Time acceleration - before purchase

[Susu986 76]

Hi Guys,

With the Dash-7 out, would someone help me out, and check how stable the autopilot is under x8 sim rate (time acceleration)?

Under the 737, PMDG heavily limits the max bank, pitch, yaw angles, and throttle changes, so the autopilot remains stable, and won't start a deadly oscillation, or dive to the ground. Other planes are a mixed bag.

To me, time acceleration is a must (naysayers, please don't comment how it's not realistic, once you have a family and very limited free time, but still want to fly, you'll understand - It's also not realistic that I fly a 737 without a real-world ATP license, this is why it's called a SIMULATOR, so we SIMULATE stuff we cannot do IRL).

I would only buy the plane, if it's (relatively) stable under these accelerations, if a happy owner could have a quick look and test it mid-flight, I'd appreciate it a lot. If it slowly deviates from the course, that's fine, I can slow the time down, steer it back, and speed up again. As long as it's stable, I'm fine.

Thanks!

[regis9 4,041]

I used 2x with no issues but haven’t tried higher.  I’ll test next time I fly unless someone else beats it to me.

[Susu986 76]

Thank you, please do!

This is great news so far!

[regis9 4,041]

2x and 4x are all good, 8x caused a lot of pitching up and down.

[Susu986 76]

Hey, thanks very much for testing! 😃

Normally I fly at x8-x16, but in this case I can probably live with x4 (as this is a regional plane with shorter routes)- looks like I'm buying, wee-hee!

[regis9 4,041]

I’m curious what aircraft you find work at 8x or 16x?  PMDG has really good time acceleration capabilities but I feel like most aren’t stable that high?

[Susu986 76]

I've found the CRJ to be very stable, the rest, not so much so.

[dragonflightdesign 100]

As a developer (just not on this project) I can say that time multiplication presents an 'interesting' challenge. The porpoising you see also occurs at x1 speed but it's so slow and so little that you don't see it. As your time speeds up, so does the pitching to the point where eventually the sim loses control. Locking the aircraft with the autopilot can be one way of dealing with it but that also requires limiting the control surfaces movement. If the aircraft doesn't have an AP, you're basically out of luck. MSFS also presents a new set of challenges because with their 'templates', you don't have direct access to the underlying sim, unlike with P3D. You can write your own templates as many of the big developers do but that's a process I haven't got into. Although MSFS do provide a 'legacy interface' access via C/C++ code and the WASM interface, the expression 'legacy interface' in and of itself implies that Microsoft/Asobo could remove that access point as and when they want. I doubt it will happen but it always has to be born in mind. This just adds another layer of complication when trying to deal with the time multiplication problem.

We have yet to see what sort of an SDK will be provided with MSFS 2024.

Edited November 15, 2023 by dragonflightdesign