Tag: MSFS202

3 topics I enjoy to talk about and why?

Paul

Topics

Science Fiction

To boldly go where no man has gone before!  You’ve probably heard that saying before but I grew up with Star Wars, and And Star Trek.   I even Grew up with Buck Rogers or even The Million dollar man.  I love the fact that there were new technology and new ways to deal with problems.   I would go to cons in my area whenever there was one and I still might when they start doing it again.   I can remember the days that I would watch every single episodes of the original Star Trek and want to meet some of these people myself.  I can’t imagine I am no the only one.  This is why I listen to all these audio books because I just keep imagining meeting different aliens and knowing what the world will be like or how different it will become.

Technology

It’s all in how you see the world.  Yes it so much more better seeing the world when I know that there are possibilities that we have never imagined.  I see companies that are trying to innovate and then I see companies who just like to keep the things the same.   Without innovation we would not become even better.   I could talk about technology until the day I am out of breath but I wouldn’t stop just for myself.   I even like to know what they will do in the future and I imagine them to be so much better than before.  After everything we’ve seen, can it not get even more better than we could possibly imagine?

Games

The cake is a lie!  Lately I have been playing old games that can easily be played on my newer systems because the games reminds me where I came from and why I did what I did.  It’s all in how you approach the problem and figure out the problem.   I simply love to problem solve and see what I can do with the games.   I guess that’s why I love puzzle games like Portal, Subnautica, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020,  Half Life Series and Terratech or anything that lets me build or problem solve.   I can’t imagine I am the only one who likes these types of games because it is just fun to be able to do things and try new ways to play a game or solve a puzzle in the game.   I hope the game developers get even more creative in the way they will allow the player to solve the game or let the player figure a problem out in several ways.

These are just a few things I can talk about and still do whenever I see Something that I want to talk about on my blog.  These are only a few topics that I enjoy to write about and even might even make more topics as I see more things that I need to write about.   What are some things you like to talk about and why?  Let me know what you like and don’t and we can discuss them in the comments below.

How to play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Steam version on Linux Mint 20.1

Paul
MSFS2020 on Linux Mint 20.1

Run Microsoft Flight Simulator

I’ve been trying to get this to work the last few days on Linux because of Windows 11 set to come out in the follow months.   However, I was also wondering if this would work on Linux as it should be able to to do.   As you know steam has some great ways to run windows games on it.   The problem that most people have is just to figure out the right way to run it.   I am here to help those who might still be having difficulty in running Msfs2020(Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020) on Linux because it seems to have so many people having issues with running it.   According to ProtonDB, This game should be playable with Gold standards which means it should run perfectly after some tweaks.   I don’t know about the rest of you but It’s more than some tweaks but I digress.

Install wine

The First step you will need to do is check out my other post about installing Wine on Linux Mint.  If you followed those instructions you are half way to getting it to run on Linux.   You’ll however want to install all the Wine DB and API’s that are associated with Wine to get it to work.  That includes but not limited to Q4wine, Playonlinux, Winetricks, All Wine Compatibility layers(Windows-Desktop-files also), Wine-binfmt  and the API layers that is associated with Wine.  I found sometimes they don’t automatically install these but they are necessary for several other games.

Install Graphics Drivers

Go to your driver manager app and make sure you have the GPU driver for your system.   I currently have a NVIDIA 1660 Super and an Intel 10-850 Core.   First I’d try the recommended but we’ll discuss this at the end.   Always download the recommended driver on Linux Mint but if you have a different Linux and want to download the NVIDIA drivers, check out the NVIDIA Unix Drivers for them to work with your system.  If you have an AMD GPU, you can visit the AMD website for your Linux Driver.  Once those are installed, you will probably need to reboot your system to make sure your drivers are active when playing on Steam or other games.   Each time there is an update, it will probably be a good idea to reboot just to make sure the drivers you want are being used by the system.

Install Steam

It seems Linux Mint 20.1 or some earlier version installs the Flathub version of Steam when they install Linux Mint.   Uninstall that version first,  I’ve found that it doesn’t do as a good as a job as the one you can get from the package manager.   I also found that it won’t run some games with Proton.   So that is the reason I say, just go ahead and uninstall it and install the real one.  This is the easy part of the installation.   Once done you are more than halfway there to be able to play your games like you want.

Download and Install Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Example of -FastLaunch

Once you have steam, You can now go ahead and download and install MSFS2020 into steam.   This will be a quick process.   Steam however will not allow you to download the game until you enable proton.  Go over to the Gear icon in steam and left click properties and go to Comparability tab.   I’d recommend trying Proton 5.13-6 first because that is what everyone else used to get it to work on their systems according to the ProtonDB. Once you do that, you’ll be able to download MSFS20 and install it.  Once installed, you’ll also want to add ‘-FastLaunch’ to the Launch options.    Once done with that, hit the little “X” button and try clicking the play button and seeing if it will run.

If it doesn’t work

Sometimes each system is a little bit different.   So I’ll talk about ways you can tweak it to get it to work on your system.    Some things to try:

  • Get a New or Older version of the GPU driver
  • Change the Proton version to a New or Older version or try the experimental version.
  • Check your Wine Settings(Although I didn’t have to do much with mine just install and try to run the q4wine once that was ran.   I didn’t do anything else but quit the program.)
  • Check the ProtoDB to see what everyone else has done to get the game to run.

I suggest making one change at a time and seeing if the game will run after the change.   If it is a GPU driver change, I suggest rebooting to make sure you are using the GPU driver you want to try to run with the program.  Also Don’t expect the game to run as smoothly as it does on Windows so be thoughtful when you are playing the game.   Sometimes there will be crashes and other things going on.  You can however try different configurations to see if you can resolve those issues also.  If you like this post please consider buying something from my affiliate list to support my blog and my time in write.

Why I bought Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Paul3 Replies

Simulator evolution 101

Saying that can mean so many different things, from First person shooters to flights like Microsoft Flight Simulator.   Each one has an unique aspect in the Gaming or PC world.   Now Let’s talk about what a Simulator is and then we can get into the mechanics of why someone would use this.  According to Wikipedia a “flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes.”

In the 1990’s it used to be a big bulky room with plenty of room for hydraulics and servos to simulate the direction and motion of the aircraft.  I know this really well because I on occasion would visit one of those places where you could see the flight crews flying in the simulator and it was so interesting and quite nice to see in actions.   The cockpit would be up in the air and you’d see the simulator tilt right or left or tilt down or up and you could imagine how that would be so fun to fly.   Now I on occasion I got to join the flight in the simulator because hey I was a little kid at the time and who’d not want to see it in action.

Simulations Still amazes me

I would on occasion remember those days in the big simulator and be in awe of what you could do.  So ten years ago I started looking for a simulator game or app.   I found the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and I was just amazed about it.   I started playing that simulator in the early days when it wasn’t really as good as it got today.   It was really fun and enjoyable to fly in those days to remind me what it was like when I was young.  The nostalgia alone is something that was the best feeling in the world for me.

Fast Forward to 2020

As the Pandemic hit and we were stuck in our house for days on end due to being lockdown.   I got really bored and started playing the old simulator.   I decided I wanted to see if they’re something new and better graphics.  So I found out that Microsoft was releasing the 2020 version later that year.   I ordered my copy of the software as soon as I was able to preorder it because well I was stuck in my house and wanted something to do.   I started using it and I have had the best time of life flying the game that reminds so much of my childhood as a kid in a real simulator.   I will say that it does take some time to get used.   You will also need a Decent graphics card to be able to play this one if you really want the realism of the way everything looks and how the terrain will look.   I suggest something like a minimum of Nvidia 1060 TI or higher and that is just the GPU.  A good CPU is recommended  something like an i5 or high would work just as well.   I never tried this on a I3 cpu so I am not sure how well it would work.   I encourage you to try it out on your system and see just how nice it is to fly a plane.

Buy Microsoft Flight Simulator (PC), (Steam),(XBOX) and explore the world!

 

How Computers have changed the world

Paul
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

The History of Flight Simulator

In the early 80’s and 90’s, there was very few people who actually knew this but bases and other places had flight simulators for their pilots to practice.   In the early days we had simulators where you had to schedule to have a chance to work on their pilot skills.   It would be a big bulky room with Hydraulics and even had a preformed landscape that was used.   This wasn’t easy to setup or even to move if you had to.   The building had to have massive room to make the simulator move and feel like you were in the air.  The controls didn’t always worked as they should of and you had to have someone monitoring the simulator outside and hit buttons to make the simulator do things they wanted too.  Pilots only had so much time usually allocated a hour at a time to fly the sim to work on their skills.    It always left the pilot with stress because they would want to do even more than the simulator could do.

The early Simulators:

  • could not fly to far
  • Had massive heat issues.  (The Simulator had to have a cool off period between flights)
  • Be down for days to weeks due to hardware.
  • Need Racks of physical tape backups
  • cost a lot to make and maintain

The Downfall of Simulators

Like most who are reading this, you’re probably asking yourself why would they have those simulator?   In truth, they were required by the FAA and the Military to train new pilots before they could actually fly a real plane or helicopters.   Pilots also were required to fly so many hours in a simulator a week to brush up on their pilot skills, in the early days.   When new models came out, the pilots would come back to the simulator to learn how to fly the new models such as the Boeing 747 aircraft.   Each simulator facility, there was a massive undertaking to update the simulator to the newest model and keep their pilots up to date on the latest techniques to flying.

Fast Forward to today

In today’s era, there are some major upgrades to the simulator.   The building has been reduced to more than half.   The simulator itself can be used longer and acts more like a real boeing 747.   The controls in the simulator work even better because the heating issue was resolved by the way the system has developed.    You really only need a few fast CPU and GPUS, such as a I9-10850k with a Nvidia 2060ti or even better a 2 x 3060ti with SLI.   The Simulator now has few downtimes and less heat and even more realism than the before.   You can feel the aircraft and expect it to do what you want it to do and learn even more about aviation, navigation, and communication in the new simulators.   Pilots can now do simulations at home with very little cost to them compared to what it would of cost in those days.   You can buy a Microsoft Flight Simulator and fly anywhere in the world you want to and keep up your flight skills in 2020.  No more needing to schedule to use that flight simulator when you can do it at home and learn the techniques that are required.

Some Useful Links:

 

 

Flying is Safer than most think, an in depth look at flight!

Paul
Boeing 747 - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate!

These words you probably never heard before if you were never interested in flying.  These are common to hear in practicing to fly or training to fly.   There are many acronyms you probably never rarely heard about in your lifetime.   Pilots have bunch of acronyms that if you were to listen to while they said it to the ATC(Air Traffic Control), you wouldn’t be able to keep up with it.   Just like Piosee(Problems, informations, Options, Select, Execute, Evaluate).   It can seem daunting if you were needed to figure out what they can say or what they want the pilot to do sometimes.


With the Airbus 330 Transatlantic Flight 236, the problem the pilots didn’t know about was they had a fuel leak.   Having a fuel leak can be hard to evaluate or even execute if there isn’t any major ways of knowing it.   Just like a car, we can have oil or even gas leaks and no one would know about it until someone would be looking for it.   The incident in question has was not even very well known in the early days because flying was almost so brand new that there wasn’t even checklists for some of the things we have checklists for now.   I’ve tried to find the checklists that they might of had in 2001 and I couldn’t find it, especially the Fuel Imbalance Checklist.

I emailed a friend who is an actual pilot and he couldn’t find it either.    So the report from the FAA says that it wasn’t prominent or not located on the FCOM(Flight Crew Operating Manuals).  In which case that was something they changed in the coming years to make it easier to see and remind pilots that it’s not a good idea to hit that switch to balance the plane unless you know there isn’t a fuel leak.

How they handles the Problem and tried to get Information to come up with Options, can be quite different in today’s reality unlike in the early 2000’s because so much has happened from then until now.   We’ve had flights that crashed and even flights that almost didn’t make it.   The Piosee is one of the acronyms that is most used in case of any malfunction or problem in the cockpit.   They have way more reundantacies than they did before even the FBW(Fly By Wire) aircraft have ways to fly the aircraft even when nothing is working.   This is also a good point to make that Peter forgot to mention about the RAT.   Wait they have a RAT on board?  No not an actual RAT but  a RAM Air Turbine which provides barely enough power and hydraulics for a plane to land with no engines or APU’s(Auxiliary Power Supply Unit).

Air travel is a lot safer than it used to be.

Just before I leave you, Let’s talk about flying in today’s society.   I know watching those videos can make people nervous to fly because well let’s face it could happen to you while you are flying.   We’ve seen many times where planes have landed due to emergencies due to bird strikes, to mechanical failures, and even pilot errors.   It’s so important to understand that the FAA requires planes to have  many redundant systems to give the pilot the chance to land the plane as safely as possible.

So the next time you fly, remember you’re in good hands because the pilots love their job and want you to make it to your destination on time and safely.

If you like to try the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 please Visit Amazon for it!