MSFS has the most advanced flight model?

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

4 hours ago, GoranM said:

Austin never accused anyone.  I never accused anyone.  No one accused anyone.  The seed of suspicion is there.  And until someone can prove it, Asobo have nothing to worry about.

This is a self contradicting set of sentences.  To say “the seed of suspicion is there”…. that IS an accusation.

I read the letter on Austin’s page.  There is no “seed of suspicion” other than the most tenuous of assumptions and willful extrapolation of innuendo.  To even suggest there is an air of suspicion of plagurism, just because someone tried out a competitor’ product, … seriously?  In the other thread, you the went so far as to claim that the “accused” then owes it to the community to refute the “accusation” lest they be even more “suspicious”.  Come on, be real.  This holds as much water as someone sowing a “seed of suspicion” on you because you flew a plane in a simulator prior to creating your first add on.
 

If someone came to light with actual code snippets that match those from a competitor that would be worthy of discussion.  The world is bad enough when specious claims are given undue consideration to the point that they become “facts” in peoples minds.  These groundless accusations then become nearly impossible to disprove to those invested in their consequence.

You are a respected developer in this small niche community.  Be better than this.

[tweekz 2,165]

As emotions are boiled up anyway. I am just glad they didn't plagiarize the scenery. 🤐

Edited June 10, 2021 by tweekz

[bean_sprout 1,201]

I think this thread is a moot point because if MSFS doesn't  have it now it probably will have the best flight model in the near future.

Regards

bs

[tweekz 2,165]

Anyway, what matters most is what suits you best. For me it is a mix of believable flight dynamics, paired with realistic scenery.

The flight model is decent as of now. High quality addons will be out soon.

As for the scenery, I've never been flying so much GA and in so many places in the world. The convenience is probably unbeatable.

[Bobsk8 12,788]

4 minutes ago, tweekz said:

Anyway, what matters most is what suits you best. For me it is a mix of believable flight dynamics, paired with realistic scenery.

The flight model is decent as of now. High quality addons will be out soon.

As for the scenery, I've never been flying so much GA and in so many places in the world. The convenience is probably unbeatable.

And to get even close to the MSFS scenery in any other sim, it would cost a fortune. 

[Tuskin38 6,573]

Why does everything need to be a competition/comparison?

Let people who like other sims play those sims, and let people who like MSFS play MSFS.

There’s no need to go into each other’s sandbox and criticize their sandcastle.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Tuskin38

[HiFlyer 9,363]

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

I have a T16000M joystick which is great, and has hall sensors. You calibrate it once and don't have to touch it again. And it is relatively inexpensive. 

I have that one. Purchased before prices and availability went berserk.

[MattNischan 3,785]

Just to clear the air here,

Nobody at Asobo, Blackshark, or Working Title is running XP side by side with MSFS and trying to reverse engineer XP's BET (or frankly any other aspect). Is there an awareness of each platform's APIs and featureset? Absolutely. Do people load up another sim once in a blue moon to check some assumption that someone posted about a given feature in another sim? Totally. I think that's plenty fair.

Additionally, MSFS categorically _does not_ use Blade Element Theory. Blade element theory is the idea that you can slice an airfoil up into cross sections, evaluate those cross sections, and then come up with a single lift and drag component for each cross section. XP does this slicing across the defined lifting surfaces to generate a limited number of lift points. It is relatively coarse and doesn't generate different values across each individual surface cross-section, but nonetheless it is used to great effect and the work done with it is quite good, as I've said before.

MSFS also starts with a base geometrically defined lifting surface, but then goes a completely different direction and discretizes the lifting surface into a large number (comparatively) of grid samples. Each individual grid sample receives its own airflow simulation that gets input from the airflow model in true 3d space: i.e. the atmospheric model is also 3d and thus the air itself is not a just a single scalar contribution but instead a varying 3d contribution across each grid sample where the atmospheric model and grid intersect. This means that each grid sample on any lifting surface contributes its forces individually and is also affected by a 3d atmospheric model individually.

Whether or not one believes the current aircraft flight model configurations use this well or whether enough parameters are exposed, the base grid sampling of the MSFS flight model is of a much higher resolution and the atmospheric contribution in 3d is a consumer sim first (to my knowledge, anyway). It also has the benefit of generating different lift values across the surface from front to back, which can be critical value differences at the flight envelope edges.

Finally, the TBM was chosen because Daher (and the former SOCATA) is a French company and Asobo was able to develop an excellent working relationship with them. As well, this allowed great access to the real plane. I'm not sure anyone on the Asobo team is really super aware of the HotStart TBM for XP, if I'm being perfectly honest.

-Matt | Working Title

[jarmstro 2,405]

2 hours ago, devgrp said:

 

"If I came across as accusatory, it was not my intention, and I apologise for any misunderstanding.  I'm always careful about painting someone in a bad light, regardless how I feel about them or vice versa, and I never directly accused them.  My belief, which is never 100% until all the facts are presented, is simply that.  My belief.  But I remember many conversations in the past that went something like, "Why did they choose a TBM for a default aircraft?" and "Why are they using BET now?  Why not stick to lookup tables?  Why reinvent the wheel?"

Anyway, back on topic."

Dude are you for real? I saw your accusations about your plane being plagiarized because Asobo used the tbm as a default plane 🤦🏿‍♂️, are you really for real? 

Why use bet and not lookup tables? Really? Why use a car when we can just continue using a horse and buggy? Are you for real? This is one of the dummest comment I've seen on this forum. You seem full of yourself, like you're so good that programmers working for a billion dollar company would steal your work 😒

Actually GoranM is one of the more sane and reasonable  of the Meyers disciples. Why he's now joined in with the baying MSFS haters I don't know as he is a very talented developer. Maybe his sales are down? Peak hysteria and insanity has now been reached on every X-Plane forum to the point where it's so intolerable I've deleted X-Plane for good. And I no longer care if X-Planes flight model is superior or not.

Edited June 10, 2021 by jarmstro

[WestAir 2,523]

3 questions on the topic:

1.) Does anyone know, or has Asobo said, if there are flight model focused patches in the works?

2.) Do we know if the dev tools / SDK is explicit enough for a flight model that performs within 5% of the tables in all stages of flight, including edge of the envelope, shadowing, deep stalls, etc?

3.) Is it possible for 3PD's to make the atmosphere destructive? (Lenticular clouds, anvils with uncontrollable updrafts, wake turbulence, cyclones, microbursts, etc)?

[abrams_tank 7,426]

16 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

Additionally, MSFS categorically _does not_ use Blade Element Theory. Blade element theory is the idea that you can slice an airfoil up into cross sections, evaluate those cross sections, and then come up with a single lift and drag component for each cross section. XP does this slicing across the defined lifting surfaces to generate a limited number of lift points. It is relatively coarse and doesn't generate different values across each individual surface cross-section, but nonetheless it is used to great effect and the work done with it is quite good, as I've said before.

MSFS also starts with a base geometrically defined lifting surface, but then goes a completely different direction and discretizes the lifting surface into a large number (comparatively) of grid samples. Each individual grid sample receives its own airflow simulation that gets input from the airflow model in true 3d space: i.e. the atmospheric model is also 3d and thus the air itself is not a just a single scalar contribution but instead a varying 3d contribution across each grid sample where the atmospheric model and grid intersect. This means that each grid sample on any lifting surface contributes its forces individually and is also affected by a 3d atmospheric model individually.

Whether or not one believes the current aircraft flight model configurations use this well or whether enough parameters are exposed, the base grid sampling of the MSFS flight model is of a much higher resolution and the atmospheric contribution in 3d is a consumer sim first (to my knowledge, anyway). It also has the benefit of generating different lift values across the surface from front to back, which can be critical value differences at the flight envelope edges.

Finally, the TBM was chosen because Daher (and the former SOCATA) is a French company and Asobo was able to develop an excellent working relationship with them. As well, this allowed great access to the real plane. I'm not sure anyone on the Asobo team is really super aware of the HotStart TBM for XP, if I'm being perfectly honest.

-Matt | Working Title

Thanks Matt!  Finally, an in depth analysis from someone here at AVSIM on how the MSFS flight model works!  And it's from the lead of Working Title too - haha, that's great information for us!

I got the feeling when I was reading the original thread from the MSFS forum that MSFS's resolution is much higher than X-Plane.  The additional information you gave us that each grid has it's "own airflow simulation that gets input from the airflow model in true 3d space" is very interesting, to say the least.

This is consistent with the consensus I get when I read the thread at the MSFS forums that MSFS actually has a more advanced flight model than X-Plane, but that MSFS's flight model needs tweaking for it to reach its potential.  A poster in the MSFS forums kept using the word "kludge" which to me meant that X-Plane has a very good flight model because it used workarounds or "kludge" to fill in the gaps where it was weak.  But if the MSFS flight model is tweaked and refined to its very potential, it should produce a much better flight model than X-Plane.  I hope this conclusion is consistent with what you wrote.

Edited June 10, 2021 by abrams_tank

[ErichB 3,647]

13 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Actually GoranM is actually one of the more sane of the Meyers disciples. Why he's now joined in with the baying MSFS haters I don't know as he is a very talented developer. Peak hysteria and insanity has now been reached on every X-Plane forum to the point where it's so intolerable I've deleted X-Plane for good. And I no longer care if X-Planes flight model is superior or not.

I wish people like Goran would stop flogging a dead horse and join the MSFS party. Another great developer onboard.   It's inevitable that, this is where it's all headed.  That's where the demand is, that's where the future money is.  This is the sim people want to experience.  XP's new lighting model won't save it.  It of course has its own niche, but the retail money is going to MSFS

Edited June 10, 2021 by ErichB

[abrams_tank 7,426]

5 minutes ago, WestAir said:

2.) Do we know if the dev tools / SDK is explicit enough for a flight model that performs within 5% of the tables in all stages of flight, including edge of the envelope, shadowing, deep stalls, etc?

 

In the original post, I posted that the details of the MSFS flight model are available now at: https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/index.htm#t=Additional_Information%2FFlight_Model_Physics.htm&rhsearch=flight model&ux=search

The answer to this question might be found in here:
https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/index.htm#t=Samples_And_Tutorials%2FTutorials%2FDefining_A_Flight_Model.htm&rhsearch=flight model&rhhlterm=flight model modelling models modeled

However, the second link on how to use the SDK with respect to the flight model is way beyond my understanding and is targeted for 3rd party plane developer it appears.  If you can understand it, maybe you will find your answer there.

Edited June 10, 2021 by abrams_tank

[jarmstro 2,405]

3 minutes ago, ErichB said:

I wish people like Goran would stop flogging a dead horse and join the MSFS party. Another great developer onboard.   It's inevitable that, that's where it's all headed.  That's where the demand is, that's where the future money is.  This is the sim people want to experience.  XP's new lighting model won't save it.

I have asked him just that. But he won't. I think he's worried that he will be seen as a traitor? No idea otherwise.

[ErichB 3,647]

9 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I have asked him just that. But he won't. I think he's worried that he will be seen as a traitor? No idea otherwise.

No-one owes any loyalty to XP, P3D or any other platform.  Platforms are only good for the window in which they remain relevant and in demand - and nothing lasts forever.   Austin and the development team unfortunately made XP somewhat irrelevant by lagging behind with features people have requested forever.    Now it's too,  little too late.    Look at the sky in XP.  Come on man, it's 2021 and the clouds look like FS98.     You go where the demand is going, and as a developer, that should make business sense.  MSFS has delivered a long standing list of want items.  Going back aint gonna happen

Edited June 10, 2021 by ErichB