Introduction and my first bug report

hi all! I'm 66yo retired software engineer, been a keen gamer for all my life, currently having nice time playing FS 4 using PC and hotas X. There's a bunch of issues I've found, and now that my membership here has arrived I'll start with something I found only minutes ago. Flying from Thailand to Hanoi Vietnam, I found that the green path indicator wanted me to fly into tall buildings, around 500 metres to one side of the actual runway. I managed to come around again and land on what appears to be the proper runway in Hanoi.

Another issue is that all of the "taildragger" aircraft I've tried flying so far, results in some ridiculous timescale issue, like as soon as I increase throttle, I accelerate so quickly that I crash before I have time to blink nearly. There are many instances where green indicator path actually goes through mountains, as if aircraft can go through them rather than over the top. I consider that putting the word "tutorial" in this game is misleading. Only the brave and someone that is already an accomplished pilot would stand a chance getting up to speed on this game. There is much to learn, and other sims manage to do a half decent job of teaching some, even if the learning curve is steep. This game gives the equivalent in swimming lessons of throwing you into the shark pool and yelling "now swim fast". All that said, I still very much enjoy the game now that I have been patient and put into the effort of learning mostly through trial and error. Overall, feels like you have some very talented guys in your development team, just not enough of them to fill out the game. I was playing MS FS X before seeing this game, and thought that the price being lower than MS FS 2024 and the apparent better performance would make it a good investment. Learning how to fly generally happens once, but it's one of the toughest courses in life and not something to be skimping on. I did see suggestion to see the website for tutorials. Sorry, but not only does that not work for me, I consider it a pathetic excuse. No, I don't want to keep hitting alt tab and remembering what I saw in one screen when looking up another. Nobody does. I want to learn things, one at a time, and practise it just after learning. I want to learn at my pace, within the one game. And I'd like at least a bit of fun while learning. Learning how to fly is the cover on this book, and the cover in this case is ugly. Okay all that said, I personally have probably learned enough to fly most aircraft on most routes, occasionally biting the bullet and looking up something else, like how to set combined mode in F16 nav/AP computer. No, I still don't know that one.

thanks for the welcome guys and gals! Here's another couple of issues I found. Airport in Kyiv, Ukraine is around 40 metres lower than surrounding terrain. Doesn't look like it belows, it's like the airport sunk 40 metres. It is apparent that mouse clicks are determined to be valid by checking duration of down, using game time. This means that when game is sped up or slowed down, that mouse clicks can be ignored, until timescale is returned to somewhere around normal. I don't see a benefit in this approach, I suggest to use real time when looking at inputs, as human inputs are associated only with real time. You can replicate this by using cheat engine and its "speedhack" function. That's how I speed up long flights, and sometimes slow down tricky approaches. There are very few games that I don't exert time control on, using cheat engine scripts to assist in the bindings. BTW, it is apparent that the game doesn't allow speedups beyond somewhere around 10x. Perhaps annoying, but also seems reasonable.

Couple more issues I found: the state of tow line connected/disconnected is not being restored after rewinding/redoing a glider segment. To replicate, take off with glider being towed by aircraft. After disconnecting, rewind to time you disconnected. Issue is that it never reconnects. I used the rewind/redo multiple times in challenge at Farnborough A30 display, and found multiple times that on second rewind, the game locked up. Alt-F4 to exit was my only obvious way of getting out of this.

Challenge "Los Angeles - Van Nuys" uses helicopter. For me, I crash within a few miliseconds, denying me potential to pass challenge. Re tow line disconnect issue: I'm using PC and Windows 11, fast CPU, 128GB memory, 4070 GPU, SSD.

Challenge "Gibraltar Approach" on my system loads for 20 minutes - and has no indication of completing load. CPU usage of Aerofly during this load is up to 6 percent, much the same as other challenges. Other missions are using 4GB before challenge start, around 7.5GB once load completed. "Gibraltar Approach" keeps using memory, like at 40GB usage it's still going, at which time I kill the process (I have 128GB memory total). CPU usage varies in a way that indicates mostly complex loops, but overall in endless outer loop. CPU usage at times does go back to zero for less than a second. No disk or network usage during load that I noticed. My CPU is Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

Edit 14/Jan/2026: Today I was able to load and complete Gibraltar Approach challenge. No idea what caused loading issue above.

Sound does not recover after coming out of hibertation. To replicate, be in flight, hit escape to go back to menus. Hibernate Windows 11. Switch power off to computer. Now power up and come out of hibernation and attempt to continue game. No sound. Workaround: exit Aerofly, run program again. Sound works again.

Here's another bug I found tonight. For the first time, I flew a "Scheduled Flight". It appears that these keep changing. At the time, on offer was flying an A380 from LAX to Melbourne. Around 6200NM from memory. When the distance got down to around 100NM, suddenly distance to Melbourne changed to 1500+NM. This kept happening, the 4th time distance had just dropped from 32NM to 31NM, and it suddenly changed to 252NM. I don't mind paying for games. I don't mind beta testing games. I paid for this, but it feels like we are still in beta testing phase. Some additional formality in bug reporting / responses rather than ad hoc posts where ever in this forum could help. If there is some formal system/thread for bug reporting, then please someone let me know where, it's not obvious. It's not just developers that need to know about issues, it's every users with an issue that wants to see if it's listed already.