FSFlyingSchool Review

This review has been authored by Paul Webster.

Sadly, not many of us are lucky or rich enough to be able to access personalised flying tuition, and being self taught does have its drawbacks. Mainly, how do we rate our own performance or know which areas of our flying we need to work on?

FSFlyingSchool (FSFS) is a unique product which interfaces with MS Flight Simulator (2002, 2004 & FSX) in order to assess and critique your flying skills. By closely monitoring all available aspects of your flight, a simulated instructor is able to offer in-flight hints and tips and, upon landing, a detailed post flight assessment of both your strong points and the areas that need improvement. All default aircraft are covered and there is an expanding database of settings for 3rd party add-on aircraft available for users to download. Longevity of the product is guaranteed as you will want to use FSFS throughout your flying career as you progress your way up the ladder from the Cessna to Boeing making certain you can handle each aircraft safely and efficiently.

FSFlyingSchool’s Front Panel

Each flight is scored and permanently recorded in your personal log book. You can monitor your progress on individual aspects via the career analyser, which charts your individual scores for each successive flight. Scores are based on how well you control the aircraft during taxi, take-off, cruise and landing. Bonus points are awarded if you are flying in difficult conditions and points are deducted for use of the autopilot. Once you feel you’ve perfected your skills you can post your scores on the FSFS website and compare them with other users.

Additional features of FSFS that are definitely worth mentioning are Circuit Training, Random Failures, and Airmanship. In a real world flight school, circuit training is where you spend most of your time, as it involves all major aspects of flight - take-off, climb, banked turns, cruise, descent, and landing - all with limited time and scope for error. If you know your upwind leg from your base leg and you can fly circuits properly and repeatedly in your current aircraft then it’s time to progress to a more demanding machine. Random instrument and systems failures are fully configurable in FSFS. Whether you want rare and random minor instrument blackouts to regular full on system failures to challenge you further, it’s all available. Whilst you’re cruising to your destination (the boring bit) you can use the Airmanship Challenge feature to test your skills. The instructor will set you a random challenge such as maintaining pitch, speed, bank angle, or heading (or a combination of these) for a limited time. He will then score you on how well you did (trickier in poor weather).

In-flight (Pilot’s) Settings

FSFS is available as a download from the http://www.fsflyingschool.com/ web site, where you will find all the information you need to get you up and running, along with a series of movie clip tutorials on configuring the product which are well worth watching. The download is actually the demo and the full version of the product. The full version becomes available once you’ve purchased your unlock key. The difference between the 2 versions is that in the demo you are limited to a restricted geographical area around Chicago and you are unable to upload your scores to the website. A brief note on the FSFS website and community – it seems obvious that the developers of this product are dedicated to constantly improving FSFS. They actively encourage feedback from users, both negative (which it is evident that they use to make improvements) and positive (which gives them a warm happy glow – I hope).

Flight Analysis (part 1)

Flight Analysis (part 2)

Installation of FSFS is straightforward. Double-clicking the install program does all the necessary work as you’d expect. Once installed, before you do anything else you will need to read the manual which is available from the Start menu under FSFlyingSchool. Interfacing an application with FSX has to be done in the correct manner for it to work at all well, so it is important that you closely follow the instructions given for running FSFS. Before you proceed, you’ll need to make sure you have the latest and correct version of FSUIPC installed on your PC the manual and website go into detail about how to achieve this.

I found the most successful way of using FSFS with FSX was to

• Launch Flight Simulator
• Create and save the flight I wanted to go on
• Start the flight so that it’s fully loaded and ready to go
• Alt Tab out of Flight Simulator and start FSFS
• Load the relevant flight plan in FSFS
• Connect the 2 programs using the button in FSFS
• Go back to Flight Simulator and start flying

It is a bit of a palaver, but until Microsoft come up with a better way of interfacing 3rd party applications (rumour has it SP2 will see some improvements), we’re stuck with a bit of beating about the bush.

One other minor issue is that FSFS is unable to tell when the Taxi stage has finished and the Take-off stage has begun, so a keypress of Ctrl Shift 1 is required to let the instructor know not to shout at you for taxiing too fast and having your flaps extended.

Other than those minor points which are beyond the developers control, FSFS works very well with no noticeable impact on frame rates (YMMV). Once your flight has ended and you get your verbal post-flight assessment from your instructor, it is best to Alt Tab back to FSFS and disconnect from FSX so you can browse your written assessment and post your scores if you feel so inclined.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed using FSFlyingSchool. As a 3^rd party training add-on to Flight Simulator, it’s pretty unique and it certainly achieves its goal of helping you to develop your flying skills, whilst being fun at the same time. It’s also one of those rare add-ons that have built in longevity. I look forward to using it for a long time to both prove and improve my skills on basic and advanced aircraft, whether they are the default ones included with Flight Simulator, or 3rd Party add-ons. The developers are obviously keen to continue to improve and expand their product further, which they seem to do with every new release, so FSFS can only get better as time goes on. I’d actively encourage you to download and give the demo a try. I’m sure you’ll enjoy and value the experience enough to pay the modest purchase fee. If for some reason you really don’t get on with it let the developers know why so that next time you try it you will be hooked.

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