I'm very keen on stunt flying, particularly in the Extra 300s ...but I've noticed that with Realism sliders all to the right, (and also aircraft crashes if over stressed set to off) .. . then if I get the plane into a spin, then it spins round and round at a ridiculous rate, looks completely unrealistic.but if you drop all the sliders one half notch to the left - you can still spin the plane etc, but it looks much more realistic ?anyone else noticed this ?sort of maneuovre that I'm talking about is saying pulling up to the vertical, then full rudder, and full right on the stick.thanks, Mark.

As a normal rule, no stock airplanes in FS9 or FSX are good at simulating spins. If anything, they might require constant aileron input to look like a spin, as well as building up airspeed.There are several payware, along with a few freeware planes available for FS9 that provide a much truer depiction of spins. I don't know if the FS9 models will port over to FSX while retaining their spin capabilities.L.Adamson

S'true. Since you don't have modeling of certain subtle effects in any of the MSFS series, all you can get is a close approximation of a spin. It sounds like you're trying to enter it by doing an low-speed snap roll (straight up, full rudder for a hammerhead and full back-stick in the same corner to snap it). It's not surprising you get strange results, to 'fake' a spin so,mewhat you sometimes have to give just the right amount of aileron, not the full amount.Do a google search for Long Island Classics and check out the Super Decathlon, it's a very good straightforward and fun aerobatic plane with a flight model that offers some spinnable characteristics...both upright and inverted.Tell your pax to bring a lil' paper bag along! :)

thanks guys - but why is it much worse in "max" realism setting (spin almost looks like 50rpm !), yet one tiny tiny notch down from that on all sliders, and the spin is much much slower - and more realistic.

There's no simple answer unless you want technical input from a flight model expert...which I ain't. But as a user for many editions now the only way I can describe it is you're talking about what happens at the extreme edges of the flight model envelope, and this is just a sim that tries to model normal flight as best it can. The hard flight settings seem a logical compromise in order to model turbulence, P-factor, gyroscopic effect etc in the normal flight regime....she's gotta add some wunkiness in there, which simply means it's gonna get extra-wunky out there on the edge. I was recording a formation flight of Bf109's today in FS9 with FS Recorder and in one of the identical flights with the same maneuvers in formation, for no reason when coming out of a formation inverted pass, the aircraft snapped and rolled violently, rolled around and then blew around like a leaf while gaining altitude. All the other aircraft I had flown and recorded to make the formation flight hadn't done that....all it took was a little too much aileron input at the right moment, go figure. So it ain't just FSX, as demonstrated in the FS9 recording just today. :)The only sim I ever flew, myself, that modeled most of that extreme stuff really well was Flight Unlimited. It had some VERY fancy physics and even fluid dynamics programming to model the effect of air pressure on the whole aircraft and control surfaces. It would definitely spin realistically, but all that development effort also meant that you didn't have a complete whole world to fly in with almost endless possibilities like the MSFS series provides. Simming is and likely always will be all about reasonable compromise.

Hello,we think FS X is computing the aerodynamics faster than the previous 18.2 Hz so you now can get more responsive effects. So some aircraft models may have to be retuned. I don't know what the new computation rate is yet.Ian

If you want to get a general idea of the rates of rotation about various axes in a real Extra 300L, you can watch (or download) videos of spins, tumbles, and other maneuvers that I've shot with the camera system in my airplane:http://www.bruceair.com/bruceair_videos.htmhttp://www.bruceair.com/Aerobatic_Intro.htm