I think all these videos of streamers should be taken as what they are: opinions / comments. Don't take them too seriously. On top: all of them are in the end driven by commercial interests (clicks, money, praise, ...). That's not a problem per se, but I guess this should be considered. When streamers are always too negative about products, guess what happens: they won't get them anymore in the future as a pre-release or for free, which takes potential watching hours and followers away from them.

And in general, about pilots: there are very few pilots that are really good at judging how it should handle and work / use data to compare it. Even if these people fly a certain aircraft every day, a lot of stuff is not usually to be tried out in normal operation. So, I got careful about that, it's just not easy to get helpful feedback (it's also not easy for the pilots to do so). There's a reason there are test pilots with specific skills and even, for example, Airbus is doing "blind tests" with pilots to rule out personal feelings and opinions. On top it's not an easy task to compare a real airplane with real hardware to a desktop simulation. This works for pure data driven stuff, failures etc. but not for how a plane "feels" as long as you're not taking objective data into account. There is too much depending on hardware and even perception because an airplane feels completely different even on the desktop in VR or just in 2D.

There are a lot of interesting videos out there where you can learn a lot from but as I said just not overpraise every opinion within them - at least from my point of view.

Edited December 4, 20241 yr by AGuther

9 minutes ago, AGuther said:

And in general, about pilots: there are very few pilots that are really good at judging how it should handle and work / use data to compare it.

Your source?

14 minutes ago, speedyTC said:

Your source?

Personal experience when building a fly-by-wire system.

12 minutes ago, speedyTC said:

Your source?

He's the highly respected guy who has created a great deal of the FBW autopilot and fbw systems.

  I would imagine this involves a great deal of interaction with professional pilots?

 

2 minutes ago, AGuther said:

Personal experience when building a fly-by-wire system.

Have always wanted to ask, and don't meant to take the thread too off-topic, with FBW aircraft like Airbuses, does a pilot get an actual feel for the weight/heft of the aircraft with respect to its overall mass, load, etc? I've heard that hand-flying an A380 can feel not too different from an A320, etc.
 

My reference, as I've posted before, is nowadays a friend who is captain on the 321LR and 320, was also on the 310 fleet years ago, and before that on the L-1011.

For ages he was quite far from being a flight simmer, but due to a small hiatus in his professional life due to an health problem, started giving a try to flight simulators, first with P3D, then XP11, and finally FS 2020. I'm not sure if he has already got the chance to try FS 2024 because he's back to work and probably busy enough to not be able to find slots for simming... but he is still my preferred reference, if not for other reason because he is an extraordinary communicator, with a unique talent to pass to others interested in learning the myriad of details behind operating an airliner nowadays, very useful and well structured information, even during a casual phone call.

He does not have a Youtube Channel, but I and a few other simmers are lucky to join him in Discord, and sometimes in a streamed simulator session OR a recorded cockpit session from one of his RW filghts.

He's very precise/pragmatic/unbiased in the way he classifies the various pros & cons of each simulator platform and aircraft model. For instance, he rates FSLabs in P3D ahead of both Toliss or Fenix and having invested a lot in that platform and in some really good Airbus hardware for his "home cockpit", he knows more about details of configuration and optimal settings for each of the simulators than I do, with more than 30 yrs playing this type of games...

I am sure he's going to give this upcoming FSLabs offer for FS 2020 a fair try, and I will suggest him to post his findings here at the AVSIM forums.

BlackBox 711 is another reference for me. I always found his youtubes, comments and evaluation of each platform and aircraft he streams very well structured, unbiased and informative.

Of course I will purchase the FSLabs day one, unless I am in Porta Land at release date 🙂

Me Loves FSLabs, and me loves FS 2024 even if me doesn't "Loves" some aspects of MSFS flight dynamics and me will keep raising bugs/ limitations and deficiencies, but certain of MSFS 2024 being BY FAR THE BEST CIVIL FLIGHT SIMULATOR EVER! 😋and FSLabs and FENIX together a UNIQUE chance to profit even more from all that we can get from this amazing platform.

P.S.: Just noticed today I've already used the sentence "I Love..." more than I usually do during the full period of 1 yr !!! and that's because I took the day off just for MSFS 2024 trials and configurations and tests ...

 

Edited December 4, 20241 yr by jcomm

34 minutes ago, AGuther said:

I think all these videos of streamers should be taken as what they are: opinions / comments. Don't take them too seriously. On top: all of them are in the end driven by commercial interests (clicks, money, praise, ...). That's not a problem per se, but I guess this should be considered. When streamers are always too negative about products, guess what happens: they won't get them anymore in the future as a pre-release or for free, which takes potential watching hours and followers away from them.

And in general, about pilots: there are very few pilots that are really good at judging how it should handle and work / use data to compare it. Even if these people fly a certain aircraft every day, a lot of stuff is not usually to be tried out in normal operation. So, I got careful about that, it's just not easy to get helpful feedback. There's a reason there are test pilots with specific skills and even, for example, Airbus is doing "blind tests" with pilots to rule out personal feelings and opinions. On top it's not an easy task to compare a real airplane with real hardware to a desktop simulation. This works for pure data driven stuff, failures etc. but not for how a plane "feels" as long as you're not taking objective data into account. There is too much depending on hardware and even perception because an airplane feels completely different even on the desktop in VR or just in 2D.

There are a lot of interesting videos out there where you can learn a lot from but as I said just not overpraise every opinion within them - at least from my point of view.

100%!

And I'd recommend reading that post to all those who tend to regard whatever they see on youtube as gospel.

6 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Have always wanted to ask, and don't meant to take the thread too off-topic, with FBW aircraft like Airbuses, does a pilot get an actual feel for the weight/heft of the aircraft with respect to its overall mass, load, etc? I've heard that hand-flying an A380 can feel not too different from an A320, etc.
 

Well pilots say that between different Airbus aircraft there is a different feeling. For example, A320, A330 and A340 or the newer A350 and A380.

What I can say from personal experience with certified flight simulators is that the A380 indeed feels a lot like the A320. Only in roll there is a slightly increased inertia when you initiate a turn that you can sense, but it's not large. Other than that, the A380 seems to fly surprisingly agile. On the grounds it's a different story obviously - this plane was made to be in the air 🥰

Edited December 4, 20241 yr by AGuther

In general yes obviously one can't just go by one or two IRL pilots opinions but if there is a coalescing of opinions (or majority) from multiple IRL pilots on an aircraft's FM or sim's FDE then I'm always going to place far more value on that than simmers on these forums who either tend to shill for specific sims or devs or tend to always push a certain narrative against specific sims or devs 🤷‍♂️

As for going by the numbers/data and measurements of in FMs vs IRL, Fenix's recent blog was a great read and gave deep insights into their FM: https://fenixsim.com/blog/entries/2024-11-15_fenix_a32x_by_the_numbers/  ... And similarly Seb spoke about their new scientific approach by purchasing various instruments to measure various data with IRL aircraft in-flight. They measured accelerations, rotations, forces on yoke, airspeed around the aircraft, etc. Then they fleshed out the FMs for each aircraft based on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyNi-Ic9mXQ&t=93s 

I'm sure FSL in MSFS will also have competent systems and FMs, what remains to be seen at least when it comes to the A321 CEO is how much they stand apart and/or above from the current high fidelity offerings.
 

Edited December 4, 20241 yr by lwt1971

17 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

In general yes obviously one can't just go by one or two IRL pilots opinions but if there is a coalescing of opinions from multiple IRL pilots on an aircraft's FM or sim's FDE then I'm always going to place far more value on that than simmers on these forums who either tend to shill for specific sims or devs or tend to always push a certain narrative against specific sims or devs 🤷‍♂️

As for going by the numbers and data, Fenix's recent blog was a great read and gave deep insights into their FM: https://fenixsim.com/blog/entries/2024-11-15_fenix_a32x_by_the_numbers/  ... And similarly Seb spoke about their new scientific approach by purchasing various instruments to measure various data with IRL aircraft in-flight. They measured accelerations, rotations, forces on yoke, airspeed around the aircraft, etc. Then they fleshed out the FMs for each aircraft based on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyNi-Ic9mXQ&t=93s 

I'm sure FSL in MSFS will also have competent systems and FMs, what remains to be seen at least when it comes to the A321 CEO is how much they stand apart and/or above from the current high fidelity offerings.
 

Yeah these kind of comparisons are more helpful in my opinion and that is also the more easy part to compare when you have the data needed for it. And to be honest I believe both the FSLabs and the Fenix will be quite good in that regard as of today. Also the A32NX is very good in that regard (flight model wise). Missing features don’t tell you how good certain available aspects are.

A comparison that also works well if you follow official procedures when failures happen and what the airplane should do system wise. This is something pilots are regularly trained for in simulators.

As another bad example there is Austin saying in a video that the MSFS flight model is bad because there seems to an Airbus out there that doesn’t implement the normal law protection in bank (I even don’t know which one). Well really? That’s the comparison for the flight model? I mean Austin is very intelligent…he knows it isn’t. But the argument seems to work for a certain group.

Edited December 4, 20241 yr by AGuther

3 hours ago, chapstick said:

Katie is a SME/beta tester for Fenix as well, so your take makes zero sense. 

Oh it's *that* Katie? I'm sorry, I didn't know that. In that case I have no point indeed.

4 hours ago, Lucky38i said:

Not only that but Katie wrote the release variant of the EFB and is an active staff member of the Fenix team.

Hey - to be clear, she is not an active staff member, and hasn't been for more than a year. We've left the staff tags on her as a nod of respect to her work early on with our EFB. 

4 hours ago, AGuther said:

What I can say from personal experience with certified flight simulators is that the A380 indeed feels a lot like the A320. Only in roll there is an increased inertia when you initiate a turn that you can sense, but it's not large.

Weren't they developed to have very similar behaviors? Or am I abusing of Airbus commonality?

8 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

Well the quote already shows a massive bias towards FSL, so not sure, how useful that is. I‘d really like someone like V1Simulations or A330Driver, because they‘ve been massively praising the Fenix, so their opinion would certainly not be biased towards FSL from the start.

That said I don‘t really need anyone to say that the FSL systems are good - I know that already. And I know their limitations in MSFS (no WX radar). And the Fenix is also very good systems wise - a slightly better flare won‘t make me buy the FSL.

I‘d rather like comments about visuals and performance and sounds, because that‘s where FSL has to compete against the Fenix (which is spectacular in visuals and sounds and by now respectable in terms of performance).

Honest question: What is your agenda here with the FSLabs?

Biased towards FSLabs is bad, but biased towards Fenix is great? Is this not a bit wild?

7 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

He's the highly respected guy who has created a great deal of the FBW autopilot and fbw systems.

  I would imagine this involves a great deal of interaction with professional pilots?

 

I stand informed; and I have a huge amount of respect for the FBW team for what they have made available to us. No need for the sarcasm in your question.

All a pilot can do when evaluating the characteristics of a coded aircraft (on a home simulator platform or even the vaunted Level-D sims) is to offer their personal opinion on how an aircraft behaves / feels. They are not coders and have no requirement to understand how coding works and translates in a sim. Something akin to racing drivers giving feedback to their engineers about how their car feels. Some are better at it than others but at the end of the day it is the coder(s)/engineers who have to interpret the input from the person who actually flies/drives the things day-in day-out. Some (coders) are better at it than others.

Personally, I would take the word of a pilot on flying characteristics over anyone else. On a particular platform. X-Plane or MSFS.
The accepted view was that X-Plane was the undisputed king with regard to flight physics/dynamics. V1's latest comparison between the (best) Buses on the two platforms seems to have thrown a spanner in that. It will be extremely interesting to see how the current (MSFS2020) buses translate to in 2024 and whether that perceived superiority of 2024 (as posited by V1) will be taken advantage of by the guys creating the FBWs, the Fenixs and the FSLs for MSFS.

Edit: Having said all that I'm just an old geezer having a wonderful time in the sim doing what he could never do IRL.

Edited December 4, 20241 yr by speedyTC