This seems quite possible to develop and could add a level of ‘Easter Egg’ realism to wake you up when you decide you don’t need to fly around nasty looking cumulonimbus especially when in older aircraft w/o the best protection schemes. Could do everything from a loud bang w/ no obvious failure, to damage to avionics, to full on explosion of a fuel tank and set you up for an emergency landing. Could be cool if not terrifying
Well, with the fact that there is lightening all over the place when there should be none, I’m not so sure it would have your intended results.
You know I read this but quite frankly in the past 150h I’ve seen none, zero lightening, until this morning when I did CYHF to KPWM and there was plenty! But that undoubtedly is a function of the weather I fly in. The FREQUENCY of events can easy be controlled w/ a slider as are failures of all types.
Due to the extremely rare nature of any significant effect from lightning strikes, it is possible that Asobo has already built in lightning damage effects. (doubt it)
The last time an aircraft had a catastrophic failure due to lightning was in 1967, when a strike caused a fuel tank explosion. I have been hit hundreds of times by lightning in everything from a 172 to a 737. Sometimes I wasn’t sure, other times it was the thunder created by a typical lightning bolt that made it very clear that even if didn’t hit, it was darn close. I have seen occasional light flickers when struck well away from the cockpit, but usually the brightness of the flash makes it impossible to tell if the cockpit lights flickered.
There are plenty of other atmospheric effects that we see in real life that do not appear in the sim that are far more worrisome. For instance, if you are close enough to a thunderstorm to be encountering significant lightning, you should be sustaining bruises from your shoulder belts in anything but the largest of aircraft. I have encountered turbulence in proximity to thunderstorms that has nearly exceeded the g rating of the aircraft. There is nothing that will “wake you up” faster than a sudden 600 foot drop while putting along in your Cub. If the “BANG!!!” doesn’t wake you up, your knees smashing into the underside of the panel surely will.
I read up on it a bit before posting and yes something tailored to reality would be great, including that uber rare event of a strike of a fuel tank complete w/ fire and loss of control! For a 10y project it could be cool to build in something like this, and yes other atmospheric effects all good!
Isn´t an airplane like a Faraday cage and lightning does absolute nothing to the electric and electronics?
Certainly true for modern A/C.
Not really this true - equipment still can fail die to induction as lightning strike create also a magnetic field which also influences radio frequencies (that’s how they also can be located by stations).
If a strike hits an airplane it may affect modern aircraft more than older steam gauge ones as an increase of some induced millivolts may either toast some transistors or diodes or at least may lead to systems hanging/restarting/not working properly.
The aircraft will not drop dead out of the sky but might lose some systems like in this case:
Well this is very, very unlikely.
The only damage you will find is structural in the form of entry and one or more exit holes. Antennas and pitot tubes can be affected in theory.
It is very unlikely for anything else to happen, especially to internal components. All the years I have been flying, all the types I have flown (from old to modern) and all the airlines I have worked for there has never been such case.
In that video, likely an antenna got damaged by lightning, weird because they likely have 3 VHF radios with separate antennas. Damage to avioncs is maybe not impossible but very improbable.
I don’t know how “lighting strikes can be located by stations”, ADF is known for being interfered by lightning, but nothing is gonna point to a thunderstorm as if it were a beacon.
In any case no point in simulating this.
Yes ok, so that was not avionic related.
Interesting you say so - Airbus however does not in general rule out damage to systems on their own safety page:
Electromagnetic fields related to a lightning strike can cause unwanted transient voltages and currents in the aircraft wiring and its systems. As required by the regulations, aircraft must be designed so that there is no perturbation of a critical or essential system in the case of a lightning strike that could temporarily or permanently affect its operation. The level of protection given to a particular system depends on the likelihood of the system being affected by lightning and the impact that a loss of this system would have on the safety of the flight.
Protection from the indirect effects of lightning strikes is ensured by:
System redundancy
Physical and electrical segregation of the redundant systems
Electromagnetic protection on the electrical harness where required, using differential transmission lines, shielding and over-shielding, and specific routing rules
Electrical isolation or use of lightning surge arrestors specified inside equipment ports depending on their potential exposure to lightning strike effects
Management of corrupted data by system software.
Source: Lightning Strikes | Safety First
So I guess there was nothing wrong with what I wrote, right?
Redundancy is always key.
Yeah every FCOM has similar text, as I said, very improbable. Damage due to lightning strikes are usually external in the form of little holes, burn marks etc.
In the context of this wishlist item I’m saying there is no point simulating anything other than a flash and a loud bang. No point in simulating failures as this is not likely to happen.
By the way, there are other way more serious threats associated with thunserstorms that are interesting to simulate, hail, severe turbulence, windshear etc.
Saint Elmo’s fire would be cool also .
If we take this as a benchmark there should nothing change as any failure is unlikely due to redundancy and good maintenance (MSFS is at least not a maintenance simulator). A broken/burned out classic bulb might be the most common scenario that could be simulated. At least aircraft are the most safe form of transportation.
I’m also not a fan of more or less pointless wishes but on failures one would have to draw a line at which point it’s pointless and at which not without putting specific manufacturers into bad light.
A lightning strike scenario as a failure however could enable a limited set of common electrical failures without doing so as the cause is “natural” and not “just cause”. As mentioned such failures would not be extreme, however they could take out a radio, an ADF or DME. You’d switch to the backup and it’s fine.
A setting for that kind of failure could just do the rest (how often should lightning strike system damage occur? Never, realistic (1:1000000), often (1:100), always).
I think these are 2 separate issues. The chance of an engine failure is equally small, most will never experience one for real in their career.
Would it therefore be realistic to fail an engine randomly in flight, no, as with damage caused by lightning strikes, the chance is statistically so small that it wouldn’t be realistic.
Should you deliberatly fly into a thunderstorm, there is a big chance you’ll end up with some sort of damage, overstressing the airframe, damage due to hail, etc. Contrary to lighting causing damage, other thunderstorm threats are worth simulating.
For those that want to use MSFS to deliberatly simulate failures that option should be there of course. Either as a probability or certain trigger, in any case, this must be optional.
I don’t think we will ever see this happen in MSFS. Realism is not the prime focus for MSobo. It has been 5 years since FS2020 launch and we still don’t have precise control over visibilty / RVR in order to simulate low visibility operations for example.
They even took the humidity slider completely away in FS2024. I think as a serious tool for training such as simulating failures, this is just not the best platform. Some 3rd party planes might be offering this but you’ll still be bound by the platforms limitations.
I can surely agree with most you say, however you have to keep one thing in mind (OT):
The whole MSFS series was never(!) a FAA approved training tool. It’s a realistic entertainment sim, build for home usage in contrast to X-Plane (build in first place for training and simulation of aircraft designs) or P3D (build out of ESP for military training).
It’s entirely different audience groups even if MSFS is great and on point in many aspects, especially visually. They in first place have to justify not pilots, instructor or agency agents but casual players and especially investors.
Things may also get even more realistic by time but the business priorities are different with career and missions in mind as well as other “fun” things to do it’s what keep things funded here so that also other simulation related things can be enhanced or added in future.
And it is for this reason I’m saying that I don’t think failures will be considered, not any time soon at least. For simulating failures (e.g. lightning strike) there are better platforms.