FSX-MS Best simulator for Glider pilots?

[Jon Davidson 0]

Most of these simulators are designed for entertainment not training. Or they are designed as the case for condor to substitute for real flying when conditions are poor ,(winter) gain experience with basic instrumentation, and online competition.

None will give you the skills you need from ground zero, except for a basic understanding of how aircraft work. all sims lack realism of stick control, usually it is much to sensitive, and unrealistic. If you are one of us who has full scale flying experience you can overlook these inadequacies, or compensate for them. All planes are tweakable in X-plane and FSX, you can modify the flight characteristics to make them more realistic, up to a point. You will discover that many if not most serious simmers regularly modify, add to, and tweak their sims to suit their particular interest. go take a ride in a sailplane at your local field, most clubs offer an introductory lesson for a very reasonable fee. You may find you don't like soaring, then your search is over or if you become hooked, you can't get enough of flying, and will soon be on your way.

[cencored 0]

Don't want to put you off. Just a caution!

No harm in contacting a Gliding instruction for direction

even if you aren't getting airborne just yet.

Here in Canada that would cost you nothing.

Go luck with it.

 

Dave

 

No all good. I did find it hard so far to find much information on gliding tuition/tutorials etc online.

I have a good grasp of the basics though, but was hoping to find stuff to train myself, do missions etc.

Any ideas?

[Guest]

 

 

Any ideas?

 

Where do you live?

[cencored 0]

Where do you live?

 

Australia. I just happened to find an interesting glider manual (pdf) on the FAA website. Surely the basics should be the same?

[Guest]

They might be.

 

If I where you I would start here:

http://www.glidingaustralia.org/

 

There training manual is, in your case the most important

document that you can get your hands on.

Have a look at their site and see if you can find a free PDF

version. However I suspect you will have to purchase a hard

copy. Every national gliding association is going to have a training

curriculum. That's the document you need to get your hands on.

[cencored 0]

Great idea, thanks for that Dave. I'll take a look. The FAA one looks very comprehensive though, so I might read that in case I can't find anything else.

[cencored 0]

Unfortunately I am not much nearer to making a decision on which Simulator after thinking about it for a while and trying out FSX, P3D and Condor.

I went to the Condor forum and a lot of people there discourage simulator use before having started actual training.

I do not have the opportunity to start training for a couple more years but am very passionate about gliding and would love to start digging my teeth in it...

[robert young 2,897]

I think FSX would be capable of much better glider modelling than it is given credit for, but I think it would take a lot of work and time.

 

I'm not that impressed with Condor. The trim is quite awful (in a real glider it is almost effortless). Condor could have been good but there are just too many basic flaws: trim, the way the joystick params are calibrated, far to much jiggling about in Yaw even in zero wind, and the cameras do not help because they are zoomed in far too much which exaggerates the unstable yaw even more. Add the ridiculously short aerotow line and it becomes very frustrating and for me fine control is actually harder than real gliding in some circumstances.

 

Aerofly FS has almost RC levels of inertia : ie: almost none!

 

I think John Cagle made a pretty good go of Aerosoft's Discus flight model for FSX given the limitations.

 

The problem is that because the market for quality Gliders in FSX is probably extremely small, it would take a lot of courage to spend the hours and dedication needed for a return of perhaps a few hundred sales.

 

I had hoped Condor would be updated, but it is pretty stone-aged now and though new sceneries are released regularly by users, to me they all look the same unconvincing terrain with poor resolution yet with vast file sizes. 

[jcomm 5,936]

I just bought the K21, from aerosoft.  Having been one of the gliders I flew the most IRL, I can say that I am disappointed, but I did expect that - I am yet to see a credible / plausible glider flight model for either FSX or X-plane 10 :-(

 

I did use Condor, and Aerofly FS, as well as SFS2 and SFS3 long ago, and SOTS, but by far the closest I ever found to my RL glider experience during the last 34 yrs was Silent Wings.

 

I am sure if "Yo-Yo" ( the aerodynamics engineer behind DCS WW2 fighters ) designed a glider some day, using the sophisticated framework of DCS, it would probably become the best glider simulation available, just as much as no other prop aircraft is, even by far, simulated so accurately as the P51d, Fw190 and Bf109 in DCS World... closely matched, somehow, by Il2 BoS.

 

It's sad that I have to use combat flightsims to find acceptable high quality prop aircraft simulations ...

[gboz 157]

I just bought the K21, from aerosoft. Having been one of the gliders I flew the most IRL, I can say that I am disappointed,

 

That's disappointing since Aerosoft say they have programmed parts of the flight model outside of the sim.

What would you say are the obvious failings?

 

gb.

[jcomm 5,936]

I haven't yet found a support forum where to address some of the issues.

 

For an FSX model, it's undoubtedly very good, but even a simple stall where you keep pulling the stick back results in a series of wild oscillations through which you can recover altitude, than go down again, then recover... ad nauseum....  The spins are also strange, and show that scripted nature of when authors try to do in FSX what FSX simply can't give them ... 

 

The ASI error with sideslip is mild. I expected a better effect since it was announced as one of the modeling features... BTW: sideslips are also very strange, compared to what we use almost everyday IRL, and the K21 can perform some really nice ones, specially when the rudder pegs at one of the stops....

 

It is still one of the best glider models for FSX though! just like the DiscusX!.  I haven't yet tried the motorized version ( maybe next weekend ).

 

I use FSX and X-Plane and both fall short of what gliders really feel when flown IRL :-(

 

Again, of all the glider sims I ever used, the closest match was Silent Wings. I regret the project having been abandoned :-/

[gboz 157]

I use FSX and X-Plane and both fall short of what gliders really feel when flown IRL :-(

 

Ok, thanks.

 

Would be worth reporting this over at the Aerosoft forums maybe.

They do seem to respond to user reports but also can be limited with aircraft they do not make themselves.

 

gb.

[pilottj 198]

I think it will always be a tradeoff no matter what soaring sim you use, like everything we do in flight sim, it must be taken with a grain of salt. Soaring is one of the more physically involved/instinct based flying where things must be 'felt', more so than other types of flying. To try to squeeze all that on to a 2D screen, there are no doubt going to be things missing. I took the ASK around the NZ Milford Sound area using ASN and CumulusX. Sure the physics of it all aren't prefect, but the visual experience was really quite nice and worth it.

 

Cheers

TJ

[jcomm 5,936]

I agree TJ, and you're  on spot regarding the lack of "seat of the pants" in any PC-based desktop sim, an experience that indeed plays one of the most important roles in RL soaring :-)

 

I hav just re-installed a plain vanilla copy of FSX:SE to use solely with Aerowinx PSX and the PMDGs. My only GA is the K21, and I have ASN too, which I found to work beautifully with CumulusX! .

 

I look fwd for additional patches and will report at the Aerosoft forums what I find needs a bit of tweaking.

 

And... BTW... is there really any form of flying that put's us so close to the true beauty of flying ???

 

[robert young 2,897]

And... BTW... is there really any form of flying that put's us so close to the true beauty of flying ???

 

 

That's a beautifully done video and so captures the wonderful freedom and joy of gliding. A stark contrast to a couple of clubs I've flown with in the UK, full of bossy men all trying to dominate the club in their own way and turning off younger members, and particularly turning off women. We get that kind of fantastic weather all too rarely in the UK so you really have to earn your heights and distances. Thanks for linking to the video Jose.