Formation Flying

By Tony Vallillo (20 August 2006)

Northrop T-38's in formation. (Aircraft by FSD.)

Formation flying is one of the most challenging and fun things to do in the air! Over the years I've had opportunities to indulge in it with real airplanes, and for some time now I have been looking for a reasonably realistic way to do it with MSFS. Up to now, though, the options appeared to be quite limited. The easiest way to join up was to find some AI traffic and tag along; but, of course, this put you at the mercy of both the type of plane and the flight pattern that had been locked into the AI traffic file. In addition, the AI traffic tended to be point to point, which made for some fairly boring, albeit easier, formating. A few much-more-computer-savvy simmers than I had managed to tweak the AI files to create lead airplane traffic that at least offered some semblance of realism, but unless I've been looking in all the wrong places they have kept the fruits of their labors pretty much to themselves.

That unhappy situation is now at an end, thanks to a new program called Recorder, by Matthias Neusinger (http://www.neusinger.net/recorder). And a big thanks to Sammy Yousef for bringing this program to my attention! Although I'm not sure if Matthias had formation flying in mind when he created this add-on, (actually, a .dll module) it has a feature that is tailor made for us formation enthusiasts! More on that in a moment.

The Recorder program itself captures many of the parameters of a flight, enough to play it back with just about all of the bells and whistles intact. For example, it allows you to:

• record flights of unlimited length
• replay
• jump forward/backward during playback
• control playback via keyboard or control window
• loop part of a recording
• change playback speed
• custom keyboard controls
• recorded data is customizable (available are throttles, control surfaces, gear, flaps, spoilers, lights, engines on/off, propeller/mixture, nav and com radios, data/time, smoke)

In addition, it supports:

• multiple tower/spot views
• free and automatic panning
• automatic zooming
• saving/loading sets of tower and spot views

The program is freeware, and if the user so chooses he or she can make a donation via PayPal. I must confess that I did just that (please don't tell the airline - such profligacy with money is strictly against the airline pilots' code of conduct!) because it took Matthias a week or two of experimentation to work out some irregularities that cropped up due to my computer's configuration. That he did so as quickly as he did is a credit to the state of product support in the MSFS community!

The basic Recorder menu. To record a flight from here, just select Record...

Just select OK from here to start the recording.

After you select Play as Traffic, select the lead aircraft recording from this

The program itself is quite easy to use, so I won't go into any detail about its normal operation. All you have to do is drop the .dll file into the modules directory of FS9 and you're up and running. As a recorder, it works just great, but it has a special feature that makes formation flying possible: Play-as-Traffic.

To end a recording, select Recorder and, from this resulting menu, Stop recording

To save your recording, name it and click on Save.

Yes, you read that right! You can play back a recorded flight as AI traffic and fly along with it! This is the breakthrough that enables you to record your OWN lead aircraft, and have them do just about anything you are capable of making them do during the recording session! Do you just want to fly straight and level, the better to practice rejoins and the wingman position and station-keeping? No problem! Want to add some turns, climbs and descents to make things more challenging? Again, no problemo! Want to really up the voltage and record the lead airplane doing acrobatics? Again, no problem! No problem, that is, to record and play back the lead ship. Keeping station under those circumstances is a BIG PROBLEM! But that's the joy of formation flying!

Although the recorder is capable of recording in 1/8 second intervals, the resultant AI traffic playback is still a bit jumpy when you get really close, within around 20 feet. If you are content to stay farther away than that, and you certainly will be in the beginning (!), then you will see a smooth lead airplane.

So let's go through the steps of creating your own formation flight. Sammy Yousef chose a relatively easy to fly aircraft for his first attempt - the default Mooney. Create a flight with the Mooney in takeoff position at the airport of your choice (Sammy chose Sydney, Australia). Use slew to slide your airplane over to the middle of the right side of the runway. Also, be sure to set the traffic level at 100%. When this is done, save the flight. Call it something that ends with "right wing". This will eventually be you, as the wingman.

Now slew the airplane over to the middle of the LEFT side of the runway, and about three ship-lengths forward of where it was when you saved the wingman portion of the flight. You are now ready to record the LEAD airplane, so be sure that everything is set up just as you want it - flaps, lights, smoke and so on. The Recorder module appears on the top tool bar of FS as "Recorder", and clicking on that brings up the recorder menu. "Record" is the first option, and clicking on it brings up a simple menu that you use to set the recording interval, and, if you wish, an auto-stop parameter that stops the recording at one of several events. I don't bother with this, I simply stop the recording manually, when the time comes. Select the recording interval you want and click OK. You're back in the cockpit - Lights! Sound! Action!

Give yourself a few moments just sitting there, to allow you some time later, as the wingman, to gather your wits about you! Then begin your takeoff roll. As a technique, add power slowly, and don't use full throttle - use around 90% of full power. If you read my previous article on formation flying you will recall that the lead airplane must always "give away" a little bit of power to the wingmen, so that they have a bit of an edge to play catch up, if necessary, and it will be necessary!

At the proper speed, rotate slowly and raise the gear when airborne. Fly with EXCEPTIONAL smoothness. As a technique, use the autopilot if it flies more smoothly than you do! For this first attempt, just continue a shallow climb at your takeoff power setting of around 90%, and fly straight out. At around 3000 feet, smoothly level off, and SLOWLY reduce power to normal cruise setting. Remember - you will soon have to fly the wing on this lead, so give yourself a break! Now, just keep flying straight and level for around 5 minutes.

When you think that, as a wingman, you will have had enough, just click on "Recorder" once again. Now the only thing on that menu that you can select will be "stop recording". This will bring up a "Save" menu, and give the recording the same name as you already gave the wingman flight, except substitute the word "Lead" for "Right wing". Having done this, you are ready for some fun! Now it's show time!

End the flight you just recorded, and select the "right wing" flight. When that loads, you should be back on the right side of the runway. Double check to see that the AI traffic level is set to 100%, and then click on Recorder again. This time your selection will be "Play as Traffic". This will bring up a menu that should, hopefully, contain the lead flight you just recorded. Select that lead flight. You should be returned to your wingman cockpit, but now you have company on the runway - the lead Mooney! In a moment or so he'll start his roll, so release your brakes and get ready to rock and roll! Stay in the same relative position during the takeoff roll, and rotate when you see the lead Mooney rotate. When his gear comes up, raise yours. From here on out it's a matter of staying in the same position. For tips on how to do this, I refer you to my previous article "How to Fly in Formation", here on FlightSim.Com.

The start of the rejoin - the tanker is off to the left, turning across our flight path 1000 feet above. (F-14 aircraft and panel by Steve Hinson and Ivan Kostic.)

Now we have caught up with the tanker and are moving in for refueling.

The join-up continues through a 180 degree turn. the refuelling pattern is a gigantic holding pattern. (Boeing KC-135T by Rok Dolenec.)

You can already see the possibilities! Air refueling, for example, can be simulated in this fashion, although the airborne rejoin that that entails is a bit trickier to arrange. You must ensure that both aircraft are in the same airspace when the playback begins. It will be easier, of course, if you start the flight in the pre-contact position, about 1/4 mile aft in-trail and around 300 feet below the tanker. But real refueling involves a rejoin, in which the tanker heads toward the receiver on a reciprocal heading and makes a 180-degree turn to end up just ahead of the receiver around 1000 feet above. The receiver can then climb up to the pre-contact position. The timing of the 180-degree turn is the difficult part to program, but it can be done with a little experimentation. Give it a try!

This would be very close to the refueling position. Recorder does not capture the boom position, unfortunately, at least not yet!

The usual chase plane views still work, and the lead plane is visible.

You can even record the lead aircraft doing a breakaway after refueling is complete.

You can even program a dogfight, although there are other platforms such as Combat Flight Simulator that are better for that purpose. Someday someone will put together a welded group of Blue Angels F-18's or Thunderbird F-16's with a space for you in the slot position. (Although for reasons not yet understood, the Red Arrows formation will not play back in Recorder, probably because the 4-ship welded group entails some special programming that Recorder can't handle just yet.) You could even program the opposing solo routines with Recorder. It just takes a sense of timing and some experimentation. Of course, having done all this, you will have to learn to fly the wing or slot position well enough so that you can keep up. That, I can assure you, is more difficult than it looks! Formation is tough enough in a real airplane, and in MSFS there is a dearth of cues that makes it much more difficult to fly really close formation well.

You will also find that the airplanes that are normally flown in close formation - the military fighters - are, if the flight modeling is accurate, very difficult to fly smoothly! After all, they weren't designed as airliners! So if you are thinking of recording the entire Thunderbird routine in an F-16, good luck! Let me know if you succeed!

All in all Recorder has the potential to unlock a whole new aspect of flying in MSFS, something that previously was probably limited to multiplayer. Using Recorder, you can do it all yourself, and just as you like it! Good luck, and Happy Landings!

Tony Vallillo
avallillo@charter.net

Download Matthias Neusinger's Recorder Module