In parallel of my previous topic concerning the possibility of opening the doors to the ground, what would you think if PMDG added us the possibility of opening the engine doors (and maybe have appropriate service vehicles) as illustrated in the pictures of the following link ?

http://www.gauthiernicolas.fr/?p=3570
 

I understand that it is not in the field of pilot, but that would be awesome, no?

Best regards.

 

Alexandre SAGETTE aka AAlphaSierra

Why would that be awesome? I don't get it.  I'd rather have so many other features, such as ARINC navdata compatible FMS or how about a high fidelity bank and turn flight simulation?

What would be interesting, is now that PMDG are doing that ops thing, if the opening of service panels could be tied to when the aircraft comes onto the stand with an issue, as is the case in real life, i.e. the ACARS stuff sends telemetry to the airline engineering personnel at the destination, for example reporting that the number two engine is low on oil or whatever, and if that could be made to trigger the oil filler access panel on number two opening up when the engine is shut down at the stand to simulate it being attended to, then that would be kind of cool. One could even go further with stuff like that and have it so that if the aircraft is at a remote airport where that airline has no service personnel, any such issues could be either deferred and stuck on the MEL, or take a while to sort out, or whatever.

Edited June 28, 20187 yr by Chock

Interesting suggestion, it would certainly increase the immersion factor, imho.

We can simulate all these service vehicle surrounding the aircraft, let them open some panels and take a look.

Take it one step further, work on the engines...drop a wrench... ground the aircraft while a fod check is carried out. Kinda along the idea of what Chock was explaining. I guess the possibilities are endless from a user standpoint, maybe not so much so from the dev though 🙂

The op title is cosmetic immersion, let's not rain on his parade.

James Dean

Thank you JimmyD, and that's right : if this cosmetic addition can be linked with engines maintenances/repairs procedures, this would make more sense.

We can imagine the same kind of things for gear pressure/changes...

From the point of view of developers, maybe not for this version I can understand, but for next version, focusing on the 64 bit P3D platform, a lot of things would be possible... No ?

AAlphaSierra

As far as I understood from PMDG some time ago, they are not allowed by Boeing to show damage to the airplane. And they need their cooperation with Boeing to produce these wonderfull aircrafts.

That is why you don’t see any smoke or fire from your engine even if the fire bell rings in the cockpit. Opening doors for maintenance would be a similar issue.

Also take into consideration how much more detail they would need to put into the engines if you were able to pop open the engine nacelles. With that amount of detail, it could easily start to bring performance down, even with 64-bit.

Nice suggestions... but honestly rather for a self owned GA airplane, the accusim approach.. 

Pilots of airliners normally don‘t care that much about dropping a wrench. 

One thing to consider: as noted an opening engine panel requires modeled engine textures. Modeled textures means more dev time, hence a higher price and longer beta... ^^ 

1 hour ago, Ephedrin said:

One thing to consider: as noted an opening engine panel requires modeled engine textures.

I guess it depends on how detailed you want to get. You can either do just engine textures, or you would have to model each and every part. The latter would take up a significant amount of resources.

On 6/28/2018 at 4:37 PM, downscc said:

Why would that be awesome? I don't get it.  I'd rather have so many other features, such as ARINC navdata compatible FMS or how about a high fidelity bank and turn flight simulation?

Dan can I ask what the deficiencies are in the current reproduction of bank and turn in the sim? Just purely out of interest

7 minutes ago, rondon9898 said:

Dan can I ask what the deficiencies are in the current reproduction of bank and turn in the sim? Just purely out of interest

Sure John, watch how the FMS-equipped aircraft often overshoots or undershoots a turn.  The FMS is trying to predict the ground track of the aircraft given speed (and to some extent I believe wind), which should be easy to do because there are basic laws of physics involved. However, the flight dynamics engine FDE in the simulator does not apply those physics formulas but instead uses a method that approximates the turn physics.  At some speeds the approximation is spot on, at other speeds it is off and the errors are compounded the greater the change in heading of the turn.  For example, PMDG B738 departing KPHX to the West on a SID that has a 90 deg turn to the right (North) several miles from airport such that aircraft is at 250 KIAS climbing through maybe 4000 ft and it is impossible for the aircraft to role out on correct heading a be on the LNAV predicted path so the result is the FMS applies correction such as a left turn (West) to resolve the track error.  It's pretty easy to see on just about any turn that exceeds 30 deg.  The solution is the developers need to take the flight dynamics of the turn outside of the FDE and do the simulation with custom coding, much in the same way PMDG already simulates the engines and in the case of the B744 the ground friction model.  I had a developer explain to me that as much as he wants to do this, it just isn't on the work priority list yet.

16 hours ago, downscc said:

Sure John, watch how the FMS-equipped aircraft often overshoots or undershoots a turn.  The FMS is trying to predict the ground track of the aircraft given speed (and to some extent I believe wind), which should be easy to do because there are basic laws of physics involved. However, the flight dynamics engine FDE in the simulator does not apply those physics formulas but instead uses a method that approximates the turn physics.  At some speeds the approximation is spot on, at other speeds it is off and the errors are compounded the greater the change in heading of the turn.  For example, PMDG B738 departing KPHX to the West on a SID that has a 90 deg turn to the right (North) several miles from airport such that aircraft is at 250 KIAS climbing through maybe 4000 ft and it is impossible for the aircraft to role out on correct heading a be on the LNAV predicted path so the result is the FMS applies correction such as a left turn (West) to resolve the track error.  It's pretty easy to see on just about any turn that exceeds 30 deg.  The solution is the developers need to take the flight dynamics of the turn outside of the FDE and do the simulation with custom coding, much in the same way PMDG already simulates the engines and in the case of the B744 the ground friction model.  I had a developer explain to me that as much as he wants to do this, it just isn't on the work priority list yet.

I wish it was a priority I must say.  I don't know if you have used the FSL A320, Dan, but it turns magically and follows its predicted paths very nicely.

I’m ashamed to say that all the simming I’ve done and I’ve never sctually noticed this effect, so I shall look out for it. Very interesting.

If you want that go buy the Captain Sim Aircraft, They are more gimmicky (if that's even a word) than PMDG

 

Nice example of the B737NG, but if you've flown the real aircraft, you'd know it really can't follow the magenta line for toffee in the low altitude departure phase. 

You often find yourself in that initial turn out while still accelerating and it ties itself in knots trying to follow it as speed changes and you clean up.

So I'd say it was probably more realistic than not.