Fellows,Lets have this debate and tell us your stand. As the topic goes "what is realistic" when it comes to flight simulation? I mean why are we daring developers to make their products to have failures or exibit "fail", so we will know that; they did a great job on the product as oppose to this in reverse in real life?Why do we want to fly a long haul and set parameters in the middle of the flight, so an engine or something alike will fail? then we can deal with it or land the plane somewhere only then we will go the the developer(s)forum to congratulate them on a job well done and how realistic the product is?Imagine an airline doing the same with Boeing or Airbus when an airline pilot intentionally stops or fails a B744/A340 engines, so he can proof to the company how well Boeing/Airbus plane is design. I for one have never set a parameter in FS for Failures, but consider myself a hardcore simmer.....My view on this is to rather "force" the MSF TEAM to hard-code these failures in the sim, so it happens at random per negligence (Poor flight planning,oil check or poor flight procedure etc etc)just as in real life rather than the players choice they have now. Then if you would like to practice failures you can set them. What is your stand on this? thnx

Until the program can give me 3-d situational awareness - it's a game.If I want to practice with programmed or random failures - that's a nice feature to have in the game.If I NOT want to have failures and cannot turn them off - that going in the trash can.A commercial pilot these days can expect to have on average a "incident" two or three times in his entire career !!!!The trick to survival is knowing which of several hundred possible incidents that one is when it happens.Yes, I'm certain I'll hear from 100 people who had an engine failure on their first solo. But how many have had another?Remember the COA DC-10/MD-11 guy who has his first incident on his final flight?Flight Sim is worse than useless for practicing emergency procedures. Not enough switches and such. Not designed to fly that way.You want a failure procedure - land with a 18 knot 45 degree crosswind - no ILS - no autoland.Fly your sim from point to point - if you crash, go back to your last airport. No jumping all over the world.Again, if you want to play with failures - fine - that's what a great game is all about - doing it your way.If you don't - that's just fine also.

I don't think poor flight planning or procedures are to blame for most failures. They're more likely to be computer glitches or mechanical problems arising from faulty construction or maintenance.Anyway, no thanks. I'd rather be able to choose whether to have these or not. I certainly don't want them hard coded into the sim.Best wishesIan

Kind of depends what you are trying to simulate. The airlines have simulators, and if a real world pilot ever expected that he/she should expect a faultless flight on one of the recurrency checks they would be in for a big surprise. All they get in their sim rides is failures (without knowing what failures and when they will occur), as the purpose is to test the pilot on their skills in handling them. Anyone can fly a faultless flight, especially with the automatics that the glass cockpits bring with them.As far as simulating mainline flights in FS, I'm not sure what the average failure rate is on various types of equipment. I guess to simulate true operations one should have some sort of accumulator built into FS that can sense the failures over many flights and apply some sort of averaged failures over time to the flight. So- if a certain airplane had a failure rate of once in every 100 hours, then such an accumulator might sense how many hours are spent flying that type of plane and apply the fault at some point around 100 hours on that type. of course, that might take you months or years to get to in real time :)Bruce.

For me, every time in the many years I have flown ,in the real world,my thoughts have always been,"What am I'm gonna do IF" That "IF" list includes every part of the airplane.Even more so is the weather. I think "REALISTIC" is that any thing that could happen, will. Of course its nice to fly in an environment that we fully control.But we don't live over the rainbow,but rather in a more exciting environment.This of course applies to all we do in life I guess. Do I practice engine outs?Do I cover the gauges for practice?Do I use the checklists? YOU BETCHA,and in both worlds.Simming does promote an interest in real world flying. Good place to start thinking safety is on the Sim,just like the pros do.The Butt ya save may be your own. Theres is no reset button in a real world graveyard spiral. "HAVE FUN, THINK REAL! VIN

Hi!I personally never use failures in any menu or something. BUT!, there is always a but..I like realism, but in a realism way. Look, you can see MSFS in two ways: 1) its an airline simulator(or civil whatever) or 2) as an line training with unexpected happenings.If you mastered the normal operation, one might to have something more to break the boredom, or test one skills.You know what I mean..So, what I like is just a simple failure, what NO addon maker EVER made, and I dont see it anywhere.In a jet one cannot give max throttle for the lenght of days, the engines will melt or at least overheat.Is it so hard to simulate this? I dont think so. Its lazyness. Engine abuse is one of the easiest things to do in MSFS, and we all often do it in case of stress/emergency. Nothing happens. The only plane I know what is real, is the Connie from FSDzigns what has a sort of reversed realism, not the max throttle, but taking away power to fast hurts.(So my call to developpers...)It all depends finally on the mood. What do you want? an uneventfull flight (technically wise) you have it, and know it for sure when you depart in MSFS. (or not when you set failures)Why do pilots in modern jets look carefully at the jet engine start? because of possible failures. It belongs to their daily life.I would like that panel designers use some failures, some random, some pilot induced, but not complete a/p failures, since these are rare. Loss of hydrailic presure or something is more real.JohanJohan[A HREF=http://jdserver.no-ip.com]Personal Server[/A]A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, AND A LITTLE MORE ACTION PLEASE!HELP:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=238882

With X-Plane, if you don't run the engine correctly, you will burn it up. Burned up a cessna from engine abuse in x-plane. If one flies a DC-3 in real life at full throttle for more than a minute, the engine will burn up. Not the case in FS9, run it how you want. This should definately be simulated in FS. But of course, the option to turn it off (dummy down) for people who don't care about simulation but treat it more as a game. I will be disappointed with FS10 if it doesn't include 2 things. One of which I have just discussed and the other being somewhat accurately sloped runways. Scott

I'll be surprised if your not disappointed :-) . - Doug

Conforms to at least a cursory blueprint of the real thing.Of course it follows then, I keep about 1% of what I download... ;)

Anyone remember FSMaintenance? If not it tracked hours flown etc in any particular aircraft and if you didn't take care of the aircraft as you should something would fail. Never knew what or if anything would go wrong or which flight it would be. Great I wish it was available for FS2004. I have tried something else but it just hasn't got quite what I am looking for.Andrew BrownRAORING THIRTIEShttp://www.gordiusfs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

The FSD aircraft are very good about things like overspeed, burning out gear boxes, ruining bearings, engine hours and diminished performance.One of the things which hasn't been used as much as I'm sure Microsoft would have expected the the ABL SDK. Some very reasonable redlines, abuse induced failures, etc. can be done fairly easily.Guess we are too individualistic.

>choice they have now. Then if you would like to practice>failures you can set them. What is your stand on this? thnx In PMDG's 747 you can have random failures, failures on request, immediate failures, etc. - even better than in full motion commercial simulation. Not use what your point is, what's wrong with having those choices? MSFS can't "program" failures since this is a property of individual aircraft, not the whole simulation.Michael J.

One of the first things i do with a new version of fs is turn crash detection off. As for the failure features of the sim or complex addons - no use for them, never use them. But that's just me - more power to them that find such features useful and/or fun. Having said that I still fly well 'inside the box' and love a clean flight.I don't really care if my A3xx or 7xx flies like the real one, I never will so as long as it's got no obvious fde quirks (like the ability to roll a heavy) and those that know say it's fairly close - cool. I bought fs9 primarily because it LOOKS better than fs8.Pathetic to some I suppose but that's as real as it gets for me and i'm quite happy.regards,MarkXPHomeSP2/FS9.1/3.2HT/1GIG/X700pro256

That is exactly what I'm wondering. If we are to simulate a flight as in real life, then why set a failure that you know 100% it will happen and you know you are going to deal with it as expected. Should we judge an add-on by how well they have coded failures or how well they have design the the flight parameters as it should be in real life? As I said never once in 10 years of simming have I set failures in the sim yet "if/when" it happens, I'm ready to deal with it. I guess my point been it is not as realistic if you already know what is going to fail because in real world (Level D Sim)the pilots in training have no clue what the chief is going to put them through and Oh....they only practise failures. thnx

>flight as in real life, then why set a failure that you know>100% it will happen and you know you are going to deal with it>as expected. Again, you sound totally unfamiliar with the latest software in this respect - PMDG's 747. You can fly there for a long time and have a surprise failure without knowing what kind of failure it will be.Michael J.