Anyone else having sluggish steering on the tarmac? I’m using the Thrustmaster T.160000 and tried adjusting the rudder sensitivity but that did not help. I don’t seem to experience this issue with the DA62, DA 40, or 208B Caravan.
I find in all the aircraft that handling control on the ground is awful. You can use differential breaking to make sharper turns, it seems to be that only at greater speeds can you get sharper turns…
I think you got that backwards. The slower you go the sharper the turn. The TBM and Caravan are known to have fast taxi speeds and in real life, you use Beta to reduce your speed when doing long taxies rather than burning out the brakes. If you are allowing the speed to get above walking speed, they won’t make a 90 degree turn.
Some are better than others. The Seminole, and Mooney handle much better than the oil tanker by comparison Grand Caravan.
Okay, thanks for replying. Over the past 3 months since I’ve been flying, I’ve mostly been taking off from the end of the runway. But recently, I’ve been trying my hand with cold starts and taxing, and this is when I noticed the awful sluggish turning. Asobo… can you hear us???
You can edit a couple of files in the stock aircraft folder to make things better. As always, make backups!!!
Open the flight_model.cfg and make the following change in the [Contact_Points] section:
point.0 = 1, -7.5, 0, -4.14, 720, 0, 0.52, 50, 0.327, 1.5, 0.9, 13, 13, 0, 0, 0, 4
Open the systems.cfg and make the following change in the [Brakes] section:
differential_braking_scale = 1
Last thing is to reduce the rudder sensitivity to -50/-50.
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AWESOME!!! Works like it should! Will these changes be similar to other aircraft?
Is it also possible to adjust the brakes? Right now, I have to pump the brake button to slowly slow the plane down or else it’s full stop!
Is it also possible to make the tail and wing strobe lights brighter? For some reason of the TBM, they have the lights so dim they don’t appear to be blinking at all at night. Other planes like the C172 are super bright!
Thanks again! Really good information!
Frank
The Toe Brakes Scale controls the strength of the brakes. If you have pedals, then it’s easy to modulate with your feet, but if you’re like me and only have a controller button, then that scale is what will adjust it. In my experience though, the sim just takes too long to apply the brakes. If I hit the parking brake, it’s instant, but when parking, I have to plan ahead a couple of seconds, or I end up running over the marshaller!
And as for other aircraft, the steering angle will be a little different, according to the position of the gear points, but I enable differential braking on everything I fly. If you need the angle for any other nose gear, you can let me know here or PM me.
For lighting, search around for the name Uwajimaya. He’s done several lighting effect mods that you might like. Changing the lighting involves editing the effect files. I can do just a little in that field, but others are much better.
Clearly you know what YOU are doing. I’ve made similar tweaks myself. But I wonder…
You recommend and emphasize making backups, but don’t say why. I’m wondering if things like this isn’t contributing to the problems a lot of people have with update issues. Do they know to restore any Asobo default files before trying the next update?
I mean, maybe this guy gets it, but what about all the other people who read this thread and make this, and other, changes to system files. Isn’t it like giving your 16-year-old the keys to your Corvette ZR1 without locking it in valet mode?
And no, I’m not saying that this kind of information should not be freely distributed. I’m just thinking of all the people making such tweaks, using outdated mods, importing FSX planes, turning on Legacy mode, and stuff like that. Then they flame Asobo when the sim won’t update or they get CTDs.
I hope that when the Xbox version comes out, most of the casual gamers will end up there, and the more hard-core simmers (me) will have a forum and product that supports advanced sim “adjustments”.
Thoughts?
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I advocate making backups before starting any edit. It’s too easy (I know, because I’ve done it) to hit save at the wrong time and end up not being able to get back to where you were. Not every editor allows Undo after saving. As always, users should weigh their comfort level with code edits against the risk of bricking their sim. I’m perfectly comfortable with editing aircraft files, since I’ve been doing it since the FS9 days. But even I was a bit nervous when I edited the XML file that controls the default filter settings, even though I still made a backup. Luckily, the XML code is fairly straightforward.
And I’ll also explain my backup method. First thing to do is to enable viewing of all filetype extensions. Click Start and search for File Explorer Options. Open that, then in the View tab uncheck the box for “Hide extensions for known file types.” Then you can select a file, and hit Ctrl+C, then Ctrl+V. You then have a copy of the file with “-Copy” as part of the name. I delete that, then go to the very end and add “.bak” to the end. that gives me a file such as “systems.cfg.bak” that will act as an archive of the original, and with the different filetype, the sim will completely ignore its presence. Changing the filetype will trigger a warning in Windows, but you can click through that. To restore the original, just delete your edited file, then remove the “.bak” from the backup.
TOTALLY AGREE particularly your point about simmers vs gamers.
My method is slightly different. If I’m going to change a plane’s flight model config file or any of its files – or am going to allow a mod to change anything – I make a complete backup of the Asobo directory for that plane and label it with the update number and date. Then I make whatever changes I want or allow the mod to change the aircraft files without worrying about it. I usually embed comments (using the semi-colon) to explain any changes.
Before an update, the first thing I do is rename my Community folder – leaving no folder named Community at all, and thus getting rid of any mods, Navigraph data, liveries, etc. I now create a backup of the entire plane directory again, this time labeling it so I know it’s a backup of my changes. Then I delete the current plane directory to make sure I’ve removed all files that I might have add, and copy the backed up Asobo plane file back where it belongs. The result is it’s EXACTLY what it was after the last update. Then I do the update.
I then test the sim thoroughly – a pain in the butt if I’ve made a lot of tweaks, use Navigraph data, etc. But I always do it. Once I’m sure the update works correctly, then I’m faced with slowly adding back in my tweaks, and the stuff in my community folder. I usually wait a few days before applying any mods because they usually break with every update.
In fact, I usually don’t use many mods because of that tendency. I’m too excited to see what the new update has, so I want to fly right away. I typically use the default planes and instrumentation so I can see exactly what Asobo has changed in terms of features, functionality, and behaviors.
That’s just me. I’m old, and have made my living in software development, support, and training for over 40 – yes, 40 – years. I prefer a known good configuration, then add tweaks. It seems like most people on this forum want to push the limits of the sim with every update, then get upset when their fragile system won’t update, or all their mods break, or the AP doesn’t work correctly. They don’t really know how to fly, so the sim becomes useless to them.
I am a real life pilot (inactive now) and enjoy flying in the sim. I also enjoy all the aviation stuff that surrounds the sim – old-school flight planning, pilotage (using sectional maps), flying manually while shooting IFR approaches down to minimums, etc. You don’t need a lot of mods and tweaks to do those things.
Happy flying,
B
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I do something similar with my Community folder. I copy it to my desktop, then just delete the contents of the real one, leaving an empty folder.
It is simpler and less error-prone that way. I just highly doubt that the majority of simmers / gamers on this forum understand the subleties of all this. I don’t think they’re scared enough, or disciplined enough to do it safely. Heck, I’ve made mistakes myself, or gotten trapped by the unexpected update. It starts downloading files and I’m like, Uh oh, I haven’t restored the default files yet!
I also worry about mods that change plane files without telling anyone. I think some mods even change the fs-base files, texture files, speech files, etc. I know I change one of the English pack files so that they don’t call the TBM “Daher”. That file gets modified with each update, and I have to redo my changes.
I don’t know what the answer is. A technical users guide to tweaking / modding might help a little bit, but I doubt it. People don’t even read all the posts in a topic, or search for a keyword – they just create a duplicate topic or ask the same questions over and over.
Well, at least I know enough to tweak my own aircraft, and know enough to – usually – stay out of these conversations. I don’t know why I jumped in here, and I hope I didn’t offend you in any way. I appreciate the knowledge you’ve gained and your desire to share it – the teacher / mentor instinct is a great trait to have, and I applaud you for it.
B
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Bottom line- those changes should be made by the dev team and incorporated in an update. The taxi handling has been terrible in most planes from day one.
Thank you Tom! Uwa’s stuff looks promising too! I just got into Flight Sim this past November and although I’m all right-brained, I learn quickly and have been creating some fun liveries too. As with anything computer related, backup, backup, backup!
Cheers!
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Sorry for getting distracted. You’re absolutely right. The steering should be changed by Asobo, not the poor simmers.
Just by way of explanation, however, when the sim was first released they had this terrible problem of airplanes veering off the runway during takeoff or landing. So I think they tried decreasing the nose wheel steering angle to mitigate that tendency. Unfortunately, that change meant that they also limited the steering angle during taxi. That change made it so that you had to slow down really, really slow – like walking pace – before you could turn more than 10 degrees or so.
The problem is more complex than you might think, though. In small planes the nose wheel is typically coupled to the rudder, and you steer with the rudder pedals. The problem comes in with the default planes’ apparent turn auto-coordination. That makes it so that if you land with a crosswind, and do not have separate rudder controls (rudder pedals, twist joystick, etc.), and land in a crab instead of slipping on short final, then the plane is going to suddenly veer off the runway upon touchdown.
So while I agree that Asobo needs to provide a fix, I don’t know what that fix should look like.
Good point, but it worked in FS9, 16 years ago, so it is possible!
I would settle for the “unrealistic” effect of having the rudder controls only affect the nose wheel once the plane is on the ground. That should be easy enough to program. Maybe even make that user selectable.
The issue that I see is that Asobo uses the actual POH steering values - or close to them - without taking differential braking into account. The real C172 only has 10° of positive steering input via spring-loaded bungees. After that, using the toe brake on the inside wheel (“Differential Braking”) allows steering angles up to 30°. But on most tricycle gear planes, Asobo neglected to enable diff. braking in the systems.cfg file, so anyone without rudder pedals is stuck with almost no available steering and airports that occasionally have some fairly tight turns. Using a little throttle to give the rudder some authority helps, but it’s not always enough. This is why I avoid using the steam C172 at St. Baart’s. There’s a retaining wall at one end that’s good for catching wingtips.