In a recent discussion about the best bush plane, a few of us were commenting on the "lively" nature of the SWS Kodiak. Some love it. I feel it's too much on a knife edge. So I thought I would try to tame it a bit. I consulted Google Gemini and came up with some modifications that seem to make it a lot more stable and especially less likely to bounce like a beach ball on landing.

I'd love to hear from others who have the Kodiak and find it a bit unstable... try these settings and let me know what you think.

Here are the changes I made to the flight model... (comments in parenthesis from Google Gemini)

In the [FLIGHT TUNING] section...

Added these to address the Bounce:

• bump_absorption_factor = 1.8 (Forces the landing gear and tire physics to compress deeply and absorb high-impact forces)

• rebound_damping_factor = 2.0 (Acts like heavy hydraulic fluid in the shock absorber struts, slowing down the suspension rebound so the plane cannot kick itself back into the air)

Changed these to make it a bit easier to fly:

• pitch_stability = 1.0 (Increased from 0.25 to heavily damp nose pitch up/down over rough terrain)

• roll_stability = 1.2 (Increased from 0.25 to stop the wings from acting like a nervous knife-edge)

• yaw_stability = 1.2 (Increased from 0.25 to calm the notorious P-factor "tail-wagging" on approach)

• elevator_effectiveness = 0.85 (Increased from 0.8 Tuned to give you smooth, positive nose control)

• aileron_effectiveness = 0.75 (Increased from 0.6 Tuned to allow responsive banking while stopping cleanly when you center your stick)

• rudder_effectiveness = 0.40 (Increased from 0.3 Tuned to keep the tail responsive for tight turns on backcountry approaches)

The file you are looking for is... flight_model.cfg (a text file you can edit in your text editor of choice)

It's located in... sws-aircraft-kodiak-wheels\SimObjects\Airplanes\SWS_Kodiak_100\common\config\

BTW, there is nothing preventing you from adding similar values to the 2020 Kodiak, when used in 2024.

The one thing to avoid, I find, is to plant the nose wheel on the ground before the mains... that totally throws off the airplane and bounces it back into the air... As long as the main gear is first to touch down, the airplane behaves predictably.

Very happy with the flight model as is. No bouncing here.

I did some testing with the fully loaded Kodiak on sloped grass strips after reading about your issues with bouncing in the other thread. I didn't have any bouncing issues with the regular tires with multiple landings at different small strips, and not all of those landings were pretty. If you want to dumb-down the flight model no one can stop you, but I'm guessing your issues are related to improper technique.

The numbers aren't in the manual, but check the pics of this flightsim.to addon for the Kodiak's landing speed chart. If you're bouncing, you are probably coming in too fast... my fully loaded landings were 70-75kts over the fence.

@Virtual-Chris 🙏,

thanks a BUNCH ! for sharing your experience with Gemini.

It's the kind of stuff I used to do a lot in the past, both in MSFS and XP, but practically don't even think about these days...

But the suggestions your got from Gemini all make sense and might well make the Kodiak feel way better, just as many other aircraft in MSFS.

I would love to find one that might bring back the feel of inertia while taxiing in any airliner in MSFS. Overall I love the experience with MSFS 2024, but the way ground physics work still leaves a lot for me to desire. I am going to query gemini and Copilot about it, and will report back if I find something worth the mentioning.

OFC I will only be able to edit addons that aren't default, because of the limitations imposed by CFG file editing in MSFS :-/ but I will surely try it with one of my preferred airliner addons - the iFly 737 MAX !

🙏

26 minutes ago, Funky D said:

I did some testing with the fully loaded Kodiak on sloped grass strips after reading about your issues with bouncing in the other thread. I didn't have any bouncing issues with the regular tires with multiple landings at different small strips, and not all of those landings were pretty. If you want to dumb-down the flight model no one can stop you, but I'm guessing your issues are related to improper technique.

The numbers aren't in the manual, but check the pics of this flightsim.to addon for the Kodiak's landing speed chart. If you're bouncing, you are probably coming in too fast... my fully loaded landings were 70-75kts over the fence.

It could very well be a skill issue. It might also have to do with the Tundra tires. At any rate, this adjustment has breathed some new life into the Kodiak for me as I had given up on it in favor of the Caravan which is much easier to work with.

I hope it goes without saying that if you’re happy with the Kodiak, this is not for you, and you can ignore it. I’ve shared this in case anyone else feels like I do.

Edited Monday at 06:45 AM4 days by Virtual-Chris

Back for the 2020 Kodiak, Canadian Cpt Mustache had a flight model mod for it that did wonders. I was highly disappointed with the flight model and performance after buying the airplane, but the CCM mod made it... Actually feel something like an airplane. I enjoyed it then, until picking up the Blackbird Porter - no looking back after that. But, if the CCM mod is still out there, might be worth looking up. (I have no idea if the 2024 version needs to be modded, but the 2020 version very definitely did.)

Will look into it this CCM Mod or values. I had a simular experience at high canyon altitude . Anyone have passenger in the cabin who can share how? Any file to Edit? It works in the Comanche and CitationX.

Michael Moe

Edited Monday at 08:47 AM4 days by Michael Moe

8 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Back for the 2020 Kodiak, Canadian Cpt Mustache had a flight model mod for it that did wonders. I was highly disappointed with the flight model and performance after buying the airplane, but the CCM mod made it... Actually feel something like an airplane. I enjoyed it then, until picking up the Blackbird Porter - no looking back after that. But, if the CCM mod is still out there, might be worth looking up. (I have no idea if the 2024 version needs to be modded, but the 2020 version very definitely did.)

I tried that on the 2020 plane and if I recall it was primarily addressing the excess drag SWS had modelled on the prop and flaps which did help overcome the issues on final that require excessive torque to overcome. It seems that SWS tuned this in the 2024 version of the plane so it’s not so much an issue. But the excessive bounce tendency on the Tundra tires is still a problem and Cpt Mustache never tackled that as far as I know.

10 hours ago, jcomm said:

@Virtual-Chris 🙏,

thanks a BUNCH ! for sharing your experience with Gemini.

It's the kind of stuff I used to do a lot in the past, both in MSFS and XP, but practically don't even think about these days...

But the suggestions your got from Gemini all make sense and might well make the Kodiak feel way better, just as many other aircraft in MSFS.

I would love to find one that might bring back the feel of inertia while taxiing in any airliner in MSFS. Overall I love the experience with MSFS 2024, but the way ground physics work still leaves a lot for me to desire. I am going to query gemini and Copilot about it, and will report back if I find something worth the mentioning.

OFC I will only be able to edit addons that aren't default, because of the limitations imposed by CFG file editing in MSFS :-/ but I will surely try it with one of my preferred airliner addons - the iFly 737 MAX !

🙏

Claude is generally better for anything code (because more coders use it).

For best results, feed the .cfg files to it first, tell it not to guess, tell it to only use data for/from the relevant aircraft, and make it cite its sources and substantiate its recommendations. Yes, I’m serious 😁

Gemini was heading in more of a semantic/philosophical direction last I checked.

Copilot is good, but trending more towards the mechanics of business and language than code.

Just my 2cts and not worth more than what you paid me for it. 😁🤙

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Claude is generally better for anything code (because more coders use it).

For best results, feed the .cfg files to it first, tell it not to guess, tell it to only use data for/from the relevant aircraft, and make it cite its sources and substantiate its recommendations. Yes, I’m serious 😁

Gemini was heading in more of a semantic/philosophical direction last I checked.

Copilot is good, but trending more towards the mechanics of business and language than code.

Just my 2cts and not worth more than what you paid me for it. 😁🤙

I don’t use Claude as I’m not a coder but as a gamer, I use Google Gemini a lot for help optimizing and modding my games. It’s great at analyzing INI files and drawing on a wealth of info from forums, YT, and Reddit to help quickly optimize things that would otherwise take a lot of personal searching and digging. Yesterday, in addition to helping me adjust this flight model, it also helped me map several controls in AAO. I view it as sort of a super aggregator of knowledge and expertise I could find by doing a ton of searching on my own. So it’s a huge time saver in some cases.

Edited Monday at 06:53 PM4 days by Virtual-Chris

3 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I don’t use Claude as I’m not a coder but as a gamer, I use Google Gemini a lot for help optimizing and modding my games. It’s great at analyzing INI files and drawing on a wealth of info from forums, YT, and Reddit to help quickly optimize things that would otherwise take a lot of personal searching and digging. I view it as sort of a super aggregator of knowledge and expertise I could find by doing a ton of searching on my own. So it’s a huge time saver in some cases.

Oh, yes - I didn’t mean to imply that Gemini is bad.

Just that I use a handful of the AI’s for various things.

And for work, which is IT and related dev, I generally get the most accurate/usable results from Claude. And even then, it still “hallucinates”.🤣