Someone asks a perfectly legitimate question, and gets pounced on as if he is stating hard facts??

Edited June 3, 20224 yr by Christopher Low

15 hours ago, MattNischan said:

 

On top of all that the million pound simulators are using table lookup physics which are derived from, you guessed it, the book figures, and they effectively have zero non-normal envelope data. So that adds another layer of inexactness. But it's good enough for training purposes (because again, good pilots "absorb" these differences, and the procedures are really what is being trained in these sims).

Years ago I spent three days at CAE in Montreal touring with one of the engineers there , where they make most commercial Airline sims in the $20-30 million dollars range. IT was explained to me that in the case of Boeing for example, they use the data from the Boeing test flights, and several aircraft, so that they can get a sample of  how exactly each aircraft is performing in actual flights. Since no two aircraft fly exactly the same, there is always a small difference due to rigging etc, this way they can average all the data from these multiple flights, and get a good representation to program into the simulators computers. 

When the sim is delivered to the Airlines, an airline check pilot has to actually fly the sim for it's acceptance flight before the sim company gets paid. If the check pilot feels that anything in the sim is not how it should feel or behave in the real aircraft, the acceptance flight will not pass. A very experienced flight crew judges if the sim is up to snuff or not. It's not a matter of inputing book figures. 

15 hours ago, ha5mvo said:

Impressions and "feeling" are subjective. I'm more interested in figures. I'd be surprised if I'm told that 4000 feet per minute is realistic for anything other than an empty plane...

There has been some discussion that following is not (yet) 100% perfect:

• Pitch attitudes (especially during climb)
• Fuel flow
• Pitch attitude when landing (might be excessive MSFS ground effect though)

From my own experience I have some doubts about:

• Excessive wind (general MSFS issue)
• Sensitivity on ground
• Control input seems to readjust a little after stopping input.

1 hour ago, tweekz said:

There has been some discussion that following is not (yet) 100% perfect:

• Pitch attitudes (especially during climb)
• Fuel flow
• Pitch attitude when landing (might be excessive MSFS ground effect though)

From my own experience I have some doubts about:

• Excessive wind (general MSFS issue)
• Sensitivity on ground
• Control input seems to readjust a little after stopping input.

The biggest one i noticed yesterday that really stuck out was the excessive drag.  It slows down waaay to easy in descent, and add flaps 2 on approach and it becomes a brick.  The real a320 with flaps 2 at idle power gear up on glideslope should be barely slowing down.

That's weird. I just landed in Boston.  Had flaps 3 extended and had to double check to make sure that they were extended because I thought she wasn't slowing down fast enough.

Edited June 3, 20224 yr by MDFlier

2 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

That's weird. I just landed in Boston.  Had flaps 3 extended and had to double check to make sure that they were extended because I thought she wasn't slowing down fast enough.

 

Sometimes when I read some of these complaints, it's almost like we are all  flying different aircraft. Personally I think the difference is sitting in the left seat..😉

13 minutes ago, Pilot53 said:

The biggest one i noticed yesterday that really stuck out was the excessive drag.  It slows down waaay to easy in descent, and add flaps 2 on approach and it becomes a brick.  The real a320 with flaps 2 at idle power gear up on glideslope should be barely slowing down.

She barely slows down for me with flaps 2 and gear up. I need the gears just like in real life to get her down to F speed within 4nm of the airport. It's strange that there's such a difference between users.

Inconsistency in MSFS weather perhaps? I’ve noticed this too. But, My last flight yesterday she was a slippery little eel 😬

8 hours ago, Donstim said:

Hey Rick,

As a performance guru, you should know that using CEO performance for a NEO is not going to be valid. (I'm talking about your FBW A320NEO performance assessment.) It only takes 23 minutes and 148 NM for an A320NEO/Leap 1A-26 to climb to FL 350 starting at 76 T with a 250/300/0.78 speed schedule at ISA+10 C, 33% CG, A/C on normal, and A/I off. For an A320CEO with CFM56-5B4 engines, it takes 29 minutes and 192 NM for the same conditions.

Wow, ok. First, my disclaimer that it was not based on the NEO clearly states that I took that into consideration. Also, the topic in this chat and the previous chat were both based on one aspect of performance, which was climb rates. Both OPs questioned if the "climb rates" were realistic. Now, with that being said, the non NEO and NEO are not that different. The things impacting climb rates are engines, wing design and drag. There's a 4 sq ft wing area difference, 240 pound difference in total thrust and the NEO has the drag edge. I can easily shorten the drag gap by adding sharklets to the non NEO getting about a 7% increase in fuel savings. It's one of the reasons the CEO stays popular. It's just like my discussion I had with a rich guy who consulted with me on rather he should buy used G5s or new G550s for his charter start up. I told him to go with the used 5s because they are significantly cheaper. The 550 has better avionics and longer range due to the trailing edge of the wings and vortex generators up the winglets. It's cheaper to get the 5s, upgrade the avionics and give up the range increase. The 5 is very capable in range performance. Now, back to the original topic. These OPs were talking about initial climb rates which are not much different, especially when you add in sharklets. The edge/difference you will see become evident in longer periods of time. The difference between the CEO and NEO is about 300 miles in range over a long flight. Ok, thats over an hour of advantage. Throw sharklets on the CEO and that difference is 50 miles. You didn't mention initial climb rates in your calcs, but you showed a difference in 6 minutes in a climb. I can takeoff 7 minutes late and still be considered on time in my ops. If I am flying faster just to make up 6 minutes, it ain't worth the pain on the airframe. In my ops, if I can't make up to 15 minutes of time by flying faster, why burn the gas. Again, it all comes down to fleet numbers and how long you are flying the jet. If an airline has a low number of aircraft and only fly short hauls, the NEO won't make a big impact. It's like when I flew Gulfstreams doing presidential airlift. Our C-32s(757-200s) started coming back from depot with winglets installed. We only had a handful of them and we didn't do a lot of long range flights with them. We gained zero benefits from winglets, but it was a nice gesture from Boeing. I flew DC-10-30s for a while, so lets compare it to the MD-11. At similar weights, the takeoff and approach speeds are literally the same. Typically, when you design the same model of aircraft for airlines, the focus is efficiency. One of the biggest costs to an airline is fuel. They don't care about power and climb rates, they focus on savings and being cheaper to operate. Seldom are they looking at high elevation and short runway performance. Usually engine power means a trade off on fuel savings. Thats acceptable when you are looking at engine out performance such as ETOPs. In fact, it's the reason the DC-10 had the third engine added to the tail as an after thought. Engines were not powerful enough to meet those requirements back then.

 

All I'm saying is that typically, performance between similar model aircraft is not that different or invalid as you say. It all depends on what we are talking about. I don't get your comment. The OPs were asking were these sim aircraft reflecting realistic climb rates. That question was answered. Byyyeeeeeeeee!      

I totally agree with tweekz. Nevertheless, the plane is fantastic. One of the best planes I have ever bought in my almost 30 years of simmin  I´d like to add that never sawn such kind of criticism with a brand new two weeks old product.

Strange. I love it.

Best.

Miquel.

19 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

It amazes me that a few simmers, many of them who couldn't get a C 152 off the ground, tell us how they feel they  know more than an  Airline Pilot with an ATP rating , about the way a particular aircraft should handle.  

Hahaha so true. Especially X-Plane simmers because X-Plane is the most "realistic flight model" cough cough.

16 hours ago, robert young said:

This is an interesting subject. In many years of developing flight models, I've come across testers who though very experienced pro pilots on type, get a complete disconnect between flying the real thing and the "feel" of a flight sim. Many tend to concentrate on whether systems, procedures, autopilot and expected outcomes like climb rates, mach numbers and descent profiles etc appear to be correct while not necessarily being critical of plain, simple reaction to control inputs. I think that is often because the limited feel of consumer sim flying controls from a chair lead to a certain forgiveness or allowance for sim hardware.

A classic case recently was a commercial pilot who made a youtube video landing the MSFS default Caravan on a short runway and completely messing short finals and the flare to the point where the Caravan crashed. Instead of criticising the default flight model (which has that awful bouncing, pogo stick extreme pitch reaction to the slightest pitch input), she sort of put it down to her own incompetence. She was either unwilling to criticise the flight model or perhaps was being diplomatic and blamed herself.

In many years of developing a wide variety of sim aircraft I can recall only three actual pilots out of many who seemed to be able to translate their critical faculties from real world to the consumer sim world, and one of those is not even a commercial pilot (he is a well known member here) but whom I respect because he has an eye for very fine detail when manual aircraft handling is concerned.

For that reason I have become quite sceptical about addons that emphasise in their marketing blurb that they were thoroughly tested by pros. A case in point is a beautifully done, popular recent addon which in all respects other than manual flying is superb, but frankly it flies manually like a pig, being a real handful, clumsy, over-sensitive to the slightest input and ungainly in every axis. Larger aircraft tend to be less over sensitive and much easier to model where basic controls are concerned. But smaller aircraft are actually quite difficult to model. Though I love MSFS I don't think the default aircraft, and a lot of addon aircraft, have anywhere near acceptable basic flying characteristics, and that is not so much the sim itself, but very poor tuning of individual flight models.

Partly to blame is the very short "throw" of most consumer joysticks which make the situation even worse.

Rob has a really good point (good to see you Rob!)

I worked on a product years ago in my Microprose days where we did a Red Arrows simulation. We had for the day beautiful models done by the art guys, really nice panels etc etc, but unfinished flight dynamics.

I sat with the entire Red Arrows pilots for that year as some of my devs demonstrated it to them. To a man they were all bowled over and super impressed. I pointed out that the flight dynamics were way off and we got the response that they had no term of reference for how good a flight simulator can be and didn't even realise a sim could have better flight dynamics. So a lot of it is down to perception from pilots when put in front of a shiny new toy. Without knowing what can be done, they had their own internalised quality bar.

Pilots who sim regularly are a different story as they have greater expectation based on their experiences.

Knowing from personal experience how much hard work goes in to these things, both in my day job and over a decade on the PMDG beta team I just focus on enjoying every minute in the air as we have come such a long way since I started my professional career with the likes of the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum sims!

 

1 hour ago, miguelpp said:

I totally agree with tweekz. Nevertheless, the plane is fantastic. One of the best planes I have ever bought in my almost 30 years of simmin  I´d like to add that never sawn such kind of criticism with a brand new two weeks old product.

Strange. I love it.

Best.

Miquel.

I love it too and the PMDG 737, the Maddog, the Kodiak and the recent slew of GA aircraft from Just Flight and others. Yes there are issues (there always will be, you should see how many bug reports come to my desk everyday for software despite the best efforts of the teams. I still remember a huge amount of time coding the Alien queen in Alien Vs Predator only to see her escape her lair 2 days after we shipped for Atari!)

There will always be issues and patches and all the rest of it, but I have been impressed with the Fenix team and their rapid issue turnaround. 

I think we are in a golden age with a whole new generation of quality products and numerous developers actively supporting those products. I feel our wonderful hobby is getting a whole new lease of life and makeover.

I am grateful to all the devs out there!

 

Jane

1 hour ago, miguelpp said:

I totally agree with tweekz. Nevertheless, the plane is fantastic. One of the best planes I have ever bought in my almost 30 years of simmin  I´d like to add that never sawn such kind of criticism with a brand new two weeks old product.

Strange. I love it.

Best.

Miquel.

Yes, I also have noticed that there is very little knocking of the PMDG 737, but if you go to their forum , there are  many pages of complaints about problems users are experiencing.  

Edited June 3, 20224 yr by Bobsk8

It should be noted that a lot of times not even real aircraft match published figures. I'm almost willing to bet every one of you with a certificate has done your flight plan, weight and balance, and crunched climb numbers and times and fuel burns, and then during climb out realized your numbers aren't 1:1 with the published data.

Or maybe I was just bad at W&B and Route Planning. 😂