I am seeing a disturbing trend in the posts proclaiming that aircraft xx performance is “way off”. Compared to what? Are you pulling a flight manual to determine design specs? How many hours do you have in the real aircraft? If your determination is that the aerodynamics are unrealistic, what credentials do you have that qualify you to make that determination?
To assist our friends at Asobo, it would be helpful to have specific details. Any critique on an aircraft needs to be assembled in a manner that provides usable data. If you have real world performance charts available, lets do some controlled test flights to compare sim data with real world numbers.
As an example, in past months, there was discussion about drag and glide ratios in the 172. Some users complained that the 172 seemed to float too much and they couldn’t get slowed down on approach. A handful of real world pilots, using real world data, performed a number of tests on glide ratios and speeds based on power settings. In general it was found that, although some minor deviation was recorded, the variances were within what would be expected even if just comparing two different 172s. The actual sim data was very close to the POH performance charts.
Recently I have seen reports that the King Air is way off. The TBM performance numbers are unrealistic. Rudder control is impossible. The Bonanza is impossible to taxi. None of these qualify as anything except unusable complaints. I will not suggest that those reports are wrong, just unusable.
If you don’t know what the surface area of the tail of the Cub is and have no idea what it’s arm to the CG is and have not calculated the actual crosswind component, then what are you using for data that would suggest that rudder effectiveness is inaccurate? The last example doesn’t even take into consideration what your controller is and what are the settings.
I am all for tuning the accuracy of our sim to be as accurate as possible. This can only be achieved when those qualified to do the tests, do the tests using real world data for comparison. If you do not have experience with using real world performance charts or real world experience with a specific aircraft, you can still participate. If you have a concern with an aircraft, provide as much detail as possible so that others can test your hypothesis. Simply telling us that the King Air won’t slow down does not help.
“Data, data, data. I cannot make bricks without clay.” No more generic, “747 is broken”, posts, please. What is broken? How did you determine that? What test can we do to determine why it appears that way? We have a very good simulator at our fingertips that will allow some very smart and experienced people run very accurate flight tests. Most of the documentation is available for us to generate valuable aircraft performance reports for the development team so the deficiencies can be rectified.
What we don’t need is the team getting a bunch of reports that the 172 climbs too steep and have them “fix” it so it feels more like users “expect” it to feel. If we work together and pool the resources we have on this forum, maybe we can prevent any more adjustments to the sim to make it more friendly.