I just wanted to update, this tool does work with Bush Trips. I don’t know what I did wrong before. LOL
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From an engineering perspective, shouldn’t extremely light landings with aircraft with oleo struts with torque-links (AKA: torsion links) also be considered less than ideal, due to the increased wear on torque-link bushings and the increased risk of torque-link failure from wheel shimmy, not to mention on aircraft with spoilers that auto deploy it delays their deployment and that too of auto brake systems.
For example a VS of <60fpm at touchdown is considered unduly soft and carry increased risk of main landing gear shimmy events that can lead to torque-link failure on 737-100/200/300/400/500 modals as example.
Or to quote various accident reports that cite Boeings 'Preventing Main Landing Gear Shimmy Events’ (which is applicable to the Boeing 737-100, -200, -300,-400 and -500 models)
'Boeing also recommends that pilots strive for a landing with normal sink rates with particular emphasis on ensuring that the auto speedbrakes are armed and deploy promptly at touchdown. An overly soft landing, or a landing in which the speedbrakes do not promptly deploy, allows the landing gears to remain in the air mode longer, which makes them more vulnerable to shimmy. This is especially true when landing at airports located at higher elevations, where the touchdown speed is increased.’
Which may be food for though for people who strive for very low VS. on touchdown.
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Thanks for the great input. I’ve been looking into the data that I can read out via SimConnect and came to the conclusion that it’ll be best to use vertical speed for landing ratings. Currently, MSFS Landing Inspector uses G forces, but the readings are too inaccurate. The reason is that they are heavily dependent on FPS and thus very inaccurate in split-second situations such as touchdowns. On multiple occasions I’ve encountered hard crash-landings that registered less than 2Gs.
I will not disable the current G meter and the G forces graph, however. I think it still has it’s purpose in the tool. The next version will include improved vertical speed readings (will now read true vertical speed) and based on this data rate the landing.
Rating a landing is of course tricky. It depends on a multitude of factors and on not just vertical speed - aircraft type and weight, weather, surface, airspeed, flaring, etc (not mentioning carrier landings). I will therefore keep the landing ratings as universal as you can possibly make them using vertical speed as the sole factor.
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Version 1.1 of MSFS Landing Inspector is out! Visit the Github project page and download the latest release. If you’ve already used this tool, then all you have to do is unzip the latest version and launch the msfs_landing_inspector.py. If you haven’t tried it before, then please follow the installation instructions on the Github project page.
Change log version 1.1 (October 1, 2020):
- Fixed -999999 values caused by low frame rates.
- Fixed vertical speed to represent true values instead of indicated.
- Landing rating is now based on the vertical speed at touchdown.
- Improved visualization of charts. Different colors are now shown for data when airborne and when on the ground.
Thanks to the community for your great support! Please let me know your feedback so we can continue improving this tool.
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Hi,
Fantastic Tool,
Is it possible to add the coordinates of the touchdown Point? To See in Google Or Bing Maps where we Landed.
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Great idea! Technically, it’s possible. It’s “just” a matter of getting the GPS coordinates of the touchdown point and projecting the point onto a map - both of which are possible. Easy right? 
But first I want to make sure I have the basics right. Make sure that fellow simmers aren’t having issues with the tool. I want to test it myself a little bit more, get some feedback from the community and then start adding new features.
All i need is a number of ft/sec or /min being displayed at the top of the screen for 3 seconds after touchdown, no immersion killer such as tabbing out to watch the numbers.
Do you flare before landing? Judging by the graphs, it looks like you need to raise your nose shortly before landing to slow down the descent rate. Try it with a Cessna 152 first.
You can run it on a phone or a tablet alongside MSFS. That’s how I do it. Just make sure your mobile device is connected to the same network as your PC.
I never felt a shimmy during a 1fps touchdown, ATP, CFI, 50 years. That being said, thanks for brining it up. This kind of expert input helps.