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

There is some torque effect when stalling, can’t tell if its too strong or not.

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Yes, I mean I deal with different parts of Avionics and how they affect the plane. I cant say to much I am not allowed to discuss anything in great detail, not because anything is bad or there is some kind of insider problem but because things can get taken out of context.

But for example this is something I have seen that works almost 100% close to reality in this sim, it works in most sims but it is most accurate in this sim IMHO.

Flying with the default AP, in Roll & Pitch mode, or NAV and ALT, (tested with the Carendo 172T) when flying in to weather with Air pockets that cause you to drop not massively but causes sudden drops other conditions need to be met or present as well, currently the weather over northern Italy is a good test of this North west Italy on the border with France at about 6000ft not over mountains you have to really watch the speed, because the AP will unwittingly fly you in to a stall as the pressures change, the resistance goes up and the plane which was flying nicely on a set power will start to lose speed. I cant get into it to much, but try it and see. You will see the speed rapidly drop and those pilots not paying attention (I am not saying pilots do not pay attention, but in these conditions the work load goes up as you could be very rapidly getting into IMC if the weather starts taking a bad turn or creeps up on you) will find themselves in a stall, as the AP battles to keep alt, and not because its making huge alt corrections.

This is modelled very very well in MSFS.

UPDATE*******

After doing some deeper checking of things and asking a few friends and co workers who fly jets to GA, I have come to this conclusion.

The flight model is actually very good, The planes are the problem. The actual modelling of the planes is not taking advantage of the flight model. Its almost like the planes are using 50% of what the sim can potentially do and some of the flight models are seem to be baked as in “Just get it to fly” we will fix how it fly’s later on. Again the systems in most cases are basic, but is not to do with the Flight model, but obviously will be influenced by it once fixed. Again I dont know, I am not an expert I dont program physics or simulations of weather and atmospheric conditions, but when you see somethings working as you seen simulated in real world stuff and then odd behaviour in other sides you can only conclude I feel, the model the actual simulation of flying and all that it entails is good, but essentially what is being put into the air is not great.

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Flight licences have been “Lifetime” in the UK for a long time now.I obtained my first PPL in 1974 and in those ancient times it had to be renewed after 5 years. Mine lapsed and then the CAA changed to Lifetime licences. When I wanted another some years ago to fly motor gliders I had to pass all the written exams again !..a real pain !

Ouch, that’s rough, sorry to hear about that. I had a friend of mine as a new hire at my last airline who had his European licenses. He told me about all of the tests he had to take to get it, and that he was worried about it lapsing while he was in training in the States. I’m very thankful mine was obtained here since it is significantly less stringent on the written test portion.

Years ago an opportunity came along to get some stick time in a Pitts under the tutelage of a VERY accomplished airshow pilot. At that time I had already logged time in Twin Otters at both poles, put thousands of hours on King Airs and 1900’s. Left behind the ‘glamour’ of the majors to bump around in Northern Canada flying instead of doing systems management. (No offense guys)
The thousands of hours of seat time did nothing to prepare me for the 50 hours I put on that Pitts. I gained a whole new respect for the guys that play out on the razor’s edge of the envelope. Trust me when I say, if you can’t replicate the crisp roll out you see in the video it has nothing to do with flight model fidelity. With the roll rate in an aerobatic aircraft, it takes a TON of practice to nail the stick like the pros do. I looked like I was flying a sponge compared to my teacher. I can stand a Twin Otter on a wingtip and squeeze it into a 75ft wide cut in the bush but I never could square a 4 point roll or scribe a locked altitude during a rolling 360 turn.
I have been mucking about in simulators since the first SubLogic and they have been getting better and better. Flight Unlimited was the first to attempt what MSFS implies they have done. Modelling the air the plane flies thru instead of just moving a 3d object thru empty space. (WAY oversimplified) I believe they are on the right track and agree with most of the other ‘pilots’ here that the flight model is pretty good. Many of the systems are suspect. Go fire up your FSX and jump into the default 747. Let me know how you do programming the FMS and shooting a CATIII autoland. How long did MS support that title? Did they ever get all the knobs doing what the knobs were meant to do?
Asobo will get the algorithms figured out. I have no doubt. But I also doubt they will ever have all the buttons active either.

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Disagree. I agree the ‘ball’ appears to be stuck. Try setting up in straight/level. Step on the rudder. you see the ball slide off center, then go back to coordinated. you can make the ball move but it does not move as expected. It definitely can’t be used to ensure coordinated flight. However if you set an outside view from behind and fly a series of no-rudder turns, it is pretty obvious that you are slipping thru the turn. Rudder has the desired effect if you use the exterior view and apply rudder to keep the turn coordinated. I think it is the way the turn coordinator is coded. It seems to react to inertia not ‘G’.

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Interesting. I was flying the X-cub last night. Was buzzing around Papua New Guinea following the Kokoda trail. Was having a heck of a time trying to spot an old strip in the jungle through the fog and rain. Spotted it from about 3500 AGL. Slowed right down and dropped the flaps. Put it on the back of the curve and just let it sink while circling so I could keep the strip in sight. Stall warning squealed a couple times but I didn’t notice any wing drop. Just for giggles I pulled back and ended up with stick in my lap, horn wailing and still had full directional control. Pretty mushy but could not get a full stall with full flap, power off and full stick. I have 0 hours in a real X-Cub but have worn out a set of tundra tires on a Supercub. I would have done a fine imitation of a piano had I done that in the PA-18. Not sure if the X-Cub will full stall with the barn doors out or not.

Canada requires min currency to maintain your license. There are a ton of casual PPL holders that have had their tickets expire. You need to redo the student pilot written I believe plus some dual time to get it back. Used to just be a matter of keeping your medical. Not any more.

In my opinion the flight model core, I call it “numerical integration beast”, is not bad. But the individual flight models (configuration files) stink. My Extra 330LT X flight model modification is proof for me. See Fix the Extra 330LT

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I doubt that, you might be right regarding the slip indicator. But propeller slipstream effect definitely is not modeled at all. Changing power refering to outside references there is no change at all in yaw. What you are saying about slipping through a turn is more an adverse yaw effect and not a propeller effect. The propeller slipstream effect merely increases or decreases the adverse yaw effect depending on the direction of turn.

Also if what you are saying would be true and the aircraft would actually be in a slip with a centered slip indicator the aircraft should experience yaw induced roll or when wings are kept level a rate of heading change. I don’t know about you but I’m not seeing any of this happening. In short:

  • Propellers in FS2020 don’t feather.
  • Propeller drag isn’t simulated acurately (drag due to windmilling prop).
  • Slipstream effect is 100% not there.
  • Torque effect might be there, but I’m not convinced.
  • P-factor is hard to say as this does not have a huge effect on single engine aircraft.
  • Gyrosopic precession (taildragger) is not modeled acurately if at all.

We can safely conclude that propeller effects are not modeled correctly if modeled at all.

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Hmmm, not a lot of time in GA aircraft, learned to fly them in FS-98, and then asked neighbor who was DC-10 Pilot for Delta to show me how to navigate, and all the controls in the Big Jets. I love the ATC experience, the IFR experience and the planes. I have years of simulator experience, have flown all the way from Europe to Midway, IS and all over USA. My favorite plane is the Virtavia C-17GIII, it just loves to fly. Another friend his son is AF C-17 pilot in real life, says the plane is a dream to really fly. So I tried the 747/787 in MSFS and was vastly disappointed, they just don’t fly correctly, the AP and the ILS systems are broken, or need more work. I did take the Pilot in Training in the game, and the directions are not as clear as needed, but understood most of what the Training Pilot was asking me to do. I graduated, GA aircraft are just not my thing. That being said, of all the turbo props I like the TBM-930 really well. But, stated before, much of the G3000 system is not correct, and the AP functions are not correct either, although, you can ascend VS or VLC, one is based on Feet Per Minute-you control throttle, the other is based on Throttle and Speed, and it decides how fast to ascend, getting them in your head can take some practice. I know, even though not CP/PPL the big jets flight characteristics are not real world, 30% of all the buttons/computers don’t work (inop), so where is the fun if we cannot play “real world”. One comment “where is the fun in setting AP and just sitting there”, well in between monitoring all the instruments, interacting with ATC as necessary, making sure nothing has changed in FMC, with bugs present, I’m pretty busy, especially when ATC says transponder has lost signal and I did not touch it. Had to watch Quality Wings 787 Video to learn how to reset it, because, no manuals on planes, or FMC built into Simulator. Was in USN, around Naval Aviation and the pilots have this big NATOPS manual on the aircraft type, they have to know it, tested on it, part of being real pilot, physicals twice a year, check rides, simulator training, the whole thing. NOTHING in this simulator which even comes close to real world. Yes, the GA planes are close, the scenery is wonderful, turned on Live Weather/Traffic today, it’s cool, takes a boat load of internet bandwidth to get flight plan/plane to load with it on. I have most likely 10,000 hours in the sim (all versions of MS), and the flight models in the big jets is wrong, with the bugs in the actual systems, went back to FSX for most of my flying. Yes, I most likely skip lots of steps in flight, because, it’s not even close to real world cold iron to at end of runway. Don’t believe me, YouTube, find the 787 Quality Wings cold and dark and watch that, you will see exactly what I am talking about, yes, 80 dollar add on, but it’s as close to real life as you can get short of real 787, all the computers work, talk to each other, interact with each other, etc., watch it.
I am going to bug this one. When I hit “P for pause”, my plane pauses, the rest of the sim keeps right on going, even if I minimize the program to taskbar, it still has the video card/processor all ramped up and running, it never releases those systems back to main PC, so generating lots of cycles/heat/etc. FSX, you minimized it, and it let processes go back to idle, allowing system to cool down. It has about second of lag time to go grab RTX and I-7 Processor and get to playing again. Yes, I want this to get better, I want the bugs to be repaired and lots of addon’s down the road, right now it’s 2.5 stars out of 5. New patch next week on 29th I think, no fixes, just more fruit salad, the main course is months away still.

A lot of text for a) not a real life pilot b) describing things that have nothing to do with the flight model
Not wrong certainly, but entirely besides the point!

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Interesting. Never thought of using the third person view for anything while flying so totally overlooked it. will try doing this next time. thanks

I don’t think this is right, you need almost full rudder to fly “coordinated” in the outside view. I don’t know what the outside view is using as a point of reference probably the aircraft longitudinal axis affected by inertia.

Edit: I just found out the spot view is orientated to the ground track. Just try adding different wind layers and you’ll see the view point shift. So no, the outside view does not show whether flying coordinated or not.

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The slip you are referring to, generally used when landing, is properly referred to as a forward-slip.

It is true that a side slip is used to increase rate of descent, particularly in aircraft without flaps. But if you apply aileron and opposite rudder the effect is to cause the aircraft to slip to the side.

If you apply enough rudder to point the nose to the right of your flight path your slip to the side will be toward the runway and thus forward along your flight path.

It’s all just a matter of ceramics (sic), really.

Sounds like the same thing to me, aerodynamically I don’t think there is any difference. Anyway as an instructor we’ve always used the term side-slipping to indicate flying uncoordinated for whatever purpose.

It is the same. Differentiating between forward, side, and only slip seems not to be common.

In my country (and at least three others) it’s simply referred to as slip.

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Exactly. As I said, it is just a matter a semantics.

I always assumed a slip or skip is unintentional while side-slipping is deliberately flying cross-controlled.

since we dont have helicopters, and i have very limited fixed wing time, i cannot say much, will have to wait for helictopers

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