1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

They're all 3 of large, >600 foot long ships caught in very heavy seas 🙂

nimitz class carriers are 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. never tried seas high enough to move them.

The frigates jump around just fine tho, been a while since I tried this:

 

16 hours ago, mSparks said:

nimitz class carriers are 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. never tried seas high enough to move them.

The frigates jump around just fine tho, been a while since I tried this:

 

Yes, the CVNs are monster ships!

The sea tale being referenced was in re a Harrier recovering to a Royal Navy carrier under very difficult conditions (not only stormy, but night time!).

The ships I shared are only a bit shorter than the RN carriers in the story. All of which are quite a bit shorter/smaller than the US Navy SuperCarrier CVNs. 

I'll have to go see how the USS Ford reacts to winds waves in XP...

On Sunday, I was playing around on XP 12 Beta. Real Weather was on, and winds were 20+ kts, gusting to 35(!).

I didn't pay attention to it in terms of sea state as I was mainly focused on checking out the really very good new cloud scapes.

But on a few trips around the Ford, the water was nearly glass smooth (note the mountains reflection in the distance - a very rare sight for any oceanic environment):

Even tho the M346 isn't carrier-capable IRL, in XP you can still do Touch n Go's all day, which is a lot of fun.

The point being, I was down close to the water for awhile, and the Ford was rock steady.

In those conditions we should see at least a few white caps, and the ship would have some noticeable relative movement.

But it was smooth sailing (which is just as well because my Case I practice in this bird was rather poor, anyway 😆).

Its really not a complaint, just an observation of what must be a Far Edge Case (how few pixel pilots really care about stormy carrier recoveries...? Why, we must measure in the dozens!!! 😂).

Edited April 8, 20251 yr by UrgentSiesta

Nothing more to add: https://forums.x-plane.org/forums/topic/330593-can-x-plane-help-in-learning-to-fly-a-real-world-helicopter-lets-find-out/

2 hours ago, uwespeed said:

Nothing more to add: https://forums.x-plane.org/forums/topic/330593-can-x-plane-help-in-learning-to-fly-a-real-world-helicopter-lets-find-out/

Nice! I hope I could do the same one day.

Having said that, I wonder if R22 in Aerofly FS 4, is more suitable for practicing than XP12 one. I heard AFS4 R22 is the closest flight mode wise to the real one, praises by RW R22 pilots.

Just flew it last night, and I can say it's a handful. Very nimble and very direct. A lot of tiny corrections are mandatory during hover, keeps your brain busy. Not saying R44/R66 are much different, but R22 is the hardest and actually a logical choice for a learning tool, beside the (way) lower cost per flight.

I crave for a solid hardware cyclic. I'm tired of opening my VKB Gladiator NXT EVO to take out the springs just to fly a heli, then open it again to put them back for A319 flights. I mean, I did R22 flight in AFS4 with the springs, but hand can get tired quickly constant pushing after few minutes.

When I want a more chilled experience, I load Cowansim R66 in MSFS, with my soundpack of course (R66 Sound Immersion NG), and fly around for a bit. Can't blame MSFS by any means for anything. It delivers great VR experience, and has some great addons, not to mention the scenery and autogen implementation. When I want a realistic experience, to test my abilities, reactions, hover technique, and to generally push myself to be a better virtual heli pilot, I load XP12 or AFS4. Sadly, DCS modules are way to expensive for my taste, considering how often I would fly them. 

Edited May 3, 20251 yr by Pe11e

I own Aefs4, although I no longer have it installed because it occupies a bunch of space, and unfortunately the systems in the type of aircraft that I like to simulate aren't up to the level I would like it to be.

The lack of weather features, or even more of some sort of real world weather, ATC, ... is also a huge limitation for me ...

I did try the helis and honestly I didn't find them better overall than in X-Plane. It also depends maybe on the specific model. Same applies to Xp12 where for instance the VSKYLABS R66 was a big disappointment to me, specially when I kill the engine and before trying to enter autorotation it pitches down so aggressively and unrecoverably that I gave up using the model in Xp...

OTOH I have a few freeware helis from the .Org, as well as the X-Trident Bell 212 and even the Nimbus UH-1H and I really like both.

Then there's DCS World, but once I followed a youtuber who is also a rw heli pilot and he did a really nice and informative evaluation of the Bell 212 in Xp and found it really detailed and close to the real thing -he did have rw experience in both the 212 and the UH-1H !