Improve "bounce" effect during touchdown

In my opinion, the ‘bounce’ effect of the airplanes during touchdown is too stiff. In real life, you can see that the airplane ‘falls down’ after the main landing gear touches the ground. Since it is hard to put this into words, here is an example video:

And for comparison, a landing of the Fenix A320 in MSFS (you can see this with any other aircraft as well):

i dont know if we are talking about the same thing, but i’d like if the moment of actual touchdown was just a little more pronounced, more clear… a little more evident… sometimes its hard to tell if your wheels are on the ground… maybe a little more camera shake, more bounce and shaking sounds, simulate the compression of the struts a little bit bouncing up and down a little, more rubber friction and grip sideways… something like that…
i hope they include some of that in 2024. we’ll see

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There is no “bouncing up and down” of the struts normally. The mass of a real plane leaning down is high and it would need a huge force to make the whole plane bounce back as it is currently the case in the sim.

Then get FS Realistic. that will solve your issue. and you can adjust how much you want, or what sound effects you want. This is subjective. as every aircraft I flew, I never got any headshake. only cameras will shake.

‘Bouncing’ might be the wrong term because I mean the ‘falling effect’ shortly after touchdown. Dave, one of the developers of the Fenix A320, said the following about this:

Sadly the issues with the gear sitting too high and not bouncing enough are a limitation of the sim; it treats all oleos as springs, and the only thing control is the force basically - I spent a couple weeks trying to get it to rest at th correct 92% compression but it would mean during a harder landing the spring was too weak, causing the aircraft to bounce back into the air in a glitchy way.

so you mean the compression of the struts? the Spirit A320 at 14:28 is a good example?

yes, I miss the ‘bounce’ effect and the compression of the struts. The Spirit A320 at 14:28 is a good example of what I mean. Dave from Fenix says that it’s a limitation of the simulator.

well there is an improved physics simulation coming in 2024, so hopefully the aircraft makers have more to work with regarding the moment of touchdown

Hopefully, because as it is right now, it’s not that realistic, as you can see in the clip

Do you have everything in realistic mode…?
Hard mode…?
Real time…?
I have never had a landing like that on rails like the one I see in the video.
Since MSFS 2020 came out from minute zero I have everything as I mentioned above, everything to the maximum possible realism.

Are you sure? Do you have any clip of it? Because I’ve never had a landing in the simulator with the ‘bounce’ effect / compression of the struts like in the first clip in the video here:

And yes, I have all settings in realistic mode

I know exactly what you mean, this has bugged me since release. Along with the unrealistic difficulty of holding center line on some aircraft (and unrealistic effects of wind). I think the inibuilds a320 actually has a pretty good “compression” feel. Along with PMDG 737 and some of the 3rd party GA like the c414.

i think we are all talking about the same… and the thing is… its an extremely difficult thing to represent in a sim because its a feeling…the change thats felt right at interface between 50 tons of airliner floating in the air and resting on its wheels…, its something you feel in your butt on the seat… so how can you reproduce that on a screen? its tough… right now its actually not bad… but i feel it could be improved somewhat… this is one of the instances where you need artists as much as coders on your dev team

The only good thing of using a xbox controler to fly is the fisical feedback. When you are landing and the main gear touchdown, the control shakes and is so clear you touchdown.

In a slight off-shoot of this, I notice I have a very hard time trying to wheel land most planes in MSFS. I am a RL pilot and always wheel landed my experimental KR2. Either there is too much bounce or the gear is too stiff.

Too stiff for sure

I have seen plenty of planes bouncing off the runway IRL. Go to any small airport and watch the flight instruction. Even jumbos with their shock absorbing struts can bounce, as is evident by lots of videos in YouTube of crazy landings. If you land correctly in the sim, it won’t bounce. On the other hand, simulation of the shock absorbers, if possible would be so cool.
I sure would like it if the sim would produce much louder sounds of the big thud I always hear as a passenger. Maybe up forward in the pilots seats they don’t hear it so loud.

Real jets do indeed bounce a bit on their struts as they land, before the spoilers come up and dump the lift. you can feel it especially on a smoother than normal landing where the strut compresses but then comes back up slightly.
The sim does have some compression numbers in the flight_model.cfg, but you’d need a full external engine to make it more realistic.

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This is in fact the pinnacle of landing for me, when I can barely feel it touchdown, or can’t :wink:

Kinda hard to do in the sim without a motion seat, though… They make them, though.

If you touchdown at stall speed you wont bounce. Any faster and the aircraft has too much energy and the aircraft will bounce like a kid on a trampoline.