Given the performance of today’s consumer computers, how does MSFS compare to professional (industry) flight simulators of to 80s or the 90s? What’s your thoughts on this?
Biggest thing that professional sims of the 80’s and 90’s had over MSFS are ability to simulate low visibility, low RVR, foggy operations. Instrument approaches right down to 100’. Avionics that work very similar to the real airplane. System failures, etc. The level C Sims of that timeframe were all night only (IIRC). Level D brought daylight, better visuals, and better motion platforms, often with electro-hydraulic motion base.
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In cockpit functionality and realistic flight dynamics which in turn could be controlled and changed in real time.
External visuals being of pretty low importance.
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I attended a Transport Canada Crew Resource Management training course in the '80s. We used “simulators” like this one. At the time, I was very impressed with the ability to sit in a cockpit for hours, familiarizing myself with every button, knob and dial, without spending hundreds and having to coordinate with the AMEs to get access to the real thing.
Years later I was checked out on the Dash-8. We did preliminary training in an actual full motion sim. Honestly I think the millions they spent on that beast were mostly eaten up by the hardware. It was exactly the same as being in the real cockpit, except for the extra seats in the engineers station, for the instructor and the sim engineer. The graphics looked very similar to the early MSFS graphics. Fuzzy green where the ground would be and the runways really had no discernable texture. The environmental, fog, rain, etc. was really impressive though as were the approach lights.
At the time, if we had visuals like this latest MSFS you would have needed an assault team to get me out of that one.
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Are we still comparing professional flight simulators of 80s and 90s? Do they still exist? Since no airline still uses an aircraft that was manufactured in the 80s, I would assume there’s no need for the simulators to train their pilots.
If airliners uses modern aircrafts like the A380, A350, A320s. Then I would guess the professional simulators that they use are pretty much modern ones.
Even my pilot friend who’s a 737-800 pilot, told me that his professional flight simulator is running on the back of an FSX simulator engine, which has been modified to add more professional scenarios.
Although the avg age of todays airline fleet is, generally speaking, between 10 - 15 yrs depending on the airline, the simulators used to train crews in 1990 are still being used today. The only significant difference between the Dash 8 200 I flew and the Q series today, as far as the cockpit is concerned, is the avionics installed. Upgrading a sim pit is no different than upgrading an aged aircraft. Swap out the panel and some software upgrades and the 737-300 sim becomes a 737-max trainer.
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Flight dynamics weren’t exactly a strong point in professional sims (and they are still not very realistic in some cases) since even most Level-D sims are basically expensive high quality procedure trainers.
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Yes they were.
I have physically seen one in action in the 1990’s
Don’'t understand. Could you explain that?
I used to train on this thing way back in the day and I always dreaded when I needed to fly it. It had no screen which made you feel really claustrophobic and the flight model was so finicky that it was just about impossible to fly straight and level. I would say MSFS with a yoke is a dream compared to the old Frasca.
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The sim I saw in action was fixed yet had fully functional cockpit of a single seat fighter jet, it was used to assess and develop the control systems and flight dynamics.
Visuals external to the cockpit were projected onto a curved screen so it was rather like a mini iMax.
As the pilot banked the aircraft the projected scenery followed suit and it felt weird standing behind the cockpit as it was being flown.
Thanx for the clarification. That sounds more like a special version which has been designed specifically for this purpose and it doesn’t represent the vast majority of Level-D sims.
That’s btw. the reason why I wrote ‘most’ Level-D sims.
Impressive statement…How is it that one is able to be trained and type rated in a particular aircraft having never seen one, in a Level D Sim.?
That would just not be possible or approved without realistic flight dynamics. Something I can attest to. Level D sims have a very impressive flight dynamic capability, generated through hours of actual flight testing and accelerometer data collection.
The flight dynamics are just sufficient for the type rating in most cases, but at the edge of the envelope they can be even dangerously wrong which can lead to wrong training e.g. during windshear recovery.
E.g. the Dash8-300.
And I don’t think that I have to mention the 737 max when we are talking about the realism of Level-D sims.
The key statement here is ’ wrong training '. That does not directly translate to bad flight dynamics and is itself a different topic.
I can personally speak to real world Simulator flight dynamics for the following aircraft:
BA3100, F-27, SA227, MU300, BE400, RA4000, G5
The first three being Level C and the rest D.
I found the flight dynamics for all to be a reasonable almost excellent facsimile to the aircraft.
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Read again. The flight dynamics are bad which results in wrong training.
If the flight dynamics would be correct the training wouldn’t be wrong. -
I don’t think that the difference between ‘sufficient’ and ‘reasonable’ is very noticeable.
How many of the mentioned aircraft have you stalled IRL, or even flown to the edge of the stall and compared the behavior with their Level-D counterparts?
The BA3100, the SA227, the F-27 and the MU300/BE400.
Obviously it is possible to fly an aircraft outside of the bounding laws and limits of a box bolted to the floor and that in these cases flight dynamics are algorithmically extrapolated and not accurate.
In general, however, within normal operations I would stand by the statement that modern level D simulator flight dynamics are accurate, generate the required immersion and consequentially contribute to a positive learning environment.
In regards to simulation in general and more specifically MSFS2020, so as to keep the thread relevant to other users, PC based flight simulation is a very difficult platform to attempt to duplicate flight dynamics/control response etc.
Mainly because the user is able to adjust all these parameters at will and because of the plethora of different yokes and joysticks available.
For me, while an extremely impressive piece of software, MSFS2020 has been on the back burner while I wait for it to be incrementally improved to the point where it will become useable as a good procedural tool. Simulation of low visibility for example takes precedence over ’ flight dynamics ’ at least for me, where this sim is concerned.
I can’t speak to Commericial sims, but operational flight trainers we build for the US Navy, outside of MSFS photorealistic scenery are on a entirely different level of fidelity to any of these products. We run 50 microsecond guranteed realtime hardware/software to run the flight models, we test AND VERIFY the models validity to our wind tunnel and flight test telemetry to the very edge of the envelope, we actually have a automated test where the computer exercises the flight model and generates 10’s of thousands of data points that we then compared against known good data. Every little piece is tested against real world telemetry, stick to control surface response time and movement speed, latency of control input to physics package to motion to visual system correlation. We model close to 200 systems malfunctions. To do all this takes racks of servers, racks of motor amplifiers, a huge rack of GPU’s, etc. And it takes years to design, build, test and deliver a design.
I"m working on just a upgrade to a system I helped deliver 6 years ago, I think the amount of engineering we’re estimating just to do some new functionality is on the order of 40,000+ hours. I have no experience with commericial aviation simulation, but it sounds like on the defense side we go further with flight dynamics.
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I was strictly speaking about Level-D sims for commercial aircraft where the requirements are lot different than for military aircraft, especially if it’s about trainers and combat aircraft.
That said I don’t think that e.g. the flight dynamics of a C-5 sim are recreated to the same high degree as for e.g. a T-45.
The point I was trying to make is that most armchair pilots think that Level-D sims are the holy grail and that a 737 in the sim is a 100% copy from the real 737 which isn’t the case.
Especially not in the 737 max case.
Stick force on the CRJ was e.g. way off and the 767 was similar bad.
Both required a considerable higher stick force IRL.
E.g. almost everyone on the CRJ rotated right into the stickshaker on his first takeoff when coming from the real aircraft for the sim check.
One always needed a few minutes to get used to the lighter stick force and to the noticeable lower overall stability.
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