aurel42

That's totally not what I expected you to say. I guess I'd have to reinstall P3D to show that this aircraft doesn't behave that way on a "fresh" sim. I've been there before and what I consider an "issue" was gone after the reinstallation until it reappeared recently.

First, I have to correct wrong and confusing info I have given before, sorry for that: being carried to the right during a take-off with the Twin Otter was unrelated to the issue discussed here; it probably was just a strong wind, as I assumed initially; P-factor and torque don't appear to be part of the problem, especially during take-off and slow flight, the behaviour is as expected (slight left-turning tendency); add-ons, especially FsPassengers, don't seem to have anything to do with the issue: I could reproduce the problem after disabling all non-essential addons (using SIMstarter NG, I disabled everything except gauges, FSUIPC and the GoFlight input bridge in exe.xml and dll.xml) the behaviour is not asymmetrical, that was a total brain fart; the behaviour is identical during left and right hand turns; the behaviour is identical when hand-flying the turns; Here's the video showing the issue, please ignore the audio track (I like to listen to podcasts while flying and didn't turn it off when I recorded the video): https://youtu.be/NJbwKYGQL9A?t=1m27s at 1m27s: AP in HDG and ALT hold modes; close-up of instruments during 90° right-hand turn; at 1m40s: ball in turn coordinator swings right, then left at 1m50s: ball in turn coordinator swings right, then left at 2m20s: similar turn, now with YD "cheat", aircraft behaves as expected at 3m20s: one more turn without YD, now in AP's NAV mode, aircraft behaviour back to weirdness If you have any idea what could be going on here, please help! Cheers, Marc

I've set my Realism settings according to the user guides for the RealAir aircraft, which recommends setting the P-factor and Torque sliders to about 50%. My current working theory is that "something" (possibly an addon like FsPassengers) modifies these values without my intervention, perhaps increasing one or both to more than what a slider at 100% would represent. By now, I'm quite positive that, when I have the problem we're talking about, I need more left rudder than usual to stay on the center line during take-off, and I need more right rudder than usual to keep the aircraft from going into a slip (and swinging back to the left) during right-hand turns (no matter whether it's an AP-initiated turn or whether I'm in control of the aircraft). If this is the opposite of what's to be expected with "normal" values for P-factor and/or Torque, perhaps that could imply that one of the settings is – by mistake – set to a negative value? I'll try to check tonight whether the behaviour is actually caused by one of my addons (by disabling them all). If I can't figure it out, I'll make a short video demonstrating the issue, perhaps it's easier to identify what's going wrong if you can actually see it yourself. Thanks to you all, I really, really appreciate your help!

Hey Gregg, I appreciate your response, but, no, calibration is not an issue. I use FSUIPC for all axes, which makes it easy to verify that there are no spurious inputs, and I verified that the rudder actually rests nicely in its small dead zone when it's not used. Thanks for pointing out that P-factor is much more noticeable when the aircraft is slow, I was aware of that, but it didn't "click" until you mentioned it: When I took off last night in a Twin Otter, I got almost carried off the runway and needed rudder at full left deflection to get myself back to the center line. I attributed it to a strong gust of wind, but looking back now, it could well have been another piece of evidence pointing to a ridiculously strong P-factor setting. I'll verify that by testing in calm wind conditions. I need to find out whether there's a way to get the current numerical value for the P-factor setting (instead of just looking at the slider in the Realism Settings dialog), perhaps there's an FSUIPC offset or something. Or maybe the changed value is visible in prepar3d.cfg.

Hey Bill, thanks for your input and advice. I guess that means I've got something else going on that affects the behaviour of aircraft during turns and seems to make a lot more rudder action necessary — I'm seeing the same extreme yaw tendencies when the aircraft is mine, and it feels like I need quite a bit more rudder than before to do coordinated turns. But, yeah, using the YD definitely helps, although I never had to use it before in the aircraft I listed. And I didn't touch the aircraft.cfg files for those aircraft before the issue started. I shall try to identify whether it's some addon that interferes. I recently started using "FsPassengers" which does seem to change some sim settings (especially realism settings) when activated, so I guess that would make it a possible culprit. I believe the problem is much more pronounced on right hand turns — if it is in fact an asymmetric effect, perhaps it's something crazy like P-factor being set to more than 100% (if that's even possible).

Hi there, I have an obscure problem that hits me from time to time, I have no idea what causes it and would be grateful for any advice. In my experience, the normal behaviour of autopilots in FSX/P3D is that they do clean, coordinated turns. In my current P3D installation (and I've experienced this before on a separate installation), the autopilot forgot how to coordinate turns, so it starts banking, the ball goes out the center, after a few seconds the ball (and the aircraft) swings violently in the other direction (is that a "dutch roll"?). In effect, I have to assist the AP during every turn by coordinating with the rudder pedals. So here are my two (groups of) questions: How do Autopilots in GA aircraft work in the real world? Do they have rudder authority even when they don't have a Yaw Damper feature? Are they limited to bank ankles that don't cause that slipping behaviour? Any idea what "overall" settings (ie. non-aircraft specific settings, I did not touch any aircraft config files) could modify the AP turning behaviour in P3D, what I could've messed up to make P3D act this way, and perhaps even how to fix it? Additional info: I don't use "auto rudder" as I have rudder pedals. Since the behaviour changed, I've observed it, for example, in the Milviz C310R, RealAir Legacy and Turbine Duke. Am I just being stupid somehow? Cheers, Marc PS: If my explanation is unclear, I can provide video of the behaviour.

Uh, I checked out this "Maintenance and Income Tool". I might be running a lot of confused code on my machine and never know it, because it's hidden behind a polished GUI, but in this case the confusion is so obvious that I'd rather not try. Instead, I picked up the A2A Comanche. Thanks again for your advice, Don! (The Katana isn't available for P3D. It seems updating the installers of their legacy products isn't among the highest of priorities for Aerosoft.)

Thank you very much, I will look into all of them. I did have A2A on my list of publishers to try, but I wasn't aware their aircraft came with maintenance and failure stuff -- is that what they call "Accu-Sim"?

Turns out, if I had done more than just the most superficial research, I wouldn't have had to ask that question. I learned two things: 1) P3D truncates my large numbers already when entering them. The "to" value is capped at 600 minutes. That's not enough for what I tried to do. 2) P3D doesn't seem to save individual failure configuration at all. No matter what I enter, when I quit and reload P3D, all the failure configuration is reset. So there's probably no way to circumvent the cap in the GUI. There goes my dream. I guess I have to find a GA plane that simulates damage "externally", like the mentioned airliners do.

Oh, we've come full circle quickly. That's not my understanding. Example: I set a minimum time of 0 and a maximum time of 100 minutes for the failure of a component, then I do a 50 minute session. As I understand it, I end up not with the certainty of having a failure, or the certainty of not having a failure, but a 50% chance (or risk) of having a failure. My original question was about this and about approximating (not simulating!) realistic failure rates by using much higher numbers than 100 minutes, ie. numbers like real-world MTBFs, in the thousands or tens of thousands of hours. I'm grateful for your explanations about my "bonus question" from the original post, about failure data being persistent when saving sessions. I know now what I can't do. I can't use an aircraft without a "virtual overhaul" between each of my sessions, since P3D's failure "prediction" will be reset whenever I start a new session. I have to check and see what I can do. I still don't know, for example, if P3D actually handles a maximum failure time of 600,000 minutes correctly, or if it caps that number internally, and if it does, whether it caps the times before or after creating its set of failures for a session. If it doesn't save that failure information anywhere, I have no idea how to check this.

Oh, I did! But I didn't learn anything relevant to my question. All I learned is that Lockheed-Martin has outstanding skills in Copy-and-Pasting.

I'm vaguely aware of that, but I find no joy in flying airliners -- and I've tried! I have to make do with what I've got. I'll just try experimenting with ridiculously large numbers, I guess I will have to see how P3D behaves. Thanks for your advice!

Hi, if I set the "Fails in" timeranges for failures from 0 to <a ridiculously large number of minutes>, will I end up with an approximation of a realistic failure rate? Without having done any research, let's assume typical mechanical instruments had an average of 10,000 hours between failures, can I set the "to" argument to 600,000 minutes for all mechanical instruments and end up with a failure rate that feels realistic? I assume P3D rolls the dice on session start on when in the given time range a component will fail, and I will only experience the failures (if any) that fall into the first few hours of that very long time window? My goal is to have a (very small) risk of component failure, not a certainty either way. I want the sim to keep me on my toes, to surprise me long after I have forgotten about this setup change. I kinda want to experience the panic and/or confusion when it happens. I'm sure that will be very instructive. Is this something you do, and, if so, how? Or is it a stupid idea, and, if so, why? Bonus question: will the behaviour be more realistic if I always save the scenario at the end of a flight and always continue from this saved state? (in other words: are the dice that P3D rolled persistent across sessions if I continue a scenario?)

So here's what I learned about my own question in the past few weeks: Beside FS2Crew (mainly for airliners) and "It's Your Plane", there's also "Multi Crew Experience" (which also has a demo). I'm still using VoiceAttack, though, because I already owned that. It works for most of what I want to do, it has the obvious drawback of not knowing anything about the state of the simulation (e.g. the "landing gear up" and "landing gear down" commands both just send the same key, if I tell VoiceAttack twice to put the "landing gear down", it will just retract it again). The aircraft I ended up with are the Lancair Legacy for fun and the Turbine Duke from RealAir for serious business. They both work great in FlyInside and support the Flight1 GTN750 whose touchscreen is much easier to use in VR than the default GPS. I ended up getting the full (new) range of Orbx (Global, Vector, OpenLC) and FreeMeshX (until I can get a mesh for Europe from Toposim). And while I was at it, I also got a GTX1080 to be able to use the highest resolution in FlyInside to reduce the shimmering of the GTN750 display and improve the overall visual quality in VR. It's still not good enough to make out details on the map of the GTN750 without using switching to the adjustable quick-zoom, but all the "normal" instruments are easy to read without zoom. Next challenge: find out how to make the in-game ATC honor the flight plan (including procedures) I have set up in the GTN750.

Hey Justin, long time no see. I'm sure Western Europe is in the pipeline, that's the region I'm most interested in (Germany and its neighbors).

That's really admirable indeed. Funny story: I dug deep into my old mails again, and it turns out I was too cheap to get the lifetime membership, I only got a three year membership (in 2004) which, I guess, has expired by now. While that's kinda sad for my wallet, it also provides me with a chance to support Justin again. Thanks again for pointing me towards Toposim!

Ah, thank you so much for the explanation. I tried to get help recovering a product I purchased back then. I seem to remember it was some kind of "lifetime membership" that would entitle me to get all the in-house FSGenesis products for free forever. I can now see how the new owner would not feel the need to help me out there.

Sorry if this isn't the right forum. In 2009 I purchased stuff from FS Genesis, they still have a working web site, but they don't seem to respond to customer service tickets. Does anybody know whether the company still alive?

Appreciated! I'm not really into heavy metal, so FS2Crew doesn't seem to be an option. My new alternative plan is to stick with the FSD aircraft I already own (which aren't supported by IYP, so I kinda discounted them in my original plan), and create custom VoiceAttack profiles for them. If I can figure out how to do that, I can even have Brent Spiner as my co-pilot. I'll definitely check out the aircraft you recommended. I also understand that the FlyInside guys are working on improved methods to control all the knobs and switches in VCs, so perhaps I just need a bit more patience there. Thanks for pointing out Orbx. I see they have some freeware stuff, too, that'll help to see if it works for me, fps-wise.

Thanks for the advice, it was 30 hours, though. More than enough time for any of the 50 people who saw the question to speak up in favour of IYP, if it was any good or did have a significant install base. [to explain: Looking at the ads on Avsim and the official support forums, I assume that people will probably not speak out against addons unless they have strong feelings about them, simply because they don't want to harm the site. So if nobody comments on my idea, I assume it wasn't a good idea in the first place and I won't waste money on it. Perhaps I'll check out Twitch streams to see what addons the streamers are using, and see whether I can come up with a new plan.]

Well, thanks. I know what to do now.

Hi there, I recently got an Oculus Rift and I'm ready to return to the current incarnation of subLogic Flightsim (ie. FSX:SE) after eight years of absence. I've tried it briefly with "FlyInside" with several of the included aircraft, but the cockpits were just as ugly as I remembered them, and I had quite a bit of trouble getting used to the user interface in VR, yet it was obvious that a very special experience is waiting for me there. I think I know what I need to enjoy FSX in VR, but I don't know what to get exactly -- I'm simply overwhelmed by the mass of developers and addons. Would someone be so kind as to recommend: a speech-recognizing copilot addon (I don't have motion controllers, I'm not happy with manipulating knobs and switches by the "look at it" navigation in FlyInside, so I'd rather tell someone to do the stuff I can't put on my joystick. Is "IYP" the way to go?) a small, modern business jet, w/ glass cockpit, and something like a old-timey twin turboprop (yet I'd still like to have something like these Garmin thingies, because working with maps or printouts is kinda difficult with that black box strapped to my forehead), both aircraft should work with the copilot thingie and have nice, immersive virtual cockpits; I love reading manuals so they don't need to be too dumbed down (but I need the copilot addon for checklists/procedures), if my "fps budget" allows it (VR is challenging in that respect), I'd like to have some generic "make scenery, weather, traffic more pretty" stuff, are there any must-have addons or "all in one"-packs that are known to be "fps-friendly"? I know that some free projects are really, really good, so if for any of this there's a viable free alternative, I'd prefer that, but I also realize that my requirements are pretty specific, so I'm prepared to purchase whatever is within my budget. If there's something on Steam that fits my needs, I'd prefer that over other distribution methods, because, for me, the DRM stuff in most flightsim addons was always a bit of a bother. Help, please! :smile: