Sim v Real

[CaptMatto 238]

An interesting video about feeling co-ordinated flight.

I've always been a sim flyer (my only real PPL flight experience was 30 odd years ago; and that for just a hour!) and there are aspects of small aircarft flight that I know I need to learn aboat, coordination is one of them. I'm hoping that MSFS will enable us to up our game with regard learning to fly. Do any of you have any great real flying tips that can relate to sim flying?

After watching and re-watching the developer videos how close do you feel the aircraft modeling is?

 

[tweekz 2,165]

My experience (PPL) is, that it is actually harder to fly a plane in the sim than IRL. Of course this is heavily dependent on your approach. If you decide to slam the bird into the ground, you can probably walk away without any trouble in the sim. 😉

Especially the landing part requires a lot of "feeling". My instructor told me, I am someone who "flies with his butt" rather than by numbers. So maybe there are some people who might find this less affecting, but the sense of motion in general is a very important factor in aviation - especially VFR!

Edited July 4, 2020 by tweekz

[Jonathan Berthier 99]

It's very much the same for sim racing vs real-life drving, I guess it's true for anything involving an object in motion with you in it being in control. High-end motion rigs will obvously help a lot with this but even they can't convey the whole experience.

[Chock 17,769]

The video you posted highlights the main problem with PC-based flight simulators, in that with no physical movement, there is no seat of the pants feeling at all. Ironically enough, this tends to make flight simmers better IFR flyers than would normally be the case if you were having genuine flight lessons in a real aeroplane, since flight simmers have to rely solely on the instruments for much of the feedback as to what the aeroplane is doing in the sim.

Having said that, whilst 'seat of the pants' stuff can be somewhat useful for flying a real aeroplane, the video you posted is more about having a bit more sympathy for what the aeroplane is doing than being an admonition to not use your slip gauge at all.

Having flown gliders a lot, I can tell you that many of them don't have an artificial horizon instrument at all and the turn and slip gauge is invariably replaced by a piece of wool taped to the windscreen. With a big long wingspan and no propwash to act on the tailfin, gliders are prone to a lot of adverse yaw, to the point where if you put one in a steep bank for a turn, as you invariably do when flying gliders, you have to d@mn near floor the rudder pedal to kick the thing into a turn well enough to overcome the massive tendency for adverse yaw, and whilst that does mean seat of the pants feel plays a role, generally speaking, once the thing is in the turn, you are feeding pedal in and out whilst trying to keep the bit of wool centered on the windscreen and in being so far over, you reach the point where the elevator is starting to act as the rudder and vice versa, so ironically, even though flying gliders is a very seat of your pants type of flying, that bit of wool instrument starts to play a very important role in knowing what to do with the elevator and the rudder. The bad thing in a sim however, is that you don't get the feeling of the disturbed airflow on the tail telling you when you are getting near a stall.

If you want a very good (and inexpensive) add-on aeroplane for FSX or P3D which will help a lot in fine tuning that sort of thing in a flight sim, then I can highly recommend the Ant's Airplanes Drifter Microlight. It does have a simulation of that piece of wool on its windscreen common in gliders, which is very well implemented, so it can give you a pretty good insight into watching where the nose goes in turns, since it allows you to keep your head up rather than looking at a slip gauge.

For getting the hang of coordinated and uncoordinated flight in something a bit more conventional, there can be no better recommendation than the A2A Commanche, which does a slip better than any other sim aeroplane you can get your hands on. This means it is a very seat of your pants aeroplane for your sim, in spite of a PC sim's limitations.

Of course if you fly your sim where you live (Cornwall), then keeping your eyes looking out of the cockpit instead of on the gauges is pretty important; when I lived down there, you couldn't move for RAF Sea King rescue choppers buzzing about all over the place!

Edited July 4, 2020 by Chock

[Murmur 3,941]

3 hours ago, Matt Barraud said:

After watching and re-watching the developer videos how close do you feel the aircraft modeling is?

 

As has been said, some flight sensations and seat of the pants can hardly be reproduced in a pc flight sim, without having any motion platform.

One thing that could help a little bit, is using the visual/audio feedback (and if available, also force feedback on pc controls) to replace seat of the pants.

A good and realistic flight model would also be necessary of course.

For example, the issue of rudder coordination you mentioned, would require a flight model that implements a realistic amount of adverse yaw, plus some visual feedback to account for uncoordinated flight (say, the virtual camera moving and leaning towards the slipping side).

A bit like when you have the virtual pilot head shaking in turbulence.

Default FSX planes lacked any significant adverse yaw, and I also think the leaning of the virtual camera during uncoordinated flight wasn't there or maybe not very noticeable.

A good example I remember is IL2 Sturmovik years ago, where thanks to visual and auditory feedback (cockpit vibration, buffeting sounds), you could feel the incipent stall/spin, even without the help of seat of pants.

 

[LHookins 3,103]

4 hours ago, Chock said:

The bad thing in a sim however, is that you don't get the feeling of the disturbed airflow on the tail telling you when you are getting near a stall.

Accu-Feel from A2A adds stall buffet. 🙂 

A couple of things:  I have never felt anything in uncoordinated flight in a light plane, even when in an obviously cross-controlled condition (maybe my derriere isn't sensitive enough) and there was no stall buffet in the Cessna 150 I took lessons in, although my best friend described it as severe in the Piper Cub during his lessons.

Hook

[Farlis 2,285]

4 hours ago, Jonathan Berthier said:

It's very much the same for sim racing vs real-life drving, I guess it's true for anything involving an object in motion with you in it being in control. High-end motion rigs will obvously help a lot with this but even they can't convey the whole experience.

Totally. I expected sim racing to be easier in VR, but I find that it is actually not that different from using a monitor. The lack of g-forces on the body and the non-existant force feedback on a steering wheel makes it impossible to feel where the limit of the car actually is.

[Dominique_K 10,138]

Excellent video, thanks Matt.

The physical sensation won't be here until they graft chips in our brain.You cannot feel anything but you can see your aircraft, if it comes from people like A2A or the like, sidesliping and you'd better be careful with a hard turn close to the ground. Besides some  mountainous strips, a good example which comes to my mind is the turn to take the runway in Skagway AK. The drag from an uncoordinated hard turn at low speed is not something  you want even in the sim.

I cannot say that they reproduce faithfully the actual flying of the aircraft though. My experience that it is also different from aircraft to aircraft. The Comanche for instance does not act like the T-6, the C182 or the L-39, to refer to some of my favorite aircraft in the sim.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

VR flying is closer to real VFR flying imo, as you tend to look around a lot as one is supposed to (rather than peering at the gauges). Also +1 here for the A2A Commanche, my most-flown GA plane in P3D.

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

The aircraft giving you a kick up the ANUS as you feel the forces acting upon you - unless you have a Level D - just can't be recreated in the sim.

For me the Sim is a Procedural Trainer - for NAV, Airfields, VORS, etc.

Flying P3D/ FSX is like flying a house brick - but the Nav is what I'm doing...

And, as a finisher...

if I could give one piece of advice about how to land the Harrier (AV-8B to our wonderful American cousins) or Harrier to us Limeys, a hard deck out at sea - it is this;

You absolutely MUST, more than the Nozzles and Thrust settings on the Rolls-Royce Pegasus - fly the TRIM of the Harrier down on to the deck...and, Man, have you got to be ready for that at 90 KIAS - because its a truly violent manoeuvre - designed to catch out the unwary and the unclean and the un-ready...

(This is what I flew tonight...)

TRIM, TRIM, TRIM...to 20', down, and alight.

And that's a Harrier landing on Nimitz - the special relationship doesn't get any better than that.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[SAS443 1,723]

I'd say most simpilots who have never Taken  lessons are very poor with rudder pedals (especially those who only flies complex airliners) But that is to be expected since you really aren't punished by improper use. Even the A2A offerings lacks in some areas. In level flight jogging the throttle back and forth hardly introduces any movements around the yaw axis (at least for me, realism settings are checked)

You can arrest the spin quite easily in power on stalls by just using the rudder pedals in a PA28. Nose will swing sideways back and forth, you will have a positive attitude but lose altitude rapidly...  but I am fairly certain a simmer would use opposite aileron when the left wing would start to dip..since well it is a natural thing to do, but instead that action would stall the left wing.

More RPM = more right rudder (slipstream)

Add a High nose up attitude = more right rudder (due to p factor, assymetric prop loading)

Fight gusts during approaches which pushes your nose around = use rudder