I also wonder if tires have enough grip in the sim, that could also contribute to the weathervaning.
It doesn’t seem like they do. I notice when taxiing and trying to turn using the tiller, the plane will continue to go straight. It feels like I’m driving on ice.
The contact points are modelled as points in MSFS (so no surface area). There is some fr though and the sim will recognise when a contact point is skidding. That skid might be a result of inertia (how heavy is the aircraft, what speed are you going when you start your turn, is the surface contaminated etc) and might be perfectly correctly moddled..but probably not!
What is certain is that the weathervane effect is too strong and overcomes the forces that would naturally serve to limit it. Just why…isn’t clear.
It’s might be lack of fr…it might be that lateral wind forces on the airframe are being incorrectly translated by the flight model.
Much depends on how each aircraft has been modelled and generalities are hard to make.
I still haven’t received a response from Asobo as to whether the tail surface area is being set or parsed correctly.
It might require the opening of a black box that is proprietary?
Of course, we do, that’s why I have never been back in the Microsoft A320 since the first day I flew it 2 years ago! … have you seen a Dippy Bird, well the nose of the Asobo A320 mimics that very closely.
I don’t think so. Setting the vtail area to the actual surface area produces force lines that line up with roughly half the physical tail area when viewed in the SDK. Setting it to roughly double the correct area makes it the correct size, visually, in the SDK.
So either the visual is not tuned correctly to the area, or the area requirement is double because maybe it’s thinking it requires the area of two sides of a flat plane instead of just one (the latter as it does the other surfaces). I’m not sure.
Either way, the vtail area for many stock and 3rd-party planes is way too big for reality and I think that contributes to the prominent weathervaning issue as well as other things like adverse yaw.
first - I do care about physics - both ground and flight – but Im not a pilot and I don’t know how various vehicles should react in various conditions so I rely on real world pilots to complain/fix it.
and as to weathervaning: is it possible that flight physics calculations and ground physics calculations are running at different speeds such that wind inputs are occurring more often than front wheel friction inputs?
Interesting. You would hope Asobo have seen the same thing. It sure looks and feels like the base formula is wrong.
Deploying an improved ground physics package that means wheels are no longer simple points is all well and good, but may only serve to mask the primary cause of the lateral force problem, of which excessive weathervane is only one symptom.
Do we have a dedicated bug report for lateral forces? We have several looking at the individual symptoms.
This seems unlikely. The data we can see via the debug and visualisation tools in Dev mode show a constant and dynamic calculation of all these forces. But it is still a valid question.
The main thread/bug report for ground physics is here
As a general comment to all, if you sim you ought to care about physics to some extent. It’s the very basis of the product and whilst you can easily play a high fidelity simulator more for casual entertainment (and there is nothing wrong with that), you can never do the opposite.
If you are not into realism in a big way, some of the discussion may seem abstract and technical. Which by necessity it has to be. But you can still feel the annoyance of crazy take off and landing rolls - we all experience that.
Maybe it’s your piloting. Maybe it’s how the aircraft you fly has been modelled and sure both those things matter a lot. But you can believe me when I say that it’s not just down to that - people who do care about the numbers and have done extensive flight testing have shown it to be so. Show your support to the folk who do this for the benefit of all - vote on the bug reports that deal with physics. It matters.
Of course everyone cares that flight physics are reasonably modeled, (airplanes being driven all over the landscape by a 5 kt wind is obviously unreasonable).
What I am referring to is the desire for flight physics to be painfully accurate to multiple decimal places. IMHO so long as the plane is reasonably accurate with respect to itself, I’m a happy bunny. I also agree that a DC-6 shouldn’t fly like a Cessna and that the huge Anatolev freightliner shouldn’t fly like a DC-6.
(Note that in most cases I have many of the realism settings dialed way down due to both my lack of skill and my crummy controls.)
I also agree that these settings should be able to be dialed up from “Disney” to “reasonable” based on individual preferences.
As a real world pilot (210 hours having flown from C152 to DA42), Yes I do care about how aircraft handles in sim during various stages of flight. As it stands right now that is not modelled accurately. Some of the third party aircraft have better (still not accurate) handling characteristics. Also how weather affects aircraft is bit odd in the sim. When there is 10kts crosswind, aircraft struggles to maintain centreline. In reality as airspeed increases rudder becomes more effective, this in my opinion does not happen in sim.
Control surface authority is effected by airspeed in the simulator flight model. But just how much will depend on the particular aircraft and how well it has been modelled: it’s not a general problem.
But for sure the weathervane effect is too strong. Check out the thread I linked in the post above for a (rather extensive) discussion of the problem. Choosing well modelled aircraft can make a big difference as these are better tuned.
Yeah the third party stuff is better in handling compared to default stock that came with MSFS. In particular the default 152 is notoriously difficult to control in crosswinds of more than 5 kts which is not realistic. In real life I have landed c152 in gusty conditions with no problem.
I had a look at that thread and it looks like majority of people are having similar issues.
Agreed. The ground physics are WAY off.
If you care, here are some links to go add your bug report or wishlist vote to.
In terms of the correct way to categorise this, in most cases the changes to physics realism isnt a bug as the software controlling the flight model is performing as designed. It is more that the implementation could be improved to make it more realistic. So a ‘wishlist’ item. This also permits discussion (unlike a bug report, which can only be used to evidence a specific bug).
For me as a Helicopter simmer flight physic is a major topic that DOES apply.
That’s because Helicopter physics are very different from airplane fysics and are not often wel done in simulators.
So I use simulators with proven acceptable Helicopter physics determind by RL pilots.
And even then opiniums over flight physics are not consistend.
The Ideal total helicopters physics simulator has yet to come
For now MSFS going into the right direction.
Based on the comments by RL helipcopters pilots that use the SIM for fun and training.
My other major sims are X-plane, DCS and Aerofly FS2.
The Aerofly FS2 is the basic engine of the Loft Dynamics EASA Level 3 Virtual Reality proffesional helicopter simulator
Once you get an answer back (hopefully you do; I know it’s been a while), where are you planning to relay their response? I suppose this thread would be a good spot.
I will try to remember all the threads it could affect - adverse yaw, here, and a few others. 
So I went through the latest development update and here is colour coded bugs/wishlist top 24 and top 49 wishlist items for the devs to look at. I coloured weather (W) as green, graphics (G) as yellow, gameplay (GP) as red, and flight model (FM) as blue.
Here is the total for the number of issues and total number of votes for each issue type.
Out of these top topics we have about 50x more votes for graphics and gameplay than we do about the flight model.
However, I think people did get excited when MS released the CFD model for the first time so it could be that it’s not that people just don’t care but more that they’re not sure which is a valid vs invalid complaint not being pilots themselves.
The issue is that if Asobo mainly look at the number of votes for various topics to decide what to prioritize, the issues with the flight model will be left behind. So I think just looking at the votes may not result in the best possible sim. Perhaps judging the flight model complaints based on their own merit or always committing to make some improvements to the flight model in each sim update would be a big step forward.