Unrealistic Water Physics for Float Planes

For a game that came with a seaplane in the first place, you would think they would have spent a little more time on the water physics. I mean it is there and you can land on water, but it’s not good at ALL. Really hoped they would work on it consistently, especially with the 3rd party floatplanes hitting the market. As of right now, landing on the water feels like you landed on a runway. Takeoff isn’t right, seems some sailing and friction has been adjusted.

When the Milviz Beaver gets here I expect to be doing a lot more water landings. Really hoping they put some effort into making the water better. Doesn’t need to be perfect, but right now it’s just boring and not fun.

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Totally agree, water physics needs more love in MSFS. A lot more.

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Yes, there’s a lot of hype over float planes but the water physics really don’t live up to expectations considering how long we have now had the sim. Have you tried taxying on water in the Bird Dog floater :rofl:

Indeed! I really hope water physics is next after all the aerodynamics updates planned this year towards helicopters. Engine simulation also needs major overhauls, especially turboprops and piston engines. Any major updates to the water physics are highly unlikely to happen this year, but I sincerely hope they do something about it next year. As well as a major overhaul to the engine simulation.

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This is not fixed in SU9, not much steering on the water - try to turn downwind - impossible!

Seb seemed surprised when it was brought up in the 2nd to last Dev Q/A.

There’re so many little things that really need to be fixed for basic control in the water and feel, and a bunch of polish stuff that would make seaplanes much more fun ( like they should be - they’re awesome IRL )

I’m surprised that they keep adding flying boats as DLC aircraft without addressing the water physics / handling.

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I have to say I completely agree with you. They keep adding sea planes, but still we have pretty bad water physics that destroy the experience. It’s really sad because the water really looks stunning. I wish I could say the same regarding sea plane physics.

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Has anyone figured out any semi-realistic way to slow a floatplane after landing? Seems like if you touch down at 65, even with full flaps and throttle at idle, the airplane never comes down off step. You continue to zoom along like you landed on an icy runway. You’d better have at least 5000 feet of water ahead of you!

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Idle power, full flaps, and running on 1 mag is about the best you can do at the moment, as far as I’m aware.
Flaps are best used if there’s some wind to play with. They can act as a sail, though it’s quite overdone at the moment.

Somebody mentioned here that there are some improvements being added tot he backlog for float plane & sea plane improvements?

Is this the case? Where are the items added to the backlog? Anyone have a link to it?

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This is how it looks like in Xplane 12. I’m no expert but this looks much more realistic than what we have in MSFS.

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Looks like water physics and float plane operations still need some work…even in XP12. Time will tell.

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it’s hard to find any video where somebody takes off in such wavy conditions for comparison :sweat_smile:
most take off videos are on smooth lakes.

I think this topic should be listed in the wishlist section, since it’s an wish for improvement rather than a bug.

Unfortunately still can’t compare the two, MSFS still miss decent adverse yaw, planes go crazy on landing with a tiny bit of wind and so on… lots of basics are missing however I guess they go with the majority of arcade users that think that’s what an airplane is like. Asobo should fix the actual simulation then move on the eyecandy, I can imagine even for airplane developers having to put hands on their models every other day is frustrating.

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I would expand this to ground handling as well. It’s as if they’ve programmed a separate model for ‘on ground/water’ / ‘in the air’, which is why we have so many issues of weird crosswind landing effects for example.

That xplane 12 graphic at least seems to have some interesting water force interactions.

Still a lot of work to go (for both sims!)…

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They actually have, well it was inherited from the FSX code, Seb explained it a few live q&a ago. Asobo plan to rewrite the ground handling he said but it sounded like probably next year for this.

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I guess the improvements they’ve made to the flight model have made it quite apparent.

Hopefully that’s something they’ll look into properly.

I wish they’d just written the thing from scratch, with zero backwards compatibility…

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There was no physic implemented on MSFS, it was from FSX, these will be redone like the new helicopter, and few others stuff.

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I would have to say… feels like the “friction” of water is less than the “friction” of air.
Compare Air to Liquid to Solid dynamics. Could be a clue to the developers?

To some extent, Land - Solid - overrides even Wind, but we can experience cross winds where the wheel - friction is stronger than the cross wind.

Water should be more than wind but less than land.

This is UE5, but it’s one of the better vehicle / water interactions I’ve seen.

I’m assuming the water improvements that Seb talked about at the beginning of the year are targeted for FS2024, which is fine… esp if it looks like this :wink:

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