It's the test harness used in the FSPS FFTF Dynamic test:

 

Edited April 5, 20188 yr by SteveW

The thing is, they make a new aircraft, they test fly it and tune it and develop it and they record how it goes and how it uses fuel and so on. Eventually they arrive at a look-up table for it so they can approximate cost of the real aircraft flight.

So then we get a model in the sim and the fuelling is adjusted to match as close as possible to the real aircraft. When we put it in sim weather and sim slowdown and stutter the lookup might not be so close.

Even so the fuel calculators come with the addon aircraft are very accurate. I tested the Quality Wings and the fuel predictions were perfect.

So a tool that makes the prediction is only as good as its performance data in use.

 

Edited April 5, 20188 yr by SteveW