Is anybody else excited about the new 20 KM CFD in SU11?

[lwt1971 7,464]

7 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

It doesn't matter how many different combinations you use with the letter "M" and the symbol "$", it always will come across silly and lazy. Yes, Microsoft is a company. And yes! You guessed it! Most companies want to make money. It's not an outlandish concept to grasp...

Well put and right on the money Bdub! (pun intended)... That said, MS is certainly raking in the $$$ from MSFS clearly, with all the free goodies we're about to get soon especially the iniBuilds A310 which they must've paid some non-trivial $$ to ini for, and various other aircraft outsourced to other 3rd party devs. Then the plucking up of the lead engineer from the IL-2 world, hiring to expand the Working Title team, etc etc.  So ya, "M$F$" keep on barrelling ahead is all I can say, SU after SU, WU after WU. Clearly with a passionate and refreshing-to-the-sim-scene team like Asobo+WT backed by MS, and a sim platform that covers the gamut of flight sim needs from visuals to realism to everything else, no surprise then how it's been so successful with us users and 3rd party devs alike 🙂
 

Edited November 9, 2022 by lwt1971

[blingthinger 667]

10 hours ago, sd_flyer said:

X$lane

 

7 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

M$F$ 

Truly hilarious. I'm accused of being juvenile...and then they stoop to my "level" and do exactly the same thing. This is "bottom of the barrel" stuff right here.

Edited November 9, 2022 by blingthinger

[lwt1971 7,464]

7 hours ago, jcomm said:

I couldn't find in the MFS documents any mention to how correctly this is being modeled in MFS. Most parameters listed in the configuration files and which were used in the Legacy model are now signaled as not used when the modern "CFD" model is active, so, those that we could use to fine tune the effects of sweep are gone, and I wonder how it's calculated now.

Well to be clear, MSFS has the "legacy" flight model engine from initial release in 2020 but it's very hardly used, certainly not by any of the default aircraft or current 3rd party aircraft. I guess MS/Asobo kept it in there to support FSX aircraft. Then there is the "modern" flight model engine, also in place from initial release which most of the current aircraft use and gives you access to the full capabilities in the MSFS aerodynamics engine. That is obviously all new and separate code, and unlike some mistakenly (or intentionally 🙂 ) believe, it is *not* built on top of the legacy model. And then thirdly, there is the CFD technology that came out in SU9 which can only obviously be paired with the "modern" flight model.
 

[WestAir 2,530]

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

 

Truly hilarious. I'm accused of being juvenile...and then they stoop to my "level" and do exactly the same thing. This is "bottom of the barrel" stuff right here.

The person accusing you of being juvenile and the person mocking you are two different people.

Edited November 9, 2022 by WestAir

[Krakin 5,853]

3 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Well to be clear, MSFS has the "legacy" flight model engine from initial release in 2020 but it's very hardly used, certainly not by any of the default aircraft or current 3rd party aircraft. I guess MS/Asobo kept it in there to support FSX aircraft. Then there is the "modern" flight model engine, also in place from initial release which most of the current aircraft use and gives you access to the full capabilities in the MSFS aerodynamics engine. That is obviously all new and separate code, and unlike some mistakenly (or intentionally 🙂 ) believe, it is *not* built on top of the legacy model. And then thirdly, there is the CFD technology that came out in SU9 which can only obviously be paired with the "modern" flight model.
 

I think including the legacy FM is more trouble than it's worth. So many times people or the sim end up selecting it by accident and then it causes a bunch of problems. What was happening when the HJet released is a good example of that. I think two years on and with the amount of great aircraft being pumped out, it is time for them to remove it from the sim or make it inaccessible to users.

[lwt1971 7,464]

4 minutes ago, Krakin said:

I think including the legacy FM is more trouble than it's worth. So many times people or the sim end up selecting it by accident and then it causes a bunch of problems. What was happening when the HJet released is a good example of that. I think two years on and with the amount of great aircraft being pumped out, it is time for them to remove it from the sim or make it inaccessible to users.

Absolutely... or at the very least, remove the UI option in-sim to switch between legacy and modern. That way users can't get into problems, and only aircraft that explicitly use the legacy model will trigger its enablement. But ya agreed, removing it altogether is probably best in order to reduce code bloat, and the motivations they had in 2019/2020 for easing the porting of FSX aircraft to MSFS no longer really apply.
 

Edited November 9, 2022 by lwt1971

[Dermot McClusky 524]

This thread makes me happy my self-worth doesn't hang on my opinion of any particular flight sim developer. 

[sd_flyer 6,094]

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

 

Truly hilarious. I'm accused of being juvenile...and then they stoop to my "level" and do exactly the same thing. This is "bottom of the barrel" stuff right here.

It doesn't hurt to look in the mirror

[ha5mvo 261]

1 hour ago, lwt1971 said:

 especially the iniBuilds A310 which they must've paid some non-trivial $$ to ini for, 
 

Do you happen to know how much?

[lwt1971 7,464]

14 minutes ago, ha5mvo said:

Do you happen to know how much?

I actually wouldn't, since I don't work for MS you see 🙂... iniBuilds charges north of US$70 for that plane in XP and they were on a path to release it for pay for MSFS before they got into partnership with MS. Even if ini was going to charge something lower like $50, in order to cover the costs of all those sales MS would've had to pay something that would fall in the "non-trivial" category, I'd say.
 

Edited November 9, 2022 by lwt1971

[mrueedi 702]

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

This is "bottom of the barrel" stuff right here.

You are aware that this verdict is falling on you first?

 

3 hours ago, blingthinger said:

That said, the use of the term "force element" is also false advertising. Per the SDK, the elements aren't actually calculating forces. They are merely scaling force coefficients.

Please spare us from your inability to interpret the SDK correctly, as you have proven dozens of times. Especially this scaling you seem to not have understood to this day, even after the embarassing amount of explanations you received the last time. Now, first you invent the term "force element", which does not exist one time in the 8000+ word-document, then you say that this term is false advertising! Don't you think "bottom of the barrel" would be also be a good fit for this sort of posting? The SDK document has far too many gaps for people reading it not in good faith, so your demonstrated unwillingness to connect the dots correctly is appalling.

If it is not clear to you that forces are calculated per surface after reading the SDK document, I might direct you to a youtube video telling you so: click here

Here a rebuttal about your unfunded claim, that MSFS aerodynamics are tied to FSX: click here

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by mrueedi

[simbol 5,832]

3 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

Hey great to see you on here Simbol.. ya lol this thread is rather long winded, but just wanted to know your general thoughts on using CFD in the aircraft flight model of your Sting S4, and if there were specific advantages/disadvantages to using CFD vs not, etc. My initial thoughts are is that it's another tool in the MSFS aerodynamics toolbox, but given the current inability in the SDK to define aircraft geometry in fine-grained ways, the CFD tech in MSFS for aircraft FMs can't likely be fully utilized with ease... Obviously great flight models can be developed in MSFS without CFD given the various 3rd party aircraft examples out there, but wondering if you had specific motivation(s) to employ CFD for the S4. Broad questions I know but if you have the time we'd love to hear 🙂
 

Right,

Well Sting S4 is an ultralight (ULS), and as such it was very challenging to put CFD to it.. but at the same time very necessary. Let me explain:

• To put CFD to an aircraft, you require to first make the flight model without CFD. So you have to invest the time on creating the base flight model regardless.
   
• After the first step is completed, you need then enable CFD, as a result the first flight model gets "de-calibrated" things break per say.. and now you need to start tweaking the flight model again... this takes double the time as the first because the complexity of CFD, which requires to be increased on each step and re-calibrate FM.
   
• Then new Prop Physics can be enabled, making your CFD + FM go de-calibrated one more time.. and you do it all over again.

Most people must be thinking God lord why going thru this trouble? well, S4 is special and it deserves special technology. S4 has a glide ratio of 12:1, let;s this thought sink in.. for each 12 NM you glide with no engine, you only lose 1NM of altitude.. S4 is practically a Glider with an engine! so to achieve proper real world physics I had to take all the SDK could give me and CFD was one of many elements for this.

I was aware thermals were coming, and to take full advantage of these I wanted to release Sting S4 ready for any future CFD improvements. SU11 + Sting S4 works like a charm now with thermals thanks to all that previous work.

CFD + Prop Physics allows users to experience better results in MSFS compared vs real world, for example, landing with cross winds.., many users come to MSFS and want to land GA airplanes like they are airliners, what this means:

1. They do full long crabbing against the wind.
2. They attempt a full rudder kick on top of the runway and cut the power to idle.

Result? if an airplane is CFD enabled, they will get kick out of the runway or swivel all over the place.. this is because propeller aircraft are very delicate against xwind, you must master the crabbing  technique to avoid this issue in real world and in fact the recommended approach is Wing Low + Rudder technique which would allow you to control the approach much better.

Any CFD enabled airplane will behave much closer to real world than those that are not, when you cut the propeller to idle on the S4 the airflow is cut off from the body, rudder, ailerons.. and the control authority is heavily reduced, more input is required to control the aircraft, all these computations are not as accurate without CFD.

So next time you flying the S4 under high crosswind conditions, re-consider how you treating your landing.. Ultralights airplanes don't behave well with xwind+ crabbing techniques.. it is way better to land using wing low techniques, and thanks to CFD Sting S4 not only managed to replicate this behaviour, but also very key stall behaviours (S4 stalls symmetric not asymmetric).. Without CFD there is no way I would have manage to achieve what I did.. so there you have it.

I strongly recommend this video for everyone: 

 

Best,
Raul
 

Edited November 9, 2022 by simbol

[abrams_tank 7,477]

8 minutes ago, simbol said:

Any CFD enabled airplane will behave much closer to real world than those that are not, when you cut the propeller to idle on the S4 the airflow is cut off from the body, rudder, ailerons.. and the control authority is heavily reduced, more input is required to control the aircraft, all these computations are not available without CFD.

So next time you flying the S4 under high crosswind conditions, re-consider how you treating your landing.. Ultralights airplanes don't behave well with xwind+ crabbing techniques.. it is way better to land using wing low techniques, and thanks to CFD Sting S4 not only managed to replicate this behaviour, but also very key stall behaviours (S4 stalls symmetric not asymmetric).. Without CFD there is no way I would have manage to achieve what I did.. so there you have it.
 

Hey, thanks for your answer Simbol!  This is very interesting information, that the CFD in MSFS can make the airplane behave more closer to the real world. 👍

Edited November 9, 2022 by abrams_tank

[lwt1971 7,464]

45 minutes ago, simbol said:

Any CFD enabled airplane will behave much closer to real world than those that are not, when you cut the propeller to idle on the S4 the airflow is cut off from the body, rudder, ailerons.. and the control authority is heavily reduced, more input is required to control the aircraft, all these computations are not available without CFD.

Raul, thanks so much for this detailed explanation, great to hear your insights and thoughts and also the behind-the-scenes tidbits re: developing a flight model in MSFS thru the various stages! Always knew there'd have to be tweaking and tuning in the FM post the initial model creations, but assumed all the tuning can be done after enabling both CFD and prop physics.. sounds like there's some benefit to tuning the model before and after each stage however (I'd also think they'll make SU8's new prop physics the default at some point in the future). Hopefully once other devs have gotten more familiar with the MSFS platform and all its aerodynamics capabilities we'll start to see them taking advantage of the newer stuff too.

 

45 minutes ago, simbol said:

... S4 is special and it deserves special technology. S4 has a glide ratio of 12:1, let;s this thought sink in.. for each 12 NM you glide with no engine, you only lose 1NM of altitude.. S4 is practically a Glider with an engine! so to achieve proper real world physics I had to take all the SDK could give me and CFD was one of many elements for this.

I was aware thermals were coming, and to take full advantage of these I wanted to release Sting S4 ready for any future CFD improvements. SU11 + Sting S4 works like a charm now with thermals thanks to all that previous work.

CFD + Prop Physics allows users to experience better results in MSFS compared vs real world, for example, landing with cross winds.., many users come to MSFS and want to land GA

Was wondering to myself before when the SU11 beta first came out and then after MS/Asobo's feature video on gliders how all these core platform improvements would impact very light aircraft, and if they'd exhibit glider characteristics with engines cut off 🙂 ... the S4 is a perfect example and sounds like you've already put it thru the paces in SU11 so that's good to know. I'll be sure to check out that video.
 

Edited November 9, 2022 by lwt1971

[UrgentSiesta 942]

I'll get excited when the aircraft addons are using CFD, and when the CFD model itself is better understood by the 3PD's.

Until then, the FM's of even the Hi Quality addons leave a lot to be desired.