Black Square Steam Gauge Overhaul - Cessna 208B Caravan

I’ll give it a go.

It may be how the dev. mode loads a plane in after making changes, even though I tried switching to one plane then back again, but maybe these settings aren’t reliable.

I tried setting the ground crosswind max speed setting to 30, and it feels no different to 70 to me. I just wanted to set it to something that should be obvious to confirm it is being loaded correctly.

I also tried setting both the friction scalars to 2, and again they don’t feel much different to me. :thinking:

Hmm, reloading the sim entirely seemed to help there for some reason. That could get tedious. With the wheel scalars set to 2, as soon as the main gears touch it brings the nose around quickly, even with no rudder input, so I can see those are working. Even quitting to the main menu won’t load the changes.

All of a sudden I’m unable to change the NAV1 and COM1 frequencies. This happens whether I use the NAV1/COM1 panel or the TDS GTNXi. Could be a mod conflict? Anyone had this? And is there a Discord channel for Black Square?

Guess I could file a support ticket with Just Flight.

EDIT: Just remember that I did a fix using Modelib changer in Addons linker. Could be that has mocked something up with the Caravan. I’ll try a reinstall.

EDIT: I solved it. Turns out I had failures on. Reset and it’s working fine.

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I had the same thing happen in the midst of trying troubleshoot CTDs after SU10 came out. I was so focused on settings, mod conflicts, drivers, it didn’t occur to me that the plane had thrown a failure my way. I jumped to the conclusion that my system was just hosed. Lol.

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Yeah, lol. I uninstalled and reinstalled at least 4 addons including the TDS and the Caravan, thinking there had to be some sort of software issue :man_shrugging:t2:

I have now bought this version of the C208B and I am thrilled. The aircraft is excellently implemented and with the sound mod from FTsim it is really a lot of fun. Great stuff!

Unfortunately, I had a CTD in 3 of 5 short flights, which I usually never have in MSFS. Maybe is a conflict with other add-on?

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The problem with the CTDs during departures or arrivals is already described above and should be solved this week :wink:

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Danke Dir, Hannes!

Just dropped in to say that I have been clicking the refresh button on the JustFlight King Air Steam Gauge page for a few days :rofl:

Not to be that guy, but I will be that guy and ask - anybody know when this piece of awesomeness is going to release? :rofl:

The CTDs have been an issue for a while there’s a few of us waiting patiently for a fix it has been put back a few times but hopefully won’t be much longer, mines been parked up in the hanger for a few weeks now awaiting the fix.

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I’m testing it, but untilnow I couldn’t see/feel any differences

The settings definitely work, but I could not get them to be read by using dev. mode alone. I had to edit the file, close the sim, then relaunch it for them to take effect. Reloading the plane from the aircraft selector didn’t work.

I know they weren’t being loaded as I had set both the wheel settings to 2. With that the plane de-crabs itself as soon as the main gear touches,so obviously too high. I experimented with 1.4 for both, and I think 70 for max crosswind. The Caravan is rated for a maximum crosswind of 20 knots, so I tried a 16 knot wind from 2 o’clock, and it was doable, with almost full left rudder.

Is there any guide on what which variable does in flightmodel.cfg? I know about SDK documentation but their explanations are mostly one liners that make sense to people that are in business since olden FS days, but not so much to a total newb?

Something along the lines variable X defines rudder authority/ ground effect / whatever and meaningfull range is beetween 0.5-1.5, where .7 would be Cessna 172 and 1 would be A320 but only makes sense if you defined variable Y as such and such and if you have high wings or something like that. Best practices so to say?

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I wish there would be something like this^^. I only know ot the SDK.

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while waiting for the king air I share some nice screenshot I recently did

can’t wait for this new analog plane :

it stings my eyes !



screen with copilot & pilot were taken from drone cam

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Awesome shots! I’m enjoying the Caravan heaps! It’s such a versatile aircraft :slight_smile: The only thing which I’m struggling with (this has nothing to do with the developer, but more the engine vs. the default C208B) is climb performance at higher altitudes.

Imgur

@hobanagerik @DAQUA3828 @sle18mad

I made a short video to explain the new parameters and demonstrate that they work as they should. Important - you have to have automatic rudder disabled (obviously) and these parameters belong into the [flight tuning] section. I also showed how to reload an aircraft properly so that changes you made take effect, without restarting the sim. Excuse my english - I am not a native english speaker.

Kind Regards
JayDee

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Never used “Quick reload” before. I’ll try that later, thanks. I found out the hard way that even switching planes via the aircraft selector doesn’t work, but relaunching the sim does.

One issue with these static values is they are not taking into account the aircraft variable weight. A heavier aircraft, in my mind, would increase the friction of the tyres, wouldn’t it? That seems like simply physics to me.

The other thing I’m not sure about is how do you even go about computing these values to make them reaslistic? I’ve been playing around with, 60/25/1.4/1.4, and it feels pretty good on crosswind landings. But is it realistic? Who knows! I have no idea how you would work that out.

With the assumption that the crosswind effect is increasingly reduced as airspeed increases over the airframe, and rudder, these attributes would need to be factored in. The surface area of the rudder, for instance. A plane with a larger vertical stabiliser would weathervane more than a smaller one, but it would also be better at countering that crosswind as it becomes more effective with building airspeed.

I guess this is something beyond what the POH would offer.

According to the SDK, setting both crosswind values to “-1000” is more realistic, as what we have seems a bit like a cheat of sorts, but perhaps they have documented this wrongly? The SDK states this for both the minimum, and maximum values. The minimum value dictates that anything slower than that eliminates crosswind entirely, which is obviously not how wind works in the real world. It doesn’t care whether you are moving or not. But in the context of the sim it makes sense.

But the maximum value states the same thing:

ground_crosswind_effect_max_speed

This parameter represents the world speed (in ft per second) at which 100% of the crosswind effect is applied to the aircraft.

As you say, this is the value at which the crosswind strength is now at 100%. So obviously anything higher than this is also 100%, no matter how fast you go. So why does it then have this below it:

Note that this value can be set to -1000 to have a 100% realistic simulation where the crosswind is never cancelled out.

That looks like a copy/paste error. The bottom value is one where crosswind is cancelled out. The top one is for determining how fast you have to be for crosswind to reach 100%, not when it is to be cancelled out. The maximum value would never be set to a value lower than the minimum value…although it might be fun to try that out to see what the sim does. :slight_smile:

Graphed, it would look like this, assuming the increase is linear:

I also wonder if these values stop a parked Caravan from slowing sliding sideways up hills. :slight_smile:

Set playback speed to x2 for best effect.

https://youtu.be/v0L1Q0wTF0s

Hi, in a perfect 100% correct simulated physics world, we would not need ANY of the flight tuning scalars. Then the aircraft would automatacilly behave correct. But no Home-Computer on earth would be able to calculate the entire real mother nature effects in real life.
In Real Live the Crosswind is active all the time, thats true. But there are a lot of comments from the community, that the ground behaviour in msfs is not realistic. Take the airliners - they are way to much influenced by the crosswind at low speeds in my opinion.
Setting these values to -1000 is just the same as it was before SU10 when these parameters were not existent. The Crosswind influence is always there. But that is exactly what a lot of people seem to NOT want.
Regarding finding the correct values I absolutely agree, this is very hard. You can go only by feeling if you have no feedback from real pilots and there is no way to compute that. But there are a lot of parameters in the configs that don´t feel right, when using computed values. For instance the 4 MOI values at the top of the fligh_model.cfg. It sometimes just feels more realistic using much higher MOI values, so the aircraft feels heavier.

Bottom Line - If you try to make a 100 % perfect flight behaviour in msfs in its current state - you will go crazy^^, because it is just not possible. Just my opinion.

Kind Regards
JayDee

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Recently I’m getting a CHIP detector warning at startup of the Caravan. Is there something you have to check to handle this?

Reset your engine damage?

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