Float plane take off, and landings

I haven’t seen any examples of 2024 float planes taking off and landing on water. To be kind the way they act in msfs 2020 isn’t bad, it’s terrible. I’m hoping that with the onset of flightsim 2024 that the folks working in this will find a way to make the float plane experience more realistic. Just watch any video of real float planes in action…

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There is precious little float plane, or sea plane footage out there. TTM had some on his channel.

https://youtu.be/pU35EiPwvp4?si=ijXD8snhpa3bUrJZ&t=113

Quite a severe crab on that landing, and he cut away before we got to see if any new water physics would have caused the plane to violently dig in its right pontoon.

https://youtu.be/pU35EiPwvp4?si=DUhUpg6OrHJcpzDY&t=762

Some reversing action on the water, after landing.

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The explanation is a bit subjective, however I tried landings/takeoffs on MSFS24s technical alpha using MSFS 2020 aircraft (so take that with a grain of salt) and it directly felt more realistic to me (without actual flying experience on floatplanes, just as per logic described below)

You really felt the waves in the tech alpha, not like it was in MSFS 2020 in which case the visual representation was in no way linked to what movement was simulated, so making it impossible to judge if a water surface it too rough to try a landing on. Also it felt water and waves have got more resistance, so it’s not like landing on ice with basically no control and also not just pushing through waves without any effect.

On top I had some more trouble to put the rather light Grumman Duck shown above down - on 2020 it didn’t matter much if you are too fast but in this case now the aircraft acted like if you skip a rock which I’d consider more realistic.

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Good to see that it feels better in FS2024. Seems like in FS2020 it’s a crapshoot depending on the aircraft you are flying. The XCub on floats is the worst, and you can clearly see this weird collision jitter when it reaches the top of its “bob”.

On one of the dev streams, Seb says the water physics in 2020 are ripped straight from FSX, where there was something like a few points for an object to interact with. In 2024, this is now a lot more detailed. I seriously think we’ll be seeing proper boats and ships, and who knows, Microsoft World Simulator could be coming soon. :sweat_smile:

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Despite water physics improvements in MSFS2024, there is still plenty of room for further improvements such as simulation of bow wave, being able to change aircraft pitch when in water like in real life, etc. This will allow for much more realistic water operations in the sim.