Crocket

2 hours ago, flyhalf said:

They just set FLOPPINESS=1

😄 😄 

1 hour ago, enright said:

This is eerily close to reality!

If you don't mind me asking, how did you accomplish this? Do you just set the "floppiness" of the control surfaces and MSFS does the rest, or did you need to code the motion of the different surfaces individually - or did you write some sort of flex simulator that runs in the background?

Incredible attention to detail no matter how you did it.

 

Thanks! Glad you like it!

To answer your question, this is absolutely not possible in msfs, where wing flex is just a spring bending vs lift (forget about wing weight, fuel weight, lift spread changing over the wing...).

So we developed a system from scratch (with no guarantee it could even work at all lol). Our 3D developer split the wing into multiple elements, and then we built a physics model handling each element with its own weight/fuel weight/surface position. So this is a simple soft body physics problem over multiple wing elements.

Funnily, difficulty was not the physics itself, but more the guessing of required simulator forces that you cannot access in MSFS (like lift over the wing), which is really sad because it would look even better.

Maybe in the future we can access those forces directly to feed the physics correctly.

Here's a first prototype when I was just looking at how we could do this.

https://streamable.com/b2m2ob

Obviously it will look more realistic than anything else (well hopefully), because instead of having wing animation going up or down, you can for example have the wing root bending up, while the tip can oscillate up and down, which brings a lot of visual authenticity.

We might even eventually have various oscillation modes appearing as it went for the real engineers (thus forced to do the aileron dance to break particular frequencies), but we'll see how it goes down the road 🙂

While it's 100% true the Fenix is a complete package with no major missing feature as the FBW can be (and crazily complete and complex for the price!!), because FBW is not completed yet, I must admit it makes me a bit sad when I hear "it has more in depth systems" or "it has failures".

What is already done in the FBW is probably the more advanced system simulation available in any sim. And what is not done yet... is not done yet 🙂

Not to mention the "Fenix mut be right FBW is wrong" bias, as sometimes FBW FMS will show bugs that ACTUALLY happens in the real plane, or stuff that appears in Fenix and not in FBW just because it's not the same software installed in FMS, so both are actually totally 100% correct.

You have a fully physically simulated gear system, including aerodynamic forces impacting gears and doors. A gear gravity extension will always be different depending on your speed or G load. 

Failures that are not scripted what so ever but just happens and if any chain reaction should happen... it will have correct impacts by simulation.

FBW models all the flight controls physically and reacting to airflow, which means there's no "hydraulic degraded state" that is scripted by any mean: it will just try to push on control rods of the surfaces and will be simulated in real time. Should hydraulics fail while a control surface is deflected: it will need airflow to push it back to a neutral position (which might not be neutral deflection but aerodynamic neutral).

PTU is a physical model that will never behave the same, and will have different wear state on each flight, thus different behavior. Depending on the plane you could have PTU constantly rotating finding an equilibrium state or just barking at different frequencies.... Sound is closely linked to physics too including electrical pumps speed regulation (using a current controller as per real pump).

Long is the list of things that you will never find in another sim/plane.  If you did not notice it on the FBW, maybe it means you are not really looking for a hard core study level after all 😄

https://streamable.com/1bggk5

https://streamable.com/fq8dv6

https://streamable.com/wpcjov

Current version already looks much much better than in this video!
Can't wait people trying it 🙂

37 minutes ago, MikeH99 said:

Looks good hopefully the systems are somewhat fully modelled. 

Oh they will :). Aileron waltz you see here is not a simple animation: it uses our core actuator physical simulation and reacts to airflow while responding to prim computer solenoid commands. 
EHA and EBHA actuators are already there and working. EHA accumulators can even be refilled from plane hydraulics if commanded by prim computer. 
 

We might release some flight controls video too to show this off a bit more :)

4 hours ago, holland786 said:

 

Um, did you read the post?

One day they’ll wake up and realize every feature of A32nx is better than payware 😄

Yup 🙂. We are slowly adding building blocks!

Trim system was recently built from scratch and simulates now the real system. The zero reset is normal A320 logic (you can click and hold your mouse to stop it from unwinding if doing a touch and go as per real plane).
 

But you are right that the dev version which has not yet received the flight computers upgrade has a state machine bug locking the trim demand on first touchdown.

This is already solved in experimental, and will be in dev when all flight computers logic gets from exp to dev. 
 

Sorry for the inconvenience 😛

11 hours ago, Aamir said:

It's worth remembering that it's entirely possible that different people do different parts of the simulation. 

C'mon, guys. You have a group of dedicated, hardworking, enthusiastic developers putting together an Airbus simulation for you all for free in between working real jobs, studying, spending time with their families, and all the other things people get up to in their lives. They definitely deserve better than this sort of unfair rhetoric. Especially given they, frankly, owe everyone absolutely nothing. 

Appreciate the support, meanwhile I'm realizing I'm bad at jokes 😄

The truth behind that joke is that we actually spend a lot of time on absolutely useless things, or actually what is felt as useless by most people, and this kind of example of surfaces affected by aerodynamics with simulated hydraulic actuators is the perfect example: you won't see any difference, until everything finally comes together and when a hydraulic failure occurs in flight while you were maneuvering, you'll get the realistic reaction of a plane with stuck surfaces until airflow can reposition them after some seconds (critical seconds :D).

Can be quite frustrating when all you hear then is "FBW is just a tiny mod on asobo poor neo, they can't simulate proper systems" 😄

That said: in the end you'll get a nice neo addon plane for free 🙂

But sometimes you have some free time to do useless system simulation 😄

3 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Absolutely love this level of physics simulation of individual componentry! Can only imagine how this aircraft is going to progress in next few months, let alone years, given the pace you guys are going.  FBW in no uncertain terms is setting the bar for 3PD payware aircraft to even think about entering the MSFS ecosystem when they claim to be high fidelity.

Feel free to play around with yellow epump active on ground and moving flight controls or flaps (on latest experimental). Boris made a super job on sounds and this is really sounding super cool.

With gears it's really fun to do the same test as the video here shows off but with new sounds: you can hear electric pump pushing hard and PTU struggling to get that word not allowed gear moving.

 Electric pumps are of course also fully simulated and are rotating through a current controller regulating their speed in real time 😄

Last but not least PTU has now random statistics so that they never have the same characteristics.  In 10 to 20% of cases, you could get a worn out one that could spin continuously when running electric pump instead of doing barks. This is because due to lack of efficiency and internal leaks, it makes it easier to find an equilibrium between yellow and green side torques... This stuff is getting quite complicated as we start to encounter plane engineering issues instead of computer code issues 😛

On 4/23/2022 at 8:01 PM, guenseli said:

@Watsi

just a little offtopic question regarding the PTU.
I have enabled it in the EFB, but it is triggered when you start the second engine, right?

Is this just a workaround from your side (you as devs)? At what point in reality starts the self test of the PTU?
I do not think it is right in that moment when you switch the engine starter ...?

 

thx

Hi!

To be clear there is no self test function in PTU. This is an hydraulic only component, and only control you have on it is the solenoid valves that can open or close to let the PTU feeded with fluid or not.

When you launch the second engine, the only thing happening is that this is one condition (having both engine masters at the same position on or off) that will allow PTU valves to open. At that moment, you have full pressure on one side, and no pressure on other side, so when valve opens, PTU will generate a huge net torque. As we simulate the whole internal physics of the PTU, this is just resulting in the PTU rotating at fast speed, thus making a high pitch noise.

That high pitch noise has nothing to do with a "self test" feature.  For example, if you happen to kill green edp while PTU is set to off. Wait for the green pressure to get back to 0, if you set PTU ON again it will also make that characteristic noise.

If you have ptu active and set a green or yellow circuit leak, you can expect PTU going at crazy RPM too :D