Real World Pilots, please state your feedback about the flight model

150 hours in a 172 and about 110 in 182T. Very close to being spot on. Biggest complaint is how it reacts to weather( movements are over exaggerated) and the vertical movements seem to be a little sensitive. I’ve played with the sensitivity in the menu and it’s helped. Other than that its very very close. I’m pretty happy where the sim in at considering its day two. Systems need work and I’m not sure if my trim is messed up but it seems to be jumpy.

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150 hours is hardly enough to pass judgement.

Compared to who? A sim pilot? It well and truly is.
To someone that has 500 hours in the same aircraft. Less so maybe, but the 100 to 200 landings in that time period is certainly enough to have a good idea. If you don’t then you should not be flying as PIC.

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There is room for improvement of course, but it is not far off at all in the GA aircraft. The work that has gone in to this and the subsequent product that has arrived is incredible. In no other simulation can you fly around and experience all the effects of mother nature while flying a model that is quite close to the real one. It is truly immersive and realistic. I think overall the flight model is very very good. The heavy jets are a different story though unfortunately. I have been flying for 12 years both GA and long haul.

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so, I have a question for the real pilots.

when turning in a real aircraft, do you not have to put much rudder in or at all and the aircraft self coridinates? [except in a cross wind]?

it feels differently then p3d or X-Plane or previous msfs titles.

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You wrongly assume he was PIC. Sit down.

2500 hours, mostly in king airs. Best sim I’ve ever flown.

People who whine about realism think flying should be hard, it’s not. Every sim I’ve flown up until now has been harder than flying IRL.

This one, the difficulty comes from not having the feel of the controls, not sim BS. Looking forward to getting a better setup eventually.

Also some of the people in this thread need to learn about trim. If the nose keeps dropping, trim up. Keep rolling? Trim the other way. It’s super simple to fly straight and level with just a bit of trim, just like real life.

I don’t fly jets so I can’t speak to that but for the props I’ve flown it’s bang on. Good job to the designers.

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130 hrs in 172s and Diamond Eclipse.

So far the ground rudder control is sooooo much better. But I cannot find how to calibrate the rudder pedals or yoke. my rudder is leaning just a bit to the right all the time.

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Another 172 guy here, the flight dynamics are real good! The way the planes sort of bobs around in the wind, feels better than XP to me actually and honestly was not expecting that. As others have said the G1000 and other systems arent quite there, but I dont think that was ever the devs intentions.

I also find, in any sim, i especially have to dial back the control sensitivity a good bit on the elevator axis. As great as the honeycomb is the elevator travel is still a fraction of that in the real plane!

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1000hs in C152/C172 and 6000hs in A319/320/321.

All the Cessnas are great, having a lot of fun remembering the old days, impressive job for the GA models.

But the A320, ■■■■ what a horrible flight model/system, cockpit looks great though, other them that total ■■■■. Hope 3rd parties dev can make a better job.

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OceanicFiber752,

Hopefully I can help answer some of your questions. I am a pilot in real life. I currently fly for a major us airline. I have a BS in Aviation and possess multiple type ratings as well as my flight instructor certificates. BUT I have been simming since far before any of that.

In short… it is great but has some glitches.

First off, you have to realize that flight simulator was designed to make $$. The best way of doing that is to make the graphics incredible. I believe they far exceeded expectations in that regard.

Pros:

  1. Graphics: Incredible… from weather to scenery its top notch.
  2. GA flight dynamics in air seem spot on regardless of some peoples posts IMO. Put the C150 through the maneuver ringer and it was spot on.
  3. Weather is incredible
  4. In game flight planning is awesome,
  5. Did I say graphics already?
  6. Sloping runways, 3D grass, the list goes on.

It’s only been a day and I am still exploring the game but here are my frustrations so far. By all means if anybody knows how to fix them please let me know.

  1. Lack of in depth aircraft systems. I was hoping with such an amazing in depth attention to detail that flight sim would take the default aircraft and at least do all the systems in the included aircraft. Example: CJ4 up at FL450 gets a cabin warning but none of the pressurization switches or knobs work. No detents for the FADEC therefore you have no idea what to set your N1 to on takeoff, climb, cruise etc. The aircraft fuel flows are wayyy off. The Flight Director does not work properly nor does the FLC button. The functionality of the collins FMS is extremely lacking. Cant be 100% sure but it also seems as though the CJ is way overpowered. In G1000 aircraft the system is 100% lacking, all it does are the basics.
  2. No 4x,8x,16x speed options. Instead they offer a “Travel To” function. This would be great if they saved your aircraft state, but instead you have to rebuild the automation etc.
  3. Controller calibration issues. I currently use the saitek yoke but do not like the way flight sim set up the sensitivity management in game. They made the curves exponential instead of linear. So if you set the sensitivity to really low (like it needs to be to be playable), the last inch you move your hardware yoke the aircraft (in sim) yoke will turn 60 degrees. Really obnoxious and makes takeoffs and landings very difficult as you tend to move your hardware yoke more on challenging landings. Maybe there is a fix that I don’t know about yet but I assume I am not the only one with this issue. If you have a yoke that travels 90 degrees this may not be a problem for you.
  4. Feels like they may have gone overboard with ground effect.
  5. Rotation. In most aircraft, if the aircraft is trimmed for takeoff properly, at rotation you give a gentle pull to get the nose off the ground. After setting the proper pitch, the aircraft will accelerate quickly due to lack of ground friction, this acceleration causes your flight controls to become more effective and thus causing you to release that required back pressure to maintain the desired pitch. However, in the game, even with trim set properly for takeoff after rotation the aircraft requires excessive back pressure or trim to hold the desired climb pitch attitude. This causes a very annoying oscillation when you try to trim and relieve back pressure at the same time. For every airspeed you need a different amount of control input to maintain the desired pitch. Massive airspeed changes in jets occur frequently so having a trim wheel that can keep up with your acceleration/deceleration rate will be much appreciated. It feels as though I can not trim fast enough with the given trim switch. All of this is manageable in the cessna but further exacerbated in the citation and larger jets. Terrible flight model for larger jets.
  6. Have to change the zoom feature, it is coupled with the knob twits feature. Getting bumped around in turbulence, you are trying to twist your heading bug and you end up zooming instead. Easily fixed in game but again, just an annoyance.

The one biggest pro is that the framework for 3rd party developers to come in and develop payware aircraft that are super realistic. aka Aerosoft and PMDG. This is a very exciting start. For the time being, relish in the scenery and GA aircraft for maximum realism.

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It’s a shame I can’t react with a meme because, man. I have many for this.

Almost a solid week with your hands on the Yoke and some clown says you don’t know what you’re doing. Yeesh.

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Whatever you say :expressionless:

I wish I had any hours in king airs. LOVE those planes and always have. They look sexy as hell and look so fun! jealous!

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I’m an airline pilot for work and general aviation pilot for hobby.
I’ll say that in general it is pretty good. The main thing I don’t like is taildragger ground behavior. The sim aircraft are all behaving like nosewheel aircraft: wanting to go straight. Taildraggers don’t want to do that, especially when going slow (search youtube for “ground loop”).
I’ve flown the cap10 quite a bit in real life and the flight model is pretty accurate if you stay inside of the flight envelope. I tried doing a stall turn in the sim and that wasn’t very realistic. In the real cap it takes a while to get the nose pointing downwards, especially while turning right, in the sim the rudder doesn’t seem to loose effectiveness.
I tried the Baron with an engine out at Vmc-air and couldn’t get the prop to feather. I hardly needed the rudder but I have to admit that the airport was not at sea level so that might also explain the behaviour.

1G stalls feel fine. I couldn’t get an opposite wing-drop by using aileron in the stall with any aircraft that I tried. Same for accelerated stall.

I haven’t tried much else yet.

I would say: the sim is pretty good. The edges of the flight envelope are always difficult to model and the sim does it fairly well (certainly better than the previous flight simulator). Add-on developers will probably make more realistic aircraft with better flight models. If you stay in the flight envelope (or do a normal stall or a spin) of the GA aircraft (haven’t tried airliners yet) it feels pretty good, but not necessarily like the real aircraft. Taildraggers are unrealistic in the sim.

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Real A320 pilot here. I have about 150 hours in GA aircraft, from flight school about 15 years ago so I can’t make an accurate statement about those aircraft but from what I remember it is close enough. Some aircraft can be a bit too sensitive in pitch in slow speed situations.

As for the A320, I won’t talk about systems as that isn’t even close. As for the handling, once you are airborne it is actually not that far off from reality. The aircraft is definitely overpowered though. I think that if they but a bit more effort into it, and listen to type rated pilot feedback a bit more, they can make it pretty good, I am sure. The potential from the underlying tech is there, that is certain.

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the flight model is realistic enough on single engine pistons (I flew 6 hours from release) the only thing
I am not happy with is the trim wheel on the cessna 152/172: you hit the switch the wheel turns just a notch and the pitch change is exagerated.

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Yes, the 747 has problems. You need to use vs mode to climb to cruising alt or get ready for a roller coaster ride. The A320 and 787 seem to climb fine in VNAV mode.

Could not agree more. The systems… i don’t even know where too start. The autopilot is completely wrong along with the MCDU. I suppose for a flight sim base hobby pilot it is more than enough. For realism ? The systems are way off and the entire plane is not close to being complete.

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Being honest re: sensitivity

I can live with that, being from a sim world background (and despite having always used force feedback where supported) I was overly heavy with the controls on the real 152, constantly trying to correct the plane in the heavy wind, my instructor just told me to trim it and let it fly itself through the bumps, maybe it is because force feedback isn’t implemented I lack that feeling of the air over the control surfaces.

My only real gripe was the twin engine thing tho, that was wacko…i’m not that good !!

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