Alec

This has ran it's course. If anyone care, if I ever make any further analysis on the final MSFS2024, I will be posting that on the Official MSFS2024 forums. Best wishes to all

Personally, I have yet to see a company other than A2A Simulation, that achieved a result as good as they does with their planes, in terms of extracting themselves the data from real flight, and translating that into the Sim. Asobo with their infinite wealth and resource to do anything they could dream of, doesnt even come close in my opinion. Doesn't mean I think A2A Is the best FlightModel for FlightSim ever, but the way they do it, by flying themselves the planes and capturing every detail that gets into their simulation, I think they are at a whole another level.

"damped frequency is dependent on damping ratio as well as the undamped natural frequency." Of course MSFS2024 dampens faster than MSFS2020, the frequency is twice as fast! You are proving nothing here. At no point did I mention anything about the Short Period Dampening, the frequency of the short period mode is so fast, I didnt even bother to go further and measure in MSFS2024 compared to MSFS2020. It is not important to measure the frequency you say, I am missing the point? Strangely, the U.S. NAVAL TEST PILOT SCHOOL - FLIGHT TEST MANUAL - FIXED WING STABILITY AND CONTROL - Theory and Flight Test Techniques doesnt seem to agree with that affirmation. Hmmm that does remind me of some of the complains about the Flight Model in certain MSFS planes, doesn't it?

He has no idea what he is talking about, it is an incomprehensive pile of nothing after he got angry that I showed him he was wrong, and even starts to get personal trying to make me feel like I am a fool for doing this. Well, Two aero engineers friends of mine took at look at this post, and they all confirmed his words has nothing to do with anything that has been talked about in here, and has nothing in there remotely close to a sound racionale. And I am the one who will look like a fool... The Half Cycle I am measuring is the time between the highest and lowest point of the curve in the same cycle. A Full cycle is would be from the highest point to the next highest point. So I am measuring how fast the oscillations are in the short period mode, meaning, how quickly the nose reacts when you use elevator. In MSFS2024, it is clearly observed that this happens much faster than in MSFS2020. My timing estimation put almost twice as fast. This could be down to changes in several areas of the Core Sim, if both planes have the same identical FlightModel.cfg files shared, or if not, could be by tweaks in the stability attributes, control power, even CG changes could affect a bit. My main point here is that I dont see any improvement so far. I can't say it won't happen, or look inside at what is actually going on internally, but I was looking forward some significant improvement after all the enhancements teased for the MSFS2024 Aerodynamics, and to me it feels just the same, or slighly worse due to the above reasons. But you can't unfortunately show any data in here that makes mst people think it's not the greatest evolution since sliced bread, they will instantly go to their confort thinking that a pilot says it feels great, and that is it, must be great then. Luckly for all of us, Real Airplanes manufacturers dont design their planes based on feeling, this only happens when the project is almost ready to ship to the customers. Also, the great addons that everyone praises as realistic also have had very serious process of gathering data, calculations, estimation of values based on known concepts, but this also is completely ignored. But still I spot some users who like me doesn't take the pill and believe it is all great and sunshine, and have interest to understand why it maybe something doesn't feel right, when everyone says it should be. And go looking for answers. I am happily doing this and will continue to do so for such users that want to base their opinions on data and not on feeling.

I have no idea what you are talking about. What is meaningless is your description of mistakes I made, which I have no idea what you are coming with that. Makes completely no sense to me sorry. I am done with this discussion, I have proven your point, and how you say 150ms is fooling myself. haha nice strategy when you post your own proof that I show how proves my point. Sure OK I will return in November when I can plot my graphs, and as always, I will show what I mean only to have people come and say how the feeling is great and I must be wrong. Got used to that, I was an Alpha for MSFS2020 and heard a lot of that, already used to it.

I never said anything about Pitch Oscillations. I said: " the twichyness is much more noticeable. This makes a considerable impact on the flying qualities of the planes. " My mention of oscillations was in the directional testing. I dont know where you are getting this talk about me having wrong expectations, as I made my points perfectly clear on what I was looking for and what I experienced in MSFS2020 vs MSFS2024 "So, I did some Flight Testing Maneuvers that are used in real life to determine Airplanes Stability, such as Fast Kick of the Rudder, and Fast Elevator Impulse, and immediately release all controls to neutral, to determine not only the amplitude of the movement, but most importantly the frequency between cycles and how much does it take to dampen the oscillations back to equilibrium. I did so in the only planes I could, XCub and Cessna 172." So, I just proved my point above, and I dont really see what you are going on about me having wrong expectations

It is not out of complete luck that I did the exact same methodology for testing short period response than your articles linked do. These "nonscientific buzzwords" you mention is explained in one of my first posts, I dont like to use scientific name dropping to make points that are gonna leave many in the dark. when those same words can be easily translated to terms we can all relate to, pilots, aero engineers or just simmers. Now, you have very useful valuable data in there, about the C172. Thanks for bringing that into this discussion of ours. I have taken the time to go 0.25x timerate and logging the times of hitting the High and Low points of each Cycle Amplitudea after each Elevator Impulse. This took some time, but with your data I felt it was worth doing. Here are the raw data and my Half Cycle Time calculation between High and Low point of the Period: The Original Timecode is in Minute:Seconds:Frames format, and have to be converted from 60fps into milliseconds, which is a hardwork I have already done for all 😉 MSFS2020 Cycle one Low - 1:17:47 High - 1:18:19 Neutral - 1:18:59 HalfCycle Time Period: 534 milliseconds --------------------------------------- Cycle two Low - 1:20:23 High - 1:21:04 Neutral - 1:21:34 HalfCycle Time Period: 684 milliseconds ------------------------------------------- Cycle Three High - 1:22:56 Low - 1:23:29 Neutral - 1:24:04 Half Cycle Time : 550 milliseconds ========================================== Now MSFS2024 Cycle One Low - 1:54:44 High - 1:55:10 Half Cycle Time: 434 milliseconds ----------------------------------------------------- Cycle Two High - 1:56:21 Low - 1:56:43 Neutral - 1:57:14 Half Cycle Time: 367 milliseconds ------------------------------------------------------------ Cycle Three Low - 1:58:26 High - 1:58:53 Half Cycle Time: 450 milliseconds Now lets analyse your Real Life Graph of what the Half Cycle should be: You have just proved my point. The Real Life C172 Frequency Between High and Low points of the Cycle match very MSFS2020, and the trend is clearly showing it is too fast in MSFS2024. That would be what I continue to call Rubber Band Feeling, as I still dont see any point into using Engineering terms into this discussion while we can perfectly get understood in a way everyone could follow. Thanks for that data! Really helped my point to show more clear than I could have alone 🙂

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 As my great friend Jcomm mentioned, I used to own a pilot license, but it has been 8 years now without flying for real. Unlike Jcomm, who has been currently flying Gliders for over 40 years!! The Cessna 172 is one Cessna variation I have very little flying hours, only 4. Did for part of the IFR. I have more on the C152, over 40. And most of the rest of my Pilot Course has been done on Pipers, love them. Being less stable than Cessna, they felt much better to hand fly to me.

I wanted to believe Asobo would specially care on giving us a sample of hope that they are doing the necessary thing to make the FlightModel better, after so many years of criticism in this area from the community. This would come in their Default planes, of course, they can't do otherwise. That is my thinking, if I want the community to know the necessary improvements have been make, I will show them some signs of that. In Ground Handling, it's there, definitely improved. Kudos to Asobo. In Flight, all I can say for sure is that I found no improvement at all. Is it worse? I can't say, my limited test as mentioned by others is very limited in precise data. My feeling is that it is worse specially in Pitch behavior, but I dont want to write any conclusion based on feeling, as this is exactly the main reason I believe for the bad state of aerodynamics in the sim, too much reliance on feel, and not enough hard data to measure how it actually is doing. So, the main reason of the post is to put that in my opinion, in the current state of Tech Alpha, Asobo has failed to deliver the needed improvement based on their default planes. I find it worrying, but of course, in November we will know for sure, and everything can happen until then.

Now with Tech Alpha Closed, I will be waiting for November to finally have access to the full Developer Mode, in which collecting data will be possible, allowing a much deeper analysis of what has changed internally, for good or for worse.

The lack of data to analyse makes this almost impossible to make this comparison, we need to be able to plot the oscillations on a graph. Also I noticed the controls felt more powerful in 2024, so same movement made me feel like I had larger amplitudes of movement, this would also make the oscillations last longer. But what we really care is about the dampening, and how fast they are in each cycle. The Rudder Kick in 2024 vs 2020 is not miles apart, I felt 2024 the C172 has more dampening, as it stops with less oscillations. I should have the C172 data somewhere, as I already did this comparison for Asobo some years back, when I wanted to show them something was wrong with the MSFS2020 FlightModel, I have to find that old post But what I want to focus on really is Pitch, this is where I noticed the worst trend in 2024 vs 2020. Pitch Stability in 2024 is very bad in the Default Planes. I am puzzled how simmers are saying that flying now is improved, with such pitch stability in default planes. It clearly isn't a good experience to handfly when the pitch stability is so overdone like that.

Thank you! Your words are very well written, I Basically have nothing else to add to that The whole thinking behind "Devs will do better" have to consider they can only do so much, and Asobo is the one who can really make it possible, or impossible, for a developer not using custom flight model to make a good simulation. All Devs get are scalars that "massage" the output. but that can only go so far.

Hmmmm. There are subject aspects of Flight Testing. Sure. You cant quantify in numbers certain aspects, only an experienced pilot can put into words what is felt, in a way no mathematician ever could. But... There are other aspects that aren't open to subjectivity. My test is such. This is done on real Flight Testing Sessions to determine the Stability Derivatives of a plane, and this is not open to any subjectivity. Doesnt matter what my controls are, what matters is what the airplane is doing aerodynamically. You can easily notice how faster after a quick Elevator Input the Cessna 172 returns to steady compaerd to MSFS2020. This would happen with any controller, with a keyboard, gamepad, etc. it is not influenced by any controller. That is why its important to return control quickly to neutral after the input, you remove any pilot interference, only the Physics are acting on the airplane. BTW I have a VKB Sim GunFighter Base, but this really doesnt matter as I mentioned above, what matters is what happened after my controls are back to neutral. This could have been a Wind Gust instead of my Controls Moving, and the reaction would have been the same.

Thank you for the feedback so far! I am no Aeronautical Engineer, far from it, but after many years of interest regarding aerodynamics , I find complex formulas and concepts can be translated to much simple terms that anyone can understand, and thats how I always try to learn about these subjects, translate them to a way my brain can understand! About my Controls, I ALWAYS set them up the same way in any sim. Linear 1:1 Correlation. No Curves, No Added Lag, Sensitivity, so what I get in Sim is a perfect translation of what I am doing with my controls

Got access to the Tech Alpha 2024 as did everyone else, and the first thing I went on to test is of course the Flight Model. Personally MFS2020 has such good Visuals I would never consider switching to 2024 because of that. But FlightModel has always been the known weak point of FS2020. I read reports of improvement of Flight Feeling from several users, and I questioned why I didn't notice these improvements, to me the sim feels just as MSFS2020 does in the air. Ground Handling is a whole other topic ,this I can confirm is a major improvement over the very very bad MSFS2020 Ground Physics. So, I did some Flight Testing Maneuvers that are used in real life to determine Airplanes Stability, such as Fast Kick of the Rudder, and Fast Elevator Impulse, and immediately release all controls to neutral, to determine not only the amplitude of the movement, but most importantly the frequency between cycles and how much does it take to dampen the oscillations back to equilibrium. I did so in the only planes I could, XCub and Cessna 172. To my surprise, my findings are not what I expected. I don't have data to compare precisely, since MSFS2024 still isnt allowing Dev Mode to extract data, but visually, MSFS2024 seems to have more directional (Yawing / Rudder) stablity than MSFS2020 in both planes. That is what we would mention in an informal conversation as "twitchyness", the rubber band feeling of applying a control and the airplane going back to equilibrium. If this is too fast, and dampens in too little oscillations, we have this overestimated stability that makes planes not too much of a pleasure to fly, as it is constantly reacting back to our controls like a fast spring. Longitudinal Stability is much worse. This has been a big surprise to me, but MSFS2024 has much greater Longitudinal Stability in both planes, the twichyness is much more noticeable. This makes a considerable impact on the flying qualities of the planes. Of course, this is still Tech Alpha, and things can change, but I am doing my comparison with what Asobo is giving us, and based on this limited exposure to the new Sim, in terms of Flight Model Behavior in the Air, I have to say I see a trend in the wrong direction here. The Feeling of Flight of small Prop Planes that are included in the MSFS2024 Alpha has been a downgrade from what we have currently in MSFS2020 in my point of view. I expect the first argument to be said is that "Modders and 3rd Party Developers Will do much better than default planes" but this is not the point, the point is that I find it worrying to have inferior quality of flight behavior in planes that exists in FS2020 and has been mentioned as improved in several areas for MSFS2024. Of course, only in November we will know for sure. I definitely hope this can get improvements until launch!

Yeah Marco, Thats the same doc I sent Jose. Really good. Says the DC3 really needed some strong legs to keep coordinated. I am curious how these DC3 addons compare to the real data now.

Not making a criticize of X-plane or the addons involved. But if you are looking for a convertion to flying the real 747, look no further than PSX 747-400 Sim. It's just perfect for the objetive you need the Sim for. Just the most accurace representation of a 747 in a Simulator.

Wow!! Finally good mesh for Brazil in X-PLane! Thank you so much, will check that for sure! I'm curious which source you are using. Is it the latest SRTM?

Pete, The terms may be the same, but what I was trying to say is that even though you can get the frames to be as even as possible, ex. no stutter at 20fps, having the same sim running at 60fps does a lot for the sense of fluidity for the human brain. I Mean fluid because I remember water, it's continous, it doesn't go in small chunks, and the same with the sim at 60fps, it has enough data all the time so the eyes don't perceive any jump in the image, it's just a fluid simulation all the time. About the eye not able to see over 24fps, that's such a myth. The newer VR Glasses such as Oculus Rift has been having a tough job to make proper 3d because we need more than 60Hz all the times in order for out brain not to perceive the screen, and therefore not get ourselves dizzy by using it for longer periods of time. I believe around 75Hz is the sweet spot for humans. Have any of you guys seen the Hobbit movie on cinemas running at 48Fps instead of 24fps? It's such a monster difference, it made me MUCH more impressed than any 3d technology. Really

I really can't imagine not being able to see the difference between 20 and 60 fps. Even though 20fps is way smoother than 60 in Prepar3d, meaning that I don't get Stutter, the fluidity of 60FPS is unbeatable. Unfortunately P3D at 60fps at all times is something no current PC is able to do nowadays

Hey Ed, As a Pilot, I love these training scenarios that we can try at home that will make any pilot cry for help, and if the worse happens, we can restart and try again. Any way of someone without the very expensive sims to get these scenarios to try on their home computers?

Hey! So I bought a GTX960, a card that will run my Sims at least until 2016 and my possible all New PC with Nvidia Pascal and New Intel CPUs, etc. I can run P3D pretty well at 30+ Fps, but I have yet to achieve the dream of a smooth stutter free simming. I just never achieved that with FSX and Prepar3d. It goies well for 3-5 seconds then stutter. I'm in need of techniques to study and fix these! First of all, is there any tool or way to detect a stutter other than by eye alone? I read something about recording your screen and playing it back later, is it effective/ Also, Vsync, etc, I never got to understand the best way to use it in P3D Thanks guys!

I think it~s great for AMD to release new powerful cards, because that forces Nvidia to lower their prices, and release more competitive products. But for simming, Nvidia all the way!

I wanted to know more about the Flight Dynamics modification. What can we expect to see better compared to X-Plane current Flight Model? Very interested in this project! Thanks!

Thank you Tom, for all these years bringing us aviation and simulation lovers the best place to meet and chat. I really hope you find beautiful clear blue skies!