One of my long time wishes is to experience bumps when taxiing. When you get your PPL perfecting your taxiing skills by hitting all taxiway centerline lights is a fun challenge, and satifyingly loud. It gives you that “pro” feeling. Also cracks and seams should result in slight bumps.
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That would be really nice, but is unlikely to get implemented. Would take too much information and a rebuilt of every airport.
I think you’ll find the goal of real pilots is to stay on the centerline. There’s no reason to try to hit the taxi lights and no benefit to doing so. Very poor pilot technique. Besides, in the real world you may damage the lights and definitely put unneeded stress on the landing gear. Your goal should be smoothness, not bumps, both in the air and on the ground.
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I don’t know about hitting taxi lights & whatnot but feeling a slight bump as you transition between one ground texture type to another might be a simple way to simulate the location of “bumps”. Like for example taxiing from a dirt taxiway onto a paved runway might produce a slight bump. Crossing a runway could probably be detected also. Could take this even further & simulate rough terrain when landing off airport on grass, dirt or a gravel bar etc. All the bush flying I’ve done so far is silky smooth regardless of what I land on (assuming its flat that is). Yeah I agree, this sim needs more bumps.
One of the features of the full motion Level-D sims is when the nose wheel goes over the recessed center-line lights in the pavement, you feel a small bump in the motion and hear a small noise. It actually adds a lot of realism as you are accelerating down the runway for takeoff and the bumps are getting faster as the airspeed increases. I would imagine those that have seat shakers or rumble packs in there home cockpit setup, etc would appreciate the feature. Combined with VR it would add a lot.
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I may not have made it clear. I mean the taxi lights which you will roll over when you taxi if the lights are embedded in the yellow taxi line. In this youtube you can clearly hear the bumps when I taxi over the lights. https://youtu.be/uhyccEkBWso
Well put. The cues you get from the pavement greatly enhances your positional awareness etc. And I do recall that the “big sims” model bumps as an important part of the immersion.
I think this would go great with force feedback, too!
By the way, maybe it might make sense to edit your post to say “taxiway centerline lights” for clarity? I also thought you meant that you would enjoy plowing through the blue lights on the side!
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Was wondering if it’s possible to add an option when you taxi over the engraved taxi or runway lights to have an realistic sound of a “bump” just like in reality.
Especially during takeoff when the wheel hop over these lights faster and faster. It will give another element of realism to the plane while on the ground.
Seems very uncomplicated consider the location of the wheels and the lights is already known for the sim.
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