Add plausible failures related to lightning strike

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 :grimacing:

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. :slight_smile:

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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.

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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? :wink: