I've been testing the functionality of MCE as of late, given that IYP
is totally dead and gone. Everything seems to work pretty well. I
know that there are some issues with auto-landing or assisted landing
for us, but I have some ideas about that.
From what I read on this list from the past, the devs of MCE basically
stated that auto-landing could not be implemented for all supported
aircraft. This was confirmed by the support team when I had an email
conversation with them recently. This makes total sense to me, since
each aircraft is different, and the auto-landing procedures would have
to be aircraft-specific. But then I got to thinking: Why do we need
that much assistance anyway? IYP was great, but I think in some ways
it handled way too much for us, and in that respect it lessened the
realism quite a bit. Given all of the feedback that we get from MCE,
I believe that landing is actually doable without needing much more,
if anything, coded. The following facts have been confirmed to me by
one of the support staff:
It is possible to set Nav1 frequency for ILS approach with voice
commands, i.e., "set Nav1 111.95" in MCE. MCE will call out
altitudes, headings, and speeds any time we please, and can do it for
the entire time that we are changing altitudes if we want. There are
also callouts to let us know that the localizer and glideslope are
alive. These two things are huge. Vectors are given to us on
approach directly by ATC, and as long as we follow their instructions,
there shouldn't be an issue with course. If MCE isn't able to descend
the aircraft automatically for us (though it probably can since it can
handle takeoffs), then I am sure that there is most likely a way to do
it manually. So as long as we follow instructions by ATC correctly,
and as long as we perform the right steps at the right altitudes and
speeds, I.e., gear down, extending flaps, etc., we should be able to
lock onto the localizer and capture the glideslope to land. My point
is, we should have all of the information we need to allow us to do
this. The great part is that there wouldn't need to be
aircraft-specific coding of MCE, limiting us to one or two aircraft
with landing capabilities. The feedback and information that we would
receive is universal to any supported aircraft (speed is the same
regardless of aircraft, as are altitude and heading, and the localizer
and glideslope have nothing to do with the aircraft being flown), so
we should be able to land in whatever we want to fly. Yes, it would
require us to learn the exact procedures to land, when to do what step
as we're descending, but hell, I think that's way cooler than just
having my computer do it for me, and certainly adds to the realism.
And the best part is that the devs aren't stuck trying to implement a
massive amount of code for each aircraft. Given how many aircraft are
supported by MCE, that would be an undertaking of leviathan
proportions. Thoughts?
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