FlyByWire Simulations | A380X | Wingflex III

[Watsi 2,578]

Hi there,

Flight Sim Expo in Houston was the place to be to see our latest A380 progress in action. In case you missed it, here's a clip showing off our new flex physics.

Keep in mind this is done in extremely rough conditions (plus some harsh pilot maneuvers), where you would probably see passengers flying in the cabin, between coke bottles and lunch boxes....

We hope this will bring further life to the A380, and helps you get a feel of how massive this awesome airplane actually is. Seat belts please!

 

[pmplayer 9,721]

👍👍👍👍

cheers 😉

[abrams_tank 7,537]

38 minutes ago, Watsi said:

Hi there,

Flight Sim Expo in Houston was the place to be to see our latest A380 progress in action. In case you missed it, here's a clip showing off our new flex physics.

Keep in mind this is done in extremely rough conditions (plus some harsh pilot maneuvers), where you would probably see passengers flying in the cabin, between coke bottles and lunch boxes....

We hope this will bring further life to the A380, and helps you get a feel of how massive this awesome airplane actually is. Seat belts please!

Wow, the A380 model looks amazing.

Also, I couldn't tell this was a flight simulator. For a moment, I thought it was a real life video (I was watching on Chewwy's channel and while I saw the FBW symbol, it looked like a real life video).

Edited July 3, 2023 by abrams_tank

[enright 497]

Amazing - even the tail elevators flex. I had a seat right over the wing on an a380 a few months ago and was awed by how much wing flex there was at cruising altitude, and how the flight control surfaces were moving so rapidly to compensate. My mind had a hard time comprehending how the wings could handle the weight of those massive engines bouncing around.

This is eerily close to reality!

If you don't mind me asking, how did you accomplish this? Do you just set the "floppiness" of the control surfaces and MSFS does the rest, or did you need to code the motion of the different surfaces individually - or did you write some sort of flex simulator that runs in the background?

Incredible attention to detail no matter how you did it.

 

[FBW737 519]

can't wait!

[Merawen 53]

Looks awesome!

Can they reuse some of the systems groundwork from the A320 for the A380 to speed up Development?

 

[Watsi 2,578]

36 minutes ago, Merawen said:

Can they reuse some of the systems groundwork from the A320 for the A380 to speed up Development?

We do for quite some time already.

[omarsmak30 4,069]

Nice stuff! Can't wait for the moment when it drops 😊

[Amon1973 1,429]

I wonder if this could be the July surprise?

[pilotter 286]

not nagging and really looking forward but I am a bit concerned about the FPS, although the A320 is perfect.

[Crocket 47]

1 hour ago, enright said:

This is eerily close to reality!

If you don't mind me asking, how did you accomplish this? Do you just set the "floppiness" of the control surfaces and MSFS does the rest, or did you need to code the motion of the different surfaces individually - or did you write some sort of flex simulator that runs in the background?

Incredible attention to detail no matter how you did it.

 

Thanks! Glad you like it!

 

To answer your question, this is absolutely not possible in msfs, where wing flex is just a spring bending vs lift (forget about wing weight, fuel weight, lift spread changing over the wing...).

So we developed a system from scratch (with no guarantee it could even work at all lol). Our 3D developer split the wing into multiple elements, and then we built a physics model handling each element with its own weight/fuel weight/surface position. So this is a simple soft body physics problem over multiple wing elements.

Funnily, difficulty was not the physics itself, but more the guessing of required simulator forces that you cannot access in MSFS (like lift over the wing), which is really sad because it would look even better.

Maybe in the future we can access those forces directly to feed the physics correctly.

 

Here's a first prototype when I was just looking at how we could do this.

https://streamable.com/b2m2ob

Obviously it will look more realistic than anything else (well hopefully), because instead of having wing animation going up or down, you can for example have the wing root bending up, while the tip can oscillate up and down, which brings a lot of visual authenticity.

We might even eventually have various oscillation modes appearing as it went for the real engineers (thus forced to do the aileron dance to break particular frequencies), but we'll see how it goes down the road 🙂

Edited July 3, 2023 by Crocket

[abrams_tank 7,537]

2 minutes ago, Crocket said:

Thanks! Glad you like it!

 

To answer your question, this is absolutely not possible in msfs, where wing flex is just a spring bending vs lift (forget about wing weight, fuel weight, lift spread changing over the wing...).

So we developed a system from scratch. Our 3D developer split the wing into multiple elements, and then we built a physics model handling each element with its own weight/fuel weight/surface position. So this is a simple soft body physics problem over multiple wing elements.

Funnily, difficulty was not the physics itself, but more the guessing of required simulator forces that you cannot access in MSFS (like lift over the wing), which is really sad because it would look even better.

Maybe in the future we can access those forces directly to feed the physics correctly.

Iceman has a direct line to Jorg and Seb, to suggest such changes to the MSFS SDK, right? Better yet, if all the major 3rd party airplane developers, including payware and freeware developers, formed a group and assigned a lead to talk to Jorg and Seb every few months on the changes needed to the MSFS SDK, that could be productive in communicating to the MSFS team, what SDK changes are needed.

[Watsi 2,578]

3 hours ago, pilotter said:

not nagging and really looking forward but I am a bit concerned about the FPS, although the A320 is perfect.

One thing is that the PC, this was recorded on, has some problems. The other thing is that we simply don't prioritize performance at this stage of developement. So pls be patient. 🙂

Edited July 3, 2023 by Watsi

[lwt1971 7,520]

5 hours ago, Crocket said:

Here's a first prototype when I was just looking at how we could do this.

https://streamable.com/b2m2ob

Obviously it will look more realistic than anything else (well hopefully), because instead of having wing animation going up or down, you can for example have the wing root bending up, while the tip can oscillate up and down, which brings a lot of visual authenticity.

We might even eventually have various oscillation modes appearing as it went for the real engineers (thus forced to do the aileron dance to break particular frequencies), but we'll see how it goes down the road 🙂

My oh my this looks incredible, and thanks for explaining how the physics were implemented for this. Believe this is a first for an MSFS aircraft simulating wing and tail elevator flex/movements to such detail. Please hurry up and release an alpha or experimental branch some time this year 🙂
 

Edited July 4, 2023 by lwt1971

[Tuskin38 6,711]

5 hours ago, Amon1973 said:

I wonder if this could be the July surprise?

No.