It matters but there are also diminishing returns. Most sims concentrate on normal operations so they aren’t so realistic when it comes to aerobatic aircraft (I’ve been told, I never did aeros) or abnormal attitudes, like stalls. Some aircraft are better than others in those respects so it isn’t necessarily all of MSFS’s fault. You could say, “if they implemented physics properly then all the aircraft would just work”, which is true. But as fast as computers are they aren’t nearly that fast so a flight model is a mash of many approximations.
A lot (by no means all!) of the complaints we see are from people that aren’t pilots where they confuse something that is perfectly normal with a bug. So it can seem like the sim is less accurate than it is.
The biggest issue with flight simulations is that we do not feel stick forces (I had a FFB stick once and it was no where near accurate) and we can’t feel the motion on our bodies. Both of those are worth far more than many physics features. And there is nothing a sim can do about that. VR helps visually but I hate it from a procedure standpoint.
Lastly, many pilots use a sim for practicing procedures so the flight model is pretty secondary. Look at the professional motion sims and how ■■■■ their physics and graphics used to be, but they got the job done.
It is a bit funny, because pilots usually use sims for procedure training but that is a bit many “simmers” take big shortcuts with. How many simmers do cross fuel checks every 10 to 15 minutes (GA) and know how to navigate if the GPS fails?
As an ex VFR pilot (~10 years since last flight) MSFS is plenty realistic enough for me. Especially now that weather and windsocks are better. Still not as good as I’d like, but good enough.
I guess it also depends on what you fly. I mostly fly GA and often fly using the GPS as my non-primary means of navigation and no autopilot (neither of my aircraft didn’t had either). So for me it is much more manual which is tons more satisfying and fun than letting the aircraft do almost everything. Like I said, good for procedures.
Finally, some simmer think an aircraft isn’t realistic unless it hits all the numbers in a POH. Which is completely false. The POH is for a brand new aircraft under very specific conditions and even then, it is a guide. The real world is a lot more complex than the tables you will find there and age affects aircraft too. Many MSFS addons are based on real, and old aircraft.
TL;DR;
Aircraft quality is really important to the accuracy too.
You can fly GA with massive realism, if you know what you are doing. If you do know then you can pass a pilot exam.
Sims implement the most necessary physics for normal flight modes before abnormal ones.
The more complex the physics the less effect it has in most flight modes and the slower the sim. Diminishing returns…
People have different expectations. Pilots tend to differ from a simmers.
The stick and cockpit forces we are missing prevent us from really feeling like we are flying. It is by far the biggest issue for me. EG: In a stall we can get thrown around the cockpit a bit but do I nearly hit my head on the side of the cockpit in a snap stall in a sim? No. We can’t feel anything.
For me personally it’s not about aerobatic manouvers but more the fact that the takeoff and landing are broken in anything other than calm wind. Aircraft weathervane so much that it’s pretty much impossible to keep a light aircraft on the runway in windy conditions.
Yeah weathervaning on the ground is to me the most serious issue. Once you’re further away from the ground I think the flight model is not too far off except for stalls and such.
As others have said, its probably just a function of the ratio of IRL pilots to sim pilots.
It may also be a function of just how many users actually use the forums. In the old forum version there used to be an option at the top right to see forum badges, and how many had them. The last time I looked at that, for the simplest badge that anyone can get I think there were about 70k members. That’s out of possibly millions of users.
The people that know of the forums, and actually bothered to create an account are a tiny overall fraction of the total user base. Among those a small number of people will actually know what they are talking about, and the rest of us are merely guessing or nodding along with those that do, yet sometimes even that differs.
So a lot of the comments have focused on the ground handling (weathervaning in particular) as being a specific area of weakness. This is very fair comment and has been subject of a lot of close study and discussion in these forums and the causes not fully understood. To me it is without question the number 1 most serious issue requiring attention in MSFS as it has such an impact on landings and takeoffs.
Yet the wishlist items associated with these attract far fewer votes than weather-related topics (which are a pretty close second in my book), and some other somewhat highly peripheral issues. It baffles me that so many seem to think the way that most aircraft handled on the ground was OK. Asobo have recognised the problem and have a longer term fix in development, but they have also implemented some new physics variables that will help in the interim.
But here is the thing: those variables have to be implemented by the aircraft dev. in the aircraft flight model. Asobo have provided the tools - but it means nothing unless the devs whose aircraft need attention don’t make use of them (noting that not all aircraft experience the exaggerated weathervane effect to the same degree).
Many of the quality devs have gone back and adjusted their flight models and the improvements are tangible when well done (but if your crosswind technique is poor, you might not notice at first).
So what aircraft perform better on the ground? Well, check this list out here. And if the aircraft you are interested in isn’t listed, if you own it, go find the values in the flight_model.cfg and tell the community.
But returning to the original question: this is first and foremost a flight simulator, not a screenshot-generator. @Ephedrin87 said it well enough above about the degree of fidelity required and what we should realistically expect. And as @Editer noted recently in another thread, beware the rivet-counters and an obsession with visual fidelity over flight performance and vice-versa. A balance must be struck. Which MSFS and its better aircraft generally do.
Those ground physics options cannot be understated. It is like night, and day. I hadn’t flown any of the PA-28’s for about 6 months or so, and recently went back to try out the Turbo Arrow III, and the Warrior II. Handling on the ground is so much better now. Not perfect but perhaps good enough, and worlds away from what we have.
Not to promote my own stuff or anything, and I’ve yet to recreate this, but this is what you could get with gusty takeoffs a while back:
It felt like you were on an ice rink. It wasn’t just the crosswind, but the gusts, and the plane just slid about the surface.
Do I care about the flight physics of the sim? Well. . . . Yes and no.
I want the sim to be reasonably accurate so that, should I ever be given the controls of aircraft “X”, I wouldn’t be totally lost. And no, the typical (ahem!), “aircraft” game where you fly around and shoot things has little to zero basis in reality.
I want it to be accurate enough so that I experience the lion’s share of the challenges of flying. As far as the hairy details of flying are concerned, I’ll worry more about them when I get a decent set of controllers and build my skills up.
In everything there’s a trade-off: XP’s claim to fame is ruthlessly accurate flight dynamics - at the expense of other aspects, like realistic scenery. MSFS, on the other hand, is emphasizing the scenery aspects which involves some tradeoffs in the complexity of the flight modelling, (these aren’t super computers!) and, (to a large extent), the scenery makes everyone else’s look like Monopoly buildings.
Even here in Russia, buildings look sufficiently “Russian” to create a reasonable model of what’s happening. The specialized markings on the local power company’s cooling towers and the garish orange exterior of a local mall are all there. If you know the area, and know what to expect to see, this is accurate enough to fly “by eye”, recognizing landmarks like the circular fountain and the wrought iron bridge in Tzaritzina Park.
Of course, I’d love everything to be perfect, but we can’t have everything we want. Despite some glaring deficiencies, I think MSFS is doing a bang-up job.
I am type rated in the 737 and the ATR, among current popular sim aircraft. I had been flying XP-11 and XP12. That sim is owned and operated by a pilot, and it feels like it. XP lacks the beautiful graphics of MFS however.
I own both sims, and MFS is a distant second. Without the autopilot or some AI flying the plane, these models feel NOTHING like the real airplane. Control response is jerky and clunky. In fact, being a real pilot seems to work against you.
So yes, MFS is for gamers who enjoy the visuals. But not having a sim that actually models the real airplane is just a joke. Most of my sim flying remains in XP12. XP12 is not perfect for sure, just has a way more dynamic flight model than the “toy” MFS. MFS should have a pilot sim available.
The autopilot still has to work with the flight model of the aircraft though, right? Or are you saying you just won’t “feel” it because you aren’t at the controls, as it were?
Isn’t it great that we have the choice where to spend our time and money.
Mind you, all my commercial pilot friends would howl at the thought of spending significant amounts of their free time in a home sim. They get enough sim time at work!
Actually, (at least in X-Plane), there are lots of active pilots that use XP to hone their skills in a “non destructive” way. (i.e. If you accidentally smash an airliner’s wing into a light pole, or botch up a pushback, it’s easier to deal with it within a sim than IRL.)
Also, experimenting on a company simulator is expensive and simulator time is precious. Likewise, you can weed-out bad ideas in the privacy of your own home, without becoming a “byword” known throughout the industry as a clumsy oof.
Microsoft has tried a number of different tactics for getting feedback. At first, they tried the Alpha and Beta programs. But, that was more of a preview and they really weren’t interested in our feedback. They have the Zendesk where AI will take your comments and search for common solutions. If that solution is not helpful then your feedback goes into some sorting repository where it seems more than often it eventually gets deep-sixed. There is forum voting, but you are not allowed to advertise your topics. So you have to create a topic and then hope it catches traction. Even if it catches traction once someone at Microsoft thinks it’s been solved that is it. Your topic gets summary closed and you have to start all over again.
So people mostly concentrate on what they can get traction on. That is a number of individuals agree and they can get a few hundred votes to gain Microsoft’s attention. If your topic cannot do that then it is dead in the water and you are wasting your time and effort. The other half of the equation is even if your topic makes the cut list does the title clearly state exactly what you need. It is easy for graphics when you want better-looking vegetation. Try describing a flight dynamic issue in 3 to 5 words so that no one a Microsoft or Asobo can misunderstand it. Good luck. I have had two issues resolved that were in no way close to actually fixing the problems. They do not read into the discussions supporting the item you created. Nope, it is just the title.
Having been utterly disappointed in the feedback system I realize that MSFS is like a novel. You can either enjoy what the author has presented or not. But, coming here and complaining about it is most likely going to end in frustration.
Really? Do you think the majority of votes and discussion is driven by a fatalistic recognition that raising or voting on the more complex issues is a waste of time? I’m sure it the case for some folk, but I sense the OPs thesis is closer in most cases: most folk don’t really know otherwise and are more conscious of what they see rather than what goes on under the hood. (whether or not feedback is actually a waste of time or not is a separate question)
I’ve seen this play out a fair few times in discussion and I can’t but help but think of the CJ4 rework in SU12: Working Title introduced lots of impressive changes to the FMC that were pretty meaningful and hard to implement. But all the feedback was about absence of some of the (mainly trivial) features that were previously present in the mod.
Perhaps it was ever thus: how many folk buy a car because of the colour and marque with no real thought to the drivetrain?
The voting system is definitely not ideal but if you look at the top 50 topics that they show every week I guess the question is does it reflect the priorities of the community? It seems to me that there is a minority who care about the flight model, which may then reflect the number of votes that these topics receive.
I wonder though whether Asobo is not receiving significant amount of feedback on the flight model from payware aircraft makers. I hope we’ll see some improvement on this front even without a large number of votes.
I would add, too, the complaints that the aircraft was now too complex for those that liked the previous, more simplistic, way it was implemented.
That entire thread was depressing. I was really quite thrilled by the changes and the aircraft (and sim) is so much better for them. Hearing the moaning about it all was difficult to take.
Clearly, there are those of us seeking realism and deep systems implementation and there are those of us who just want to get up into the skies as quickly/easily as possible. Neither approach is wrong, but balancing the sim for each camp is certainly challenging.
There were some interesting insights into how the feedback and wishlist is viewed by the development team in yesterday’s Dev stream. It certainly dispelled the idea that they carry no weight. Rather the opposite: votes determine where things sit in the ‘stack’ and guide discretionary allocation of resources (understand that there will also be a large slice of resource and work not influenced in this way but directed by planned development).
This does come with its risks though and development priorities shouldn’t just reflect vote numbers (the point of this thread). There ought to be a heirarchy of need also, something along the lines of:
Stability. If the software won’t run, then it makes everything else unimportant
Physics. The rules on which the world is built. If these are wrong, everything is wrong. As a flight simulator, flight physics in particular.
The natural environment. This includes the atmosphere, the surface of the earth and biome.
The built environment. Everything we have added to the former.
The social environment. How we use the former two spaces.
The challenge is that some of the most visible and entertaining aspects of the SIM can come from the built and social environment. As in reality we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the physics of things. And as with setting any kind of priority you need to strike a balance between the the utilitarian and the beauty of art.
So to be clear: such a heirarchy isn’t a manifesto for utilitarianism and ignoring the desire to have ‘pointless’, but enthralling, things like moving trains and boats, but it is to say why you shouldn’t just rely on votes as the beautiful and entertaining will win out every time against the dull, but necessary.
Of course bringing all these things to software that runs on a home computer/console is clearly impossible, so as another thread notes, MSFS shouldn’t exist (but thankfully does!)
Yeah perhaps the bug/wishlist topics should be split up further into some categories akin to what you suggested. Then people can vote on those and the most pressing physics issues can at least be seen.
