What is the best currently available aircraft for use on the water and land?
By what criteria? There’s lots of different airplanes because each is generally designed for specific capabilities or such.
The OzX Goose Redux handles well on water (with invisible water rudders since steering with differential throttle doesn’t really work well in the sim right now, if at all).
True “amphibious” operation where you can taxi an appropriately equipped aircraft from land to water or vice versa is currently impossible in the sim, unless you turn off crash detection maybe.
The work around I use is to get up to the water’s edge, and then just go into slew mode (Y) to nudge the aircraft from land to water, or vice versa. Not a perfect solution, but for now it does the job.
Thanks all. I guess we just have to wait for Asobo to make some updates.
Water handling is going to change significantly in a few days with Sim Update 5 per Q&A and trailers. I’d wait until the dust settles from that before making a move.
Did they actually say water handling is going to change? I missed that, its seriously something to get excited about then. I thought they just said they were going to add water effects.
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Biggest issue for me is that all of the current float planes fly like they are on wheels on a solid surface.
In real life a float plane “steps up” so it rides on the stepped part of the floats and hydroplanes while it gains enough speed to rotate.
Meanwhile there are dozen or more float plane and sea plane variants kicking about, the ones i have personally used are the Grumman Goose (freeware), the Xcub mod (freeware) and the AH C140 (payware).
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From personal experience, this is the best:
Otherwis this my also be fine:
Kenmore Air deHavilland Beaver
Polaris AM-FIB
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I can’t find quotes now, but I believe they said they’d be coming back around to update the water handling. The A5 was released in a barely passable form, like they ran out of time and had to kick it out the door, and it was in no way finished. You couldn’t taxi from the land into the water, the plane didn’t actually interact with a moving water surface, and of course the lack of effects and spray made it feel lifeless even. Now that they’re adding effects and new float types, I assumed this was the update where they’re circling back to do major water handling updates as the water effects and new float types are so prominently featured. Maybe I’m just reading into it too much. Either way, I expect this is going to destabilize the third party seaplanes and amphibians for a bit until they can update as well.
What I’ ve heard is that they are adding more masks to the waters, which means that you will be able to fly to more places where the ocean is very clear, like Bermuda, Bahamas, Cozumel, etc, and be able to see those beautiful water colors and transparencies, where some of the reefs below are more visible. Few places in the SIM world already have that, others do not. Most places the water is dark blue all the way to the beach. It is just eye candy.
Their eventual goal is to map the seabed and have independent tide driven water but seeing as a lot if not all of Bing data is on land only I imagine several years will have passed by the time this is widely functional.
I rather see improvements in BING Maps before water. I am flying over major cities and the maps haven’t been updated in years! Google Maps put Bing to shame.
Be careful what you wish for, Google maps also uses ten times the bandwidth
Water,
Land,
I have had a lot of fun with the Blue Mesh Polaris AM-FIB. I’m using it to fly the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition. So far I have flown it from Pittsburg, along the Ohio river, then eventually the Mississippi up to St Louis. I just started up the Missouri a couple of days ago. It doesn’t go very fast, so it is going to take awhile!
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Unfortunately the 172 Amphibian mod is an absolute misery to actually use on the water. Bounces to an insane degree leading to an “overstress” crash about half the time no matter what you do. I believe the author is waiting on improvements to water handling on Asobo’s end.
I agree the Goose Redux is a lot of fun, and can’t be beat for the price.
It’s not clear to me what the H135 has to do with the thread topic.
