Landing descent rate couldn't be more meaningless, especially the way it's measured in the sim as an instantaneous value.  A -500fpm descent rate from 10 feet above the runway for instance would be a hard landing, but from 1 inch above the runway would be hardly felt.  G would be a much better metric but even that has some issues.

Even level D sims don't really get this right; you don't really learn to land the plane until you fly it, which is one big reason why OE with a check airman exists.  People ask on my streams all the time what I use to monitor landing rate.  I just chuckle 😉.

29 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

Landing descent rate couldn't be more meaningless, especially the way it's measured in the sim as an instantaneous value. 

Yeah, and comments like yours (and other pilots) really opened my eyes to the whole uselessness of it. I get why VAs use it as a tool to ensure people at least try and care about landings.

I just wish the streamers would leave it alone.

I do track it in my log, but only as a data point. I also track G. Like you said, both are flawed but I trust the consistency of a g reading better.

8 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

A -500fpm descent rate from 10 feet above the runway for instance would be a hard landing, but from 1 inch above the runway would be hardly felt.

That's physical nonsense. 500 FPM is 500 FPM no matter where it started. The thing is: It's impossible to generate a descent rate of 500 FPM starting at 1 feet. It's like jumping from a height of 1 feet, you will never generate a high enough "descent rate" to hurt yourself because the acceleration (in this case: the g-value) has too little time to gain speed.

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

That's physical nonsense. 500 FPM is 500 FPM no matter where it started. The thing is: It's impossible to generate a descent rate of 500 FPM starting at 1 feet. It's like jumping from a height of 1 feet, you will never generate a high enough "descent rate" to hurt yourself because the acceleration (in this case: the g-value) has too little time to gain speed.

Not in the sim it's not, that's the point.  Because of how sims measure such things, a FPM landing rate is absolutely meaningless in the sim.  It's a complete contrivance that people focus on, that tells you absolutely nothing.

In reality, a VS measurement at moment of touchdown has value, and that's why MX will pull FOQA data that measures this as well as g, in the event of a hard landing write up.  But in any desktop sim I've ever seen, this is an unrealistically instantaneous value, rendering it worthless.

It is also inaccurate in principal. There's a polling rate, it is constantly checking to see if aircraft is "on ground" and then captures the FPM when onground=1. It polls for this, i.e it does not just know when the aircraft has touched down, it is pinging every second/half a second/whatever the developer has set it to ping at, and it is entirely and commonly possible that you have landed in between these polling points.

On 4/12/2023 at 6:48 PM, BrammyH said:

To be fair, they said in February they are working hard on v2 and didn't have much to share. If v2 is on the near side of release, I imagine a lot of bug fixes are just rolled into that.

In terms of updates, it depends on how meaningful the update is.

believe it when i see it.

2 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Not in the sim it's not, that's the point.  Because of how sims measure such things, a FPM landing rate is absolutely meaningless in the sim.  It's a complete contrivance that people focus on, that tells you absolutely nothing.

In reality, a VS measurement at moment of touchdown has value, and that's why MX will pull FOQA data that measures this as well as g, in the event of a hard landing write up.  But in any desktop sim I've ever seen, this is an unrealistically instantaneous value, rendering it worthless.

I admit I have no idea how the simulator calculates these things, but I can tell you that the "feeling" of a landing is almost always represented in the numbers, i.e. when I felt I just did a very smooth landing it it's accordingly <100 FPM when I check it out and viceversa when I put it down hard (e.g. on contaminated runways) the FPM is accordingly high.
So again no idea what the sim actually does to measure it and if the value itself is true to how it would be in real life, but it "works" in this regard as explained above.

12 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

People ask on my streams all the time what I use to monitor landing rate.  I just chuckle 😉.

I'm surprised that you didn't just tell them, "My rear end". 😁

13 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Landing descent rate couldn't be more meaningless, especially the way it's measured in the sim as an instantaneous value. 

Also, what do airlines consider a hard landing? Is it based of the g force of landing?

 

I have never checked (or been bothered about) my landing rate in the 12 years that I have been flying the PMDG 737NGX.

4 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

I admit I have no idea how the simulator calculates these things, but I can tell you that the "feeling" of a landing is almost always represented in the numbers, i.e. when I felt I just did a very smooth landing it it's accordingly <100 FPM when I check it out and viceversa when I put it down hard (e.g. on contaminated runways) the FPM is accordingly high.
So again no idea what the sim actually does to measure it and if the value itself is true to how it would be in real life, but it "works" in this regard as explained above.

I have pretty smooth landings in the PMDG 737, usually between 100-150 FPM and most of the time with a G rating of <1.00 . I can tell it is smooth and no bounces either. 

17 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I have pretty smooth landings in the PMDG 737, usually between 100-150 FPM and most of the time with a G rating of <1.00 . I can tell it is smooth and no bounces either. 

G can't be <1.00 when the wheels touch down no matter how soft and smooth.

5 hours ago, BrammyH said:

Also, what do airlines consider a hard landing? Is it based of the g force of landing?

Yup.

2 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

Yup.

what is the general threshold value to trigger it?