SimWorks Studios announced development of Kodiak 100

The slider seems like something of a cheat. In that you can load the cargo up however you want, and use the slider to move the CG where you want it. It doesn’t alter the weight only its distribution. I just double checked on a few Asobo default planes, and the slider works as I remember it, just as you imply.

I think it would be fair argument, considering there are no limits that I know of for an individual position, that the slider accomplishes the same task as having to adjust the weights per position to achieve the same goal, but a hell of a lot easier.

If I put 900Kg in the front, and 1Kg in the back, I can use the slider to pull the CG aft. Or with it disabled, I have to adjust those 901Kg to achieve the same goal. Swings, and roundabouts as it were.

But it still leaves you in a position where the EWCG is outside limits, even though the CG may be within. As you burn fuel down during a flight, the effect on balance will therefore be incorrect whereas with it set correctly and weight distributed carefully you should end up with the correct effect on balance.

Using an EWCG slider to alter part of what makes up the total CG is just wrong!

link the discord pls

True, I guess, since it doesn’t exist in real life. But if both options simply adjust where the black, and white spot is, some might like that aspect of things to be unrealistic for simplicities sake.

If we continue down that path we may as well remove all the assistances as well, like auto-rudder. :slight_smile:

Oh how I long for that day :innocent::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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If anyone does want to enable this feature for whatever reason, go into the “flight_model.cfg” file, and comment out this line:

;empty_cg_deviation_limit =0

It seems to work for me, for some values of work! :wink:

I’m not in a position to test this in flight, but I loaded up 1500lbs in one of the Row 4 positions, then used the slider to move it forwards as far as I could, and it seems to achieve the same thing as putting those 1500lbs in Row 2 instead. I don’t think I’ve ever tested this so I don’t know whether this would actually fly the same or not.

That is a reasonable question. You can only have 8 seats with passengers loaded if you balance the weights carefully to be within limits. This would mean lots of fuel and putting the children in the back, adults in the front, otherwise you cannot have them.

In fact, most passenger variants of the Kodiak don’t have the left seat on the last row, as it obstructs the door -but that’s an option.

For the record, Daher provided us with a W&B utility where we put our aircraft configuration and experimented with MSFS. Our version was very close to the figures given by the utility.

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Here is a great Kodiak performance site.
I assume the little differences between it and MSFS are due to limitations of the flight sim and/or the right configuration of the aircraft. But still nice for flight planing and understanding of all the little parts involved for the weight and fuel setup.
https://pohperformance.com/Kodiak/index.html

Edit: Maybe this one is a better link:
https://pohperformance.com/kodiak.html

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Maybe a question of perspective but the standard tires seems to be the normal 29’’ larger tires you see in all Kodiak’s. I cannot find a shot of a Kodiak with that big balloons tundra tires.

They may be after market options. I had a look at their sales site, and it doesn’t appear to have any tyre options there.

So I finally got a shiny new set of rudder pedals and turned off Auto-Rudder in Assistance options and discovered I could not maintain stable flight after takeoff. I know the kodiak needs a lot right Rudder Trim (I don’t how much though). By Contrast I flew the C152 C172 and TBM and had no problems.

I saw a YT video yesterday by AvAngel that indicated a possible bug in the Kodiak flight model that SimWorks seem to have acknowledged they are at least looking into the issue.

So for those flying the Kodiak:
1/ Do you have Auto-Rudder enabled?
2/ How much Right Rudder Trim are you setting for take-off?

With both version SWS 1.04, and the mod by CanadianCaptainMoustach, the plane handles a lot better. P-Factor has been reduced by half by SWS, a little more by CCM.

I don’t use any rudder trim on take-off any more, just rudder input, which normally suffices.

Where can one find this mod? I couldn’t find it on flightsim.to which is my first goto place for this kind of thing.

You can find the link to his Discord on his Twitch page. I believe he specially doesn’t want it uploaded to that site.

As far as P-Factor the handling is very close to RL in terms of trim and effect. I don’t have CCM’s mod but if it reduces the P-Factor value for the sake of the value itself, it is definitely wrong.

Without getting into commentary about the core MSFS flight model, the P-Factor is numerically high because that is what gives the correct effect.

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True, but as I understand it you were claiming the flight model was correct in the release version as well, and the advice was to use full right rudder, and remain at a shallower deck angle until airspeed builds In other words it wasn’t broken, and working as intended.

Two days after CCM released their mod, you released the 1.04 version with P-Factor reduced by about half.

I’m no pilot, but I do have a few hundred hours in the Thranda Kodiak, and even I could tell that was broken.

As I wrote somewhere, the instability was due to a value that slipped through release builds, something we discovered after reverting back to the build Daher signed off on. Even then, the plane was stubbornly tested by me on stream and by the Kodiak pilot in private, to confirm and see where, what and how it happens.

The P-Factor is lower than we would like in 1.0.4 but it is a hotfix, not a well-tuned and long tested update. Yet, 1.0.4 flies very very close to the real thing.

Quirks are there and will be ironed out, but reducing P-Factor to 1.0 just because 4.8 seems high shows lack of knowledge about the plane and the behaviour of single-engine turboprops. A 208, a TBM or a Kodiak are not people’s average C172. They have very powerful engines that are a handful and take P-Factor to another level.

A lesson learnt the hard way from us is that MSFS doesn’t like real values and if they are used, you often have to adjust using huge scalar values. That is why you see such values on numerous planes, because the SDK lacks the fine control we had with FSX, where scalars were usually 1s.

Regarding CCM & 1.0.4, when developing, we gather data, apply it, have type pilots test and adjust. Adjusting based on a feel/assumption of how it flies based on experience with other planes is not good enough and is literally a last resort solution. What feels like an improvement could break realistic or fine behaviours of the aircraft.

That said, it is a mod and people may elect to use it. Whether right or wrong, new knowledge will be gained from it.

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I don’t think it was reduced to 1. It was 2.5 I think.

One of the other things that was adjusted were slightly increase flap drag, increasing the full flaps scalar from 1 to 1.5.

But as you suggest only someone directly familiar with the real aircraft can say for sure.

In any case, my biggest issue with the release version is “fixed” in both iterations, and that was climbing slopes. Bugalaga is easy now. Though from the videos on YT I have watched, the slope in the sim is massively exaggerated in the sim. The real on has an upward slope at first, which flattens, then increases into a more gentle climb. The sim is a gentle slope all the way up to the top, then a very steep ramp you would expect kids on skateboards to be negotiating!

Flap drag is a pain. As we don’t have propeller drag at low rpm in MSFS, flaps are a hack we used to artificislly add more drag.

We have a workaround in mind about this, which should let us get flaps back to normal drag values. The reason we are scarce lately is because we are switching from support, back to work. :slight_smile:

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How do those of us running SWS 1.0.0 get hold the SWS 1.0.4 version? I cannot see a way to update it???