Murmur-absolutely right. FSX on the pitch axis is way to unstable and no sim has trimming down right yet-. Itused to drive me crazy-of course a stellar aircraft on FSX and xplane can minimize this.

 

Jcomm-you are right-I am getting totally confused. I thought our discission about the " torque bug" . Now it seems to be about " unbalanced " or a mis rigged airplane or the engine itself producing a rolling moment.

 

Of an unbalanced,mis rigged, poor fuel management would require adjustments from the pilot. However pilots take great care so that isn't necessary-at least good ones do. For example-on the rare occasion I took 5 adults in my Baron after doing w/b I put quite a few container of water in the nose. If I had a extremely heavy passenger in one seat in the back I would put suitcase/ weight on the other side. A mis rigged aircraft is another-which Larry took care of and with my 40 year old bonanza was taken care of with a a single one time adjustment to the aileron trim and rudder trim. Never touched it again.

 

 

By the way on the Debonair, even though it had a high performance engine-even rudder input was pretty minimal -as it had a rudder aileron connect.

Well, if wings with differential incidence or aileron tabs were used in the past, that means indeed that engine do cause roll torque, tending to bank the aircraft. It's just that this roll torque is compensated in some way: by using differential incidence or aileron tabs in the past; by using just canted engine nowadays.

 

I've thought that through. Since these planes have to have dihedral for positive stability, they will want to bank.............. if there is induced yaw. With more engine power being applied, there is more yaw. And more yaw, if uncorrected, means more bank. Therefor, the engine "cant", will provide additional right yaw, as additional power is supplied. And that eliminates the opposite roll effect, that caused by using asymetric wing indidence.

You could start with the basics: http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/media/PHAK%20-%20Chapter%2004.pdf

I've thought that through. Since these planes have to have dihedral for positive stability, they will want to bank.............. if there is induced yaw. With more engine power being applied, there is more yaw. And more yaw, if uncorrected, means more bank. Therefor, the engine "cant", will provide additional right yaw, as additional power is supplied. And that eliminates the opposite roll effect, that caused by using asymetric wing indidence.

 

Makes 100% sense!

 

You could start with the basics: url="http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/media/PHAK%20-%20Chapter%2004.pdf"]http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/media/PHAK%20-%20Chapter%2004.pdf[/url]

Even in that text, it mentions the elimination of asymmetrical wings, with engine cant on more modern designs. It just doesn't get into "all" the whys.

 

 

Well, the guys flying the C172 at A2A, and a friend of mine who drives one at the airclube confirm having unbalanced passengers in the C172 R does cause a bank tendency and requires compensation, with yoke.

A minor problem that I see, is our desktop yokes and sticks. We have a centering spring. The spring is required to sort of replicate the control surface forces that we'd feel on the yoke, if we deflect it right or left. I previously mentioned the oversize radious of my plane's left aileron trailing edge. This caused the plane to dip to the right. It would not roll, but just dip. For the first test flight, the force on the stick to correct for this behavior, was so light, that I didn't even notice.

 

And that's the problem with the limitations of desktop sticks and yokes. If this force is simulated, then it has to be contained within the range of the joysticks centering spring. In real life, the force is so minimul, that just resting my arm on the arm rest, and holding the stick slightly offset, is going to contain the bank. If the simulated force is outside the limits of the centering spring, then I'm going to percieve it as a roll, that actively needs to be countered with aileron, and possibly aileron trim. If this roll, needs constant adjustment with changes in engine power, then it's going to feel wrong

 

Therefor, just letting the stick go, in the real life plane, will let it bank. But do that within the sim, and the perception can be different. I could even apply this thought to the MU2.....since Tom Kyler mentions letting go of the yoke. I have the MU2 (not downloaded yet, because I can't yet run it), and therefor can't say much about it. For those reasons, the centering spring is a compromise, that won't fit all purposes. So.....use a bit of trim to compensate for weight, if the plane actually has trim........or let the offset yoke lie within the confines of the centering spring.........if you don't have aileron trim. A compromise for sure...

I'll chime in here as someone who spent an extensive amount of time (and more than a few dollars) trying to work my way into XP10.  I'm now getting ready to copy my install over to a storage disk.  I may get back to it at some point, but right now, FSX, with all the recent payware arrivals and the DX10 fix (which I'm working my way through) is giving me a more complete experience.  Yes, there are things I liked better in XP10 - in particular the lighting system - but that's not enough by itself to compensate for the more polished overall feel of FSX in its current form.  And as for the things that are still missing in XP10, like seasonal textures and airport buildings - sorry, I was willing to go along with the whole "this is our way/crowdsourced/it's a beta/Grateful Dead" XP way of doing things.  But we're now nearly two years since the initial release, and to me at least, that's way past time for some of these basic features to get attention.  

 

I'm guardedly optimistic that P3D 2.0 will feature expanded licensing (a big consumer base would be good PR for a company that depends on taxpayer funds to purchase its big hardware), happy with what FSX is giving me, and doubtful that XP10, for all its virtues, is ever going to be anything more than a cottage-industry effort.  I'm sorry to reach that conclusion and I'd love to be persuaded otherwise, but until I am, I'm reluctant to commit more of my scarce resources (money and time) to X-Plane.

 

My $.02.

 

Yup, this basically sums up my experience/feelings too

Very good point and I hope the devs take notice.

 

 

 

True. I have a hard time imagining ORBX ever going XPlane though after JV's statements. Dont think he's left the door open for anything there. Then again money talks. If XPX grabs the audience they'll have to. But XPlane doesnt need ORBX as badly as FSX does/did. You can achieve incredible results already with freeware in XPX. A2A and PMDG are very welcome though. 

 

 

I am sorry to politely disagree, but I must.  X-Plane features a 'plausible world' but the autogen is so densely repetitive it's unpleasant.  A gas station almost every block?  Really??  The default airports are devoid of ANY buildings whatsoever, much less a JETWAY?  I love the job x-Plane did with the freeways, and the railroad tracks.  I love the cars and trucks.  I am sad that my $400 MCP panel is useless in XPlane and used nearly every flight in FSX.

 

Each platform has some appeal, but as I've said before, the idea of 64-bits, while seeming like an apparent 'magic bullet' is no panacea for all that's wrong with flight simulation.

 

There are inherent roadblocks in both sims that take a toll.  In FSX we are deathly afraid of the 3.5 to 4.0 gb Virtual Address Space (VAS) limitations.  While THAT ONE ISSUE is gone in 64-bit X-Plane, there are plenty of other things that can kill performance to unacceptable levels.

 

While we're all flying single CPU and single GPU hardware (neither FSX nor XPlane support multiple graphics cards in SLI), we're all trying to juggle 30 objects and maintain decent frames.

 

Complexity is the enemy, yet it is complexity that gives the higher immersive factor.  So we continually and forever are bound to tweaking settings to try to get our sim to 'be all it can be'.

 

The core idea behind MS Flight was solid, but they fumbled the ball on the goal line when they ignored the serious sim pilot who wants FMC navigation and some real-world cockpit hardware as well.

 

I enjoy both platforms, but I have returned to FSX with renewed enthusiasm.  Much of which is brought about by the 3PD folks at PMDG, FSDreamteam, ORBX, and VRInsight.  Taken together, my simulation experience is much more satisfying in FSX, and I'm the LAST guy who ever thought I'd come back from 64-bits to 32.

X-planes  64-bitness and overall smoothness has really lost it's shine since more and more FSX'rs are coming to grasp with the DX10Fixer. I haven't hung up XPX fully yet, but I've started to look at it as I looked at XP9, not quite on the same level as its competitor. Looks like Orbx is about to redo ground traffic/LC and Active Sky has something that will "revolutionize" weather, but as far as XPX is concerned we are just looking to get rid of all the gas stations and excessive grass regions.

I really like XP10, but I also have invested time and $ on FSX and its add-ons, which total almost 250 GB.  Right now I'm happy using FSX 75% of the time to XP10's 25%.  Once PMDG announces what product they will make for XP, I will probably dedicate more time to it. I really enjoy flying Javier's CRJ-200, and I have bought some scenery add-ons.  The FSX "SP 3" that would make it 64-bit compatible and tailor it toward today's CPUs and GPUs will only be a dream.  P3D seems to have no plan for a gaming version.  My wish list for XP-10 is seasonal textures, major landmarks, and terminal buildings, just like the basics you get with FSX.  Austin and his team seem to be very focused on customer feedback and maintaining frequent communication with RSR and others.  I really love how smoothly it runs on my system.  Right now my "heavy" of choice is the FF 777.  I think XP has a bright future.

I really like XP10, but I also have invested time and $ on FSX and its add-ons, which total almost 250 GB.  Right now I'm happy using FSX 75% of the time to XP10's 25%.  Once PMDG announces what product they will make for XP, I will probably dedicate more time to it. I really enjoy flying Javier's CRJ-200, and I have bought some scenery add-ons.  The FSX "SP 3" that would make it 64-bit compatible and tailor it toward today's CPUs and GPUs will only be a dream.  P3D seems to have no plan for a gaming version.  My wish list for XP-10 is seasonal textures, major landmarks, and terminal buildings, just like the basics you get with FSX.  Austin and his team seem to be very focused on customer feedback and maintaining frequent communication with RSR and others.  I really love how smoothly it runs on my system.  Right now my "heavy" of choice is the FF 777.  I think XP has a bright future.

Hi Luis,

 

I liked the FF777 but my new love is the PMDG T7. I encourage FF and Philipp Muenzel and Austin Meyer and his team. I want them to succeed, and to prosper. That said, until the 'big boys' (Orbx, Rex, FSDreamteam, FlightBeam Studios, etc, come to the party, I am afraid that XPlane will develop, albeit quite slowly. The size of their programming team is rather small, and making quantum leaps in the entire flight 'world' (not just one specific flight 'region') is a Herculean task, even for dev teams that are bankrolled by Micro$oft.

 

Meanwhile, I enjoy both platforms, though I have recently discovered that a fresh clean install of FSX with only specific pieces put back on is the secret of smoother frames.

While I'm adding thoughts- I will also say that because they don't have the heavy hitters developing for them, X-Plane faces a much higher workload trying to build a world that is not only plausible, but one that more closely resembles 'the real world'. Autogen is a fact of life in flight simming, it's simply much too big a job to make the entire planet photo-realistic, unless you partner with Google Earth or some such. That said, I will say that at times XPlane can truly dazzle, amaze and captivate, the inability to see out to the horizon at commercial jet cruise altitudes and the naked airports devoid of structures are a huge negative and buzz-killer in my world.

 

I could live with the FF 777, but once I got the PMDG version, it was no contest. You simply can customize the PMDG plane to a higher degree, in my humble view.

 

Laminar is facing court litigation, and that's unfortunately a reality and an unpleasant one. Depending on who you talk to, the suit is either "not an issue or concern" or "a major threat to ongoing viability of the company". Mr. Meyer has vowed to fight the good fight, but as I've postulated before, the worry, anger and anxiety of a major lawsuit is not only bad for business, it doesn't help one's sleep patterns a whole lot either.

 

The partnership with big hitters (3PDs) takes pressure off the root developer (Laminar). Since unfortunately the 3PDS have been slow in coming to the party, progress on the platform seems to have slowed to a crawl.

 

What's different about FSX is that now people like ORBX and PMDG are innovating and pushing the "dead" platform forward and making it better. Orbx FTX Global replacing the default textures in FSX is a game-changer, and their new Vector Graphics add-on for Global (due out late October 2013) will make things even better. The 3PD (ORBX) is making FSX itself more fun to fly.

 

In the case of Laminar, because the environment itself is far from "finished", development of necessity is painfully slow. Aircraft developers have publicly stated new planes are stalled on the drawing board until version 10.3 of XP releases. So now you have the 3PD blaming the underlying sim for slow developement or delayed release date of the add on.

 

The perception of the public can only be a very uncertain future, filled with delays. I'm sure ten years from now, if Laminar remains in business, XP20 or whatever the iteration is at that time will be substantively better than 10.2 is today. On the other hand, old people (like myself) who are in the fourth quarter of life, don't have "forever" to wait for something truly incredible and stupendously innovative to hit their flight deck.

 

That said, I agree that XPlane has some definite attraction. But I also discovered that 64-bits, while "ideal" on paper, is not the catch-all fix for poor frames! That was a stunner, let me tell you.

 

Rex and Active Sky apparently both have strikingly impressive weather products in the wings for FSX. Orbx is becoming almost like a subsystem of FSX, or you might consider ORBX as something a little like FSXI. (Flight Simulator 11). By the time you start to hit the new "hybrid" setting in ORBX FTX Central, you realize they are smart enough to design a way you can make the "hybrid" setting juggle between their GLOBAL FTX product and their special add-on airports and "regions" like Pacific Northwest Blue.

 

Toss in those astounding 2nd generation payware airports, and Bob's STILL your Uncle in FSX. And as someone rightly said, I'm the LAST guy who ever thought for a moment that he would reinstall FSX from scratch and then build all the plugins and addons back into the platform.

 

As far as ATC goes, I still say VATSIM or PilotEdge is the ticket. PilotEdge for me is the top dog, but they do have a limited service area. Flying on Vatsim can be a scary adventure, as the moment the ATC closes their shop, the Unicom crowd starts doing Stupid Pet Tricks with their aircraft, triggering TCAS RA's and near death experiences galore. After 3 hours in the air on Vatsim, some clown flew right through the vertical centerline of my plane on final apprach (he ran right through me). Now THAT is a buzz killer!

 

On PilotEdge, I have NEVER had a near-collision or anything remotely CLOSE to one. Plus having block-to-block coverage for your entire flight? Priceless. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Robert. I beileve they pretty much reflect the oppinion / thoughts of most of us.

 

I believe the horizon blurr will get addressed anytime soon. I also believe that some weather injector will become available, both contributing to a much better experience for those who like to simulate airline opperations.

 

I'm still imagining the time it'll take to update the default mesh and textures when Alpilot's site annaounces it's availability... 40GB, whow!

 

My plans right now are to use the airplanes I have to the limit. This includes the MU2J, the DC3, the Carenados. I look forward to get the Saab too.

 

I have the OSM and photosceneries for my area, and the results are very good, although I prefer the default FSX scenery for Lisbon, with both bridges realistically reproduced, the main emblematic buildings / structures, etc...

 

For airliner flying, I use FSX, the NGX the 777 and the AXE . I am following the progress of the Airbus NEO for X-Plane because it looks nice, and although not yet to the level of complexity of the Aerosoft AXE, from patch to patch it is looking even better.

 

Helicopters - this is something that DCS World helped changing for me. I used to start only X-Plane to fly helos, because the FSX offers are not up to the level of what we can get for X-Plane, but those two helos in DCS really look / feel amazing, so, I share my helo flying time between the EC135 in X-Plane 10, and the UH-1H and Mi-8 in DCS...

 

I'm a glider pilot, but I do not have Condor or SW installed - puzzling, isn't it? I have CumuluX! for FSX, but I seldom use it these days. I would really like to be able to use a good glider in X-plane, and although I think such improvements stand well behind in Austin's TODO list, getting a better thermal model, and some more weather features simulated in X-Plane would be great. With photoscenery, X-Plane would be a great platform for soaring simulation.

 

 

But I also discovered that 64-bits, while "ideal" on paper, is not the catch-all fix for poor frames! That was a stunner, let me tell you.

 

Eh, but this was a complete false assumption you had then. 64 bit was never meant to fix poor frames. It is ONLY for avoiding memory crashs, nothing more, and Laminar / Ben were always very clear about that.

Yeah, I agree with Mario. I also always understood it to be only something to prevent the memory-crashes (RAM limitations of 32Bit) and i read a few times that we shouldn't expect any impact on the framerates.

 

In fact, the impact on framerates (mostly the huge one when using HDR) is another thing that has to be improved by LR.

 

Talking about P3D and FSX: if i remember what was written about it, the further developpment of FSX has been stopped by MS, right? And its licence for developping it has been transfered to p3d, is this correct? But since FSX is being maintained "artificially" alive, am i right, that X-Plane is the only real alternative for FSX-users, even when not for everyone of them right now, but at least in the future? Or did i perhaps missed something?

Robert good post.

 

Just want to say that stuff like what you described happens very rarely in VATSIM, in fact I've never been close to a situation like that. But yes it can happen.