XP12 is growing on 737NG - now he's on the 346...

[BobFS88 695]

1 hour ago, Rimshot said:

we're all constantly in search of confirmation that what we like is better than what someone else likes 🙂

We also are searching for information as to what makes a certain aircraft special especially when it comes to certain freeware that is at a level of payware status. Not necessary of what some like better than other, but for there own personal knowledge and understanding.

Edited July 25, 2023 by BobFS88

[Best 29]

1 hour ago, Rimshot said:

Exactly my point. Regardless of preference, we're all constantly in search of confirmation that what we like is better than what someone else likes 🙂

This is so true

[BobFS88 695]

5 hours ago, mSparks said:

But surely it is not a proper flight sim video if you are not flying along outside the plane as if you are superman, with a generic 2D instrument panel showing how cool your knots and altitude are.

OMG.... I need to make an XPlane plugin that adds that Tesla symbol to 3rd person view.

lol

Watch out for those flybys. 

Edited July 25, 2023 by BobFS88

[blingthinger 672]

7 hours ago, Pe11e said:

So who to believe?

One would think that with all the peacocking IRL pilots waltzing through these forums that at some point somebody would strap a couple time-synced go-pros to their cabin and generate some data.

And there's no doubt in my mind that at least one of those peacocks is nerdy enough to also program a raspberry pi or arduino with a 6dof accelerometer, also strapped to the cabin.

Believe the data!

[mSparks 2,125]

55 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

8 hours ago, Pe11e said:

So who to believe?

One would think that with all the peacocking IRL pilots waltzing through these forums that at some point somebody would strap a couple time-synced go-pros to their cabin and generate some data.

And there's no doubt in my mind that at least one of those peacocks is nerdy enough to also program a raspberry pi or arduino with a 6dof accelerometer, also strapped to the cabin.

Believe the data!

 

[dbw1 453]

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

One would think that with all the peacocking IRL pilots waltzing through these forums that at some point somebody would strap a couple time-synced go-pros to their cabin and generate some data.

And there's no doubt in my mind that at least one of those peacocks is nerdy enough to also program a raspberry pi or arduino with a 6dof accelerometer, also strapped to the cabin.

Believe the data!

Peacocking?

[snglecoil 1,829]

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

One would think that with all the peacocking IRL pilots waltzing through these forums that at some point somebody would strap a couple time-synced go-pros to their cabin and generate some data.

And there's no doubt in my mind that at least one of those peacocks is nerdy enough to also program a raspberry pi or arduino with a 6dof accelerometer, also strapped to the cabin.

Believe the data!

Ha, ok. If you know how to rig equipment up and are willing to provide it…and cover the cost of the airplane rental, I’ll fly. I’m up for an adventure. Let’s test it out.

[blingthinger 672]

1 hour ago, snglecoil said:

Let’s test it out.

Hrmmm...opposite coasts!

I'm pretty sure the latest go-pros et.al. have accelerometers built in now too?? Might do some homework on that.

[snglecoil 1,829]

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Hrmmm...opposite coasts!

I'm pretty sure the latest go-pros et.al. have accelerometers built in now too?? Might do some homework on that.

It’s not me who wants to know. I already know. So when you are ready to put your money where your mouth is, just let me know and we’ll gather data to your heart’s content. 

[blingthinger 672]

15 hours ago, snglecoil said:

It’s not me who wants to know. I already know. So when you are ready to put your money where your mouth is, just let me know and we’ll gather data to your heart’s content. 

Oh do you? Earlier were claiming either was plausible but curiously didn't claim to side with either 172 assessment. So, which do you believe and why? Somewhere in the middle?

Money/mouth? I've never claimed to have regular airframe access. I would love to see/take measurements. If someone in the west is willing to spend the gas, I'll gladly dust off the non-flightaware raspberry pi and dig into some python code.

[snglecoil 1,829]

You have it correct. I stated that either result was plausible in real life based on differences in technique...and technique, while a pretty big variable, is not remotely close to being the only variable at play in those landings in real life. I don't side with either assessment because I'm not going to evaluate any flight model based on some guy's YouTube video. Counting my 1114 hours in various 172 models (805 of which is instruction given), I find positives and negatives in the handling of both XP and MSFS's default 172. At the end of the day, both platforms are close enough to a "generic 172" that it really doesn't move the needle much one way of the other for me personally.

I'm not saying that correct modeling of the underlying physics of flight is not a worthy pursuit by the developers. What I find odd is the insistence of any simmer that the "flight model" must be the MOST realistic or it somehow robs them of some level of enjoyment in the simulator. Heaven forbid that something breaks that all important immersion! Never mind the inconvenient truth that 99.9% of simmers are sitting stationary in front of a flat screen monitor or two with consumer grade flight controls. The flight model is wrong? Pssst, it may partly be that janky plastic yoke with a 6 inch throw and dirty pots. Never mind the fact that most simmers will never fly so much as a Cessna 172 in real life, much less a 737 or A330. So even if the flight model is lacking in some way...what difference does it really make at the end of the day? How is any non-pilot simmer to even know except that some person on the internet told them so (yeah, myself included)

My neighbor is a former NASCAR Xfinity series driver...loves his racing sims. He had at one time one of the most impressive home racing sim setups I've ever seen. You want to talk about data? The telemetry on those real race cars is mind blowing, they can simulate a car's handling to a very high degree with all of that data. I asked him how close his sim was to racing the real thing? He said that while it is impressive how realistic a lot of it is, it's not really comparable. It's just different. He said that really he primarily used it to refamiliarize himself with different tracks the week before he raced them, and in that respect it really did help him.

When I was instructing, I had several students come to me from a flight simming background. One of those students was so motivated and enthusiastic about learning to fly, I couldn't keep him off his copy of XPlane...even though I suspected that he was practicing bad habits at home on the sim. He struggled fiercely learning to land the plane. I finally convinced him to stop using his flight sim until he learned how to land the plane at a minimum, and maybe not touch it again until he decided to do an instrument rating. He agreed and thankfully started progressing quickly after that.

On the other hand, I had a different student who's landings seemingly out of the blue just started to click. I noticed that he was consistently maintaining his final approach speed which made the rest of the landing so much easier. He told me that he decided to mess around with XPlane mobile of all things, and that it let him grasp the concepts of pitch and power for energy management that we had been working on.

So what? I don't know. I guess all of this to say that I am firm believer that sometimes good enough is really good enough.

[mSparks 2,125]

33 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

What I find odd is the insistence of any simmer that the "flight model" must be the MOST realistic or it somehow robs them of some level of enjoyment in the simulator.

negative learning/training is insanely expensive. It is a _lot_ harder to unlearn bad habbits and incorrect muscle memory than it is to aquire them.

The less accurately a sim recreates real flight, the more bad habbits and inverted muscle memory you will aquire every time you use the sim.

https://varjo.com/vr-lab/what-is-negative-training-and-how-to-avoid-it-in-vr/

Edited July 27, 2023 by mSparks

[thepitts 35]

Now that's what I call " A Proper Post".

Cheers Tim

[blingthinger 672]

7 hours ago, snglecoil said:

I don't side with either assessment because I'm not going to evaluate any flight model based on some guy's YouTube video

I hear you and based on my life experiences, I automatically smile and shake my head a bit. I'm looking at it from the perspective of the scientist/engineer who makes your flight dreams possible in the first place. My life's work thus far has been toiling over metal geometry definition down to 0.0001 inch. To repeatably and reliably cast and/or cut the metal, the factories have to involve even tighter tooling and process tolerances.

Somewhere in the mix of manufacturing tolerances, material decay and age, and human factors, lies a golden aiframe; an aerodynamic sculpture that does not change. For a given set of weather conditions and energy state, that golden airframe is going to behave a certain way. If there's hysteresis in the flight patterns, there's either something wrong or there's some interesting unknown physics at play. I guarantee that for a Cessna 172 there are no unknown physics at play. You are fully justified in hand-waving over the human factors but those factors didn't carve the metal.

A similar concept is also at the core of each of these sims; some numerical model that doesn't care about what kind of joystick you might be using. Based on my understanding of the underlying models, one of them is going to align more closely with that golden airframe when viewed with tight-tolerance scrutiny. 

That we can take a bunch of piles of sand and melt them into CPUs, is miraculous. That a bunch of apes can draw theoretical math and physics symbols in the dirt with their finger to command that melted sand to imitate the birds above, is even more so. I fully desire to see certain behaviors when I'm about to flare one of these silicon-based metal birds in a crosswind. 

Am I nitpicking? Sure. But so goes the dream.
 

[Murmur 3,978]

9 hours ago, snglecoil said:

I find positives and negatives in the handling of both XP and MSFS's default 172. At the end of the day, both platforms are close enough to a "generic 172" that it really doesn't move the needle much one way of the other for me personally.

[...]

So what? I don't know. I guess all of this to say that I am firm believer that sometimes good enough is really good enough.

That'a a strictly subjective preference. It isn't true that any simmer is interested in the finer details of the flight model. Infact, for the majority of simmers, the visuals  and the scenery are vastly more important, once the flight model is "good enough". Their immersion is derived more, by far, from looking at the scenery below, than from the feeling of the flight physics (again, provided it is "good enough" for them). Other simmers may have different preferences in their scale of priorities, and most simmers are in between.

Years ago, I used the PMDG B747 (for fs9, I think). It had an atrocious OEI behaviour (and the plastic joystick and rudder pedals weren't certainly responsible of it). On the other hand, the LevelD B767 (for fs9 as well), behaved much more realistically under asymmetric thrust.

That made me lose all interest in the PMDG bird, and on the contrary, the pleasure and immersion of flying with the LevelD B767 was unmatched, even if visually it looked worse than the PMDG. But I'm sure most other simmers (including some RL pilots, likely) didn't even notice or wouldn't probably even care about that detail. Were they wrong and me right? Not at all, just different preferences.

For example, I get definitely more enjoyment flying in DCS than in MSFS, even if the former has worse visuals, because what is important to me is better in DCS.