One reason for steam gauges being popular is likely ergonomics: for many they are simply easier to read (and use), including myself.
If I would ever buy a real-life airplane it would be with glass for sure. The G1000 for example looks lighting fast and awesome in real planes, but it’s not nearly the same in the sim - the lack of physical buttons and dials obviously being a major difference.
That said, if someone would make a high fidelity Diamond DA50 RG for the sim I’d definitely buy one. Isn’t she a beauty
Quite possibly true. The market probably can accomodate a new glass cockpit GA plane like the Acclaim.
But especially the high-fidelity developers most likely invest far more time into a single project - often they only release one or two aircraft per year. So the fallout of such a market test failing is probably greater than for devs who have less refined systems and flight models and release 4 or 5 planed a year.
The other question is about the difficulty vs. steam gauge aircraft. No idea how much of a factor that is.
SWS at least will release the PC-12 shortly.
[EDIT: (Agree to disagree. ) => outdated refence to the post above. Please ignore because of my stupidity and inability to read properly …]
As said before: the larger Garmins are pretty ergonomic. But they cost more than many used planes .
Like with many new car systems, most smaller touch screen glass cockpits aren’t ergonomical at all IMHO. Too much information on a tiny screen. And then they often don’t have separate knobs and buttons any more and for every function you have to go through the menu structure and constantly hit the wrong pixels on the screen during minor turbulence. It’s like trying to use a cell phone or one of the old TomTom GPS units in a holder on the dashboard while driving over a bumpy gravel road at 60 miles an hour …
Isn’t that what I said: steam are easier to use than glass, especially in the sim where there is no haptic feedback at all. So I think we agree more than we disagree
There are quality Glass cockpit aircraft addons around, Kodiak, Sting S4 and Visionjet all come to mind.
Though to be honest, as I regularly fly a steam gauge fixed prop Sting S4 in real life I personally would have preferred a Steam version of the Sting without the CSU
Regardless it clearly can be done, so I doubt difficulty with glass is a big issue.
I love all 3 of those planes, but do you see the gap? Light Sport, STOL & Business Jet. There are no twins & nothing in the mold of a Mooney Acclaim Ultra or Diamond 50.
OK, well the only one I have seen in real life was definitely a Rich Man’s toy. it was stored in a lockup hangar (which also had vintage cars and motorcycles) next to a private runway (newly resurfaced for the jet) that we had to phone and get permission to land at - and yes they flew it for “business trips” but it was basically a toy.
It is also often described, including by Cirrus themselves, as a “Personal jet” …
The economics of jets make the Vision Jet attractive for small charters for moderately rich men as well as a rich man’s toy – that cockpit visibility is clearly made to appeal to pilot-owners and those who can “sit shotgun” up front.
Well, even though there are only very few glass cockpit aircraft, it looks like there’s finally something that makes using them (and analog cockpits of course) a little easier without the need for a lot of equipment.
As I said above, I think it’s only a matter of time until the glass cockpit market starts getting filled.
Glass instruments take much longer to develop to a high degree of accuracy.
If what you want is a Garmin plane using existing avionics, then they are already here and many are coming. For the myriad other choices out there, it’ll probably be a couple to a few years, but, they’ll come eventually as people look to find a differentiator to market their plane with that can spark interest.
As was noted, there was a pretty big hole in steam gauge planes, which technically make up the majority of planes sitting at airports today. But that’s been pretty well filled now. Eventually, some enterprising people with interest and experience will attack the huge variety of glass out there. Accurately modeling these systems is a huge amount of work, though, so it’s going to take time.
P.S. I, too, would like to see a Tecnam P2012, too, given it’s the choice of Cape Air.
Very true. If I remember correctly, Working Title were on the verge of releasing their core code as open source before they were “Assimilated” lol.
Most PFD and MFD screen displays are basically the same BUT they are tuned to the specific aircraft type into which they’re fitted so this demands an accurate FDE, which is a challenge in itself.
Where they differ most is in the engine display so you’d need a proprietary section of code to drop in for each type:
Piston Single
Piston Twin
Turbo Piston Single
Turbo Piston Twin
Turboprop Single
Turboprop Twin
Jet Single
Jet Twin
Each of these would then need to be tuned to the specific aircraft with it’s performance characteristics and fuel tank arrangement etc.
A huge amount of work, but there are study-level planes in the sim now which have been years in development so it’s not impossible.
Where I come from we say the same thing about the Cessna 152, but these distinctions aren’t really relevant to the discussion. My point was there’s no overlap in these current offerings, and there are still entire categories of modern GA planes that aren’t on offer at all in high fidelity.
) => outdated refence to the post above. Please ignore because of my stupidity and inability to read properly …]
