I presume you are talking about the default aircraft in MSFS, but with properly implemented flight models as in the current crop of add-on aircraft, sorry XP12 is not going to be a “million times better than MSFS” as that’s just a silly thing to say. Yes the current default aircraft in MSFS are nothing home to write about, and maybe the C172 is Asobo’s best out of the lot. But the with coming November release and inclusion of properly modeled aircraft like the iniBuilds A310 and Milviz Beaver, MSFS will finally have default aircraft with great flight models. iniBuilds themselves have said: Discord : “Just to be fully clear, our flight model in MSFS is on par to XP. So those still wanting to negate MSFS as a viable sim solution based on those reasons - don’t speak too soon.”
There is no “one flight model” in a sim… it’s the sim’s core aerodynamics/physics engine which is then used to implement flight models per aircraft. Up until May 2022, all MSFS had were the default aircraft whose flight models were poorly and sparsely implemented. The core MSFS aerodynamics engine is very capable and what’s important are properly implemented aircraft… Enter May 2022, the flood of high fidelity aircraft with great flight dynamics (i.e. Fenix A320, PMDG 737, Milviz C310, Maddog MD80, Bae 146, Sting S4, etc) who all implement their flight models properly on top of the core MSFS aerodynamics engine. These birds all have great flight dynamics/handling not just observed by us simmers who’ve used all sim including XP, but also those who’re IRL pilots of these.
As I stated on another thread, some good insights by Matt Nischan of Working Title on flights models in MSFS and XP (and this was before the prop physics and CFD enhancements came in SU8/SU9):
"There’s no conclusive observation that can be made by looking at one specific aircraft flight model configuration and then applying that conclusion to the entire flight simulation. How well a particular aircraft meets book values is entirely dependent on how well the flight model author adjusted the values to make the book values possible.
This is exactly the same in both MSFS and X-Plane. X-Plane only uses geometry to the same extent MSFS does, for the most part. All the complex study level flight models developed in XP heavily use datarefs to adjust various tables and scalars to modulate the output of the simulation, because all simulations are imperfect.
If the flight model designer has not input the correct parameters into the model, then you get a ■■■■■■ simulation, both in MSFS and XP. It’s why the default 172 in XP flies like it has no idea what longitudinal stability is, while payware offerings are much better: that doesn’t mean XPs flight model overall is garbage, just that the configuration of it may be for a given airplane. Similarly, taking the default 787 which doesn’t match book and claiming it means something about the core of the MSFS flight engine is just misguided.
In the right hands, the MSFS modern engine is going to produce some seriously accurate aircraft. How do I know that? Because our Working Title CJ4 does actually hit those book values at all regimes, with correct N1s, fuel flow, climb rates, over various altitudes and ambient pressures. Not only that but we have stall speeds within a knot of two of book, proper approach angles, correct bank rates, etc.
Is the MSFS simulation completely perfect and without limitations or quirks? No, but neither is XPs, by a long shot. These strange questions and tests are apples and parsnips."
"Additionally, MSFS categorically does not use Blade Element Theory. Blade element theory is the idea that you can slice an airfoil up into cross sections, evaluate those cross sections, and then come up with a single lift and drag component for each cross section. XP does this slicing across the defined lifting surfaces to generate a limited number of lift points. It is relatively coarse and doesn’t generate different values across each individual surface cross-section, but nonetheless it is used to great effect and the work done with it is quite good, as I’ve said before.
MSFS also starts with a base geometrically defined lifting surface, but then goes a completely different direction and discretizes the lifting surface into a large number (comparatively) of grid samples. Each individual grid sample receives its own airflow simulation that gets input from the airflow model in true 3d space: i.e. the atmospheric model is also 3d and thus the air itself is not a just a single scalar contribution but instead a varying 3d contribution across each grid sample where the atmospheric model and grid intersect. This means that each grid sample on any lifting surface contributes its forces individually and is also affected by a 3d atmospheric model individually.
Whether or not one believes the current aircraft flight model configurations use this well or whether enough parameters are exposed, the base grid sampling of the MSFS flight model is of a much higher resolution and the atmospheric contribution in 3d is a consumer sim first (to my knowledge, anyway). It also has the benefit of generating different lift values across the surface from front to back, which can be critical value differences at the flight envelope edges."