Aircraft ground handling still drastically unrealistic

Last time I had that issue the behavior started at pretty low speed… But you have a good point, at high speeds it might have started wheelbarrowing a little, I will look out for that.

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Recently been having increasing difficulty keeping the Bonanza straight on take-off with even the lightest of crosswinds. However PZL104 might have hit the nail on the head - I’ve noticed it’s carrying a lot of nose weight on takeoff even though the indicator is set to neutral and needs a good pull to rotate.
Next flight I’m going to give it a load of nose up and see what happens

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I was doing some landing practise at some French altiports last night in the Caravan, and while on my take-off roll I deliberately pushed my yoke forward, and unsurprisingly I got the same wobble you get with the JF Arrow. 6-7 degrees or so of up trim allows for very smooth take-offs in the Arrow, with the default W&B, and 50% fuel.

That sounds like a classical moving the goal posts. People provided you with counter-examples to your original argument, so now you claim they are wrong because “the conditions” you never mentioned before were not right.

It’s typical, people make sweeping statements and when they are challenged, it wasn’t in the end such sweeping after all, just certain special case that was never mentioned.

That’s going to be a very nose heavy takeoff trim in the G36 depending on your passenger loading, as per the POH Before Takeoff Checklist

Trim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SET
a. Aileron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEUTRAL
b. Elevator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3° NOSE UP
(6° nose up if only front seats are occupied)

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Nah, have a look at my second post (well before the vid was shown). I’ve been very clear on what I fly and what I’m talking about.

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This.

I fly all sorts of r/c planes, many taildraggers and I have no trouble at all in setting up the individual models on my transmitter to handle properly on the ground, especially during take off. The same plane in MSFS is a nightmare to get anywhere near right. Even a docile beastie like the Stearman is so twitchy on rudder during taxi, take off and landing that it’s near impossible to do so tidily in the sim… and this is without any more that 4Kts of crosswind.

The rudder sensitivity controls in options needs to be redone, and certainly tire friction and maybe tail wheel/skid too needs to be properly modelled. As it is now, many light GA planes are nothing like the full scale real thing, or even rc models, in ground handling using the rudder pedals.

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Single engine aircraft absolutely do need right rudder! What aircraft were you flying???

Most of my complaints with ground handling are the steering settings that lock out the steering at speed. They need to be doubled to be more realistic, especially trying to turn around when you’re doing even 5 knots is far too big a turning circle.

I agree regarding wind effects, they seem to be zero when the aircraft is stationary, which is completely incorrect.

You could actually spin the Cessna in FS95, so what are you talking about with “non-existent physics” when previous versions actually attempted to model spins, torque and p-factor? MSFS is the only “sim” I’ve used that you have to use opposite rudder when taking off with a light crosswind. All I can say is the A2A planes can’t get here fast enough to actually turn this into a real flight sim, not a screenshot sim.

I really wish they’d improve the way taildraggers act on the ground, a lot is to do with the centre of gravity force swinging the aircraft around, which is not strong enough in the sim. If you put the C of G way back, only then do you start to get a little more effect.

Try “one wheeling” any aircraft in the sim. It is nearly impossible. It is almost like there is a switch that says, if a wheel is on the ground the plane is no longer flying, it is on the ground. There should be no difference in the physics. Just because one wing can no longer descend because it’s wheel is on the ground does not mean the plane is no longer a plane.

I agree 100%. An aircraft is always capable of flying (is always flying) if the air going over the aerofoils is great enough. Seen many aircraft flying on their ropes!
You can see this clearly on the airspeed indicator with a 100kt wind set. It will read zero airspeed, until you start to move forward a little. Only then does it shoot up to match the wind the aircraft should be experiencing.

SU5 removed a lot of other effective forces too so the aircraft have been dumbed down a bit, probably for XBox. Hoping that SU6 and 7 bring some positive change.

My question regarding handling during the take off roll is simple and needs to be answered by real world pilots.

During the take off roll, does the rudder become proportionally more sensitive to input as speed increases? or, does a real aircraft tend to roll in a fairly straight line in the same way as perhaps dihedral tends to cause a plane to fly straight and level?

I find that, in the sim, at the low speed phase of take off, lining up with the centre line is relatively easy and as speed increases, it is possible to hold the rudder in one position, keeping the plane in a straight line but sensitivity to small rudder inputs increases to the point where a tiny input to correct for a small drift away from centre line results in an almost uncontrollable swing in one direction followed by several overcorrections until the plane departs the ground.

I appreciate that as the speed of air across the rudder increases, rudder effectiveness and authority must increase and therefore a smaller input would have a greater effect but, I would imagine that those smaller inputs would be fighting against the planes natural tendency to weather vane into the general direction of the windforce acting on the fuselage and the whole plane. Therefore those small rudder inputs would only serve to nudge the plane away from the direction its moving.

It’s as if a planes tendency to roll in a straight line isn’t modelled at all.

Obviously, different planes with different undercarriage configurations, and differing wind conditions all serve to make for a lot of variability, but my gut feeling is that all planes have a tendency to become exponentially more sensitive to rudder input as ground speed increases and that doesn’t seem right.

All the above seems to apply for landing but in reverse of course.

That’s correct and it applies to all flight controls.
The lower the speed, the lower their effectiveness.

With taildraggers this effect can even much more pronounced in the three point attitude since the fuselage can shield the airflow over the vertical stabilizer/rudder.

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Yes, obviously rudder authority is non existent with no air flow over it, only a nose wheel coupled to the pedals, or a steerable tail wheel (with stick held full back to start with) works to begin with in calm conditions. All control surfaces gain authority as airspeed increases, but things don’t suddenly become super sensitive in a real plane. You have control input feedback that lets you know, because it’s harder to over push the pedals or the ailerons, so you don’t do it. Thus it gets easier to control, not harder. Weathercocking in a crosswind aside of course, or maybe too rapid power increase in a Spitfire or something.

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But the sim seems to take that initial increased effectiveness and exaggerate it to the point of loss of control with no apparent damping that I would imagine should happen, that would keep a plane in a straight line.

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Yes you’ve said correctly, the rudder effectiveness increases as speed increases, so less is required, and more force is required to hold it in that exact position too. But the aircraft stability also comes into effect which should prevent the uncontrollable swing. That tiny input shouldn’t cause that.

I blame this on the sim’s control sensitivity, and whilst they’ve improved the settings a lot, some peripherals just don’t have the resolution that this sim may require to make the subtle adjustments required, and setting them to work properly at fine inputs makes the larger inputs then completely uncontrollable. (ie: setting the controls for fine adjustments near the centre of the control, makes them shoot to full deflection at full range.) I just think a lot of user tweaking is required to get them to feel right. Luckily we now can set the cutoff points to do this.

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I don’t understand that one and without xwnd I’m not experiencing any directional control problems with a sensitivity setting of
-33% (all axis) on my Gladiator NXT / T16000M.

(Apart from the tailwheel traction bug which is very noticeable on the Pitts Special).

Edit: don’t forget the initial increased effectiveness due to propwash.

Well, In a take off into wind with no crosswind, once I am above say 40-50 kts, if I were to let go of the rudder pedals, most planes don’t seem to continue in a straight line. I therefore seem to need to keep a little rudder input in, to keep the plane in the correct direction. When I do release any rudder input, I often get quite a wild swing which requires me to respond. As sensitivity increases, I find even the tiniest response tends to cause way too much of a reaction.

I think, as the other posters pointed out, the real world tendency for the rudder pedals to become harder to push can’t yet be simulated and that does make our responses a little bit unrealistic and that may have quite an effect.

Why would you want to neutralize the rudder input during the takeoff and especially at low speed?

If there’s no rudder trim, most aircraft are designed to fly without rudder input at cruise power and at cruising speed.

What are your sensitivity settings?

Edit. The force difference required to move the rudder is negligible at these low speeds.
A major problem are cheap sticky plastic pedals.
Things get even worse if you can’t keep the heels on the floor while steering.

Cliffboy1962 nails the frustration of take offs in this sim, more so with some planes than others.

@Parong. Yep, the vertical stabiliser should dampen any tendency for super sensitive yaw as it does its job at flight speeds, as does the horizontal stabiliser for pitch. So there is modelling problems that haven’t been perfected yet in this sim. Mostly though in yaw at take off. I find I can control roll and pitch to near perfection as soon as the wheels are off the ground (not when one is still touching as has been mentioned). It doesn’t really matter if my trim is off or what the sensitivity settings on my stick or yoke are, I’m totally at ease with nailing roll and pitch. Yaw though, even in the air is still a biatch. I spent a good half hour trying to perfect sideslip landings in the Stearman last night at Ben Gurion airport in Israel and I never once got a setting that allowed me to not jerk the yaw as I came in steeply in a plane with no flaps. OK my rudder pedals are el cheapos but seriously, I can do this with all the time with rc models just using my thumbs on a rc transmitter and I have shaky fingers.

Adding to the problem is we don’t have force feedback controls as yet.

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These are my rudder settings. I use a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro (ignore the dead zone and offset figures, this joystick really on its last legs!). Still with the already narrow control range and lost deadzone area it now has I can add small control inputs and sideslip smoothly. Maybe have a play with them? Linear (0% ‘sensitivity’) is far too strong for small inputs.