Why adjusting control sensitivity is not the answer

[Slides 1,552]

Just now, hangar said:

they interpolate using various versions and pilot reports..

That's what I mean. They need to know the aircraft details before that add those to their performance metrics to update the averages they're using. Something must be causing that large of a discrepancy from the real world.

[hangar 661]

15 minutes ago, Slides said:

That's what I mean. They need to know the aircraft details before that add those to their performance metrics to update the averages they're using. Something must be causing that large of a discrepancy from the real world.

Well that's his post and his information. I would not be savvy to all the version of c208's that he's flown...and I'm sure with 3,000 hours that it's likely meaningless anyway since with that many hours it's more than likely that he has flown many versions over many years.

If one were trying to get within 5% of the proper torque/flap/speed settings then yes the version would be needed if you were trying to emulate a version to begin with....But Asobo is not doing that, and even if they were...take a real long look at the numbers he posted...they're so far off that its not a matter of being inaccurate due to versioning issues.

The point of his post is to show just how problematic some of the flight modeling can be when flown or practiced in ways that you would fly the real aircraft.

The point of MY post regarding this, is that we can't simply explain away all the flight modeling issues due to control or sensitivity issues, as it goes deeper than that in many cases. Some of these models need some serious tweaking having much more to do than just a sensitivity adjustment.

I suppose if you really want to know the versions, you could always post and ask him though. I'm sure he'd be glad to share the info, if put upon.

Edited August 20, 2020 by hangar

[sd_flyer 6,042]

Remember guys, in real life controls sometimes rigged differently which can make them feel tighter or lighter. When you fly real airplane you can also feel direct aerodynmaic   forces (unless of course it fly by wire system)  that translate to how you perceive  sensitivity. Plus there is range of motion vs airflow. Controls become less efficient and "weaker"  at slower speed and "harder" with increased airflow. It also effect the range and amplitude of moving are wider! So it greatly affect how one perceive sensitivity. Well, may be HULK would not have same perception as most of do! LOL

In addition, actual range of movement  sometime  varies between aircraft in real life . For example in 172 or Cherokee you can turn yoke 90% to left and right for a full deflection. But, for example, in Mooney you won't  - its yoke has smaller range of motion by design ! Now to say you seat literary on the floor! LOL

Now, try to translate all those phenomenas to your sim hardware ! It's not easy! You gotta trick your brain and muscles!

Also, In real life we trim for airspeed to reduce pressure from the controls. In contrast, in the sim we can push yoke or stick up and down without feeling any physical forces and therefore we perceive it  as sensitive! In sim we do not need to trim to ease up control pressure!. The trim purpose is to "calibrate" control in neutral position, so aircraft can fly at desired attitude without moving a stick. Idea kind of similar to real life - we need to trim for airspeed, but the angle we approach this problem is different. 

[Slides 1,552]

34 minutes ago, hangar said:

suppose if you really want to know the versions, you could always post and ask him though. I'm sure he'd be glad to share the info, if put upon.

No, I don't want anything. He'll need to report this directly to Asobo with details they might want. Otherwise it's just some random persons info from their point of view. Unless they proactively reach out to him if they come across his post.

There are other performance issues with other planes too. But like you said that's not related to the control sensitivities discussion.

[Marco Manieri 194]

9 hours ago, Shayne said:

There is either no movement on the rudder with almost 50% deflection then it goes to full or there is instant deflection.

I think you used the wrong command to your controller axis. Make sure you use "Rudder Axis", not Rudder left or right

[Slides 1,552]

34 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

Controls become less efficient and "weaker"  at slower speed and "harder" with increased airflow.

This is the point that's being missed by some. It is much easier to do rapid full deflections in a sim than in real life. To some this gives the feel of oversensitivity since sims don't really fully model the airflow pressure feedback.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Slides

[virtualstuff 758]

47 minutes ago, Marco Manieri said:

I think you used the wrong command to your controller axis. Make sure you use "Rudder Axis", not Rudder left or right

Indeed if you don't use the axis youre results are pretty bad 🙂

Edited August 20, 2020 by awf

[Slides 1,552]

This is worth reading.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/real-world-pilots-please-state-your-feedback-about-the-flight-model/150771/30

As expected. Overall feel of the GA aircraft is great. There are issues with the airliners and of course systems modeling is lacking. And some of the performance numbers are off.

All very fixable and far from the dire conclusions of a few.

The good thing is if that you don't agree with this, you can tweak your own aircraft or buy a 3PD aircraft when they're available. Everybody wins.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Slides

[High_Alpha 42]

1 hour ago, Slides said:

It is much easier to do rapid full deflections in a sim than in real life. To some this gives the feel of oversensitivity since sims don't really fully model the airflow pressure feedback.

I agree, but I think they should be implementing a substitute for that lost feedback by altering the deflection curve in the flight models themselves. Either that or support the limited number of force feedback controllers in the game with presets without needing third party software profiles for different planes.

[Slides 1,552]

1 minute ago, High_Alpha said:

I agree, but I think they should be implementing a substitute for that lost feedback by altering the deflection curve in the flight models themselves. Either that or support the limited number of force feedback controllers in the game with presets without needing third party software profiles for different planes.

Wouldn't they be artificially reducing control authority then? And it would have to be airspeed dependant. How do other sims handle that?

Maybe MS needs to bring back force feedback sticks 

[High_Alpha 42]

7 minutes ago, Slides said:

Maybe MS needs to bring back force feedback sticks 

This is the correct way of fixing the problems that some people have with the flight model. That being said lowering the sensitivity in the flight model as opposed to on the end users settings might at least stop people complaining when they don’t set things up properly...

Edited August 20, 2020 by High_Alpha

[LHookins 3,103]

26 minutes ago, Slides said:

This is worth reading.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/real-world-pilots-please-state-your-feedback-about-the-flight-model/150771/30

As expected. Overall feel of the GA aircraft is great.

That was a great read!  I was surprised at how positive they were, but I shouldn't have been given the real world pilots' reactions on the Beta forum.

I also enjoyed their description of simmers. 😄 

Thanks for posting that.  I guess those who were underestimating the number of real world pilots who liked GA in MSFS might need to rethink a bit.

Hook

[robert young 2,897]

49 minutes ago, LHookins said:

That was a great read!  I was surprised at how positive they were, but I shouldn't have been given the real world pilots' reactions on the Beta forum.

I also enjoyed their description of simmers. 😄 

Thanks for posting that.  I guess those who were underestimating the number of real world pilots who liked GA in MSFS might need to rethink a bit.

Hook

I agree that a return of Force Feedback sticks is part of the answer, but as I have explained so many times, controls alone are not going to solve the underlying issues with this sim. I regret ever getting rid of my sidewinder stick from many years ago. It had very impressive FF and you could adjust it so it approximated quite well the increased natural stick force increase related to speed.

The pathetic amount of total movement on even expensive joysticks is something now everyone accepts as normal. There is a chap in the UK who used to construct spitfire type sticks with an enormous total movement. With his stick you could control even the worst flight models because the finesse in movement was so refined. Another atrocious thing about most sticks is that they have a huge "palm rest". This forces you to move your hand right to the top of the stick, increasing the leverage and making it even less capable of any control finesse.

If you look at high performance single prop aircraft with decent sticks, you'll see that routinely pilots place their hand in their lap and use finger dexterity to control, rather than the whole arm, unless they are doing extreme maneouvres.

Edit: Apologies. I answered the wrong post in the thread.

Edited August 20, 2020 by robert young

[cwburnett 1,809]

8 hours ago, robert young said:

extremely small movements you are inputting in the sim

So as I've thought about this more, I think you're right. I went back this morning to look at a live video again and then considered the degree to which, possibly, I've been "trained" over the last month by this sim to make more minute control movements. I hopped into a couple other planes and see what you mean about the bobbing. A few conclusions:

1) Inputs feel about right at high speeds, but it looks like the controls surfaces don't become adequately less effective at lower speeds. At 90 kts in the Baron, minor corrections should be using as much at 45 degrees of the yoke, but I see that even at lower speeds I'm still only using maybe 10-20 degrees in sim.

2) Part of the bobbing problem I've seen looking at some twitch and other videos looks to be a function of the difference in how a real yoke operates in GA planes vs how a sim yoke works. In the Baron, there is no one neutral position while in flight - the neutral position is defined by the trim setting, so at lower speed, I'll need more nose up trim for level flight, so the neutral yoke position will be further back; at higher speed, I'll need less nose up trim and the neutral position will be further forward. When I make pitch changes, I'm using trim constantly to reset that 'neutral' position to produce the pitch and angle of attack I want at that moment. This is easy to do because the force of the aircraft fighting against an out-of-trim situation is obvious and easy to correct. In the sim, however, this isn't the case; if I'm holding control input on the yoke and then release it, it bounces back to the center; without releasing it, it is impossible to know how out of trim the plane is, and I think the concept of trimming is hard for new(er) pilots and is even less intuitive in the sim, where you can't feel what trim does to assist. Couple that with how easy it is to move the yoke forward and back, and you have a recipe for very unstable pitch control, especially in turns. I went back and watched a couple videos I did in P3D as well testing out v5 and noticed that even in the MD-80 my manual pitch control isn't nearly as good as it is in a real airplane.  My Baron doesn't have an autopilot. Yet I've flown it from Key West to Denali, and everywhere in between. Legs as long as 5 hours without an IFR altitude bust. I can trim and keep the plane within 50 feet for hours on end. No way can I do that in any sim, and I think it is because of this problem more than anything else.

I will hop back in the default Mooney or Bonanza in P3D, but I suspect I'll see the same thing trying to manually fly a pattern there - but maybe it will be less pronounced?

By the way, I don't have a proposed solution for this and don't know enough about whether part of the problem is inertia, or just control surface issues or what... 

8 hours ago, robert young said:

I did have a couple of flights in a Baron, right seat, many years ago and I recall the yoke was extremely satisfying and beautifully engineered. It's a fine aircraft. The nearest equivalent I have experience of is the Beech Duke piston, which I've flown a couple of times and also co-designed one for FSX/P3d when RealAir Simulations was active. It has proven to be a very popular addon.. I wonder if you've tried it?

Oh, yes. Your reputation precedes you and the RealAir B60T is my favorite flying plane in P3D. Exhibit A on my feelings about the Duke!

 

8 hours ago, robert young said:

As I said earlier in the thread, I don't think the flight physics in MSFS are bad at all - only the tuning of the individual aircraft.

This is good to read - I missed this key takeaway earlier and have been confused about whether we were saying the flight physics of the sim are bad, or the models are bad, and I'm happy to hear that all is not lost and that if the past is any indicator, we'll get better modeled aircraft in the future made by developers that are really focused in on how a single aircraft model performs and 'feels' in sim.

In the meantime, I'm not too offended by the dynamics of the planes I fly most. I'll be honest, I've spent 90% of my time in the 208 and the TBM. The Bonanza is a disappointment because, unlike it's bigger twin-engine brother, is underpowered at cruise and can't break 140 kts TAS in cruise at 11,500 - which is 20-ish kts slow.

[cwburnett 1,809]

11 hours ago, sd_flyer said:

Well while agree that book not necessarily reflect super accurate values of real airplane I don't think FAA would every approved POH if performance numbers off the scale. You gotta use something for calculation, you can't guesstimate on the fly! 

Unfortunately I have never flown Baron, my experience bound  only by  Duchess and Traveler. But back in the days when I was getting my commercial multi addon in Seminole, I calculated accelerate to stop distance and single engines ops by the book before each flight. And during my training I would get V1 cut and multiple simulated engine failures. And PA44 was performing right on money of my calculations by the book.

As far as MSFS. It actually good to have little overpowered airplane, nice cylinder  compressions and etc. Don't you think 😉 In contrast some airplanes like  Caravan and Bonanza are actually underpowered ! So go figure what they used for modeling and how! 

It is true that not all performance numbers are created equal. But accelerate/stop is one of those that was drilled into me in training - these figures are best case with a test pilot. Same with takeoff or landing distance to clear a 50' obstacle. I bet if book said stop distance was 2,250' over a 50' obstacle, you'd hesitate to accept a 2,300' runway with an obstacle. You'd probably add the usual 50% at least - any why? Because the book value isn't a reliable number to hit every time by an average pilot - and I don't think I'm anything more than an average pilot. So we build in a buffer in case we make a mistake. I guess my point is, on any given day, based an a whole host of external factors, actual performance can vary from the 'book' value - sometimes significantly. But you're right, they're a good guide to how the aircraft is designed to operate, at its best. They tend to be more generous on things like cruise speed, fuel burn, etc...things that make the plane seem faster or have more range than may be realistic...

Oh, and yes, the Bonanza has bugged me for a long time. 140 TAS at full throttle at 11,500? Come on...lame!

Edited August 20, 2020 by cwburnett