We all knew it was good, now Boeing is on board - https://www.airwaysmag.com/new-post/boeing-microsoft-flight-simulator-pilot-training
-
Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
Boeing to Use MSFS for Pilot Training....
- Thread starter rvn817j
- Start date
So many memes come to mind - none of them good for here...
A procedures trainer is not a flight simulator, so this is being misunderstood by a lot of people.
Essentially, a procedures trainer is there for pilots to learn the "flows" for a given airplane/airline and how the various systems work without spending several thousand dollars an hour running a full motion sim, and since PC hardware has got better and cheaper over the last few years, those have gone from "wood mockup of flight deck with posters of the controls on them" to flat panel touchscreens and/or VR headsets.
The airline I fly for actually used the Majestic Q400 addon for P3D as a procedure trainer when we had a fleet of those.
If an aviation governing body signs off on MSFS for this, it's not saying "this is completely accurate", but it's more along the lines of "it's close enough to how the airplane works, and it's not gonna hurt anything to use it as part of training".
Essentially, a procedures trainer is there for pilots to learn the "flows" for a given airplane/airline and how the various systems work without spending several thousand dollars an hour running a full motion sim, and since PC hardware has got better and cheaper over the last few years, those have gone from "wood mockup of flight deck with posters of the controls on them" to flat panel touchscreens and/or VR headsets.
The airline I fly for actually used the Majestic Q400 addon for P3D as a procedure trainer when we had a fleet of those.
If an aviation governing body signs off on MSFS for this, it's not saying "this is completely accurate", but it's more along the lines of "it's close enough to how the airplane works, and it's not gonna hurt anything to use it as part of training".
I haven't been involved with FSTD Level D (the top level for FAA certified flight simulators) devices for over 20 years, but the visual fidelity of today's MSFS far exceeds any of the Level D devices from 20 years ago. (And some of the "home brew" cockpits I've seen online are better than older Level D devices!) Level D devices aren't "completely accurate" either, they are just certified to a specific standard (e.g., use actual aircraft controls (yoke, knobs, switches, etc.) in the simulator and have the exact same dimensions as the actual aircraft...among other requirements). I wouldn't be surprised if MSFS (or some derivative of it or even X Plane) isn't used somewhere as the visual software component of an actual Level D simulator.
In the Navy (back in the day) our procedures trainer was a poster of the cockpit taped to the inside of the toilet stall.....
Sorry about the thread drift.
In the Navy (back in the day) our procedures trainer was a poster of the cockpit taped to the inside of the toilet stall.....
Sorry about the thread drift.
Victory103
SOH-CM-2026
One still gets the "paper tiger" cockpit poster issued, but I never opened mine as P3D worked well enough for the basics.