On 1/19/2021 at 8:01 PM, Chock said:

We could start saying that Laminar Research's usage of blade element theory is some perfect replication of flight modeling too, but we all know it isn't. These are first and foremost games; it's why you can buy them on Steam.

Just wanted to add that there's a 'vidya game' called C:MO (Command: Modern Operations, previously known as C:MANO or Command: Modern Air and Naval Operations) that people can buy from Steam, and it's used by the US Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, US Pentagon, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, German Air Force (Luftwaffe), Royal Australian Air Force, UK's Royal Marines, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Royal Airforce, British Army and various other military contractors including several NATO & allied military services, as well as multiple state, private & NGO organizations worldwide.

Also wanted to add that there's another 'vidya game' called Capitalism that you can buy from Steam that's used at Harvard and Stanford Universities.

Cities: Skylines, a 'vidya game' that you can buy from either Steam or Xbox (and play on both PC and Xbox) has been used by the City of Stockholm and The Swedish Building Services to plan one of their districts (look up Norra Djurgårdsstaden).

Edited January 21, 20215 yr by EvidencePlz

You forgot to mention the video game the US Army itself developed - America's Army. It's a pretty good multiplayer shooter game actually.

On 1/19/2021 at 11:25 PM, OSM said:

XPlane is the worst. Don't believe what Austin saying. XPlane not an "engineering tool", this is just a good marketing myth. 😄

Great for marketing indeed, not a myth though, check out BETA and eVTOL. 

On 1/20/2021 at 4:27 PM, jrw4 said:

As the person who posted the XP11 data to the MSFS forum yesterday, I would like to add that it was not intended in any way to be critical of XP11 or MSFS. Rather it was meant to illustrate the existence of factors that impact our perception of flight simulator behavior that may not be easily expressed in terms of textbook physics. Sitting at home in our lousy desk chairs (as suggested previously in this thread) is very different from being in the cockpit of a 172 at 2000 feet as a cold front bears down on you. We're now talking not so much about inertia as we are about gestalt (there's a word you don't see often in flight sim forums 🙂), and so it is our perceptions that matter, as well as the POH numbers.

A flight model that allowed designers to hit with precision all the V speeds, fuel consumption, and glide ratios, might be perceived as providing an "on rails" experience. MSFS appears to be reaching beyond the POH to provide that holistic experience (still in those lousy chairs) by reaching for those emergent properties, and IMO, to some extent that has been achieved, even at this early stage in the sim's development. But there's a long way to go, yet, to achieve the results that we all wish to see. Good luck to MS/A and the 3PD in leading us on that journey.

Best wishes to all.

What FDM option did you use in x-plane? Out of curiosity?

It was the classic, not the experimental.

PS Just tried it quickly. The EFM results seem to display somewhat quicker damping of the oscillation. 

Edited January 22, 20215 yr by jrw4
Added PS

Asobo does have actual pilots doing QA on their flight physics.

8 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Asobo does have actual pilots doing QA on their flight physics.

Again, that's been said dozens of times, but that approach can't be as effective as having a shop that specializes in simulating a limited number of aircraft that the developers fly on a daily basis. 

I'm sure Asobo has people familiar with both aviation weather and ATC, but that hasn't prevented them from making mistakes with those features either. In my previous post in this thread, my intent was to point out that a consumer flight simulator is almost certainly going to have a wide variety of default aircraft that more or less mimic the behavior of their RL counterparts. The problem that Asobo created was not producing a robust SDK so that 3PDs could make up for these deficiencies.

Sounds like we need to start using AI for flight models.

Cheers

bs