Thoughts about MSFS and RL training/currency

[aniiran 428]

I find landing behavior of high wing aircraft to be word not allowed just with fundamentals.  I have flown the C152 last year and a C172 this year in March IRL.  I set my eyepoint realistically in the sim but I can never match RW training.  In RW training I was taught once close to the ground 10ft or so, cut the power, slowly bring the nose up to where the dash matches the horizon and look straight to the end of the runway and hold.  Normally, this results in the beginning of a stall horn then a full stall horn for a full-stall landing.  This behavior is not present in FS2020, I find you have to keep too much power in to land smoothly. You have to keep speed too high or the plane will sink and you never get close to a stall horn before landing. The stall speeds are set way too low in the sim.  I test what it would take to get a stall horn on landing and its basically 15 degrees nose up and under 40kts, which is not realistic at all. You shouldn't have enough elevator authority at 40 kts to get to 15 degrees nose up but in FS2020 you do. 

If you try to practice crosswind anything it's a joke. The ailerons don't seem to do anything on the ground.  You can't put one wheel down first you just slide wildly to one side or the other even with full rudder input.  I find the wind speeds are grossly over represented. 

It seems like the winds at 10 in the sim give the effect of something close to 20 IRL.  30kts in the sim is like 50 in real life. The greatest wind I have ever landed in IRL was 18G24 but that was pretty straight forward despite me being nervous.  Try that crosswind in the sim and you'll be all over the runway.  

I was hoping this breakthrough new flight model would be better but it almost seems worse. 

This is the main reason I don't like to fly the smaller planes, because I can not mimic RW behaviors, so what's the point.  I don't know how an A320 flies but it seems more convincing in the SIM that the smaller planes do. 

Of course, a lot of it is about feel. Pushing buttons on a keyboard or click on the screen, slow view slewing movement, no peripheral vision and not feeling movement is probably 40% of the problem. 

 

[Flyfaster_MTN002 412]

As an addendum to this: Just picked up a 49" monitor. It is not the best as far as specs go, but wow it makes MSFS feel immersive now, to the point it actually seems to simulate a cockpit environment. Before it felt more like looking at it. Much closer to the real thing and incrementally better for training.

[snglecoil 1,828]

Flight sims provide so many legitimate opportunities for supplemental support of actual flight training. I personally had a 16 year hiatus in flying altogether between the private certificate and instrument rating. Even after such a long time out of an actual airplane, I found the instrument rating a relative breeze because I did a a ton of self study and practice on a flight sim connected to the PilotEdge network. Flight sims are outstanding procedural trainers….as long as you are disciplined with running all of the correct procedures. You do what you practice. 100% if you don’t practice it,  you will carry it over to the plane. I see it as an instructor over and over. 

I still, however, have yet to see a sim that that does an effective job at teaching stick and rudder skills. The students that try to “practice” landings at home in the sim are almost always the ones who struggle the most with actual landings. Primacy is a beast to try and overcome. But on the other hand, it all depends on the person. Some students seem to have an ability to disconnect the “sim muscle memory” and test/correlate flight control principles to quickly grasp what is going on in the real plane. The clear winning use case, though, is procedural practice. 

[sd_flyer 6,034]

4 hours ago, aniiran said:

I find landing behavior of high wing aircraft to be word not allowed just with fundamentals.  I have flown the C152 last year and a C172 this year in March IRL.  I set my eyepoint realistically in the sim but I can never match RW training.  In RW training I was taught once close to the ground 10ft or so, cut the power, slowly bring the nose up to where the dash matches the horizon and look straight to the end of the runway and hold.  Normally, this results in the beginning of a stall horn then a full stall horn for a full-stall landing.  This behavior is not present in FS2020, I find you have to keep too much power in to land smoothly. You have to keep speed too high or the plane will sink and you never get close to a stall horn before landing. The stall speeds are set way too low in the sim.  I test what it would take to get a stall horn on landing and its basically 15 degrees nose up and under 40kts, which is not realistic at all. 

 

This is good opportunity for you to adjust your RW flying skill  sim flight physics. I always with taking for example 172 or 152 in MSFS in do airwork to figure power setting and sim. In other worlds interpolate them  like a test pilot ! Even in RL different airplane of the same type not always fly the same! 

I personally have no problem to land 152/172 in MSFS. I  do exactly as you describe cut power and glide to land, touch mains when cowling obscures runway and so on. But I have to adjust my speeds and power setting based on MSFS modeling! It's nearly impossible to get true stick and rudder skill in someone with RL experience in the sim and then transfer to RL flying. It almost equally  hard  to take RW and transfer them exactly 1 to 1 into sim! There must be adjustment and interpolation.  The best way to go is being both simmer and RL pilot. Then thing sort of balance out a bit!  

[MarioDonick 752]

38 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

But I have to adjust my speeds and power setting based on MSFS modeling

Indeed. You have to develop a feel for the simulated airplane, instead of sticking too tightly to real-world experience.

(Of course, avoid a wrong transfer when going back from the sim to reality 😉 ).