Modeling force through amount of deflection / persistence...

[jcomm 5,930]

When I saw the latest ( GOOD ) news about Aerowinx PSX developments it immediately came to my mind a personal experience I had when I was using both Aerowinx PS1 and Airline Simulator 2.

 

Hardy Heinlin, and Simon Hradecky are fully dedicated to accuracy, and try their best to achieve the ultimate realism for their simulations. By the time I was mainly using PS1 I was offered the chance to try the Airbus simulators here at TAP's headquarters...

 

I trained for a night in my PSS and Wilco buses before the LevelD simulator session, because I had been only PS1-ing, and had forgotten about most of Airbus specifics, but my hands were accustomed to the kind of inputs required to "drive" the PS1 744. When in the TAP simulator the captain handed me the controls for the takeoff, at Vr I pulled so hard on the stick that we rotated and climbed like an F-16 :-)

 

Whow!!!! he said, you have to do it a lot more softly he remarked - I blushed and felt really miserable... It had to be the wrong perception I got from PS1...

 

When I came back home, I started AS2 and PS1, and there were remarkable differences on yoke sensitivity from both sims. Later Hardy explained that in the absence of proper force feedback systems he had chosen to instead translate the amount of force required to deflect the control column at various G values by persistence and amount of deflection in such a way that to translate a higher force you had to fully deflect the yoke and keep it there...

 

Well, since in X-Plane hinge forces aren't being modeled, and even if you do not have hydraulic or other sort of assisted controls you can always fully deflect your yoke and rudder without restriction, making some designers choose the "control phase-out" technique to overcome the consequences, I though about suggesting Austin to adopt a similar technique to that of PS1, which is also in some way adopted by ELITE and even FSX. You'll have your stick forces translated to max deflection / persistence so that while at lower Gs / speeds you can easily fully deflect your controls and have them fully deflect for you (unless some type of art stab is used), at higher loadings you'll have to fully deflect the yoke and "stay there" in order to translate the amount of muscle force that would be required in real life, and also avoid abrupt / irrealistic full deflections at those loads...

[Murmur 3,941]

I agree with you, but unfortunately, looks like Austin is not very willing to introduce more "interfaces" between joystick deflection and control deflections, other than those already there (phase out, deflection speed). Here's an email exchange between me and him in 2006 (!!!) on a similar subject;

 

"Hi Austin,

could you give us the possibility (in Plane-maker) to limit the authority of the flight controls with respect to the trim?

In other words, on an aircraft with a full control deflection of +/-20 degrees, one could set a joystick control authority of only +/- 10 degrees, while retaining full trim authority of +/-20 degrees. Why, you might ask? Well, in a real airplane the deflection of control surfaces is usually limited by aerodynamic forces, and one can't yank the flight controls as you do on a pc joystick. Add to this the fact that pc flight controls have shorter travel, less feedback and less precision than the real ones, and you end up with a flight model significantly more twitchy than the real thing. My suggestion would hopefully improve flight qualities, while retaining full maneuverability using the trim (indeed, promoting its use!). The simpler way to do this, would be to allow us to set a trim ratio greater than 1.0 in Plane-maker. (it is currently limited to 1.0).

Greetings,

Marco"

 

His reply:

 

"i totally disagree

i have hit the control stops before in my cirrus, in reality

and the hydraulic flight controls of airliners are strong enough to give full authority"

 

However, even if such behaviour in future will be modeled, I think there should be in Plane-Maker the option to retain the current behaviour (and I guess Austin thinks the same). That being said, your suggestion could be easily implemented with a custom plugin.

 

Marco

 

[jcomm 5,930]

Well, the good news is that he just answered rather positively to an email I sent him with this :-)

 

It was very well accepted :-)

[Murmur 3,941]

GOOD!!