Make Castering nose / tail Wheels an option in Assistance Settings

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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MSFS has options available for devs to enable free castering wheels however most devs aren’t using it. I believe this is as they want their aircraft to be controllable with basic controller/joystick.
This is not realistic however for simmers with pedals.

It would make sense to make this an option in assistance settings so aircraft that have castering wheels in real life fly would handle properly on the ground but if the option is enabled a fake rotation is applied to the tailwheel as it is now in most aircraft

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For proof that castering wheels in the sim I have modded the dc3 to enable free castering tailwheel. THis has made taxiing far harder but more realistic as you need to use throttle, rudder and differential brakes to control the tail wheel angle, taxi-ing on a sideslope is much harder and now possible to ground loop. Definitely need tailwheel lock for takeoff
Copy this over to your flightmodel.cfg, I use it with the duckworth enhancement mod

[CONTACT_POINTS]
static_pitch = 11.5
static_cg_height = 9.5
gear_system_type = 1	;0 = electrical, 1 = hydraulic, 2 = pneumatic, 3 = manual, 4 = none, 5 = undefined
tailwheel_lock = 1
locked_tailwheel_max_range = 0.261799
max_castering_angle = 3.14159265358979




gear_locked_on_ground = 0
gear_locked_above_speed = 250
max_speed_full_steering = 0
max_speed_decreasing_steering = 0
min_available_steering_angle_pct = 0.0
max_speed_full_steering_castering = 40
max_speed_decreasing_steering_castering = 40
min_available_steering_angle_pct = 0.0
min_castering_angle = 0.0


max_number_of_points = 15

;landing gear
point.0 = 1, -55.53, 0, -2.89, 1600, 0, 0.6, 180, 0.082, 2.5, 0.695, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2			; sta 666.4
point.1 = 1, -18.33, -9.761698, -11.25, 1600, 1, 1.875, 0, 0.704, 2.5, 0.682, 4.7, 11.5, 2, 140, 150, 2	; sta 220
point.2 = 1, -18.33, 9.761698, -11.25, 1500, 2, 1.875, 0, 0.704, 2.5, 0.682, 5.2, 11.5, 3, 140, 150, 2	; sta 220

;main gear retracted
;point.3 = 1, -18.33, -9.761698, -8.25, 1600, 1, 1.875, 0, 0.704, 2.5, 0.682, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 2	; sta 220
;point.4 = 1, -18.33, 9.761698, -8.25, 1500, 2, 1.875, 0, 0.704, 2.5, 0.682, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 2	; sta 220

;scrape points
point.3 = 2, 0, 0, 0, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1			; nose
point.4= 2, -9, 9.25, -6.757123, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 8, 0, 0, 1	; right engine nacelle scrape
point.5 = 2, -9, -9.25, -6.757123, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1	; left engine nacelle scrape
point.6 = 2, -60, -0.0, -1.637793, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1	; tail scrape
point.7 = 2, -57, -0.0, 12, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1		; top of fin
point.8 = 2, -60, -13.25, 1.5, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1		; left stab tip
point.9 = 2, -60, 13.25, 1.5, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1		; right stab tip
point.10 = 2, -26, -47, 1, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1		; left wing tip
point.11 = 2, -26, 47, 1, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1		; right wing tip
point.12 = 2, -8, 0, 4.3, 800, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1		; fuselage top
point.13 = 2,-20.33,-9.762,-6.25,1600,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0	; left waterscrape
point.14 = 2,-20.33,9.762,-6.25,1500,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0	; right waterscrape


emergency_extension_type	= 1
steering_time_constants		= 3, 5
hyd_need_power_to_function	= 0 ```
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If you place the text between lines with 3 ``` you’ll get a code block

Like this :)

Which should increase readability a lot.

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Topic moved into the wishlist. Bug Reports & Wishlist > Wishlist

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My DR250-160 Capitaine mod tries to caster the wheel as well as giving the more unpredictable (to some) results that taildraggers give, as much as you could do it back in SU6ish days.

I’ll give those numbers a bit of a play in it and see how this goes with smaller aircraft. It’s well overdue for an update anyway! Thanks for testing this out.

A default fully castering option would definitely be appreciated though, for both nose and tailwheel aircraft.

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Yeah, the tailwheel or nosewheel not beeing free castering in the appropriate airframes has been a pet peeve of mine from the get go… i know it’s not for all, but certainly an on/off option would be nice.
The Blackbird Corsair is of the same caliber… awsome plane, but ugh that tailwheel… it’s a hard enough airplane to fly, but waaaayyy to easy to taxi. Even with TPR, it moves from side to side instantly.

Anyways, Voted!

min_available_steering_angle_pct = 0.0
is in there twice…

Woof ~ Woof & ~Salute!~

Steiny

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Doing more testing with other aircraft and they aren’t as stable as the dc3 with castering wheel. I believe this is due to the Contacts section of flight model does not have a variable for wheel steering radius. This is what will define much of how catering wheel aircraft steer. To demonstrate this you can see in the screenshot the contact point does not move for the tailwheel when it is steering. The force vectors are also all aplied to this center point which is not realistic for a free castering wheel

image
image1222×873 90.2 KB

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Bump

Same goes for the other models that should have a free castoring nose or tailwheel.

(wassit the DA40 that had a free caster before and it was removed with an update?)

Please have a realism-gander :wink:

Woof ~ Woof & Salute on a great product

Steiny

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I thought I’d bump this topic, because the long awaited Antonov-2, which has been just released, is also plagued with this problem. And I don’t buy the reasoning that aircraft developers intentionally avoid implementing realistic self-catering wheels in order to make their aircraft more accessible for beginner users: in my opinion more realistic steering with differential brakes and rudder wash is not that hard to learn and quickly becomes intuitive and is actually fun. I really hope this post gets more votes and is noticed by the developers and the problem gets fixed. Meanwhile we have to live with this toyish and immersion-breaking physics of taildraggers being on rails.

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Yeah, it has nothing to do with making it easier for beginners. It hasn’t been fixed because there is literally no way to fix it within the confines of the flight model config.

It’s not an addon-level problem. The only true exception I know of is FlyingIron, who have resorted to writing their own special code to basically override the limitations of the FM config. This, I’m sure, was no easy feat. The DC-3 could be considered an exception. It is more realistic than stock, but still doesn’t behave completely like a free-castoring tailwheel.

The parameters that have been applied for the DC-3 free-castoring wheel are simply not feasible on the majority of other aircraft. While the tailwheel can pivot freely (not tethered to rudder input), it leads to the tail meandering all over the place, dictated completely by wind, forces from the engines, propwash, etc. but hardly at all by the weight and momentum of the aircraft.

See the post above about contact points. They do not move with the wheels and cannot change dynamically. Until the sim allows otherwise, we are limited to either steerable tailwheels or “free-castoring” tailwheels that behave very strangely.

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