Current status of the FSS E175, is it any better?

[mspencer 450]

1 minute ago, jarmstro said:

Me? I just paid up. I've no axe to grind either way. What I think now is that they don't possess the skills necessary to turn it into a study level plane. It's not the first time up I've wasted money on an addon. But as I've said above, at least give me a rudimentary TOD and LNAV and that will do.

Unfortunately there have been enough of these cases by now that there are distinct warning signs. Many of us saw them at the start of this project once they showed off a little too much of the VC and the instruments in a preview video, and on release most of those concerns were validated.

Having seen the glacial pace of progress and the simple issues that keep cropping up, I genuinely wonder how much work went into it besides porting the model in. Almost everything is aliased in some way to a default Asobo mechanic, scripting, etc. Now sure, they are doing their best now, but I don't think they have any idea how to properly code that FMS and when they say "VNAV is functionally done it just hasn't been implemented into the FMS," that causes a pretty bad headache for me. Not really sure how that's supposed to work.

[jarmstro 2,406]

10 minutes ago, mspencer said:

Now sure, they are doing their best now, but I don't think they have any idea how to properly code that FMS and when they say "VNAV is functionally done it just hasn't been implemented into the FMS," that causes a pretty bad headache for me. Not really sure how that's supposed to work.

Indeed! Now, could some one please tell me how a pre release product that goes on sale is anything other than an admission of defeat?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by jarmstro

[JRBarrett 3,206]

6 hours ago, jarmstro said:

But even with all those variables isn't it  still simple mathematics? If I can get  a simulator plane down manually and meet any constraints why do developers find it so hard?

It might at first glance seem like “simple mathematics” but it is not.

Let me give a couple of r/w examples:

A car is traveling over flat ground at a constant velocity of 60 kph. In 15 minutes, how far will it travel? It doesn’t even require pencil and paper. The answer is 15 km. It only requires simple elementary school arithmetic that any 10-year-old child could handle.

Same car, but the velocity is allowed to vary. At one moment it is traveling at 60 kph. Then it briefly accelerates to 75 kph, then decelerates to 35 kph and so on.

Now, determining how far it will travel in 15 minutes goes from elementary school arithmetic to university-level calculus. It requires the calculation of derivatives and a running integral to arrive at a correct answer. And that is when it travels in a straight line. If it also  follows a curved path, the calculations get really complex.

It is the same with VNAV. A constant descent path at idle power with a fixed unvarying ground speed can be handled with simple arithmetic and a bit of algebra as far as calculating an initial TOD and expected time and location to arrive at desired altitude.

But the moment you introduce variables - changing ground speed and true airspeed, changes in required thrust, multiple altitude/speed constraints, you step right into the realm of advanced calculus - and the simple fact is that most developers do not have the mathematical background to do that correctly, which is why you see so many bad/glitchy VNAV implementations.

PMDG, which has a pretty accurate VNAV, has it because it was designed by a man with a PhD in computational fluid dynamics. It truly does require that level of maths education to do it correctly. The same holds true for the engineers who design the VNAV systems on r/w aircraft. 

Even then, r/w VNAV systems can be subject to various problems causing incorrect or unexpected behavior as discussed in this paper from NASA:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20010046486/downloads/20010046486.pdf

LNAV by contrast is much easier to implement. The required maths to calculate bearing and distance between two waypoints of known LAT/LON, including any required wind corrections, can be done using bog-standard algorithms that can be implemented in software by any developer with a good grasp of high school-level trigonometry and algebra.

That is why so many FS aircraft have reasonably good LNAV, but poor or non-existent VNAV.

Your comment about being able to “eyeball” a descent pretty well using v/s and the nav display is valid. The human brain can “do” pretty advanced math in real time without even knowing it. LeBron James, the US basketball player, can consistently shoot and sink a basketball from quite some distance, from almost any location on the court, without having any knowledge of the underlying maths.

Through long experience and practice his hands/arms/eyes/brain “knows” exactly what angle and force to apply to the ball to achieve the desired result.

But, if you were to try to develop an automated robot to reliably do the same thing, the underlying mathematical computations would be complex indeed.

The same holds true for almost any athletic endeavor - from pitching a baseball or bowling a cricket ball to accurately hitting a dart board. 

Edited July 29, 2023 by JRBarrett

[zorro747 34]

Hello, guys! HAven't flown the bird for a while. Yesterday updated the plane. Noticed some major improvements. Such as EFB. Can you tell me if it is possible to import the flight plan to MCDU?

I tried to enter the plan manually, but after insertin an airway next point was not possible to insert, because it was not correct... Did not have mucht time to investigate everything and quit the flight.

 

[bigifooti 156]

5 hours ago, zorro747 said:

Hello, guys! HAven't flown the bird for a while. Yesterday updated the plane. Noticed some major improvements. Such as EFB. Can you tell me if it is possible to import the flight plan to MCDU?

I tried to enter the plan manually, but after insertin an airway next point was not possible to insert, because it was not correct... Did not have mucht time to investigate everything and quit the flight.

 

if i recall right, just enter the intersecting waypoints. It take some second for the FMS it to find the airway that connects the intersecting waypoints.  

[Fiorentoni 4,479]

Well from what I‘ve heard it still has no custom LNAV (and therefore no VNAV) or custom AP or custom FMS. And instead of focusing on that, they seem to rather want to release the 190/195 first and cash in before people realize there will be never be a custom FMS. I mean it‘s almost a year now.

[zorro747 34]

38 minutes ago, bigifooti said:

if i recall right, just enter the intersecting waypoints. It take some second for the FMS it to find the airway that connects the intersecting waypoints.  

yeah, I tried that also. But it also didn't work well. I insert a waypoint and it automatically depict the airway, I insert another waypoint, depicts an airway. Seems to be ok, but when insert another wayponing the airway inserted two steps ago appears and the next waypoint is always incorrect... That is why I asked if they have FPL transfer to MCDU... They have simbrief integration to EFB as I have noticed...

[rob0203 703]

Anybody has scripts for Lorby AxisOOh's?

[Twenty6 694]

8 minutes ago, rob0203 said:

Anybody has scripts for Lorby AxisOOh's?

for what?

 

[Sonosusto 715]

The plane is rather fun to fly and fills the niche that the CRJ once had for me a long time ago. VNAV is coming, per devs. That would be nice. In the meantime, VS is my friend

[rob0203 703]

3 hours ago, Twenty6 said:

for what?

 

For the FSS E175, I need the Lorby scripts for my MCP etc.

Edited November 9, 2023 by rob0203

[Fiorentoni 4,479]

59 minutes ago, Sonosusto said:

The plane is rather fun to fly and fills the niche that the CRJ once had for me a long time ago. VNAV is coming, per devs. That would be nice. In the meantime, VS is my friend

The real problem is LNAV. Any pilot can fly fine without VNAV.

[aniiran 436]

They are still working on the custom Navigation systems,  they showed a devolpment tree of just how complicated and how many calculations and systems are affected and it seems daunting but they say they are making progress.  I believe they will come through.  They have made continuous improvemnts on schedule and are keeping the community updated.

People are asking where is the custom VNAV for the FSS E-175.

I'm asking where are the sharklets for the Fenix?  A developer like Fenix should have been able to knock that out in a day or a week but we still don't have them let alone IAE engines.  Developers have different priorities.  Fenix also showed that a proper simulation of the IAE engines is much deeper and more complex than they had expected.   Probably the same with custom FMC/NAV systems.

 

[regis9 4,051]

LNAV seems to work ok for me, subject to limitations from using the default FMS systems.  It's still a work and progress and (now) clearly labelled as so.

All in all it's certainly not as polished as other addons at this point, but is fun to fly from time to time, updates are pretty frequent.

[Aamir 2,913]

4 hours ago, aniiran said:

I'm asking where are the sharklets for the Fenix?  A developer like Fenix should have been able to knock that out in a day or a week but we still don't have them let alone IAE engines.  Developers have different priorities.  Fenix also showed that a proper simulation of the IAE engines is much deeper and more complex than they had expected.   Probably the same with custom FMC/NAV systems.

 

I don't think you have an understanding of what developing Sharklets entail if you claim they can be done in a day or a week. It took FSL 2 years to release Sharklets. Clearly, if you want to do it right, it will take time.