MSFS FlyingIron P38L Lightning first look (and first crash, and second look)

[Chairman]

FlyingIron released their much anticipated P38L Lightning for MSFS this afternoon. Time for a first flight. It's a fighter, so off to EGOD and the Mach loop as you do. In live weather, also as you do. The actual weather at EGOD as I type this is hosing down with a 45 knot wind across the runway, so it's improved a lot since my 1st flight.

The first try can be summed up as 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes'. The second try got off to a better start (I could see more than halfway along the runway) but before I even got to Dolgellau to begin the loop - or possibly after, I don't know, I only got brief glimpses of the ground flashing past above me as I somehow missed the hills - I thought screw this and started climbing on instruments. I can barely fly through clouds with modern steam gauges and thought I had no idea how to read 1940's steam gauges but I somehow made it up to the top after pausing only once to fall upside down out of the sky. On instruments that I couldn't read properly. w00t.

Let me say here and now that hand flying up through that cloud was unquestionably the most terrifying VR experience I've had, but worth it for the way the cloud turned from black to grey to white then suddenly I was cruising in the sun on top.

With no plan to get back down and the Cairngorm mountain range below me, but with loads of petrol, after a bit of thought I summoned the emergency GPS and pointed the plane at London. When I got sick of the plane bouncing around in the turbulence I also summoned the emergency autopilot and descended through the muck and ice popping out about 6 miles from Heathrow. Even I could find that from 6 miles away, and a few minutes later I was safely on the ground and off in search of some clean undies.

Brilliant plane and an awesome way to spend an hour and a half, but I really must stop taking my first look at planes in weather that makes ducks look for shelter.

Click here. Go on, you know you want to.

[Charl]

MSFS does that rather well...
How are you coping with the various controls in VR?

[Chairman]

The ones I use all the time (TQ, flaps, gear, trim) I have mapped to joystick or TQ buttons. For the rest, it's down to the mouse. I often set the plane up ready to taxi in 2D then flick into VR because it's just easier to mouse things in 2D Xplane does that bit so much better, we can use VR controllers and actually reach for switches and knobs and move them, so intuitive, so much easier, so much faster. MSFS will get there eventually, or maybe XP12 will arrive and be as visually stunning as MSFS.

[Charl]

Mmm someone will wake up to voice commands for the copilot, I'm sure.
I could never get used to the "hands" in AFS2.