Flying HAS to be more difficult than this!!!!!!!

[LAdamson 240]

>Not a problem! Pick up some speed and do a half loop and >roll out level at the top. You'll be heading back in the >opposite direction....OR....dive her a little and pull her >verticle. Before she runs out of airspeed stomp on the left >rudder. Do this ABOVE stall speed or you'll spin! You will >now be coming almost straight down. Power off and pull out >easy. You'll have made a 180 and be at about the same >altitude you were at when you started. You'll be fine! :) >Don That's what we have visions of, before reality set's in. As the terrain keeps rising.......... we've been bleeding off airspeed in a vain attempt to keep distance above it. Can't put the nose down to pickup airspeed, or we're going to hit the trees. Even a turn may cause us to stall! So now we're barely above stall speed & the terrain is still rising!Bummmer!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where's the power of an F-16 when you need it!In reality, there are numerous ways to try to prevent this scenario. Fly to one side of the canyon, to allow maximum distance for the turn.When you know you need to get out........... slow the airspeed to permit a minimum radious turn. Figure in enough to stay above stall speed in a turn though!When trying to cross a mountain peak without lots of extra altitude, approach from a 45 degree angle, in which just a 90 degree turn will get you away from it, if you can't make it over. L.Adamson

[Guest Richard_H]

This reminds me of probably my most terrifying experience of real world flying. I decided to do a land away at Rochester Airport in Kent, England, and to be frank, didn

[Guest Jayviator]

Ok this topis is years old but i just found it and wanted to say my bit, it can be a game or a simulator depending on how you use it, some of the planes i have downloaded you have to get the engines started up first (my concorde for eg) and the engine start up procedure is actualy quite difficuilt, the amount of people who think you just press a button and the engines spring to life have a bit of a supprise to see there is such a complicated procedure and if you domnt get it right the engines wont start, or you could actualy damage the aircraft, so flying IS easy, try gettinga plane started up from dead then you will see there is more to fs! tehn you have to leant how to use autopilot, beleive it or not, you dont just press the autopilt button and the plane then guesses what you want it to do, you have to tell the autopilot what you want it to do, and theres ILS landings to, sometimes i still make mistakes with that that i cant figure what i did wrong, like i have the correct ILS frequency dialed in and ive hit the localiser and it is bringing me in line for the runway but the glidescope is bringing me down so much that if i let it continue i would crash way before the end of the runway!so i would say it can be as easy, or as realsitic as you want it to be!

[Guest Jimbofly]

Well if my real-life flying is anything to go by then flying is actually easier than it is in the sim - more because in real life you have instant feedback not just visually but in other ways i.e. g-forces etc.I'm sure the same applies to 747s etc - someone who is profficient at both would probably find the real thing easier.Some aircraft in FSX do actually simulate closely what the real aircraft do in terms of flight dynamics but in edge scenarios such as stall etc the flight modelling falls apart a bit.James

[MatthewS 761]

For more difficulty and "realism" just add some 3rd party aircraft such as Level 767 or PMDG 747 or soon to be released Airliner XP.Things have come a long way since 2002!

[Shri 0]

Barry Piloting a flight simulator and flying a real aircraft is exactly the same! You could fly any plane provided you know to fly one aircraft properly, and then learning to fly another will not take much of a time except one has to know where the switches are placed so to get familiar with the plane. The principles of flying are the same whatever the aircraft. However there is one big big difference flying in a simulator and flying a real plane. In a simulator you will never have the fear to die in case of a mistake and so we are courageous to do what we want and most likely we do it correctly and so learn fast. Courage is the most important ingredient in real life and such courage obviously is amply available in a flight simulator and that is why you said

[tfm 169]

I paid for a 2-hour stint in one of BA's full-motion 737 simulators. The scenery was hilariously sparse, no doubt because the computers were built in the 1980s. But I found it much easier to achieve accurate flight (by my standards) than with the FSX version of the 737 (or the Level-D 767 and PMDG 747, which I also own). The dials are all visible, all the time; they are much bigger and more easily legible than when displayed on a PC screen; there is physical feedback from the aeroplane's pitch, bank and yaw; the control yoke and its handy trim switch are much easier to use; and of course the field of vision is far superior.The Level-D 767 and the PMDG 747 are of course excellent. But what they simulate are the various complex controls available in real aeroplanes. Once you have mastered these, they actually simplify the flying process, rather than complicating it. Overall they do not add to the difficulty of flying. For example, if you find it easy to do a VFR landing of the "stock" 747, you will not find it much harder to do the same landing in the PMDG 747.Out of interest, the BA simulator taught me two things relevant to configuring FSX: (i) fluidity in the display is fundamental to the "realism" of the experience - more so, I think, than the level of detail in the graphics. I don't know how many FPS the BA simulator produced but to get the same sense of fluidity in FSX I need about 40fps (which I can only achieve by turning settings right down low). In the end I've ended up with a compromise because I'm a sucker for the pretty graphics on the small screen. But try setting FSX up for maximum performance and have a go at a VFR landing: you might be surprised how much more quickly the ground seems to come up, even though your rate of descent is the same and the only thing that's changed is the framerates; and (ii) the controls are very sensitive. Setting large "nul" zones or turning down the sensitivity of the yoke is not realistic.Tim

[Murmur 3,944]

>(i) fluidity in the display is fundamental to the "realism" of>the experience - more so, I think, than the level of detail in>the graphics.You can say that again!Marco