Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Scenery

Sydney is the de facto capital of Australia, containing as it does, the most iconic architecture, beaches, harbours and people.

Microsoft official trailer for their free scenery upgrade to Australia.

"One of the cool things about Microsoft Flight Simulator is the ability to do multiplayer flights with other players over the internet. I have done quite a few of these, most often group flights where we explore some interesting part of the world while we talk about flying or other things, over Discord or Skype. I've also done flights with my Australian friend Pete (a.k.a. "MiGMan"), often testing out routes in his ongoing MiGMan's World Tour (MMWT) Series. This is an enjoyable social aspect of flight simulation, where airplane nerds can talk with other airplane nerds about airplanes as they pretend to fly them!"

A 747 Jumbo Jet has been converted into accomodation next to Stockholm Arlanda airport and Microsoft Flight Sim has modelled it in great detail.

Like most (all?) folks, my first flight in MSFS 2020 had to be to my childhood home.

In my first caching experiment I cached the Williamtown RAAF base near Newcastle. That only used 45mb of space, so this time I set my sights higher. Or broader.

Located in the far NW of N.S.W. at the intersection of Kidman Way and the Barrier Highway, Cobar's main activity is mining. One of the oldest, Peak Gold Mine was opened in 1896, and the CSA Mine is one of Australia's highest grade copper mines.

Explore the vast irrigation bores, reservoirs and ditches around Collarenebri, and fly over Moomin Gin. In 1962 a small group of pioneering cotton growers formed a cooperative at Wee Waa and processed 98 bales of cotton in the first year. Today Namoi Cotton processes up to 84,000 bales per week at it's 11 facilities. In 1794 the first cotton gin patent was granted in the USA to Eli Whitney. Today at Moomin Cotton Gin the process of separating cotton lint from it's seeds with the descendants of Whitney's invention.

Explore the western third of Grand Bahama.

I saw this beauty at Wellington aiport in June 2021.

Livery by Donka. | Ac modelled very nicely by Asobo. It feels like you're sitting in a small car rather than an aircraft, and that seems to be authentic. A good slow speed sight-seer and of course it's also amphibious. Remains under utilised ATM but I must drag it out for local flights where there are any water features about the place.

Signing in and out of Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 can cause some settings to change, so I made this checklist to keep track of them and quickly get the sim back to where you were before.

Explore the nearest ports and features just south of the border from Portoroz LJPZ.

Thredbo, Perisher and Mt Kosciusko mission. Thredbo and Perisher are two of Australia's most popular ski destinations. While not the most dramatic peak, at 7,310 feet Mt Kosciusko is nonetheless Australia's tallest. RAAF 20 years livery by Impulse Simulations

Thredbo, Perisher and Mt Kosciusko mission. Thredbo and Perisher are two of Australia's most popular ski destinations. While not the most dramatic peak, at 7,310 feet Mt Kosciusko is nonetheless Australia's tallest. RAAF 20 years livery by Impulse Simulations

The Jacaranda capital of Australia, Grafton lays astride the Clarence river and features Edwardian and Victorian architecture. Fly east of Grafton to the coast and then north to the coastal towns of Wooli, Minnie Water, Sandon, Brooms Head, Angourie Point and Yamba. Then return to Grafton via the Clarence River.

The Pitts Special demonstrates superlative object modelling by Asobo Studios.

LJAJ Ajdovscina is home to a Pipistrel factory.

There are 5 flights out of Divaca in Slovenia 1.

Cruise ~ 80kts | Sightseeing. Excellent visibility. | VERY short take off and landing. Can operate on most terrain. | Evolution: Piper Cub > Zlin Shock Cub > Zlin Shock Ultra (ultralight) | Ac modelled phenomenonally well by Asobo. Livery by Donka.

I spotted a local MiG-29 at the airport. Also took a few shots from the lofty peak of Mount Ararat.

After a 14 year hiatus Microsoft re-envisioned their flagship IP. A combination of Bing satellite mapping, cloud storage, Azure cloud computing, photogrammetry, atmospheric physics modelling and many other bespoke software technologies have delivered a quantum leap in the flight sim experience. The next decade looks to be the best yet for flight sim fans!

The key commands, categorised with a prefix and CaMel added to help with a quick visual scan of this list of over 200 commands.

The scenery addons I use in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

What I said 18 years ago about Flight Sim 2002 seems totally applicable to this new sim:

Previously to get anywhere near this level of detail for a particular locale you would have to purchase a 3rd party scenery pack and then suffer abominable frame rates.

With the ability to automatically generate buildings, trees, static and flying aircraft and the associated radio traffic this package must have sent shock waves through companies whose business was based on enhancing the Microsoft sims. Still, the open architecture is there and the Pro version even includes an object / aircraft construction kit.

I'd imagine some business plans are hastily being rewritten and in the end we are all better off.

The sim has the ability to support computers and graphic cards that aren't even built yet - but they will be!

Yet it still runs on an average PC and looks good. Who could have imagined 10 years ago that this level of detail and complexity could be modelled on a PC? Only in my dreams!

MiGMan, 2002

The Pitts Special demonstrates superlative object modelling by Asobo Studios.

Explore the nearest ports and features just south of the border from Portoroz LJPZ.

"This is a modification to the MSFS 2020 default Microsoft Pilatus PC-6/B2-H4 Turbo Porter aircraft, including all of the G950, Floats, and Skis variants. It is primarily aimed at improving the aircraft flight model to make its overall performance more closely match the actual aircraft, providing a much closer experience to flying the real aircraft. Multiple changes have been made to the flight model and engine parameters, as well as the weight and balance, which are all detailed in the Change Log file in the Documentation folder. A PDF copy of the actual aircraft POH is also included in the download under the Documentation folder."

Concise tutorial shows how to unlock custom external views with one simple text file edit.

I still felt that some of my landing problems are controls related so I went looking. This guy is long winded but the gist is to find flight_model.cfg (I think) for your aircraft. Save a backup copy then edit elevator_effectiveness from 1 to maybe 0.1 and similar for pitch and rudder. Fast forward to find this part of vid. Then set the sensitivity to 0.0 so all are back to linear with no dead zone (for me). With my stick, this makes it feel and act much more realistic to me in the XCUB and C152.

The developer has added all the fuel tanks available in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. This is a free upgrade and a gift to flight sim cockpit builders!

I use the Bell 407 for Helicopter flights in MiGMan’s World Tour as it is beautifully modelled and easy to fly.

Images from the ’Thredbo, Perisher and Mt Kosciusko’ mission in Australia 4.

Recon flights I undertook in the development of MiGMan’s World Tour.

Videos around 1 minute in length.