A330 Driver's take on MSFS 20204 two weeks after ... noteable quotes with respect to flight dynamics:
"new flight dynamics are also worth pointing out, make a really good impression, iniBuilds A330 for example"
"handling of gusts very much improved, now I'm back to using turbulence at realistic setting"
"accuracy of localizers and glideslopes have improved a lot"


@abrams_tank thanks for all the various IRL pilots' reports you've gathered up so far.. the opinions appear to be coalescing even more 🙂

 

 

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by lwt1971

5 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

@abrams_tank thanks for all the various IRL pilots' reports you've gathered up so far.. the opinions appear to be coalescing further 🙂
 

Yes, the opinions seem to be forming a consensus. MSFS 2024 may truly have the best flight model for a civilian flight simulator for the home market.

36 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

MSFS 2024 may truly have the best flight model for a civilian flight simulator for the home market.

And msfs2020 doesn’t??

2 hours ago, ha5mvo said:

And msfs2020 doesn’t??

Lots of folks, including myself, feel the FM in MSFS 2024 is a significant improvement compared to that of its predecessor. So to answer your question directly, no, it doesn't.

1 hour ago, Rimshot said:

Lots of folks, including myself, feel the FM in MSFS 2024 is a significant improvement compared to that of its predecessor.

Not just in the response to inputs, but the sounds. Do an aggressive roll and you can hear the air moving over the frame. I’ve never flown a plane irl, but intuitively it just feels ‘right’.

1 hour ago, Rimshot said:

Lots of folks, including myself, feel the FM in MSFS 2024 is a significant improvement compared to that of its predecessor. So to answer your question directly, no, it doesn't.

I'm confused! thus far I have been told (to my surprise by the very same people!) that the FD on 2020 is the best thing since sliced bread.

Now, nobody needs the A2As of this world since 2024 is so true to life - and with the default models no less.... (backed up by the scientific poll going around ).

 

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by ha5mvo

3 minutes ago, ha5mvo said:

nobody needs the A2As of this world since 2024 is so true to life

Well, we were talking about default flight models. There is always room for sublime addons by the likes of A2A.

10 minutes ago, ha5mvo said:

I'm confused! thus far I have been told (to my surprise by the very same people!) that the FD on 2020 is the best thing since sliced bread.

Really? I don’t think I saw that. Not bad but lots of gaps (most noticeably inertia) was the consensus about 2020 I saw.

1 hour ago, ha5mvo said:

I'm confused! thus far I have been told (to my surprise by the very same people!) that the FD on 2020 is the best thing since sliced bread.

Now, nobody needs the A2As of this world since 2024 is so true to life - and with the default models no less.... (backed up by the scientific poll going around ).

Thus far, you continue to make stuff up and talk besides the point. Who here claimed that MSFS 2020 flight dynamics was the best thing since sliced bread? Those who chose to keep casting MSFS 2020 flight dynamics as something worse than it really was would've rightly gotten pushback, but that obviously doesn't mean what you're claiming.

It was widely known and discussed that ground handling physics and the ground<->air transition modelling in the 2020 FDE was subpar, and something very hard to work around in 3rd party aircraft FMs unless done purely externally. And that's the area that has gotten the most noticeable improvements (and what I notice the most).

And then the other problem was aircraft FM development, especially for those aircraft FMs using CFD, since the aircraft geometry definition was too basic and all the surfaces for the fuselage/wings/tail/etc couldn't be defined in detail. So aircraft devs had to work extra hard to still come up with competent FMs in 2020 (which many great devs did like Fenix, PMDG, iniBuilds, Milviz, etc). This was a most requested improvement by various aircraft devs.

And now yes if some of the 2024 default aircraft FMs are this good, that can only mean the 3rd party aircraft devs who specialize on their specific aircraft are going to be able to do even better things. Perhaps some simmers used to pre-2020 sims might find it hard to grasp that default aircraft can be good too, but with such antiquated mindsets not a surprise really.

If one were intent on pushing the same tired old narratives against MSFS when it comes to flight dynamics and physics, one might try and discount what's being reported here on this thread and elsewhere :)... the vast majority of actual experts, actual IRL pilots, etc seem to be all opining the same thing. And no, that does not mean we don't need the A2As of this world, another silly statement.
 

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by lwt1971

7 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Yes, the opinions seem to be forming a consensus. MSFS 2024 may truly have the best flight model for a civilian flight simulator for the home market.

You can have a word not allowed flight model in X-Plane and a fantastic one in v2024.

And vice versa.

It's up to the addon devs to take advantage of the goodness.

And, FWIW, I've yet to be impressed with Fast Jet flight models of any sort in MSFS. Just compare the HeatBlur F-14 between the versions available for MSFS and DCSW.

Same for the IFT MB-339.

Same dev in both sims, so why not same results?

Now that I think of it, same for JustFlight and their Arrows (and 146) across XP and MSFS.

My favorite flight model addon is the A2A Comanche in MSFS.

My Second Favorite is the REP upgraded JF Turbo Arrow in XP.

And I could go on across multiple add-ons, classes and simulators.

V2024 brings a great Aero Model, but there's no Magic Pixie Dust that's going to make the SWS Kodiak fly as well in v2024 as the Thranda does in XP 12. That's NOT to say it can't happen, but rather to illustrate how critical it is for the DEVS to adopt the new Aero Model.

Heck, the FM of the Carenado PC-12 responds better than the SWS PC-12... (Just to keep it in the SAME sim).

I'm really enjoying the progress made, but there's a long way to go before any sim can be crowned.

 

Edited December 6, 20241 yr by UrgentSiesta

45 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

And, FWIW, I've yet to be impressed with Fast Jet flight models of any sort in MSFS. Just compare the HeatBlur F-14 between the versions available for MSFS and DCSW

I haven’t tried any fast jets yet. I think there was a problem with supersonic modeling in 2020 (?), is it still there in 2024?

Was just playing around with water handling in the Dornier sea plane (which, btw, is an awfully pretty addition to the sim!). So far, it's vastly better than 2020.

I could never get sea planes to behave normally on the water in 2020. I could turn them about 15 degrees left or right, and then they'd just stop turning. It was like those old mechanical driving games where the road was a conveyor belt and the car was on the end of a rod that you moved back and forth. You could only turn them so far before you hit the edge, and turning them didn't actually turn them - they stayed on the road. Planes in 2020 behaved just like that. It was the weirdest bug in the sim by far.

None of that for me in 2024. For the first time since P3d I turned a plane around on the water, which felt like a much bigger personal achievement than it really was.

It did seem to take quite awhile to unstick from the water on takeoff considering it's a twin turboprop, but there could be something I'm missing in the preflight. When it did unstick it pulled hard despite a neutral yoke, so that makes me suspect it's something wonky with the physics as it transitions from float to fly.

The only weird bit is that in VR, centering the view tilts your head in the cockpit when you're on the water. I suspect that's because the plane is listing slightly to one side and that's confusing the centering function. I had to tilt my head considerably to the left before centering in order to be sitting straight up in the seat.

 

4 hours ago, scotchegg said:

I haven’t tried any fast jets yet. I think there was a problem with supersonic modeling in 2020 (?), is it still there in 2024?

Ironically, it's the low speed handling that's really off base.

For e.g., in the DCSW version, one can follow the NATOPS / POH for the Tomcat pretty much to the letter. 

In the MSFS version, the flaps don't work the same, nor wingsweep, nor spoilerons, nor DLC / Direct Lift Control (spoilers used by pilot to maintain critical AoA during carrier landings).

So it ends up being like running a significantly different aircraft during one of the most difficult phases of flight (and IMHO one of the most rewarding). If you practice to get good in MSFS, you screw up your DCSW skills, and vice-versa.

What it comes down to is that in v2020, the addon's aerodynamic model (the "shape" of the addon as it interacts with the flight model) is essentially a C172/Piper Arrow, no matter what the 3D model / graphics renders for your eyes.

E.g., the IFT Vari-Eze, a canard home-built, doesn't fly correctly because there is no support for canards in the v2020 FM, and so on. (and it makes me wonder how the pending Black Square Starship is going to handle...).

Throw a twin tail, full stabilator, variable geometry supersonic interceptor at that type of aero modeling, and...well, it could be better 😉

Now, that said, v2024 has reportedly added the ability for the Devs to use the actual plane shape in the flight model, so there is the possibility that complex FMs like the Tomcat's can be made to shine in the new sim.

p.s.: lest anyone think I'm bashing MSFS here, X-Plane didn't get it (close to) right until the latest version, v12. Which is the primary reason they included an F-14 in the new ver - they wanted to show off the significant improvements to the overall Aero Engine.

 

14 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Now, that said, v2024 has reportedly added the ability for the Devs to use the actual plane shape in the flight model, so there is the possibility that complex FMs like the Tomcat's can be made to shine in the new sim.

p.s.: lest anyone think I'm bashing MSFS here, X-Plane didn't get it (close to) right until the latest version, v12. Which is the primary reason they included an F-14 in the new ver - they wanted to show off the significant improvements to the overall Aero Engine.

Yup the 2024 SDK docs app has this tutorial on aircraft geometry and surfaces (though it might have not been updated much for the new 2024 capabilities): https://docs.flightsimulator.com/msfs2024/html/7_Samples_Tutorials/Tutorials/Tuning_The_Flight_Model/Geometry.htm ... Need to read it more carefully one day but at least it appears the flexibility is there to define complex shapes, especially by starting with the visual debugging based on the actual aircraft 3D model

"The flight model for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 relies on the shape of the aircraft to predict its aerodynamic behavior and we have almost entirely dropped the use of multiple tables of data used in legacy simulations. This means that the correct definition of the aircraft's dimension data is of particularly importance to getting it to fly in a realistic and consistent manner, and so on this page we'll be going through the process of setting up the aircraft geometry."
...
"It's worth noting that even if you don't have the exact measurements or values required for the above listed parameters, you can still use the visual debugging to get a very close approximation based on the aircraft model. Simply tweak the values then save and resync until you get the surface sensors in the appropriate position."
...

 

Edited December 7, 20241 yr by lwt1971

From the docs above I couldn't find any details about the possibility to create models with multiple tails, V tails, multiple wings with possible asymmetries and their associated interactions?

I thought this would now be possible in FS2024, to model biplanes or aircraft with 2 or 3 tails like the Constellation.. 

Apparently not yet possible...

Edited December 7, 20241 yr by jcomm