Does anyone think turbulence over land is realistic atm?

THIS is the perfect explanation of the problem we have in the sim and why any turbulence or thermal or whatever movement of the air we encounter feels overdone and wrong. The nose constantly comes up or down which makes any manual flight a constant stare at the VSI and why it’s so frustrating to fly with what is meant to be realistic behaviour of the air.

4 Likes

There are some interesting observations/concerns expressed here (Incoming soaring feedback on the SU12 weather update) regarding the thermals. Heat-only thermals tend to overtake everything else. People have been able to “soar” C152s over cities with the engine off.

Treed areas are flagged to disable lift, which destroys ridge lift in many areas. If you fly in an area where there are very broad and distinct lines of trees (Manapouri in South Island New Zealand comes to mind) with a little wind in the middle of the day, the effects are over the top and extend very far up.

I believe SU12 caps the heat only thermals at cloud base but the effects still occur far higher and to a much greater extent than they should.

The yaw thing is perhaps the most annoying but depends greatly on the particular aircraft you are using. The stock B58 had (or still has?) this problem. The tail just wags back and forth even without the presence of effects to pitch and roll. A 3rd party example would be the AH Globe Swift, but I discovered they had set the area of the vertical stabilizer and rudder to 15 square feet each! Reducing these to realistic figures helped the problem significantly. Even so, certain aircraft do it and others don’t, and it doesn’t seem to depend on overall size of the plane.

2 Likes

That’s pretty spot on as well although I have seen some pretty good attempts to do it right, I think it IS possible but probably not as easy as just using what the sim offers at the first glance. In flight the DC6 for example feels extremely good around the vertical axis and its behaviour has been confirmed in many aspects by DC6 rated pilots. Other aircraft like for example the FSW C414 behave extremely realistic as well. It’s a matter of knowledge, proficiency and will to create a good flight model in MSFS, it doesn’t get there automatically. Stalls is the same although many aircraft will simply not offer any hard data regarding how their stalls would turn out. Who would deliberately stall a DC-6 or 747? It’s different for a C172 or course.

Ground Handling is indeed a huge issue in MSFS and it has a lot to do with the wind and how aircraft react to moving air in the sim. If you turn all wind off the planes behave pretty nicely on the ground, almost like they would in reailty from the little comparison I’ve got.

Trim behaviour has always been a problem in the sim since I can remember. We just don’t have the correct hardware. Our sticks and yokes return to the center and the trim system has to cope with that. What MSFS presents however has even less to do with correct trim than FSX and P3D had to offer. Trim (and axes in general) behave very weird in MSFS, too sensitive, not linear and completely unpredictable. Something’s not right if the rudder trim is more effective than the rudder. A lot has to be done on this topic, also with respect to the flight characteristics.

5 Likes

It does seem to be the case that with care good aircraft developers can make some very nice models within the present limits of the sim.

I enjoy the gusts and turbulence - not ever had this in a home simulator before. Sure it needs improvement and tuning, but props to Asobo for what they have done so far.

But :-1: for trim, which sorts negates all the good stuff in the atmospheric modelling.

2 Likes

That is an interesting read. It’s these overpowered ‘heat-only’ thermals over agricultural and urban areas that are causing all the turbulence I’m trying to get rid off. What I find odd is that the creation of this lift seems to be more related to the windspeed than the temperature, as setting the windspeed to zero has a bigger effect on this than anything else.

I also find it quite dispiriting when members of the community diagnose and identify the issues for Asobo and even then really basic stuff still doesn’t get fixed. Last week I couldn’t work out why I had no GA AI traffic, it turned out that it was largely because of a bug in the sim that makes all the Cessnas invisible, a bug that some guy posted a fix for last July in the Bug section of this forum, and that bug is still in the sim! It’s things like that which cause me to expect that gliding is unlikely to be fixed in SU12.

2 Likes

I have noticed that too. Turning the wind off cuts the “heat only” thermals down tremendously. It’s actually pretty odd. With a sunny day and no wind, you would expect the opposite - that the thermals would be more distinct.

This is also interesting: Will SU12 or later SUs incorporate significant thermal model changes as described in official Gliders Overview stream by Marten from Flight Sim studio AG?.

Looks like they had two models - easy and realistic. They had people test them, and the testers reported not finding enough thermals and it was too difficult to understand, so they shipped the “easy” model which is just thermals galore. So, because a bunch of testers didn’t understand how or didn’t have the patience to find thermals, we got a model that has far too many thermals.

1 Like

There is no turbulence setting for me

It’s coming in SU12 which should be out tomorrow.

Thank you very much

Gives me a good excuse for why I float off the end of the runway and across county lines, it is not my approach speed after all it is those dang pesky thermals.

1 Like

I wouldn’t say completely unrealistic. I’m in flight school right now (the real kind) One of the things we just covered included a section on exactly what you experienced. It’s not necessarily winds, and such, the temps on the coast from the water and the land tend to cause different temps, with thermals meeting the winds aloft. The issue is when the thermals from the hot land meet the cooler ocean or vice versa it will make it a rather bumpy ride. Someone mentioned the plane not going back to the trimmed altitude… um duh. If you get stuck in a wind shear that pulls you down 500 feet, you’re not magically going to pop back up. You have to correct everything. Even here in Colorado you get that flying near water, or even going over the natural earth to city enviroments. The heat off the ground can be a pain like oh look 2 knot winds clear day. Why did my cessna just drop like 10 feet. Feels like riding a old wooden roller coaster.

1 Like

To be fair, I think he said attitude.

3 Likes

And he said ‘minor bumps and knocks’ . Not LLWS!

2 Likes

There are joystick that don’t spring back to the middle, but unfortunately Microsoft have chosen not to support their own product: the Sidewinder2 FFB joystick.

There are other brands as well, but the fact that they ignore a Microsoft product seems even more bizarre.

Yeah man it’s such a huge shame. I can see why, very limited user base, but it would be great if they could. It’s possible - I have a couple of plugins that can definitely interact with it but both have their own flaws. Usable though (good enough to use - just not as good as it could be with a bit more work). At least it “just works” as a good and precise joystick without any special drivers though, even on Windows 11.

Good for helicopters. And even without the plugins the TRIM for regular aircraft feels good (I mean you can feel the pressure to keep it centred reduce when you trim out for level flight). I find it nicer than a normal stick. But to be fair I have not tried a very expensive stick to see how they feel.

1 Like

Yes, it’s a limited user base at present but you can be sure that if FFB was properly supported, virtually every simmer would want one.

Perhaps not people who just fly an airbus, but all GA and heli simmers.

It’s a huge market.

2 Likes

The lack of FFB support was not due to a limited user base, it was due to Asobo misunderstanding what properly implemented FFB could do and confusing it with XBox style gimmicky controller rumble for special effects.

2 Likes

Well, even after SU12 the turbulence is still ridiculous.

Over the sea the plane is rock steady. The instant you overfly the land with even a 4kt breeze blowing the C152 is shooting up in the air at 1100ft/min and diving towards the ground 10 seconds later. Take your hands off the controls and within seconds it’s knocked into a 30 degree bank and turned around 180 degrees in 20 seconds.

It’s practically impossible to trim accurately with it behaving like this and it’s impossible to fly any kind of course or pattern accurately.

Is there no way to turn this half baked simulation of turbulence off completely, because trying to fly the C152 like this is simply not enjoyable?

1 Like

Turning the setting to “Low” in the Piloting section of Assist Options works for me, hardly anything at all.
“Realistic” is a bit too much IMO but some may find it okay. I’ve set mine to “Medium” as a good all round effect for me.

1 Like

But turbulence isnt only to do with wind as they have attempted to explain many times. If you dont like it turn it to the minimum. That will give you the ex-plane “on-rails” experience. If you cant handle the Low setting then I don’t know what to say - the plane barely deviates