Is there a way to make landing criteria more real?

[zoynyne]

First off, I'm an FS fanboy.

I love it, and I loved FS2002, and I even thought FS2000 was pretty good - compared to the flight sims I played around with as a kid in the 1980's...

So don't flame me.

But what I've noticed over the years is that one (namely myself) can make some VERY unacceptable landings, with full realism options enabled, and FS just lets you get away with it.

Now, I'm sure as far as survivability goes it's probably modeling it fairly accurately.

I've made landings that were horrible, and exclaimed to myself "wow, I can't believe it didn't crash"...

Then I thought about it, and figured "well ok, I guess in real life that landing WOULD have kept me and the passengers alive, despite how bad of a landing it was"...

Does anyone know of any way to tighten up the landing criteria to a more real world standard?

Something to where if it isn't landed just like a real pilot would do it'll give you a "crash"?

This post was inspired by a 747 flight I took tonight from San Francisco to San Jose (California USA).

I hadn't messed with it in a while, and coming into SJ I had a ridiculously high angle of attack on approach - this was because I had took off with full fuel on a 60 mile flight... DUH! (smacked myself on the forehead).

I guess maybe it would have been survivable, but I'm sure that tail was scraping the ground when I landed...

Does anyone in this wealth of simming knowledge know of any way to make the realism standards more stringent?

Is there a mod, or addon that would do this?

[tommchowat]

hmmm, i'm not too sure about that. i've always found that the landings are relatively realistic. i play FS on the fullest realism possible, and when i was flying a 767, i managed to hit the tarmac at a 125 kts and that caused a crash (must've flared for too long!!) i don't think there is a download though....try landing at a ridiculously slow speed.

[Fireball]

You can make the landing gear easier to break by tweeking the settings in the aircraft.cfg file for any aircraft you want to change. You will find this in the [contact_points] section. Here is an example:-

// Contact Point Types
//0 Class <0=none,1=wheel, 2=scrape, 3=float>
//1 Longitudinal Position (feet)
//2 Lateral Position (feet)
//3 Vertical Position (feet)
//4 Impact Damage Threshold (Feet Per Minute)
//5 Brake Map (0=None, 1=Left, 2=Right)
//6 Wheel Radius (feet)
//7 Steer Angle (degrees)
//8 Static Compression (feet) (0 if rigid)
//9 Max/Static Compression Ratio
//10 Damping Ratio (0=Undamped, 1=Critically Damped)
//11 Extension Time (seconds)
//12 Retraction Time (seconds)
//13 Sound Type
//14 Airspeed limit for retraction (KIAS)
//15 Airspeed that gear gets damage at (KIAS)

[contact_points]
point.0=1,69.25, 0.00, -10.17, 1500, 0, 1.50, 75.0, 1.00, 1.85, 0.500, 8.00, 8.50, 0, 300, 300
point.1=1,-6.00,-13.00, -11.30, 2165, 1, 1.80, 0.0, 0.75, 1.85, 0.700, 9.75, 9.75, 2, 300, 300
point.2=1,-6.00, 13.00, -11.30, 2165, 2, 1.80, 0.0, 0.75, 1.85, 0.700,10.25,10.25, 3, 300, 300

point.3=2,-30.00,-73.083, 1.250, 800, 0, 0.00, 0.0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.000, 0.00, 0.00, 5, 0, 0
point.4=2,-30.00, 73.083, 1.250, 800, 0, 0.00, 0.0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.000, 0.00, 0.00, 6, 0, 0
point.5=2,-47.25, 0.000,-4.000, 800, 0, 0.00, 0.0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.000, 0.00, 0.00, 9, 0, 0
point.6=2, 69.33, 0.000,-4.000, 800, 0, 0.00, 0.0, 0.00, 0.00, 0.000, 0.00, 0.00, 4, 0, 0

You can also change the angle of attack at which a stall occurs in the .air file for which you will need an editor like FSEdit, AirEd or FDE.

David

[zoynyne]

Thanks much!

I will play around with this.

[FlyboyUND]

A lot of airplanes will take a ridiculous amount of punsihment on landings. Now I don't know if that applies to a 747 landing at near MTOW, but they're designed not to be extraordinarily fragile. Tail strikes happen, too, they won't usually break an airplane apart. But consider what happens the next time you are in an airliner during gusty conditions in real-life! I've seen some pilots really smack 737s on.

[zoynyne]

Oh I'm familiar with that fact.

What I'm after is a setup that will "fail" me on a landing if it's not real nice and smooth, for example, if it's a landing that would make any passengers exclaim "gosh, that was a pretty bad landing", then I get a "fail"...

I think lowering the tolerance of the landing gear to impact should do this well though.