In the airports feature discovery video they said they had hand crafted 80 airports but thee are only 40 in the deluxe premium version of the game. They have also stated there will be regular world updates post-launch including new airports. Is this they way the remaining 40 hand crafted airports will be delivered to us? Or are they planning something different like an airports DLC? In other words, what happened to those 40 hand crafted airports?

On many of the videos now on youtube, the smaller airplanes when viewed from outside, seem to have a very unstable movement through the air. They oscillate all the time, with the tail bobbing up and down. Are they stabile enough, and do they have enough interia to be representative of the real thing?

Andreas, isn't this just the opposite of the often critizised flying on rails, so we should be happy it's finally gone? Thus, I tend to confirm your observation (not so much of oscillations, but of less stability), but it may be a step into the proper direction in fact.

I am not a real pilot, but was given stick/yoke in a real R400/C172RG twice for half an hour. I recall, there was much more work need to keep the plane level and straight than I recalled from Prepar3d, where I can let go controls while the plane will happily fly on (if properly trimmed and no gusts, of course). 

Another part of my impression of needing more work in a real plane may be of course the missing forces acting back on our toy controls lacking any force-feedback.

A real pilot can certainly say more on this.

Kind regards, Michael

@pmb Notice how I didn't state whether the unstability is representative of the real thing or not. I made a question out of it, so if Asobo feels it is, in fact, representative, they can enlighten us 🙂 

Yes, I agree that it's good that we are no longer flying on rails, but some people, especially @robert young, has been an advocate for this new approach being a departure into the oposite ditch - that airplanes in general have much more inertia and inherent stability than what is being reproduced in the sim at the moment. 

I'm not a pilot, and I don't even have a few hours in the cockpit of a real airplane. The closest I've come to the cockpit is 1A. 

2 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

@pmb Notice how I didn't state whether the unstability is representative of the real thing or not. I made a question out of it, so if Asobo feels it is, in fact, representative, they can enlighten us 🙂 

Yes, I agree that it's good that we are no longer flying on rails, but some people, especially @robert young, has been an advocate for this new approach being a departure into the oposite ditch - that airplanes in general have much more inertia and inherent stability than what is being reproduced in the sim at the moment. 

I'm not a pilot, and I don't even have a few hours in the cockpit of a real airplane. The closest I've come to the cockpit is 1A. 

Ah, sorry, you are right. Hope they will take this and present an answer.

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

I won’t be able to be there but could you please transmit the following questions ?

- Will water masks be like in the trailers?

- Will we have access to charts for free ?

- Will it be a walk around mode ?

- Will ATC have accents ?

- Will we be able to make fire fighting missions ?

Thank you very much

6 hours ago, Slides said:

True, while I don't expect all the systems to be modeled, the ones that are modeled like AP should work correctly. 

I hear ya.

21 minutes ago, pmb said:

Andreas, isn't this just the opposite of the often critizised flying on rails, so we should be happy it's finally gone? Thus, I tend to confirm your observation (not so much of oscillations, but of less stability), but it may be a step into the proper direction in fact.

HI Michael,

The phrase "flying on rails" is in my view the most misleading assumption made about FSX and P3d. What does that phrase actually mean? Well, it seems to mean that FSX aircraft by default stick to a rigid line when flying and their movement lacks fluidity or flexibility. Nothing could be further from the truth, except in yaw, but that is not the fault of the core aerodynamics. That was down to the initial setup of light to medium sized aircraft by, at FSX's inception (and in previous FS iterations before that), the person who tuned the individual default flight models.

The yaw problem was caused by tuning the weather-vane parameter to a higher than an accurate value, which resulted in the inability of all the FSX and previous default aircraft to side slip. As far back as 2002 I fixed this in the Marchetti SF260, our first release for (if I recall FS 2002 or whatever it was named then). We continued to refine the side slip in FS2004 and FSX and the side effect of that was that we managed to make all our aircraft spin reasonably convincingly.

Other than the yaw problem, which was slightly "on rails", the roll behaviour would have been ok except again someone at Microsoft applied too much dihedral effect, so that many default aircraft had an exaggerated "wings back to level" behaviour. Again this was quite easy to tune out, and again I did so for all our early releases.

It is in pitch stability that the term "flying on rails" is the most inappropriate term to use. In fact it was the polar opposite. All of the default aircraft that were not airliners had gross pitch instability and you could see this clearly when rotating a Cessna Caravan, C172 or default Kingair. They suddenly lept off the runway then, spring like, bobbed up and down with the slightest stick input. Far from being "on rails", this movement was ridiculously unstable and unrealistic. Again I (and for example Steve Small at FSD) damped down this yo-yo movement by tuning it out.

Again, there wasn't much wrong with the core aerodynamics. They had just been tuned not very well.

When Asobo made a significant announcement saying "no more flying on rails", my heart sank. In that one statement they gave notice that rather than taking a nuanced approach to the flight modelling, they had already made assumptions that everything about the flight model would be over-hauled, but from the videos I have seen (and yes you CAN judge what is going on by observing those vidoes) they made things far worse than they already were.

Unfortunately, their assumption was that if you exaggeratedly made small aircraft twitch, buck, weave, bob, and do so with ludicrously jerky movements, that somehow  made them "not on rails". It doesn't work like that. Flight modelling is a subtle art, not a bull in a china shop exercise.

Forgive me for repeating here what I've said on a few occasions, but I've flown light aircraft and gliders on many evenings when thermal activity has died down. In those conditions every single aircraft I have flown handles like a 747 on a balmy night. There is no bucking or weaving, no pitch instability, no unexplained jerks, no drift in yaw, roll or pitch. These aircraft, even the smallest ones, do exactly what they are told. But even in turbulence, they do not twitch in pitch. They are remarkably stable in pitch. What they do exhibit is a reaction to assymetrical lift on each wing which leads to some uncommanded roll and (with much more inertia) yaw, which is automatically damped out by the tail fin and fuselage. But in pitch they are still pretty rock solid. Unfortunately that silly phrase "flying on rails" has persuaded some that in order for a flight model to be authentic, the aircraft must by itself be inherently unstable. This is a total and utter myth. But the myth perpetuates and now almost everyone makes the assumption that FSX is no good at flight modelling because everything flies "on rails". It is utter nonsense.

The reason light aircraft move around quite a lot is because they are indeed light and turbulent air acts upon them. But they still are not inherently unstable. So there is a radical difference between how an aircraft flies in still air and how it reacts to unstable air. It is the AIR MASS that is unstable, not the aircraft!

Rant over :)

13 hours ago, espent said:

"Will all IFR capable airplanes be able to fully fly a IFR-filed flight plan on release day? If not - do you have a timeline for this?"

Timeline for what? What exactly in the IFR capable airplanes is missing that prevent them from flying an IFR flight plan? Not that I had seen any video that really dealt with the topic. Nevertheless I have a feeling the problem that might cause an IFR flight to go unsuccessful usually sits in front of the monitor.

 

7 hours ago, odourboy said:

Flight model limit of mach 0.95... really?

Who said that?

 

1 hour ago, Bottle said:

In the airports feature discovery video they said they had hand crafted 80 airports but thee are only 40 in the deluxe premium version of the game. They have also stated there will be regular world updates post-launch including new airports. Is this they way the remaining 40 hand crafted airports will be delivered to us? Or are they planning something different like an airports DLC? In other words, what happened to those 40 hand crafted airports?

They said they'd give 80 airports better definition, and some of them (the "iconic" ones) would be of even higher quality. I still can't see what's missing here. At least that's how I got it.

 

59 minutes ago, pmb said:

Andreas, isn't this just the opposite of the often critizised flying on rails, so we should be happy it's finally gone? Thus, I tend to confirm your observation (not so much of oscillations, but of less stability), but it may be a step into the proper direction in fact.

I am not a real pilot, but was given stick/yoke in a real R400/C172RG twice for half an hour. I recall, there was much more work need to keep the plane level and straight than I recalled from Prepar3d, where I can let go controls while the plane will happily fly on (if properly trimmed and no gusts, of course). 

Another part of my impression of needing more work in a real plane may be of course the missing forces acting back on our toy controls lacking any force-feedback.

A real pilot can certainly say more on this.

Kind regards, Michael

One thing I always hated in FSX was that when you set up some gusts, these would always make the ASI jump up and down like mad instead of the aircraft being thrown around, which I find way more suitable. Technically I couldn't even argue with that, as gusts are essentially short term variations in wind speed, so this seems somewhat logical. However, this is not even close to what I see on ASIs irl, and that being independent of the aircraft type. Talking about light to moderate gusts I did not see these fluctuations in a SEP, and I don't see them in airliners. Not the way it was in FSX. The behavior in this video still reminds me of that FSX behavior. Yes, I do know he set up insane conditions there, but I'm talking about the overall effect.

 

16 hours ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Make sure you ask them about water masks, transparent water and visible reef structures if they're taking live questions. Better yet, tell them to fly around in the Caribbean and have a look at the waters.

Those Icon A5 videos really make me feel there is no transparency at all, right? When the fuselage dives in, it's just gone. Can't see any of it anymore once it's under the water surface. This (plus the spray effects etc of course) really need improvement in the future... a lot.

59 minutes ago, badderjet said:

They said they'd give 80 airports better definition, and some of them (the "iconic" ones) would be of even higher quality. I still can't see what's missing here. At least that's how I got it.

I looked again at the airports feature discovery video. They say, “37K manually edited”, 80 airports get “specific treatment: most wanted airports” and then “top level selection” of “iconic airports”. They never state the number of this last group however.

So yes, you’re correct and my initial interpretation was wrong. It looks like three tiers of detail: i) all airports manually edited, ii) 40 airports with “specific treatment”, iii) 40 airports with “top level” detail. So perhaps the world updates will include the level ii) airports being phase released.

2 hours ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Yes, I agree that it's good that we are no longer flying on rails, but some people, especially @robert young, has been an advocate for this new approach being a departure into the oposite ditch - that airplanes in general have much more inertia and inherent stability than what is being reproduced in the sim at the moment. 

I am convinced at this point that there are problems with the flight model but that in truth is based on what I have seen from vid's and hints from others with Robert Young being at the top of that list. If anyone has the experience and know how in that area then he is it.

Now, having said that, if this is a vastly improved flight model and if they have 1000 "Pressure Points" bla...bla...bla...then it could be expected that a lot of people will have problems flying it because in real life, an airplane is sort of a living breathing thing and can sometimes have a mind of its own. I can remember my first flights with a C-150. I was all over the sky and felt like a drunken sailor on a tight rope. I remember thinking...Good Lord, look at that flight instructor's white knuckles and is that tears in his eyes. LOL

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by shivers9

2 hours ago, badderjet said:

Who said that?

 

3 hours ago, pmb said:

Andreas, isn't this just the opposite of the often critizised flying on rails, so we should be happy it's finally gone? Thus, I tend to confirm your observation (not so much of oscillations, but of less stability), but it may be a step into the proper direction in fact.

The path is right, but the lack of inertia is overdone. No RL plane is that sensitive to control input / wind. I'd like to know if they are able to fix this. I assume they are, but I'd like a little confirmation! 😄

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by tweekz

15 minutes left to the stream ladies and gentlemen, get some cold drink and let's see what we can find out!

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by 737_800

Peeing and getting drink, brb! 😄