Question for real pilots who use MSFS. Which is easier: Landing a commercial airliner in real-life or within MSFS? There are lots of YouTube videos that make both look like perfection, but in terms of the actual mechanics of “flying” is MSFS easier, harder, or about the same as real-life aviation. Specifically landing under otherwise “normal” conditions. Just curious since I can’t seem to land to save my life.
I would definitley imagine real life with 100+ real passengers
I have only flown a GA but in my experience real life is easier when winds are calm, however, when things get bumpy in real life you are jumping around/vibrating as well, which makes it not only scary but also makes it harder to control the yoke.
I find flying (GA) better in real life. The sim is fun and you can learn procedures of how to fly aircraft that no longer exist, using skills that are rarely used today, but the sense of movement and noise and smell from a PA28 can’t be simulated on a PC.
And especially true for one which has been in service since 1961 I would guess
I’m guessing in real life you don’t get stutters and low fps on short final to deal with.
Perhaps dependent upon how well you maintain the engine in the aircraft
A smooth 120fps all the way down I suspect.
Or even worst - CTDs!!
I count myself lucky. They don’t happen much for me any more.
This is the truth! Not even the best VR experience can replicate the smell of a 1969 Arrow when you open the door on a hot summer day. The smell of years of old sweat, hydraulic fluid, 100LL, oil, grease and who knows what else all co-mingling just doesn’t come across in the sim
Thanks friend. I was just about to sign off and have lunch
I purposefully didn’t include one other odor that is always so faintly ever-present on a hot day… emanating from the rear seats where someone probably didn’t feel so well after a bumpy flight many many years ago
Real life is easier most of the time. The controls in a business jet (what I fly) are much smoother and consistent compared to controls in MSFS. This is especially true when landing in crosswinds. In the sim, rudder input has to be increased or decreased the instant the airplane touches the ground. This is not the case in a real airplane. Sensations of acceleration, deceleration, turbulence, etc., cannot be felt in a simulator which masks the senses a little more. Just like in real life, landings take lots of and lots of practice to perfect and even then, everyone has a bad landing from time to time. As a content creator on YouTube it is easy to show the best landings and leave the bad landings out of a video. This video might help with landings. It demonstrates how to do crosswind landings but also gets into how and when to flare (which can change based on the aircraft type). Crosswind Approach and Landing: A How to Guide - YouTube
I hope you are joking
I am able to start up, fly and land (consistently without crashing) the A320 and the B787 after watching some tutorials, but I don’t think I would be able to do the same with the real things after a few hours at the stick/yoke, honestly.
Flying is so much harder than driving and even a light vehicle requires hours and hours of practice on the real thing… see how students struggle with a steering wheel and two pedals, I cannot imagine mastering an airliner which moves in 3D space and the complexity of its cockpit so easily.
My dissatisfying answer is, “It depends”.
Sims do indeed lack many of the cues (both in sight and sense) that flying a real aircraft gives you. They also tend to feel, “digital” in that, as mentioned, the controls often lack any need (or allowance) for subtlety.
But they are very predictable, mostly. Even the sims that simulate turbulence, thermals, etc tend to do so in expected ways. Therefore you can fly it like a surgeon.
An actual aircraft (especially if you don’t always fly the same one) is endlessly variable depending on the day, the weather, the loading, how well it has been maintained, etc.
As an example, the spin birds we used to fly in the military were hopelessly bent and never flew straight. I’ve never experienced that in a sim. To that end, I don’t even generally bother mapping my individual throttles in the sim…I’ve never needed to fly with them split!
I also find that the sim can be more forgiving than the aircraft on landing. I can (generally ) squeak a smooth landing out of most aircraft in MSFS if by no other means than applying the old, “fast, flat, and greased on” method of flying.
In reality, this method comes with some considerable…consequences…and I can recall skipping uncomfortably down the runway in a Cessna about 5 knots faster than she was willing to stall at.
Lastly, in larger aircraft (737/320s) it takes very little rate of descent to have, not so much a bad landing, as not a great one.
The Bus in MSFS feels far more gentle across a far wider range of touchdown speeds and rates if descent.
So, purely IMO, sim flying and actual flying are really kind of different, but similar, experiences. But, where you might spend 30% of your concentration on a particular aspect in one, you might only spend 10% of your concentration in the other.
If that makes sense.
A while ago I set up a sim pit for a local gliding club, and one of the instructors asked to try his most familiar aircraft - Antonov An-2, he has thousands of flight hours on it. Spent half an hour but wasn’t able to start the engine. Sometimes sim is overcomplicated compared to RL.
As a pilot (almost 40 years since my first flight and flying A320 since many years and just one year shy of retirement, but still flying C172/PA28 and PA31). I would say as above - it depends. Some things are easier in a sim and some are harder.
A sim feels digital and you can’t feel the aircraft.
So things like keeping altitude, doing turns without loosing/gaining altitude is much harder in sim. IMC flying is much easier in MSFS since your senses never get fooled like IRL.
It also depends on what we actually mean by sim - MSFS or a Class D sim for 15 million $ .
As mentioned above ground handling is way off in MSFS, especially in cross wind (not even close to how an aircraft behaves). So doing cross wind landings is easier in IRL (at least staying on runway after touchdown).
There are lot of other things that are not replicated close to life in MSFS…
You should bottle and sell it as a perfume.