Take my survey

Hey all, I'm interested in knowing how hardcore we all get when we sim. I devised a survey to figure out how many real-world procedures we try to simulate when we fly. Help me out by answering the questions -- it should take about five minutes. I'm curious to see how deep down the rabbit hole we as a community go!

Note that you will need to log in to fill the form, but IT WILL NOT RECORD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. It's just there to make sure no one answers twice.

will you publish the poll results ????

Just tried to answer in the survey but a lot of questions didn't make sense to me concerning realism. Quite a few  answering options are either missing, are not applicable or would require multiple answers. 

Edited January 30, 20206 yr by FDEdev

3 hours ago, vadriver said:

will you publish the poll results ????

You should be able to see the poll results; I marked them as public.

3 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

My level of "hardcore" varies based on how much time I can make available ... which now that I'm "jobless" and started my own company is less available time than when I had a job at another paying company.  

Some of your question options are exclusive and I would need to answer them inclusive ... like your flight planning (tools used is flexible based on how much time I make available).

Do you work for or contract with Microsoft/Asobo?  If you can provide more info as to the objective, that would be nice.  In case, you didn't already know Navigraph survey happens yearly (which covers many of the same questions you ask) ... which reminds me, have the result of that survey been published for 2019?

Cheers, Rob.

I was just curious. I don't work for anyone. I am curious to see how seriously people take this hobby / how much they turn it into a second career. I personally draw the line pretty close to the crazy end 🙂 The Navigraph survey is good but doesn't cover procedures. And yes, they did publish the results.

Just answer what you "mostly" do. I didn't want to make them multiple choice because everyone does everything once in a while.

3 hours ago, RISCfuture said:

I was just curious. I don't work for anyone.

so need to take it seriously ..... and given you don't ask a stack of questions many have about some very important aspects at the entrance to the rabbit hole.

ask for a hint & you might find the bottom ............

There is nothing "realistic" about flight simming. It's make believe. Or do you consider it "realistic" sitting in the left seat of an airliner, taking off to a fancy destination after having read a "tutorial flight"?😄

4 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

There is nothing "realistic" about flight simming. It's make believe. Or do you consider it "realistic" sitting in the left seat of an airliner, taking off to a fancy destination after having read a "tutorial flight"?😄

I have hundreds of hours in real-world simulators as both a trainee and an instructor, dating as far back as the early 1980s.  What I have on my desktop today with P3D and an array of high-end add-ons is without question a better training device than the simulators we used to train real world pilots just a decade or two ago.  Good grief, our Air Force undergraduate pilot training students flew simulators that moved a low-res camera translating over a 3D terrain model board, essentially a model diorama of the immediate airport environment.  That was followed in later years by monochrome computer-generated graphics that were utterly primitive even when compared to the default scenery in something as old as FS2004.

If that technology was good enough to provide procedures and instrument training for student pilots learning to fly real high-performance aircraft, then what we have available to us now is certainly good enough to meet a non-trivial objective standard of realism, and in some cases at surprisingly high levels of fidelity.

 

10 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

There is nothing "realistic" about flight simming. It's make believe. Or do you consider it "realistic" sitting in the left seat of an airliner, taking off to a fancy destination after having read a "tutorial flight"?😄

The language makes a difference between real and realistic. The latter being a tentative, per definition incomplete, to reach the former.

Taking back your example. What about a simmer conscientiously making all the required steps from entering the cockpit at departure to leaving it at arrival ? A good simulator is almost as good or bad as the simmer wants it to be, these days. And we see our sims to be closer and closer to the real thing. Looking back to the last 15 years of  simulator history and forward to what P3Dv5 and FS20 may bring us, the word realistic doesn’t seem inappropriate to me.

It is an asymptotic quest of course. It will take a little time to simulate the gravity effects on the simmer’s body and inner ear 😏.

1 hour ago, domkle said:

What about a simmer conscientiously making all the required steps from entering the cockpit

...of the Cessna 172, going through all the "Rod Machado flying lessons", getting their ppl, then transitioning to other aircrafts, certifications, etc......Now, how many simmers do you think are willing to engage in THAT level of realism? Not that many, I reckon. 

If they did, PMDG and other addon developers would be out of business in a New York minute. 😏

Problem with surveys can you trust the result most simmers if the forums are to be believed have given up flying till MSFS comes out, I admit I am flight sim hobbyist.  

On 1/31/2020 at 9:08 PM, Ricardo41 said:

There is nothing "realistic" about flight simming. It's make believe. Or do you consider it "realistic" sitting in the left seat of an airliner, taking off to a fancy destination after having read a "tutorial flight"?😄

There are certainly some aspects of flight simming which are very realistic indeed. I'm sure you are aware that many pilots (myself included) have in the past done things such as stick a photo poster of a panel up on the wall and used something as basic as that to get used to visual scans and flows, so even something as basic as using a picture in this way can be regarded as a procedural flight simulation trainer. It's not 'realistic' in the physical sense of there being actual switches to flip, but it is extremely useful as a training aid which is precisely why you can buy those posters from many pilot supplies stores.

In a similar fashion to that, years ago before there were the kind of realistic flight sims we are lucky enough to have today, I knocked up a basic stick and rudder contraption with a wooden stick and some flat bits of wood connected to some bungie chords. I used this to get into the habit of applying rudder with foot movements when deflecting the stick, since this is not really a natural movement until you get used to doing it. I dunno if it helped, but I do know that I got sent solo after 7 hours and 15 minutes of dual, so I'm suspecting it might indeed have helped.

More recently, when I was training to do headset procedures for my job for engine starting on the real things, I found that having used the Flight 1 ATR 72 some years ago in FS9, was useful in helping me to understand exactly what Hotel Mode is on the real ATR 72s which I now work on. This was handy because disconnecting the ground power from an ATR after it has used that ground power to crank up the number 2 engine is potentially dangerous when you have to go in front of a dirty great big engine with a propeller that would turn you into minced meat if it hit you, so it is helpful to know that there is a light on the forward fuselage which illuminates when the aircraft is in Hotel Mode. Some of this stuff I know from sims, some from having read technical manuals to familiarise myself with the real thing and the sim versions too.

Similarly, I have on occasion had to put ground power on aircraft out on remote stands so that cleaning staff could work on them; normally, the airline would send an engineer out to be in the cockpit to select ground power after it had been connected, but occasionally they would not and so I would go up to the cockpit and do this. The fact that I know how to do that on an A321 is entirely due to having done it in flight sims, and in particular the more realistic 'study sim' variants of the A320 which you can buy.

In fact, I've bought several of the more realistic sim versions of airliners specifically because I know I'd be working on the real things and it would be useful to have something to get familiar with them, notably the Flight Sim Labs A320, the iFly and PMDG 737s and the Majestic Dash 8 Q400.

So even though I only actually pilot small aeroplanes in real life, the fact that I am familiar with the big ones too from having used flight sims has proved useful numerous times when doing stuff on the real things at work. A good example of this is again the ground power and its use; I'm perhaps more careful than most ramp people to ensure that the plug does not fall out of its socket, or that nobody disconnects it just because they've heard the APU crank up, because I know that you have to select the specific power source on the overhead to maintain electrical power and if you don't, you'll lose power on the flight deck and potentially lose your flight plan or perhaps have to spin up the IRS/INS again. I know some ramp people who have not done that because they do not know that the electrical source has to be selected and as a result have removed the FEP, upsetting the flight deck crews in the process, for obvious reasons!

Edited February 3, 20206 yr by Chock

8 hours ago, Chock said:

I know some ramp people who have not done that because they do not know that the electrical source has to be selected and as a result have removed the FEP, upsetting the flight deck crews in the process, for obvious reasons!

As an aside, how do you know when the cockpit crew are ready for the plug to be pulled?

5 hours ago, Mace said:

As an aside, how do you know when the cockpit crew are ready for the plug to be pulled?

Typically, what I do is when I hear the APU crank up, I wait a minute or two and then either ask via the headset or more often just catch the co-pilot's eye and give the hand signal for removing the plug. The signal for that is basically the reverse of the signal to show it is connected, i.e. you pull your clenched fist away from the palm of your hand to imitate a plug being pulled out. If you cannot seem to catch the crew's eye, typically what you do is thump on the side of the fuselage a couple of times and then move back a bit away from the aircraft so they can see you.

If it is okay to pull the plug out, the crew member will then give one of a couple of signals, either they'll indicate wait 1 minute or so by just sticking up a finger to tell you they need it to stay plugged in for a little while, or they'lll give the remove signal back to you, followed by a thumbs up to show it is okay to do that.

On 2/3/2020 at 10:59 PM, Chock said:

...by just sticking up a finger to tell you they need it to stay plugged in for a little while...

I suppose the mood of the pilot might dictate which single finger they use... 

Seriously though - an interesting and educational digression from the survey thread.