Runway slopes and takeoff performance

[Guest andywilby]

Andy here again with reply to Jeff and others,

[Geofa 108]

"Where are we with higher altitude t/offs on baking hot days for example? (This maybe getting a bit out of control here -!!- but I trust you are getting the sense behind the words.)"Ok-I'll take you up.I took the Fs Baron to Evanston, Wy. (an airport I flew out of for real and experienced the effects of high density altitude-especially when my landing gear failed to retract on takeoff). Evanston is approx 7300 ' altitude and I set a temp of 70 f (21 C) degrees.Gave it full power and saw I was getting 20" of manifold. Took out my real Baron perf. charts and saw at that altitude I should be getting.... 20" manifold (vs. 26-27" at sea level).On the takeoff roll noticed the airspeed coming up much slower than at a sea level airport-very lethargic. Took a great deal of runway to get to 90 kts. liftoff speed-much more than at sea level-used a good deal of the runway. Then I consulted my takeoff charts and found-it was pretty accurate where this event occured.Then upped the temp to 90 F (32 C). Didn't reach 90 knts. till the end of the runway-too late for takeoff.Seems a fairly accurate simulation of high altitude/temp takeoffs.Your discussion does bring up the continual discussion of what is "serious" though. For me the entire Fs series has never been "serious" till recently as for most of the 1990's it seemed primarily for those who wanted to fly commercial jets thru ice cube looking clouds and vector terrain scenery, and thus struck me as gamelike."Serious" GA simmers like me gravitated to Pro Pilot and Fly where realistic instrumentation, clouds, aircraft models, and geographic environment was depicted. We didn't call this "eye candy" then but greater reality.I still remember a simmer at that time stating that he didn't need a "rock and soil" simulator (addressing Pro Pilot) but a "serious" simulator like MSFS. Of course now-that rock simulating is standard for all flight sims. Eye candy-or just greater reality? For me even today-flying a jet aircraft in FS which I personally never expect to fly in reality makes the sim gamelike, as I have no way to judge if it is realistic; and no training to fly it in a realistic fashion-therefore I stay away from this type of simming.I'll be the first to admit that Fsx improved the GA experience greatly for one of the first times in the Fs series I can remember-and I've been doing this since 1981. The downside of course is those whose interest was flying commercial airlines have been disapointed. I am glad for once my area of reality was addressed.. :-)If FS neglects GA in FS11 I'll probably pass on it -and stay with fsx, much like many have decided to stay with fs9 when their interests were not addressed.It would be nice if we had more options to pursue our own reality and seriousness like we did in the 1990's but that is just not the case anymore.GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[michal 44]

>Has MS had a tendancy to focus on the pretties>without concentrating as hard on more subtle differences that>effect flight? I rather have MS to focus on flight - 99% of the time the aircraft is actually off the ground so in my opinion any improvement in friction, wet runways, sloped runways add little to overall simulation. We still don't have viable weather like fog effects, turbulence, moisture, icing and even basic visibility to simulate typical IFR scenarios most threatening to a pilot.>Where are we with higher altitude t/offs on>baking hot days for example? Maybe you haven't noticed but this has been working correctly.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

[LAdamson 240]

>As to the OP's question "why not," that's pretty simple to>answer. ACES simply ran out of time to fully convert all the>necessary code to allow for airport runways, taxiways, and>aprons to work with the completely new, "round earth">paradigm.X-Plane tried it, but there are too many floating runways. It's now disabled by default. What it amounts too, is that too many airports will have to be programmed individually.L.Adamson

[Guest jshyluk]

Thinking back, I do recall that there was an add-on a few months ago that added more "realism" to aircraft braking. I wish I could remember its name, though. I do recall that it needs a registered, paid-for copy of FSUIPC to work, as FSUIPC has weather controls that are more finely tuned to aircraft performance specs than the default FSX.As a Reviewer, I have hardly any practical experience with the physics of flight, other than to have coffee (not mine) spilled on one of my better suits during a turbulent ride. My expertise is animation and, well, computerized eye candy. Still, that doesn't stop me from looking stuff up and it's easy to find experts to consult with in e-mail. ACES has divided flight-simmers into three broad categories: gamers, explorers, and hard-core users. I think that's perhaps something of an oversimplification, but it will do. On AVSIM, we see more of the latter, I think, than anything else. These hard-core users will have accurate and up-to-date flight manuals and engineering texts for their favourite aircraft. The other day, I found myself able to find the correct ILS frequency for a runway in Frankfurt. If that doesn't win some kind of bar bet in an airplanespotter pub, I don't know what would. Of course, that doesn't even hold a candle to the free-for-all of angry Interent come-uppery you can find on, say, an IL-2 forum, where you can spend weeks reading Russian technical charts and delve into the intricacies of German WWII-era superchargers. So, there are experts in everything on the Internet, whether you want to hear from them or not.Despite being really complicated, I personally feel that the goal of the aviation engineer is to create a cockpit environment where the pilot can work intuitively. Yes, there's a million little numbers on the dashboard, but there's also an implicit order to things. If the needles point to green, and the ball has blue on the top and brown on the bottom, you're probably okay. So under all of that technical sophistication, I think that most folks would be able to discover through intuition that for instance a sim aircraft's brakes are underpowered (or overpowered). Something like being able to park a 737 on an aircraft carrier would be a clue (not that I've tried that, but I do remember a thread about landing an empty 737 on a very short runway. I believe that the end consensus was that the brakes and reverse thrust worked to published specs, but that tire friction was too high. However, I believe FSX needs a high tire friction to keep the aircraft from skidding when you start the engines.) That's not taking into account real world tragedies where the pilots make errors in judgement regarding brake power. Even the experts can be fooled. This is a rambling topic, but I think it's very interesting. Jeff ShylukAssistant Managing EditorSenior Staff ReviwerAVSIM