I've been flying liners recently so I've not paid much attention but now that I'm in GA period, I notice that turbulence is way too high in the default sim. Which is confirmed in a few threads I have read.

So I dialed back the level of turbulence to LOW (instead of Realistic).

I have Active Sky but I've not changed anything for now.

And finally I am considering Real Turb which I've heard of a couple of years ago. But when I go to simMarket, there are many Real Turb. Apparently the "original" one but also clones... and even sceneries?

Can you please advise?

My understanding is that Real Turb only adds clear air turbulence. I may be wrong, but that's my understanding.

For me, mainly flying GA I find realsitic is fine using the weather presets, but as soon as I start using live weather, I have to dial it back to Medium.

I think a lot of it may be system dependent, though a lot of simmers have never flown GA in real life and don't really know how it should feel.

Airliners on the other hand, being a lot heavier are far less affected by turbulence and I wonder if turbulence in the sim is more optimised for airliners than GA.

In real life, you probably wouln't be flying GA in or around thunderstorms - even airliners try to avoid them as much as possible.

Thank for your input. Even in airliners, not especially in thunderstorms, it is not rare that the aircraft is strongly kicked sideway. For GA, you put medium, which tends to confirme the general trend: the defaut "Realistic" setting is too high.

simMarket: Flight Simulation Add-Ons - MSFS, P3D, FSX, XPLANE

simMarket: REALTURB CAT AREAS GLOBAL V2 MSFS

quot RealTurb CAT Areas Global for MSFS v2 quot incorporates a new logic for enroute turbulence CAT compared to the previous version while adding support to terrain and in-cloud turbulence Enroute tur

Have you looked into FsRealistic, for GA planes its really good

I fly pretty much all GA...the biggest thing I fly is the Longitude.

To me...realistic is the choice. Sure, it can seem a bit overdone at some points, but it's usually pretty good. Once I drop to medium, the air everywhere is just WAY too smooth imo. Pretty much zero turbulence. This is with running RealTurb in addtion.

There should really be another setting between Realistic and Medium.

21 minutes ago, FakeWayne said:

...There should really be another setting between Realistic and Medium...

Medium well? 😊

I find whatever setting I stick to, it just varies from day to day anyway (I suppose like it should do), but I do agree, going from medium to realistic seems to be quite a big jump.

21 minutes ago, FakeWayne said:

Duplicate post for some reason.

Edited July 14Jul 14 by bobcat999

1 hour ago, cianpars said:

Airliners on the other hand, being a lot heavier are far less affected by turbulence and I wonder if turbulence in the sim is more optimised for airliners than GA.

This is MSFS in a nutshell. Turbulence shouldn't be optimised for anything it should just exist and aircraft of different types should react to it accordingly when they encounter it.

All these external flight models, ground handling capabilities, turbulence optimisations, etc etc ... is anything in the simulator constant? (you know... like physics).

I practically don't use MSFS 2024 amymore other than for casual glider flying, with which I make use of soaring presets, but I still have RealTurb because it adds interesting effects not only related to CAT, but many other SIGMET-based phenomena as well as terrain effects.

It is compatible with the soaring weather presets and I believe it does a nice job helping to recreate some interesting soaring weather situations.

It can also complement ActiveSky FS.

@Simicro Hi,

I bought RealTurb about 4 months ago and I really recommend it. I would never fly with MSFS turbulence set to anything other than low because it is so so exaggerated and makes flying completely unrealistic (I have 2,400 hours IRL GA). Yes, there can be quite heavy turbulence in real life but it does not feel nor 'look' anything like the jerky movements that MSFS depicts.

I absolutely agree with above that, not just turbulance, but wind effects in general, seem almost entirely 'tuned' for airliners and are just out of place and unrealistic for light aircraft.

So I use MSFS turbulence set to low and then I use RealTurb with the settings at the top of the UI all set to 120. It gives movements that are far more realistic. It's particularly good at depicting turbulence caused by the ground (flying over mountains at relatively low AGL, etc).

The other factor is that it is cheap, and it's set and forget.

The link that @mwe_EDVK provided above is the correct (most up to date) product to buy, for MSFS2024.

Edited July 14Jul 14 by JYW

If you’re looking for more accurate flight physics with weather, you might want to add Xplane12 to your simulator collection. Platform diversity does take more maintenance effort, but the work can be rewarding.

Thank you all for your kind Help. I'll have to make a decision for Real Turb and have a closer look also at FS Realistic.

The way I use it is to set Turbulence to Medium in MSFS, then set all of RealAir's turbulence options (CAT, Enroute, and Terrain) to 50. That gives skys that have some dynamics without the turbulence becoming overly aggressive.

From what I understand, RealAir builds on top of MSFS's native turbulence model rather than replacing it. It enhances what the simulator already generates while also adding its own effects, such as clear-air turbulence.

I'd separate the two problems a bit. FSRealistic is more about camera and cabin effects around the aircraft, while RealTurb is aimed more at air movement and weather effects. If the thing bothering you is the sim feeling too smooth or too jerky between Medium and Realistic, I would start with the turbulence/weather side first and keep FSRealistic as a separate decision.

For light GA like the Comanche or Bonanza, I also find the built-in turbulence setting can be a bit of a blunt instrument. One extra add-on doing the specific job you want is usually better than stacking two effects and then trying to work out which one caused what.