robert young

This is an interesting subject. In many years of developing flight models, I've come across testers who though very experienced pro pilots on type, get a complete disconnect between flying the real thing and the "feel" of a flight sim. Many tend to concentrate on whether systems, procedures, autopilot and expected outcomes like climb rates, mach numbers and descent profiles etc appear to be correct while not necessarily being critical of plain, simple reaction to control inputs. I think that is often because the limited feel of consumer sim flying controls from a chair lead to a certain forgiveness or allowance for sim hardware. A classic case recently was a commercial pilot who made a youtube video landing the MSFS default Caravan on a short runway and completely messing short finals and the flare to the point where the Caravan crashed. Instead of criticising the default flight model (which has that awful bouncing, pogo stick extreme pitch reaction to the slightest pitch input), she sort of put it down to her own incompetence. She was either unwilling to criticise the flight model or perhaps was being diplomatic and blamed herself. In many years of developing a wide variety of sim aircraft I can recall only three actual pilots out of many who seemed to be able to translate their critical faculties from real world to the consumer sim world, and one of those is not even a commercial pilot (he is a well known member here) but whom I respect because he has an eye for very fine detail when manual aircraft handling is concerned. For that reason I have become quite sceptical about addons that emphasise in their marketing blurb that they were thoroughly tested by pros. A case in point is a beautifully done, popular recent addon which in all respects other than manual flying is superb, but frankly it flies manually like a pig, being a real handful, clumsy, over-sensitive to the slightest input and ungainly in every axis. Larger aircraft tend to be less over sensitive and much easier to model where basic controls are concerned. But smaller aircraft are actually quite difficult to model. Though I love MSFS I don't think the default aircraft, and a lot of addon aircraft, have anywhere near acceptable basic flying characteristics, and that is not so much the sim itself, but very poor tuning of individual flight models. Partly to blame is the very short "throw" of most consumer joysticks which make the situation even worse.

I did addons for just over 20 years so I get what you are saying. It's your choice.

All understood Paul. But all you have to do is say "any tweaks you do are entirely at your own risk and will not be supported".

I don't think it is a "bug". I think it is a long running un-addressed design decision about how friction, wind, ground handling and weather vaning works in this sim. In many other threads I have pointed out the exaggerated tendency of light MSFS aircraft to immediately weather vane even into a mild crosswind as soon as they start a take off run. It is completely unrealistic for a GA aircraft to weather vane so harshly into wind with a tiny amount of crosswind. But it happens in MSFS. Even in large airliners it is very difficult to calibrate ground steering hence the not very convincing ground behaviour of even the best of large jet aircraft currently available. Some devs try to overcome this by having way too sensitive and abrupt ground steering on the take off roll which results in a very inelegant squirming down the runway. For that reason, and also because of pitch control flaws in most GA aircraft, I now never buy any aircraft addons from the Marketplace, because it is impossible to tweak these flaws with encrypted config files. I managed to fix most of these flaws with just one Marketplace aircraft because it was also available on another portal, where the config files were not encrypted.

Hi Paul, Are you going to offer this on a website other than the MS marketplace? I hope so as all the Marketplace aircraft are encrypted by Microsoft. This means that if a user privately wishes to tweak something in the flight model, a/p, or other parameters it is not possible. Congrats on the release. It looks really good.

Again, I think those who are happy with what's there at the moment with statements like "well I just had a smooth as butter flight", that is not my point at all. My point is really one subject. Please Asobo give the end user an OPTION like you do on almost everything else. Thank you.

Here is an example I found today. It didn't take much searching to find it. Missionary Bush pilot on a 26 minute video of a longer flight with 27 degrees C over extremely mountainous conditions and medium wind. Except for the last 500 feet final approach and a very brief crossing barely a couple of hundred feet above a high peak, there was almost no discernable turbulence and nowhere near that "simulated" by MSFS in similar conditions. On another day there might well be much more turbulence but on this particular day very little, in conditions that MSFS would be bound to impose a non-optional bumpy ride. There are many more examples where you might expect turbulence but get very little. This is why it should be an option unless you load up a flight with live weather and the conditions can be relied upon to be truly real. I rest my case!

But you've missed something. The current turbulence effects over-ride any other parameters you set. There are NO Input parameters that allow you to escape from the COMPULSORY turbulence. However you set every other option of weather you cannot over-ride the turbulence. You can set your flight to be at high pressure, low temperature, no clouds, no wind, no convection, but you will STILL get turbulence. If you can set every single other scenario why can you not set turbulence levels? Turbulence is not a steady state or a permanent feature. It occurs when other conditions will provoke it. If you remove those provoking conditions then turbulence should be zero, but it is far worse than that. Whatever conditions you set there is always turbulence. Answering those who say the lack of turbulence is unrealistic, it is also unrealistic to set the vast majority of other user-option parameters for a given flight in MSFS. If you can set the density of clouds for a given simulated flight, or elect to have no clouds/wind at all, then why should you not also not have the opportunity to set turbulence to zero. Why is this such a problem? I go back to my comparison with FSX which had the utterly ludicrous compulsory lights on at dusk and lights out at dawn. This imposed "feature" was stupendously stupid as we all now accept. But it took a while for people to say "hang on", why is this compulsory lights off/on regime imposed? I think the same is happening right now.

The strong reason for having a slider or other option is this: Just say you set up a flight without live-weather. In those conditions you can set the cloud layers and density, the wind and gusts, the amount of sea swell (through wind speed), the haze and temperature conditions, the time of day, pressure, location, type of aircraft, routing, runway choice, altitude and cruising speed. All of these variables are what makes a SIMULATOR. A simulator simulates user constructed conditions in order to train, practice or experience those conditions. It is not "real-world" in this regard. If you want "real-world" conditions you can opt to fly by the book and pretend you are on a scheduled flight and you can set live weather. But the whole point of a simulator is that you can OVER_RIDE all of this. To me it seems blindingly obvious that the amount of turbulence is just another one of these user options just like all of the other ones. As you can already set live-weather if you wish, or set weather conditions as you wish, it seems to me to be ridiculous to not include turbulence as an option. Having an option serves EVERYONE. If you are not going to provide this as an option then you might as well also imposed cloud levels and densities, and some pilots will say "that's fine with me because where I live there is nearly always some cloud". But that's not the point. The whole point is that in a simulator YOU can set the amount of cloud you wish to fly with. Turbulence should be no different from all the other flight set up options. I cannot see how anyone could possibly object to it, whether or not you happen to personally think it feels "normal" to you.

You are not doing anything wrong. If you use reverse as an on-off switch (ie you set it so that there is no gradation of reverse with a movable control) then when you stop full reverse the prop switches to almost full forward while the prop speed winds down to idle or high idle thrust. That's why you get a sudden surge forward. The solution is to try and set a control so the reverse levers are controllable in increments. This is quite difficult to do but possible. Or you could use the mouse to pull the lever gradually back to idle although I am not sure this is possible with twin engine turbo props in MSFS.

There is nothing I can find in any flight_model.cfg file or simobjects files that "switches on" turbulence for that specific aircraft, so it is likely a global decision by Asobo. The larger the aircraft, the less it will be affected by it. As we know in the custom weather menu you can set wind from any direction and the (grossly exaggerated) gusts too. It would take no further work on Asobo's part to provide a slider for turbulence. I get that many here approve of this situation but clearly a significant number of pilots, experienced or not, do not like an imposed parameter, and it most definitely is baked in, though implemented with a fair degree of difference according to position and time of day. To me not giving a simple OPTION is as inexplicably silly as the FSX compulsory lights on at dusk and lights off at dawn. Giving an option on these things harms no-one. You might as well make it compulsory to tie any flight to start at the real-world time the sim detects on your computer when you begin a flight. The strength of any sim partly lies in the flexibility and options it gives and to me and many others the compulsory turbulence is just another not very bright idea. It wouldn't be so bad if the lighter default and addon aircraft are way too light inertia wise (with noble exceptions). If you like this compulsory effect then that's fine. If you don't then who are you harming to make it an option? Someone mentioned that not having it returns the sim to that old chestnut "flying on rails" which to me is a completely daft misunderstanding based on a popular myth. If you remember Asobo made this subject something they were going to overturn in their early publicity. Their solution to this was to create an entirely artificial (so they saw) anti flying-on-rails regime by making many aircraft act like foam constucted rc aircraft which bucked and bobbed at the slightest gust in an entirely implausible manner (see the early videos soon after release). The motion of real aircraft is much more subtle than this, which is why baked in compulsory effects are transparently detectable. So in conclusion, make the darn thing an option then everyone will be served and there'll be no need for arguments on each side. Not doing so is just plain stubborn.

I didn't say I wanted it off permanently. I said I want the OPTION to switch it off to simulate those times in decades of real flying when the air was as smooth as silk.

No, I don't want it taken away. I want it to be an OPTION! Option 1: RANDOM Option 2. OFF Why is that strange?

I left the discussion a while back but on a general note about options, there are a couple of things that might be considered: Almost everything other than an objective view of graphics and scenery in the fine detail design of any simulator, including this one, is based on the judgement or opinion of one or a few people. That's fine providing as much as possible in MSFS should be an option. When I used to fly I would have to drive to the airfield, book in, do ground checks, fuel up, climb in, contact ATC, get a map out or set the gps - you get the picture. But in this or any other sim I can defy reality by simply loading an aircraft on the runway fuelled up and ready for take of, or even cruising at an altitude I wish, or with a pre-set approach. NONE of these things are "real" but they are incredibly useful to a sim pilot because you can use these options to practice any stage of flight. One could say that in the training and even operational world these are the core functions of a simulator to aid learning or set up a given fight experience. Why should the setting of turbulence be any different? The option to set weather almost EXACTLY how you wish is just another one of these options. In that regard it should be treated in the same way as any other options, none of which are "real". If Asobo removed the option to load the sim ready fuelled, or already flying, or at the runway, there would be an outcry. So, setting aside any discussion about whether almost zero turbulence is realistic or not on most days, it is in a way irrelevant. Moreover, aside from setting so-called real weather, random air mass movement is not a "natural" phenomenon in this sim but the opinion of one person or a very small group of people, and implemented in a baked in manner. Sim pilots on the whole do not like baked in effects for obvious reasons: they diminish the ability to set the sim to parameters one prefers. I will say that when a poster above says "there is no such thing as still air", technically that is correct. But there is such a thing as steady air - ie an airflow which is virtually undisturbed. In that case, though a wind is blowing, it can be extremely smooth and is only relevant when taking off or landing or tracking a course. In all other respects it is as though the air was still. In many years of power and glider flying in my part of the world this happened many times. Other times there was extreme turbulence. In a sim, it seems obvious that one must be given the option to set either. I can't see that it is any different to other options which sim pilots expect.

Well I'll bow out of this discussion now, as it is not coming across. I did not say there should be no turbulence. For the last time (!!) I said that in STILL AIR conditions with NO WIND and NO HEAT and NO CONVECTION over FLAT land with FEW trees there shouldn't be any turbulence because there is nothing to generate it. But I keep reading replies ignoring those conditions. I give up 🙂

As you know I respect your views on almost everything sim related. However I am saying (perhaps until I'm blue in the face) that turbulence appears to be switched on with absolutely no regard to totally benign conditions. This is clearly therefore nothing to do with impressive development of sophisticated air mass modelling. Someone at Asobo has flicked a switch. While that switch might have some subtlety, it is still a switch. That's a million miles from detailed weather modelling which is an extremely complex subject way beyond Asobo's current capability.

Yes, but for the umpteenth time I'm not referring to hot days or thermal activity/high wind days. I specifically described baked in turbulence on days which are cool, not hilly and on which there is NO WIND.

Yes, but in MSFS there is now turbulence on calm, cool days (morning or evening) when there is nothing that would provoke it. Thus it must be artificially baked in. So this is not a sophisticated simulation of air mass and circulation. Someone has just created it crudely and globally. It also doesn't seem to be related to time of day. It's wrong. At the very least a slider is needed.

Not true with respect. It is present when wind is disturbed at low or higher altitudes over hills, undulations and trees, or meets frontal air masses colliding with other air masses. But I'm getting turbulence when I take off any GA aircraft over a flat, largely treeless landscape where the wind is set to zero and the temperature is below 10 degrees F and with virtually no sunshine or rising air. It is most definitely BAKED IN. I think we are revisiting the same discussion several updates ago when some but not all were observing this baked in effect. It was not a popular move as far as I can recall. This effect is very predictable. If I take off on a coastal strip then fly over water in the above conditions I get no turbulence. The moment I fly over land even when the conditions are cold and totally benign the turbulence starts. So someone decided to re-code a baked in effect that appears to be global. In benign conditions such as this there should be zero turbulence. Air mass doesn't suddenly bubble up by itself unless 1) There is air flow over hills 2) There is heat 3) there is sufficient wind to disturb air flow passing over trees at low level 4) There is convergence between two air masses. This is precisely the baked in effect that most complained about several months ago and it was removed. Now it is back.

When judging physics one has to discuss which part of the flight behaviour is in question. When developers say "tested by real pilots" this could mean many things. It could mean that climb performance at various altitudes, pressures, temperatures etc and broadly stall speeds at given AoAs, etc etc seem ok. But that leaves out several other vital things mainly connected with handling. Does the aircraft roll, yaw, pitch in authentic ways? To me those three elements are extremely important, because they are intimately connected to handling. You could have a sim aircraft that reaches the book ceiling in the correct time given its fuel and passenger load and power settings, but it could still handle like a pig. How does the aircraft flare, or rotate? Or handle on the ground with nosewheel steering and rudder? At what speed does rudder authority become effective? Can it side slip in a believable way (GA aircraft). Does it drop a wing on stalling. Does it weather vane convincingly or drift in yaw believably. These are all factors that are not connected with what is generally accepted as "performance" yet they are pertinent to overall physics. A given sim aircraft might fly beautifully in manual mode but is flawed under autopilot. Or the reverse. There are so many facets of flight modelling that it is often very difficult to judge. Moreover, if a sim aircraft is "tested" by experienced pilots on type but who are not at all experienced running a given sim, they might lack the knowledge to set up their hardware and sim options to properly judge a given aircraft. In my experience the best testers are those who are experienced on type in the real flying world AND in a given sim. Many real world pilots can be quite forgiving of handling deficiencies because they might assume a sim is incapable of reacting in the proper way to inputs and are eager to allow leeway. That was certainly the case when some of the first few "real pilots" published their initial reviews of MSFS. Many of them ignored the grossly exaggerated response to pitch input of some default aircraft. It's a very complex subject and one to be taken with a pinch of salt unless you are absolutely sure the tester concerned understands with great detail how a given aircraft should respond. I have known many pilots who are thoroughly attuned to how aircraft should behave and most of them are gifted aerobatic pilots flying smaller aircraft whose capabilities they are pushing to limits constantly. The more "procedural" large passenger aircraft become, the more scope there is to pass a sim aircraft as authentic because it seems to perform "by the book" within quite limited parameters. The larger the aircraft, the easier it is to miss some handling flaws because it is assumed almost all flying is within the quite limited scope of take off, climb to cruise, gentle descent and Lnav and Vnav response. In other words the testing is often biased (quite understandably) towards autopilot capabilities. As to being surprised that a 737 can take off heavily loaded on a relatively short runway without flaps and so on, it must be remembered that most passenger aircraft are routinely flown within extremely strict limits. To watch what they are really capable of, one might look back to airshows like Farnborough or equivalents when huge new aircraft whose manufacturers were eager to impress potential buyers would climb at extraordinary rates, roll, pitch, take off and land in breathtakingly impressive ways (and of course they were typically almost empty of fuel and passengers).

What are the most important elements of any sim aircraft? That it flies well manually and under a/p, that it looks decent and its core functions work. While most MSFS default and addons aircraft look good, very few of them in my opinion fly at all well without tweaks. I'm pretty certain that the PMDG 737 will fly extremely well, act very competently under autopilot and will have authentic core functions. To me that is worth the price and over-rides any other consideration. Extras such as integrated simbrief are fun to use but not always. For example I cannot find a way to load up the FBW A320 with passengers unless I start at the gate and use simbrief. Perhaps I have missed something. The most important facet of "immersion" is how an aircraft flies and whether its characteristics are believable, absorbing and have authenticity. Everything else - virtual coffee machines, atm cash dispensers (I wouldn't be surprised one day!), virtual printers, and other peripheral devices, aids and gizmos are nice to have but nothing, nothing is more important than the fundamentals and very few sim aircraft achieve that.

So you are implying that despite MS/Asobo's very early claims that this sim was going to do away with flaws in default aircraft aerodynamics, hinting that MSFS was a perfectly viable sim without any need except optionally to embrace and purchase addon aircraft, that doesn't matter because there are lots of current addons which fill the gaps. While that is partly true there actually are not that many addon aircraft (particularly light aircraft) that fly properly either. Many current addons display exactly the same twitchiness in pitch control as most of the default aircraft, even though they have other qualities which are ok. You are right that these can be ironed out through modding, but there is a problem with this highlighted in the next paragraph If MS hadn't insisted on encrypting every single addon aircraft available in its marketplace that might not matter, as that means others with experience could iron out the flaws with mods. But they are encrypted as are the default premium aircraft in the marketplace. So we have a lot of addon aircraft that in my opinion are impressive in many ways but which do not fly very well. Of course this too is my personal opinion but I know many experienced pilots who are also savvy with sim aircraft who agree with me. This then is the complete opposite of all the publicity generated by Asobo about how they were going to radically improve default aircraft, especially regarding aerodynamics. Actually almost all of the claimed innovations they have come up with were available to a skilled flight modeller well over a decade ago. Moreover I disagree that in current times it is ok to publish a simulator where it is taken for granted that you need large numbers of addon aircraft to make the sim viable. That is absolutely not what MS and Asobo consistently implied when the sim appeared. But it is not just the default aircraft flight models that are the main subject. The constant updates to air mass, turbulence and other air flow related issues are also in the opinion of many not at all correct, and for me the worst of this is the ridiculous over reaction to even a mild cross wind. On larger aircraft this is far less noticeable but on GA aircraft it sticks out like a sore thumb. If there were user options/sliders to adjust these aspects then it would not matter but there are no such controls. When I used to co-produce aircraft, our aim was always to give the user as many options as possible. We even went as far as to give the option of grass/concrete tire sound effects so the user could get authentic sounds when landing on grass strips vs tarmac airports. You cannot offer too many options for the experienced simmer. Maybe in future the number of user-options will increase. I do hope so. Regarding the potential of making a decently flying aircraft and PMDG comments about this, among others, I do agree that potentially there is possibly more scope for detail in aerodynamics just starting to be developed, although it is actually much easier to tweak for larger aircraft than for smaller ones, because light aircraft need much more care and adjustment as they are so much more sensitive to flaws that can be more easily masked in a high inertia aircraft. So while you make some good points, and I agree with some of them, my perception at the release of MSFS was that Asobo claimed to have all but revolutionised the flight modelling of default aircraft. That is quite obviously not the case. And I have already pointed out that many of the announced innovations were perfectly doable many, many years ago, even with the seemingly more restrictive potential of eariier sims. Finally, although there might well be promising progress in aerodynamics potentially, Asobo have actually taken away quite a lot of parameters that were available in FSX. If you wish I can list them but it is a long list. That won't matter if the alternatives developed prove to be as good or better but so far I'm not convinced that the practical results are discernably superior. I hope they will be in the near future.

And thank you for your kind response.

I flew gliders for many years after I retired from flying power aircraft. The only significant turbulence I ever experienced was mid afternoon on a hot summer day, or taking off from a cliffside airfield with curl-over winds. When people say it is accurate according to their own RL experience, it absolutely depends where you live, the time of day, and the season. For that reason we need a slider that can range from turbulence on to completely still air. Also the cross wind effect is ridiculously exaggerated. I have never experienced the need for sudden virtually full rudder when encountering a very mild partial cross wind on take off or landing, even when the landing requires a little crabbing on finals. It is WAY, WAY overdone, and no matter how many people tell Asobo to tone it down, they don't. As marvellous as this sim is in many ways, I do not believe Asobo staff understand how aircraft actually fly. And aircraft do not violently bob up and down in pitch with the slightest stick input. They really don't. About the lightest aircraft I ever flew was a Rollason Beta which is a tiny tail dragger. It had a bakelite stick with a superb feel. When you pulled back it would smoothly go nose up. When you pushed forward it would smoothly go nose down. NOT ONCE have I experienced the pogo stick bobbing up and down you get in MSFS with light aircraft. Nor did any glider I flew ever act in such a way. They might have been sensitive, but were always eminently controllable. Even an Extra 300 with its massive ailerons and 7+ G elevators could be flown with the most elegant control, almost like an airliner. The vast majority of default aircraft in MSFS, including the caravan and even Kingair, violently yo yo up and down in pitch with the slightest stick movement. Even the otherwise superb Kodiak does it. It's wrong, wrong, wrong and any pilot who really understands how aircraft fly will confirm this.

What a palava! Asobo needs to learn how to set up simple key presses or sliders. It should be a piece of cake for them, but apparently not. Hacking one's way through multiple config files is not ideal is it. I'm not sure re-syncing the aircraft is going to work, though it does for flight model and engine changes. It depends which camera.cfg in which multiple sets of folders is the correct one.