I feels I can’t go back to default liners like the 747 and my irl most loved 787… the 747 without auto trim feels akward but I figured that’s how the plane actually works.
While the 787 general handling feel not too different from the a32nx, the sound definitely don’t feels real, in cockpit view even touchdown at ~500 fps gives me the annoying metal scraping/hitting noise which hints I dropped the plane hard… it just don’t feel right
That’s an interesting observation concerning autotrim.
The 787 unfortunately doesn’t feel too different from the A320, because Asobo has inexplicably added autotrim to the 787 with SU3.
I really hope that Asobo makes the 787 fly like a Boeing again with the next SU.
Sounds are nice IMO and 500ft/min is pretty hard, that more an unflared ‘arrival’.
Oops I didn’t notice about that, so in real life Boeing’s don’t have auto trim?
Autotrim is actually a bit too inaccurate in this case (even the old CRJ 100/200 have autotrim).
It’s the Airbus like fligh path stability in the 787 which is the main problem combined with autotrim.
If you reduce the speed, the nose on conventional aircraft drops and you have to retrim.
On the FBW Airbuses (A320-A380) there’s a flight path stability function which does the opposite.
If you reduce the speed, the pitch attitude increases to (approximately) maintain the flight path.
This makes flying somewhat easier but it reduces the ‘feel’ of flying an actual aircraft even more.
Flying an FBW Airbus IRL feels surprisingly artificial and disconnected.
Autotrim is (simplified) responsible that you don’t have to retrim when changing the pitch attitude.
The MSFS 787 presently autotrims (no retrimming required when changing speed) and it also slightly alters the pitch attitude for a partial flight path stability.
Both things don’t happen IRL.
Maybe it’s my misuse of words, I don’t mean in the AP engaged mode but full manual flights, where the a320 and 787 do maintains the pitch angle as what I used the game pad stick holding to for a while, so the slight change in thrust or so don’t alter the pitch a lot, whereas the 747 of say I maintain climb angle of 15degrees nose up, as soon as I release the stick it will drop back instantly to whatever the trim position is and need huge manual input trimming to stabilise. While this sounds right and I did read that in real life you feel the steering column and when the trim is right the feel that needing to apply force to maintain pitch angle would disappear. But since the game don’t have that force feel, it makes manual flying very difficult to impossible to fly reasonably smooth as I have to repeat the let go-> see VS and apply trim → let go and see if it corrected procedure
I’m talking about manual flying as well.
E.g. level flight with the 747, 250kts at 4000ft and 770000lbs = +5° pitch and ~44% N1.
Now smoothly increase the pitch attitude to +10°.
The speed will start to decrease and nose will drop to around 7° if you return the yoke to its neutral position. (with decreasing speed pitch will decrease further)
(The real one is a bit more stable in pitch doesn’t reduce the pitch again that quickly initially)
Now repeat the same maneuver, but simultaneously increase N1 to ~64% N1.
The pitch attitude will basically remain at the new pitch attitude without the need to retrim.
The 747 (and the 787 IRL) behave like every other conventional aircraft, it’s the same in a C152.
I never understood the argument concerning the lack of force.
Same setup as above. Reduce thrust to idle and increase the pitch attitude to maintain altitude.
Don’t retrim. Keep increasing the back pressure and the pitch attitude.
At 220kts add thrust again ~44% and +7.5° pitch attude. When speed and pitch (and hence altitude) are stable, note the force required to hold the stick/yoke in its off-center position.
Now start applying continuos nose up trim and watch how the force required to maintain the +7.5° attitude decreases.
As soon as the yoke is centered, stop trimming.
ah ok, I was just watching youtube pilot videos and they always says about the correct trim is the one it reliefs the pressure on you yoke, which I feels makes sense to maintain smooth pitch angle as IRL I don’t think I’ve experienced pilots keep trial and error on the trim setting
Not sure if I understand you correctly.
They technique I described is exactly the same IRL and in the sim.
There’s no trail and error.
Just to make sure, you use the elevator to set the new pitch attitude and thereafter you trim the force required to hold the stick in the off-center position away.
The technique is the same with a joystick or gamepad stick.
The problem is most likely the too short gamepad stick where is noticeable more difficult to slowly relief the pressure than with a normal sized joystick.
I’ll hook up my gamepad and try.
hum~ I think I got what you said, just the part of “The speed will start to decrease and nose will drop to around 7° if you return the yoke to its neutral position” I think I misunderstood with trying to release the yoke and see what pitch it settles.
yea I do think the game pad short stick is too short a travel for this and I wonders in the default window view is there in cockpit trim angle % visible easily in Boeing? coz it seems that the amount of trim I am able to set in each button press is not that much and I always over/under correct it.
btw IRL does airbus have the auto trim?
I understand. If you would increase the pitch attitude from +5° to +10° without adding power, you would have to continuosly trim nose up to counter the ever increasing nose down moment.
The trim rate might be even too low initially to keep up with the nose down moment.
Unfortunately MSFS has a unrealistic automatic trim rate increase if you keep trimming for more than ~2sec.
Trim on Boeing and Airbus is displayed on one of the center screens, but this doesn’t help.
You can’t trim to a specific value because the required amount of trim always changes.
What are the sensitivity settings on your gamepad?
They must pretty big (at least +50%) to achieve the necessary fine control movements.
All FBW Airbus and Boeing aircraft have autotrim.
The difference is that Airbus uses it to provide the flight path stability and hence it’s always active.
On Boeings it’s basically only active when e.g. extending/retracting flaps to reduce/remove the resulting pitch moment.
thanks for the detailed explaination, I also checked on web about A320 auto trim and it seems like the airbus is doing so as you said, for flight path stability, so e.g. at takeoff I can hold the pitch up angle for a while and it will auto trim to maintain the flight path, so in that time in game I can turn around and engage various switches and not affecting the flight path, while if I do this in IRL boeings or as the 747 in game, the moment I release the control the plane will drop off the sky instantly unless I do all the pitch trimming controls required?
A Boeing (or any other conventional aircraft) will not drop from the sky, but you have instant feedback if the speed is changing.
You always have the immediate feedback what the aircraft is doing and what you need to do to counteract anything you don’t want to happen.
Trimming becomes as ‘automatic’ like shifting gears in your car.
You don’t have to think about it.
I don’t know what kind of gamepad you are using, but on my F310 I’m using the left button on the front for trimming and the buttons on the right front for throttle control.
Using the keybloard for trimming would be a bad idea.
On an Airbus this feedback is completely missing, which doesn’t matter too much when you are doing something else.
If everything works, an Airbus is a very nice office to work in, but concerning manual flying it’s not so nice.
One of the jokes is that the reason why Airbus has a table where other aircraft have a yoke is, that they are made to eat in and not to fly them.
That’s the main problem in any flightsim. Most people are flying the airliners alone which is very unealistic.
There’s a reason why there are two pilot IRL on such complex aircraft.
One guy is flying and when flying manually the flying pilot doesn’t touch anything in the cockpit, except the yoke/sidestick and the thrustlevers, while the other guy does everything else.
If you fly alone, the only halfway realistic option to operate an airliner is to engage the AP at 200ft after takeoff and disengage it again at 500ft before the landing.
As you have noticed, if you are being distracted from manual flying, a conventional aircraft can get away from you pretty quick, while an Airbus ‘only’ flies a significantly different speed from what you intended to fly.
right, I think I completely got what’s the actual case, and yea, the airbus trimming is just like the full automatic gear in cars nowadays and it makes it easier to fly an airliner.
And this makes me wonders if the boeing default aircrafts are broken because as a layman I do not have the idea that they handles this differently IRL for basic manual flying.
While I love and swear by manual transmission in cars, if car analogy is half way correct I do feel the force feedback is the key for a real great manual handling in this or else the automatic trim would be better, in my mind it’s just like clutch catching position, IRL we use the feel from the toes to determine the clutch position but if that’s taken away and by say keep an eye on rev counter for clutch position during every swift I can imagine things go wrong a lot more often.
I am actually using the PS4 handle for my flight sim usage, where left stick mapped as the primary flight control and right stick to be the rudder, the cross up and down switches I used as a flaps up and down selector so that I can engage flaps level easily without affecting my stick control, thrust is replaced by L2 and R2 buttons and the L1 R1 are mapped as spoiler full engage or retract buttons so that during manual flying airliners which I enjoyed a lot I can keep everything in control quick during landing. the trim was done using keyboard just because in my first dive into the game I am into the A320 which I don’t need to worry about manual trimming, and then the 747 feels still ok if I use the AP for most of the flying and only disengage during approach, where trim don’t need to be manually tuned a lot. maybe time to try it differently.
I’m always placing the controls according to if I need to look at them IRL when operating them or not.
E.g. many users have the gear and flaps controls on a joystick button, (I’m not aware of a single aircraft IRL where gear and flaps are part of a HOTAS) but IRL these controls are far away and you need to look at them to locate and operate them.
That’s why I have e.g. the gear up and down commands assigned to the large keys on the numpad.
That’s not the case with trim. It’s always on the yoke and e.g. on my T16000M it’s on top of the stick where it would be IRL.
Trimming with the trim buttons on the base of the stick would make trimming more difficul, let alone on the keyboard.
Being able to progessively reduce the force required to keep the stick in an off-center position is for sure more difficult if you use a different hand for trimming than for controlling pitch.
If you are planning to fly non-FBW aircraft in MSFS, I strongly recommend to consider re-locating the trim to the most convenient position.
If you are flying manually, throttle and trim are most important controls besides the primary flight controls.
Hope this helps 
yea, this helps a lot, though in shot term I will be mainly playing the FBW A320 and hopefully their study level A380! but this really shines into the technical aspect of difference between airbus and modern Boeing handling.
sidetracking by a lot if this is the case where Boeing always have to manually trim it with feel and not auto levelling like airbus, I wonders why the all evil MCAS back in the 737 Max disaster exist in first place… as a layman reading various news it sounds like the original 737s are auto levelling or “stable” as the A320 aircraft, so Boeing, in order to make the max handles as if any 737s added that secret auto trim in the background to “fix” and turned into the disaster.
If the Boeings AP will take over the trimming and when flown manually they required all those manual trimming efforts, I can’t image where the need of MCAS is… the overall handling characteristics shouldn’t differ much given all controls are in the same place and views are similar?
The 737 is very stable, but this has nothing to do with auto levelling etc. Creating a stable aircraft is simply a desireable design feature.
Boeing could have most likely certifed the MAX without MCAS, but in this case either the type rating would have been a different one (very expensive), or the conversion training would have taken longer which makes the transition to the MAX also more expensive.
Both choices are not what the airlines want.
MCAS basically tries to replicate the behavior of the NG to avoid the above mentioned points.
(The NG was already reportedly noticeable less pleasant to fly than the classic)