In real-world aviation, aircraft structures are designed to endure incredible forces, with materials engineered for both strength and flexibility. Critical components such as wings, control surfaces (like ailerons, elevators, and rudders), and engine mounts are built with a certain degree of flexibility, enabling them to absorb and react dynamically to aerodynamic forces, turbulence, and maneuvering stresses. Currently, this is not simulated correctly natively by MSFS, rather a developer specifically puts a lot of time into developing such a simulation themselves, which is time consuming and not done by many. Seb mentioned adding this to the simulator in a recent interview, and I think it should be considered by the devs. It will add a lot of extra fidelity to the sim, and make features possible that are currently not offered by others.
Current versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator handle wing flex and other structural “deformations” as animations rather than real-time simulations based on physics. While these animations can visually represent flexing under certain flight conditions to a varying extent, they do not accurately reflect the dynamic interaction between aerodynamic forces, environmental stress, and structural elasticity of aircraft components.
Real aircraft wings flex in response to lift forces and aerodynamic pressure. This flex behavior isn’t simply a preset motion but is continuously shaped by fluctuating forces on each part of the wing. Engines, especially larger ones, also often flex under different loads. The system could also be applied to things like aircraft suspension. In real life, upon touchdown, the main landing gear often doesn’t immediately compress fully. Instead, there’s a brief delay before the aircraft’s full weight settles onto the suspension system, resulting in a noticeable “clunk” as the landing gear and struts absorb the load.
While we can achieve some of these effects today, it is mostly done using hard-coded animations, which really do not look realistic and behave correctly under all conditions, and they’re prone to being animated in low framerate which really ruins more immersion compared to what they add. A proper simulation of airflow actually affecting the flexibility of the wing would be a great addition to MSFS, and something which many people most certainly would pay a high price for.
Regarding the suspension, here is a video illustrating that aspect, from a modified X-plane 12 setup. You can see the landing gear bearing the weight of the aircraft as it “clunks” down, and also the wing bouncing up and down, though maybe a bit overexaggerated.
(Credit: u/derpitroxxxx from r/Flightsim reddit page)