That Skycrane reference on wikipedia doesn't actually reference a reference. The paper it points to just says 'it can be done' but doesn't offer documented proof. 

Assuming it's accurate though, you "simply" need to be able to shed the majority of your gross weight at the snap of a finger and apply that suddenly-unused power towards fighting the drag of airfoils at really high AoA instead of lifting a load of cargo. So empty load at full power and just barely hanging on with the airfoils at high AoA and some big proportion (maybe 50%) of the rotor radius being subjected to even more insane negative-lift AoA (~45 deg?...hello drag, goodbye lift) of the ring-center flow. I would think that collective range is also a player here. My guess is that it's probably not common to be able to push rotor blades near stall AoA to get to the needed lift range for the portion of the rotor that's still actually worth a darn. So "power out" of it might be an option but it's not exactly the territory of a non-workhorse copter.

Edited July 24, 20241 yr by blingthinger

I agree with the various points in this thread, each presenting valid explanations, and I do also acknowledge that at least in X-Plane we DO have VRS and we can "feel" it.

Regarding recovery, the only simulated helicopter where I did fight, and always lost recovery unless I applied cyclic input to exit was the DCS World UH-1H.

But when last week I heard Austin talking about new details being under development I thought to myself that we will probably get it working better one of these days, and be "forced" to use proper recovery techniques to exit VRS 🙂

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

Regarding recovery, the only simulated helicopter where I did fight, and always lost recovery unless I applied cyclic input to exit was the DCS World UH-1H.

you can plugin it reasonably easily to stop collective pulling out if you really want it.

 

On 7/25/2024 at 1:14 AM, jcomm said:

Honestly, between wikipedia and the official helicopter syllabus by FAA, I would trust FAA....

"Vortex Ring State Vortex ring state (formerly referenced as settling-with power) describes an aerodynamic condition in which a helicopter may be in a vertical descent with 20 percent up to maximum power applied, and little or no climb performance. The previously used term settling-with-power came from the fact that the helicopter keeps settling even though full engine power is applied"

"When recovering from a vortex ring state condition, the pilot tends first to try to stop the descent by increasing collective pitch. However, this only results in increasing the stalled area of the rotor, thereby increasing the rate of descent."

I was practicing VRS irl today. Its a lot easier to escape than I was led to believe, but you do need a fair bit of altitude, (probably about 50 or 100 feet or so at least) so near the ground is really dangerous.

I would say it will even escape itself once you are falling fast enough, although we didnt try that one. 

So xplane probably has it about right.

Edited October 7, 20241 yr by mSparks

Don't want to open a new thread, as name of this one is quite fitting. 

I'm using FSX for long, long time and I was thinking of newer FS engine. For a reasons I can't use MSFS2020 and 2024, so my question is: is it worth to move from MS FSX to X Plane (11 or 12)? I'm talking moving all - old Saitek Pro flight kit (would it work?), some similar add-ons for XP. Are there also good 3rd party planes? Like in FSX I'm using B777, B737 (both PMDG), King Air 350 (IIRC Carenado)..

My recent PC HW is not issue for X plane. So is recent XP 11 or 12 so much better than FSX to justify time (I bet that would take a lot) and money investment? I read quite a lot about it, but it is mostly just fight between recent MSFS version fans and XP fans (which is not my problem). I need to compare it to nicely customized FSX.

@FrozenPolarBear,

everything is better than FSX. I went straight from FSX to XP10, now on XP12. XP11 was a transition form OGL to Vulkan, so XP12 is almost a complete engine rewrite, a problem the competition had as well once they realised the limitations of the old engine.

I would say the only let down in XP12 is ATC, but even as is, it is a huge improvement. The next Beta run is pretty much exclusively an ATC update.

Flight model is amazing especially if you are a real pilot, If you like the 737 the Free zibomod is as close to the real  737 800  as you can get and constantly improving. There is even a freeware King air that is being done by real pilots all available on the org.

clouds weather continually updated, There are plenty of videos on what xplane 12 is all about on the xp12 official youtube channel.

Cant comment on the competition as i gave up on them after FSX

@mjrhealth

Thanks for detailed reply 👍 

Yeah, I'm aware about mostly non existent ATC in XP, so I'm ready for add-on solution. But if XP is going to add some good ATC soon, that's great info and something I wasn't aware of. 

I also heard praises for Zibo 737, it is basically in any thread related to XP. That King Air is a pleasant surprise. Now most of plane models goes to MSFS, but I browsed through XP airplane models availability today and it is looking good enough for me.

Graphics. Here I'm pretty much expecting improvement here from FSX, like we're talking over 10 years difference 😁, but I'm not too much for VFR, so any improvement from good old FSX is a bonus.

I was mostly asking airplanes models and physics to compare with FSX, which according to your reply is like night and day difference. So I think I'll dig a little more about other XP features (flight plan from external site, Saitek compatibility etc ) and if there is no problem, I think I'll give XP a shot.

Thanks again

You can try the XP12 demo for free as often as you want (it's limited to KPDX and surroundings and to 10 to 15 minutes per session) to get an impression of performance, visuals, flight modeling, workflows, etc. Third party plugins and aircraft are supported, so you can set yourself up and give everything a thorough checkout.

You'll soon realize how horribly outdated FSX is in every single regard. That's a promise.

@Bjoern

Thanks for your reply, last two days of diving into XP topics here and there mostly convinced me, including your and @mjrhealth encouraging post. I will give it a shot and download it over night today 😏

 

Regarding to the demo, in case XP 12 would disappoint me (now I don't believe that would happen especially compared to FSX), I wouldn't regret those few bucks. I would regret the time spent customize it. Just those two days of my free time checking XP12 related topics was way more expensive than XP purchase price 😇 . And I think on this forum I don't need to explain how long takes tinkering with freshly installed FS 😁

58 minutes ago, FrozenPolarBear said:

@Bjoern

Thanks for your reply, last two days of diving into XP topics here and there mostly convinced me, including your and @mjrhealth encouraging post. I will give it a shot and download it over night today 😏

 

Regarding to the demo, in case XP 12 would disappoint me (now I don't believe that would happen especially compared to FSX), I wouldn't regret those few bucks. I would regret the time spent customize it. Just those two days of my free time checking XP12 related topics was way more expensive than XP purchase price 😇 . And I think on this forum I don't need to explain how long takes tinkering with freshly installed FS 😁

Regarding interface configuration, X-Plane IMO has the most intuitive interface among the various I have used in flight simulation, with FSX / P3D in 2nd place followed by DCS an IL-2... 

When I switched from FSX to XP11 a few years ago, it was a surprising experience for me. The feeling of flying was no longer the same as on rails. However, I had satellite images for the scenery under FSX and I wanted that for X-Plane too. There is a free tool, Ortho4XP. that works very well. Simheaven also has X-World, which improves the buildings and adds appropriate building types for the different regions. Yes, X-Plane has a great community that offers a lot.

XP12 ATC has come a long way.

They introduced shorter take off,s do you dont have to back taxi if you dont need too, but that broke stuff. Reports filed.

Its generic, since most countries do different things.

Does not currently support non towered airports, wonder if that will be included in the next update. Ie they never hand you off to CTF or whatever.

Next release supposed to include sids and stars.

An AI behaviour overhaul, Be nice if it supported flight planes that would be good for AI. Stop them ganging up on you.

I guess we wait and see.

 

On 10/13/2024 at 3:01 AM, FrozenPolarBear said:

Don't want to open a new thread, as name of this one is quite fitting. 

I'm using FSX for long, long time and I was thinking of newer FS engine. For a reasons I can't use MSFS2020 and 2024, so my question is: is it worth to move from MS FSX to X Plane (11 or 12)? I'm talking moving all - old Saitek Pro flight kit (would it work?), some similar add-ons for XP. Are there also good 3rd party planes? Like in FSX I'm using B777, B737 (both PMDG), King Air 350 (IIRC Carenado)..

My recent PC HW is not issue for X plane. So is recent XP 11 or 12 so much better than FSX to justify time (I bet that would take a lot) and money investment? I read quite a lot about it, but it is mostly just fight between recent MSFS version fans and XP fans (which is not my problem). I need to compare it to nicely customized FSX.

Msr Bear - I went across to XP12 as my simulator via FSX and P3D. I cannot use MS2020 or similar as it is not possible given my internet limitations. So why XP12? Stable platform, proven aircraft modeling and believe it or not great scenery. The Gateway process and community participation gives you an amazing spread of realistic airports across the globe in a way that FSX never did or could without extensive addons and tinkering. I have not bought any addon scenery worth mentioning since. XP has the lighting and clouds weather etc very credible and more than satisfactory all up compared to P3D and especially FSX. The standard world in XP with its lighting and interesting spacial drawing of stuff all over is actually very different to the FSX world but you will have a very credible simulation environment to indulge with. As for model well I would be the first to say in some areas, not so good but in others more than good, left a lot of stuff behind exiting P3D and FSX but apart from a few quirkly or long gone classic aeroplanes I am very impressed with the Tolliss Airbuses, there is a brilliant B747, B737 (300 and 800) MD80 MD11 and well the GA world is nicely catered for with King Airs and Cessnas etc. In fact few aeroplanes you wont see in MS like the Piper Aerostar, some interesting Bellancas etc. DC3 yep only the real big complicated pistons like the Constellation and DC4 -and DC-6 are missing but there are lots of other things.

Been riding the beta update process which has been interesting - but go back or over to another sim - not now not ever XP12 has it nailed for me! Somedays you cannot believe how good it is really. 

Ok, it is happening. Downloaded over night, so today I rolled up my sleeves and pick first thing. My cursed Autopilot Saitek panel, which worked flawlessly in Win7 DVD version of FSX, but on my new PC I bought 4 years ago with Win10 (yes, I switched to win10 just 4 years ago😜), I have never managed to make it work. I gave up after two weeks of fighting with that stupid Win10 usb power management (probably the worst Win feature ever) and then with various FSX plugins for that panel, which no one has ever worked. Today, on this very forum, bam, 2 minutes, link to xplane org, some awesome dude name sparker, bam app for fixing that usb power management, download Saitek plugin for xplane 12 from the same saint who puts everything essential to one thread, 5 more minutes and it bloody works!

17 hours ago, jcomm said:

Regarding interface configuration, X-Plane IMO has the most intuitive interface among the various I have used in flight simulation, with FSX / P3D in 2nd place followed by DCS an IL-2... 

True, definitely better than FSX. No really, it feels subjectively like 10x less tedious process to setup XP than I remember in FSX.  

16 hours ago, odi11 said:

When I switched from FSX to XP11 a few years ago, it was a surprising experience for me. The feeling of flying was no longer the same as on rails. However, I had satellite images for the scenery under FSX and I wanted that for X-Plane too. There is a free tool, Ortho4XP. that works very well. Simheaven also has X-World, which improves the buildings and adds appropriate building types for the different regions. Yes, X-Plane has a great community that offers a lot.

Yeah, now I'm scolding myself to wait until now to switch. But as I said, FSX was customized fully (almost) to my liking and that was long and tedious process. That was the main reason for staying with FSX so long.

2 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

Msr Bear - I went across to XP12 as my simulator via FSX and P3D. I cannot use MS2020 or similar as it is not possible given my internet limitations. So why XP12? Stable platform, proven aircraft modeling and believe it or not great scenery. The Gateway process and community participation gives you an amazing spread of realistic airports across the globe in a way that FSX never did or could without extensive addons and tinkering. I have not bought any addon scenery worth mentioning since. XP has the lighting and clouds weather etc very credible and more than satisfactory all up compared to P3D and especially FSX. The standard world in XP with its lighting and interesting spacial drawing of stuff all over is actually very different to the FSX world but you will have a very credible simulation environment to indulge with. As for model well I would be the first to say in some areas, not so good but in others more than good, left a lot of stuff behind exiting P3D and FSX but apart from a few quirkly or long gone classic aeroplanes I am very impressed with the Tolliss Airbuses, there is a brilliant B747, B737 (300 and 800) MD80 MD11 and well the GA world is nicely catered for with King Airs and Cessnas etc. In fact few aeroplanes you wont see in MS like the Piper Aerostar, some interesting Bellancas etc. DC3 yep only the real big complicated pistons like the Constellation and DC4 -and DC-6 are missing but there are lots of other things.

Been riding the beta update process which has been interesting - but go back or over to another sim - not now not ever XP12 has it nailed for me! Somedays you cannot believe how good it is really. 

Thank you for such long experience share. I got pretty excited too today when I first started it (as you can see above). But it is keep going. All other Saitek panels works as well, button customization for each plane is great idea (at least for me). I even tried to plug my X55 Rhino set and it worked for first try flawlessly. Axis calibration window right from the start automatically.. good things just keep coming 😊 Now I'm searching for something which turns Saitek switches from "buttons" to real two way switches (it is aparently a thing, which I again found on X-plane forum section). Flying experience I can't comment yet, as it really feels different and I did just few minutes of test flights with default C172. That's not anywhere close to draw conclusions. 

So for the name of this topic, moving to xplane time was like 4 years ago with new PC, I just didn't realize it.