I have about a hundred hours flying IRL and I really appreciate the 'realism' of XP-12.

I was scud running the C-172 into KOKB (Oceanside, CA) but it wasn't working out so I air filed an IFR clearance to nearby KCRQ and climbed up into the clouds. I'm hand flying while setting things up for the ILS and I spent just a tad too long focusing on something in the cockpit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see I'm still in a solid overcast. Then all of a sudden I came out of the bottom of the overcast at about 400-feet AGL in a death spiral I never saw coming. I immediately started a recovery but it was too late. And all I thought in those last few seconds was, "Oh sh$#T, I'm dead!" 

No other sim I've flown (and I've flown them all) has ever 'scared' me like that. Good job, Austin!

   
 

Icing? It's real in XP12.

Could also be disorientation.  Without an IFR rating, ending up in a spiral dive while flying VFR through cloud is a very real danger irl.

Kobe...

That pilot wasn't IFR certified and went head first into IMC.

30 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Kobe...

That pilot wasn't IFR certified and went head first into IMC.

Didn't Kennedy Junior do the same thing? 

18 minutes ago, psolk said:

Didn't Kennedy Junior do the same thing? 

Sadly, yes.  Sometimes "VFR" is not really "visual".  JFK Jr had a very capable aircraft.  Still puzzled about him not using the AP and sorting things out.

5 minutes ago, oldflyguy70 said:

Sadly, yes.  Sometimes "VFR" is not really "visual".  JFK Jr had a very capable aircraft.  Still puzzled about him not using the AP and sorting things out.

I thought so...  Perfectly flyable aircraft and he was VFR but proceeded into heavy clouds and IFR conditions if I remember correctly.  Very sad but so easy to get lost when up and down are both white... 

31 minutes ago, psolk said:

I thought so...  Perfectly flyable aircraft and he was VFR but proceeded into heavy clouds and IFR conditions if I remember correctly.  Very sad but so easy to get lost when up and down are both white... 

Kennedy's are before my time enough to want to keep track, but I'm betting Kobe's pilot had done this before. He had 1000's of hrs. More than enough to be too cocky.

Even though he wasn't IFR certified he certainly had the experience and know-how to be so. Why he'd take his eyes off the artificial horizon in that scenario blows my mind.

This is one thing the stationary sims can simulate with near perfection: you don't feel the problem....until it's too late...

Edited January 11, 20233 yr by blingthinger

3 hours ago, psolk said:

I thought so...  Perfectly flyable aircraft and he was VFR but proceeded into heavy clouds and IFR conditions if I remember correctly.  Very sad but so easy to get lost when up and down are both white... 

Flew over a large stretch of open water at night, which can essentially be a sea of black outside the window (no visibile horizon).  That's IFR, even though it's technically still VFR.

way back in my early days of XP - before I knew about the failure system, I decided to practice how I would actually cope with an unexpected engine failure (during early training they give you plenty of warning).

So I set the fuel to nearly empty, and then just started flying touch and go circuits.

after about the sixth circuit as I'm coming in to land I thought to myself, "huh, looks like I need to fly another circuit".

At more or less exactly that time the engine cut and I lept about a foot in the air it scared/made me jump so much. landed it ok, but never have I been so caught off guard before.

Talking about that is how I ended up being told about the failure system.

Hence I empathise a lot with @flying_carpet posts.