Battle of the Boeings: Milviz 737-00 vs. Captain Sim 737-200

[Tim_Capps 474]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I want to sharpen my criticism of Captain Sim's CWS so people know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

On initial climb, engage CWS. It works perfectly. You are engaging the AP when the yoke is already back, so there's no problem.

 

Start to level out by pulling your joystick or yoke back. Maybe it will let go, maybe not. If you center your joystick that may help "break" it loose. It may even require a backward nudge. But not too much, or it will over do it and you'll find yourself in a dive.

 

Let's assume you're in level flight and want to dive. You want to move the stick forward slowly enough not to overshoot your desired VS, but if you move it too slowly, the AP will set itself at someplace short of where you were aiming for. It is very tricky to find that exact touch on the stick to get it all the way to where you want to set your descent while not overshooting. But now is where things get really interesting.

 

Easing back on the stick -- which is the instinctive approach -- will get you nowhere. You can pull it all the way back and it won't do any good. Centering might work, but probably not. Worse, in fighting your efforts to come out of the descent, it will reset at a higher rate of descent. Each time you try to get out of what is now a dive, your terrifying plunge becomes more terrifyingly plungey. With enough violent jerking around of the stick, you might get it to break, but now you're zooming up in a crazy climb.

 

So, with extremely delicate and experimental movements of the stick, the pitch up works well enough under CWS. Getting into a descent works, so long as you get the right balance between avoiding getting stuck prematurely and overshooting into a plunge. Getting out of the descent back into level flight is a dice roll, and even then there is a good chance you'll zoom up. Chances are you will end up disengaging AP to rescue your airplane from the clutches of an murderous dive.

 

Nothing works remotely like anything you'd find in a commercial airliner. (Except roll, which doesn't seem to suffer from the problems pitch presents. So, given all the above, I suppose you could say it "works," and I'll admit it isn't completely broke, unless you expect reliable responses from pitch inputs. With further practice I might be tempted to fly the Captain Sim 737, but I would not expect either realism or much fun out of the CWS. You still have heading select and altitude hold,, and if you have to, can fly without the autopilot for brief periods.

 

CONTRAST THAT with the Milviz. You pitch down, you descend. You pull the stick back, you go back to level flight. Pull it back more, you climb. It is docile and as happy to give you back your airplane as a retriever with a partridge.