I’ve been playing MSFS 2024 in Xcloud. I have started the career mode and flown the C172 ‘a little bit’. And I found that C172 floats too much, in my opinion. I haven’t flown this aircraft in real life. But I even had a very weird situation in which, there was a wind of 20kts, I tried to descend, so I cut the throttle to 0%. The aircraft keeps CLIMBING, I keep the throttle at 0%.
I try to trim the aircraft to 9-10 degrees (nose down), that’s 50% of nose down trim. I usually can mantain altitude with this trimming at 105kts more or less. So, what has happened? My C172, instead of flying like a GA aircraft, it felt more like a glider. Probably there was some thermals that kept me climbing. However, when did C172 become so sensitive to thermals?
If I speak of other flights, I’ve always felt that the only thing I needed to glide like an albatros was to trim the aircraft nose up, no flaps and trim my Cessna to fly at 55kts and it will glide a lot, even shutting the engine would not be a problem to glide.
I just had the same thing happen. I was flying a Freelance First Flight with my own 172 over Shrewsbury, MA and the plane went from 1700’ to over 6000’ with the throttle at 0%. It wouldn’t stop climbing so I ended the flight.
Flying the C150 / 152 / 172 in real life I can tell you that the behaviour of those Asobo Cessnas is completely unrealistic. Where I fly we have a short 1300 ft grass runway. So pilots are very aware of a stable approach and a good timing because there isn’t lots of margin. Every aircraft, even of the same type, has its own particular behaviour. And we even have a C 172 that is known for its really long float / flare distance. But even this C 172 is nothing compared to the Asobo ones. In the sim there is like 300 - 500 ft more of flare with the exact same config as in real. Even with more headwind it’s not gettin much better. In real life you can feel the mass of the aircraft just a few seconds after idle (vs. like 10 secs in MSFS). To me this is a real dealbreaker to use MSFS for training.