Another thought. Even though you have AP off at this moment, maybe… just maybe… there is a VS (vertical speed) value being altered by your mouse somehow. In the same way that some aircraft that DON’T have an actual AP unit can still be controlled with the default Asobo commands anyway.
It’s such a gradual change, it could just be turning some invisible setting and seeking a -500fpm climb and vice versa. Which again points back to double binds at some level?! Gah I don’t know!!
Just that looking at the video again, it really looks like AP behaviour.
Good thing too, because I don’t go anywhere without my buddy.
I asked him if he was messing with the pitch control when I wasn’t looking and he said no…but then again that’s exactly what a cat would say if he was messing around!
So very cute that one can have cats on the flight.
But I hope it’s allowed to ask if you could invest some time to optimize the Wilga for using as a towplane? That was my hope from the beginning. As the developers who brought the first glider to buy to the marketplace and as the first added Towplane, I though there will be some more effort to get it working.
Please don’t forget these functionality over the happyness transporting cats and dogs.
Happy to hear you can do. But I think it depends on the weather situation. So for me most times it moves to the right or left, or aborts the start for other reasons. I had also some good starts, but over all it fails about 90%. I mostly use real weather and in opposite to this the free version of the Robin is without problems. So try and error is wasting time for me. Sorry to that all, because I normally like the quality of got friends planes very much.
Regards Ralf
A lot of the problems you see are just in how the AI controls the aircraft. The tow functionality uses a very dumbed down AI flight model. The Wilga is also a tail dragger with a good bit of prop torque, which means if the AI doesn’t make corrections in time, it could very well abort or go off of the runway even under very minimal conditions. And since the AI is already sluggish and “on rails”, that’s not very far-fetched.
The Robin is a trike and inherently a lot more stable and controllable. Sure, GotFriends could tweak the numbers some more, but most of it just boils down to the system itself. I know they already spent considerable time tweaking the AI flight model for towing in the past and it’s a lot better than it was.
I’m sure it’s something they will revisit as they find time for updates between projects, as they always do. They are one of the few devs that actually listen to their customers. And who knows, maybe there actually is a bit of a breakthrough to be made and something will eventually click to make the AI flight model better on the Wilga, but there is also an equal chance that it’s just the sim being the sim. I’ve ran into enough of those situations in my own projects to know that sometimes you can only do what you can do.
And this isn’t directed at you or anyone by any means, but I’m just throwing my general thoughts on the “Avitars” out there:
I really don’t see it as taking away from their main focus, which is aircraft. These guys are always working on an aircraft and having a team means that not everyone is focused on the same thing at once. Not to mention, they also learned some new techniques that can be applied to their general workflow in the future - so I would say it’s a win-win.
Hello Chris, I completely agree with you, also about the Avitars.
Thank you for your comprehensive explanation of the situation, which I personally am aware of.
To the Avitars: You can also see there that most of it is distributed as freeware and the price for Valor is very low.
I’m also completely on the side of Got Friends, I have almost all of the planes, even though I hardly fly most of them because my interest is mainly in gliding, but I also want to support the group and think they have shown what they can do and therefore established on the market.
Sometimes you have to be a little provocative and maybe I can see it from my German understanding of quality.
In Fs2020, in contrast to its predecessors, much more emphasis is placed on physics.
Roughly speaking, still I think I could let myself be pulled up from a table, because what I see graphically doesn’t necessarily have to correspond to the physical values. The other way around, I could give the Wilga model the flight characteristics e.g. of the Robin. Of course, this is a copied model that is only used as a towplane. Therefore, as you can see, the best flight characteristics of the Wílga do not bring the best functionality with the poor AI as a pilot, as you said.
One sentence particularly impressed me about 45 years ago when the first LotR film was shown in cinema. The evil Saruman had a good philosophy: if it doesn’t work that way, it can be done another way (German dub). Maybe this is an approach that isn’t physically correct but works quick and easy.
BTW I am a big fan of fuzzy logic
All the best
Regards Ralf
PS
So I will be patient, like I am with Fs2020 itself.
I doubt you’ll see it lower anytime soon, if ever, since that’s 50% off.
I just picked it up and am very impressed. It’s an absolute steal at that price.
Ok, stayed up WAY too late with this one, finally a convert. First and foremost have to completely DUMP that default view and get yourself properly into the aircraft. Then the shadows fly around and ask you to fly it like a maniac. Quickly figured out the wee bit of throttle to carry on final to not crunch it in and what a beast this little aircraft is. Fastest 110KT flight ever, need born to be wild playing in the background. I was at Dunsford just sitting there going through aircraft profiles/setups and it was the Wilga’s turn. Spent about 4 hours straight dive bombing and landing on random fields. I want to hook up a flap lever on my ceiling now.
I used to fly the little Shock Ultra straight down into the grand canyon fully deflected ailerons and rudder, this is like it got a boost of nitrous oxide and then some, two big bottles. I’m not sure if it’s normal to try to fly through windmill blades, but suddenly seemed like something you need to try in this aircraft. Knocked all the dust off the extremes of my rudder pedal tracks.
