of just one-on-one?

Tons, yes, here's one to get your started:

Superior Dogfight: 4 x Navy F-18 vs 4 x Air Force F-15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80rDX3pANeE

agumonkey• 6 years ago

pretty strange slow pace and large landscape with a imposing sense of death coming

rediguanayum• 6 years ago

There's a Youtube channel with a former US submarine sonarman. Here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9bMgCQyFNaMPsK9GtzM5dQ Watching him play in a submarine video game as an Astute SSN is interesting as he tries to dodge torpedoes using noise makers and obstacles is interesting due his commentary and tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHnt_uJqTUA

Jerry24• 6 years ago

That was great! Thank you so much for a recommendation! If you have any more, pls share :)

x86_64Ubuntu• 6 years ago

I can only imagine what the features to implement spec sheet looks like for creating a flight sim.

ygra• 6 years ago

I certainly didn't think about that they would have to re-implement the entire (or at least most of the) computer system the pilot is interacting with as well.

ourmandave• 6 years ago

To compare, here's a real A320 landing in Nice France during the day.

It kind of has the same over the water coastline approach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjWG3WRM5yk

hirundo• 6 years ago

I feel like learning to safely land whatever plane I'm flying in is just due diligence. I wish each seat had a simulator for the current aircraft available as an entertainment option, for me to brush up on in case everyone else who could fly it chooses the wrong entree for dinner. You know the toy steering wheels that children play with in cars? Like that.

disposedtrolley2• 6 years ago

That would be awesome, but it would also mean that IFE systems would actually need to be made well!

The current ones from Panasonic seem to have caught up to the original iPad: https://www.panasonic.aero/our-offerings/systems/x-series-bl...

niklasrde• 6 years ago

It’s hard! They’re not slow by choice, they’re slow because of the years it takes for safety approvals, testing, and certification to complete. I’ve met a creative director who’s responsible for Norwegian’s IFE last year, and she was telling me about some of the crazy challenges it is to try and work with the hardware and software constraints they get. The software teams certainly have the resources and knowledge to build a great, modern platform.

Svip• 6 years ago

The pilot and co-pilot are not allowed to eat the same thing for this reason.

gruez• 6 years ago

in case everyone else who could fly it chooses the wrong entree for dinner.

I thought modern airliners can auto-land? All you need is someone to walk you through dialing in the numbers.

aaronmdjones3• 6 years ago

First you need to know how to use the radio to ask for that help. Just putting the headset on isn't enough; finding the microphone button is half the battle, and then you need to know what frequency to tune to, and how. Then you need to follow along with those instructions.

Even assuming everything goes perfectly up to that point, the plane can only /land/ itself -- assuming you're approaching an ILS autoland-capable runway, in a plane with autoland equipment installed. You still have to idle the engines on touchdown and engage reverse thrust. You may have to keep the aircraft on the runway centreline after touchdown. Then you need to shut down the engines so emergency vehicles can approach and passengers can evacuate safely.

It's not as simple as "dialling in the numbers".

paranoidrobot• 6 years ago

Unfortunately this is typical "All you need is..." fallacy.

Even assuming for a moment that yes, all you need to do is dial in the numbers...

Have you ever tried to run tech support over a dodgy phone connection to someone who's never touched technology before? Where one wrong button push turns off all of that automation? Where there's no chance to go "Ooops, undo that!"? Where it's a very high stress situation, involving a huge number of acronyms?

Even just managing radios could be a major problem - you may quickly find yourself out of range of the controllers, and if you haven't figured out how to ask for and change frequency, well you're now not talking to anyone.

rangibaby• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

jacquesm• 6 years ago

The salmon mousse strikes again...

js22• 6 years ago

Passenger[0] lands King Air, with his family aboard, when pilot died shortly after take-off:

https://youtu.be/aqPvVxxIDr0

The video is a reconstruction from the radio recordings. I learned that air traffic controllers are rarely themselves pilots and that finding someone with King Air experience during an emergency isn't easy. This video is recent, but the incident happened in 2009. News story from that year:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2009/april/14/u...

[0] He'd earned a private pilot's license 18 years prior, but had quit flying shortly after with only 80 hours total time logged.

Waterluvian• 6 years ago

80 hours decades earlier is probably enough to have the fundamentals down. Even just knowing how to use the radio puts you quite far ahead.

It’s kind of the argument for basic first aid training and other things like that.

js22• 6 years ago

He only knew how to use the radio because he'd had the pilot show him before take off. He described the King Air as being so different from the plane he'd learned on that it might as well be the space shuttle.

One of the controllers who helped get him down realized she had to simplify the plane for him. He had been struggling with the autopilot and she got him to turn it off and fly it manually. He was fortunate to have some great controllers to help him and a clear day with no wind.

After the incident, he started flying again and went on to become a rescue pilot.

myself248• 6 years ago

Youtube's been trying to get me to watch that for eons, and I kept clicking away from it because it's simulator video. I thought it was just someone roleplaying.

Now knowing it's an actual event being recreated, I might have to go give it a watch!

beobab• 6 years ago

I have GamePass, so I thought: "I'll give this a go. How hard can it be? I'm really good in Elite Dangerous."

Turns out: Quite hard. I have a newfound respect for airline pilots.

On a related note, even my RAF cadet experience 20 years ago counted for naught. Whilst I could keep the plane in the air, landing proved the most difficult, and I crashed and bounced and would not have survived without invulnerability switched on.

_s2• 6 years ago

Private pilot here -

It’s not that difficult to land; especially in a sim where you can experiment without worry.

It’s all in the setup - as you line up on your final approach, make sure you are at a prescribed speed and rate of descent; generally in a small plane (172 etc), you’re aiming for around 300-500ft/m at 70-80kts, and the plane is pointing to hit the runway at the threshold (piano keys / white lines).

Counter intuitive: Throttle controls rate of descent, elevators control speed. Mess around until you feel these two things clicking.

When you’re around 20-30ft above the threshold, reduce power to idle, keep the aircraft straight and level or the nose just slightly high and just let the plane drop on to the runway!

Whatever you do - don’t force it, take your time and you’ll have far more fun actually going to places and stopping there!

g_p4• 6 years ago

These are good tips for flying GA and getting started in the sim. Older versions of FS used to teach more of the ground school theory than the current version. I did the tutorial just out of curiosity but it didn't really teach enough to have an understanding of flight in the way the FS2004 lessons did.

For flying jets though (assuming this is what the GP means when mentioning the respect for airline pilots), you'll have some higher numbers, and you'll use the thrust for speed rather than the "counter intuitive" approach you'd use in a smaller aircraft.

The things to remember at first are that you're moving faster than you think in the air, so you need to take a longer final approach than you may think as a newcomer, as you're "consuming" that distance rapidly. You'll also need to get used to lining up with the runway (assuming you're doing VFR approaches, which isn't how airlines do it in reality) and find a reference in the cockpit. And chances are you'll be coming in far too high as well - you will feel lower down when you get the view from up front (compared with a side window) and often end up too high. If this happens, go around and try again - if you dive down to compensate, you'll end up gaining too much speed and miss your touchdown zone on the runway.

A good way to learn and practice landings is to wait until ILS and autopilots in FS get their bugs fixed, and learn enough to configure them to fly the landing. If they're accurate replicas, the A320 neo should be able to land itself from ILS. Learn what the approach looks like, and get used to the height and view of the descent. Then try some ILS approaches with flight director on, but autopilot off, so you're flying the approach yourself, but with guidance. This can be tricky if you're not used to the auto throttles on an Airbus though.

WalterBright5• 6 years ago

I usually fail miserably at driving simulators because I drive by the "seat of the pants" feeling, and you get none of that with the driving simulators. It's similar to how badly I do with flight simulators, as I constantly overcontrol it because there's no feedback to my body.

dmd• 6 years ago

I'm guessing you're not a pilot, then, because the first thing you learn is to absolutely NOT trust your body (by which I mean your vestibular system) - you have to rely on your instruments - your body will always lie to you and get you killed.

WalterBright5• 6 years ago

I presume you're right about that, but up to a point. My father was a fighter pilot, and he said you live and die by how tight you can turn without stalling out ('cuz then you'll fly right into the crosshairs of the guy behind you trying to line up on you). This is done by feeling in your seat and the control column the minute trembling of the wings as they reach the stall point, and that's exactly where you need to place the airplane.

I took a class in performance driving once. They say to cinch the belt down as tight as you can so that your seat feels every nuance of the road. And it does, and it works. With some practice you can feel when the tires are right at the limit of their grip. It's just like reaching the stall point in an airplane when the wings lose their grip.

Also, airplanes have a "feel" in the control column, and they definitely fly by that pushback. It's so essential that Boeing jets have a "feel computer" to push back on the stick to simulate what the pilot would feel if he were directly controlling the surfaces. There's none of that in the flight simulator games.

olivermarks• 6 years ago

The driving sims with feedback rams under moving seats are amazing, this is how pretty well how all of the new generation of racing drivers learn tracks and skills. Very expensive though. https://youtu.be/X9PoorzvU2k

nilkn• 6 years ago

Disclaimer: I’m not a pilot in real life.

In MS Flight Simulator so far, I noticed that I quickly developed a habit of flying almost 100% from instruments even when there’s great visibility outside. I don’t know if that’s because of what you describe here, or because it’s difficult for me to manipulate the camera and fly the plane at the same time, or because this is actually just the best way to fly a plane. Either way, it’s worked pretty well for someone like me who had no flying experience. I’m also terrible at racing sims for what it’s worth.

WalterBright5• 6 years ago

It's certainly the best way to fly in real life if you're flying IFR in zero visibility conditions!

dylan6047• 6 years ago

I feel like everyone on the road except me drives by the seat of their pants with absolute last second decision making that leads to "rude" behavior. As many defensive driving classes I have taken (yeah, you know why), I actually learned a few things from them and now drive very defensively, and it is clear that the majority of drivers do not.

Nition4• 6 years ago

Imagine putting this much work into every detail of your simulation, and then getting negative reviews on Steam because there's background music during the initial download.

gambiting5• 6 years ago

tbf, the initial download screen is so bad I can't believe it was actually coded by a microsoft studio. It's a 120GB download, so I thought ok, I'll just play some other game in the meantime, right? Nope, they forgot to check if the application is in the foreground and check for button presses even when the download window is minimized, meaning that when I play something else pressing "A" on the controller presses the "help" link on the download screen, opening a new browser window and microsoft help page. So....nope, I can't play something else while Flight Simulator is downloading its data, because whoever coded it doesn't know basic principles of input capture on MS platforms.

Nition4• 6 years ago

Yeah, it's bad, and it's the first thing you see as well. But it's not "negative review for the whole game" bad. I just muted it in Windows in the volume mixer (although I bet a lot of people don't know you can mute individual apps). I didn't notice your input problem but that sounds pretty annoying.

g_p4• 6 years ago

The downloader itself also just doesn't meet the level of quality I'd expect Microsoft would want before putting their name to something. Microsoft is meant to be all about cloud, and this seems to be a single threaded downloader, pulling one file at a time, then decompressing it. Once it's decompressed fully, it moves into the next file.

It's not a deal breaker for me - I just left it running for a couple of hours, but the process seems sufficiently fragile that many people had quite serious problems getting it to download.

I'm not a game dev, but it feels to me like there's a few areas where FS falls short of what I'd be expecting as Microsoft. I'd want it to be responsive and start quickly (at least presenting something on the screen), and I wouldn't want it to be using full GPU in the menus. Teething issues are to be expected, but the downloader is critical and it's the first experience people have. A shame they didn't use some more reliable file transfer tech (or even just thread it!) The general lack of multi core use on the sim is definitely quite disappointing though for a 2020 release that's doing lots of general calculations and other tasks that benefit from threading.

slaymaker1907• 6 years ago

You can control the volume of individual applications from the volume center on Windows. Shouldn’t be necessary, but I assume that would probably work.

gambiting5• 6 years ago

Ok, the download screen is even more broken than I thought. I'm using a GTX1080Ti, and when the download screen is in the foreground, it's using about 15% of my GPU(still stupid, for a static text screen, but whatever), but when the application is in the background.....it's using 60% of my GPU!!! So it's literally burning about 200W of GPU power just to download some files. And all because they probably forgot to enable a framerate limiter on that screen when in the background. Mind boggling.

aloknnikhil• 6 years ago

To be fair, the negative reviews are mostly because the steam installer only installs the game installer which then downloads the actual game. And that counts towards gameplay hours. And just the sheer size of the download means the number of hours spent downloading and thus counting as hours played puts the game outside of the refund window.

nodesocket• 6 years ago

Steam is very liberal on giving refunds even if you go over the refund gameplay hours of Flight Simulator.

Essentially all the reviews I've seen of the actual game and experience have been extremely positive.

wdr1• 6 years ago

That's a bit of understatement.

- As others have pointed out, you can't background it during a 100G download. It continues to capture keystrokes.

- There's no way to mute the annoying music. So forget about passing the time on Netflix or YouTube.

- If the download craps out midway, it frequently gets stuck. Meaning you might have to delete those 80g you already have & start again. (Unless you tell what is complete & isn't.)

Feolkin• 6 years ago

I think it's completely legitimate (not necessarily the music, but the launcher has enough issues). I'm not sure why we're expected to put up badly designed software just because at some point we get to play a good game. I will absolutely give a game a bad review if certain parts of the on-boarding experience are terrible. My most recent one was Fallout 76, where all the problems getting the game running in the first place drained any interest I had in trying the game and at least giving it a chance.

galkk• 6 years ago

There was a similar recording 2 years ago: retired soviet military pilot (no piloting experience in 20yrs) is trying simulator of MiG 29 (with VR helmet). He did some maneuvers and even land the plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEGH965Dvp8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjDhZ2Qx2bw

Jerry24• 6 years ago

Don't speak Russian but this was awesome to watch. I guess like driving a bicycle, you don't forget how to fly a plane.

fakwandi_priv• 6 years ago

Does anyone have any insights regarding licensing?

Is MS opening a big wallet or is it the other way around where these companies want their newest planes in these type of games? In the video you see "unbeatable fuel efficieny" and I remember seeing Iberia on one of the boeings in the launch trailer, seems like adverts to me.

dylan6047• 6 years ago

Waiting for Boeing 737MAX to show up without the optional equipment.

shayankh• 6 years ago

made my day really

dom96• 6 years ago

Wow, after playing Microsoft Flight Simulator and flying the Airbus myself this was incredibly informative. A lot of crucial things outlined here, like for example I didn't know you could control the autopilot like that.

dylan6047• 6 years ago

:50 into the video. "I don't think this word means what you think it means."

alphagrep12345• 6 years ago

What's the use case of Flight Simulator? If it's meant to be a practice testbed for pilots, how does using (playing) it on laptop/xbox give you the real flight experience?

aschobel• 6 years ago

I use it to do a practice flight before I do a real world trip to a new airport. That gives me a much better idea of terrain and what to expect than just looking at charts.

It’s also a huge amount fun and let’s you do things that would be unsafe in IRL.

Airbus pilot tries Microsoft Flight Simulator [video]

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