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> but their physics model is dog shit. Totally unrealistic behaviour in any non-standard situation. That has and always will be the problem with flight sims.

> but their physics model is dog shit. Totally unrealistic behaviour in any non-standard situation. That has and always will be the problem with flight sims. You have always been able to get away with shit in a flight sim that you would never be able to do in real life because you can't defy the laws of physics in real life. Ultimatley you would need far more than a home computer with a decent graphics card if you wanted to get anywhere near real physics in a sim.

CaptainOfCoit 3y ago
If the simulator would be FAA-certified, would you say that they simulate things accurately enough? Partners of Laminar Research are selling FAA-certified X-Plane software + hardware bundles, that because of the certification, I'd wager a guess simulate things accurately enough.
- inoffensivename 3y ago
  It depends on what you mean by "accurately enough". To teach a student the interplay between pitch and power, how changes in configuration require changes to pitch and power, etc, they can be useful. They are very good as instrument procedural trainers. For flight at high angle of attack, e.g. slow flight near or beyond stall, the models are not very accurate. Also a simulator will never help a student overcome the fear they will invariably feel when they do their first power-on stall.
- traceroute66 3y ago
  > If the simulator would be FAA-certified, would you say that they simulate things accurately enough? There are different levels of FAA-certified for sims, and I think we can agree that X-Plane is very much on the lower end of the spectrum. My understanding is that X-Plane is based on limited geometric data, meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum, the Level D simulators that the airlines use are formally validated and tested against the real aircraft’s flight data. So yeah, not accurate enough, ESPECIALLY (as @ inoffensivename pointed out) the sort of things you might want to use it for basic student pilot training.
sigmoid10 3y ago
>You have always been able to get away with shit in a flight sim that you would never be able to do in real life because you can't defy the laws of physics in real life. You might think so, but with the Diamond DA40 in MSFS it's actually the opposite: Even with just the pilot and a half tank it stalls like it's completely overloaded with 4 passengers and a full tank. So I can actually see how they might have engineered this on purpose to be on the safe side, so student pilots don't stall the real plane. On the other hand, that also means you lose a ton of options in an emergency. But teaching young people to fly the plane more careful than required is probably better than the other way around.

CaptainOfCoit 3y ago

If the simulator would be FAA-certified, would you say that they simulate things accurately enough? Partners of Laminar Research are selling FAA-certified X-Plane software + hardware bundles, that because of the certification, I'd wager a guess simulate things accurately enough.

inoffensivename 3y ago
It depends on what you mean by "accurately enough". To teach a student the interplay between pitch and power, how changes in configuration require changes to pitch and power, etc, they can be useful. They are very good as instrument procedural trainers. For flight at high angle of attack, e.g. slow flight near or beyond stall, the models are not very accurate. Also a simulator will never help a student overcome the fear they will invariably feel when they do their first power-on stall.
traceroute66 3y ago
> If the simulator would be FAA-certified, would you say that they simulate things accurately enough? There are different levels of FAA-certified for sims, and I think we can agree that X-Plane is very much on the lower end of the spectrum. My understanding is that X-Plane is based on limited geometric data, meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum, the Level D simulators that the airlines use are formally validated and tested against the real aircraft’s flight data. So yeah, not accurate enough, ESPECIALLY (as @ inoffensivename pointed out) the sort of things you might want to use it for basic student pilot training.

sigmoid10 3y ago

>You have always been able to get away with shit in a flight sim that you would never be able to do in real life because you can't defy the laws of physics in real life. You might think so, but with the Diamond DA40 in MSFS it's actually the opposite: Even with just the pilot and a half tank it stalls like it's completely overloaded with 4 passengers and a full tank. So I can actually see how they might have engineered this on purpose to be on the safe side, so student pilots don't stall the real plane. On the other hand, that also means you lose a ton of options in an emergency. But teaching young people to fly the plane more careful than required is probably better than the other way around.