Consensus of GA aircraft

[lnuss]

57 minutes ago, jgf said:

I've no idea how well anything in FS is modeled, reading up on this got me wondering about real pilots' opinions of the various aircraft.

Unfortunately, hearing folks opinion on real world aircraft means little for the sim modeling, which is often quite poor, in terms of aircraft behavior. For example some sim aircraft have been carefully tweaked to match real world numbers, or nearly so, yet feel rather artificial, often harder to fly than the real ones, and certainly it often comes with some odd behavior that would defy physics. There are very few aircraft available for the sims that are comfortable to fly, having to compensate for odd happenings in one way or another. A long time friend of mine felt the same way, and eventually did something about it, for us.

 

My late friend Mike (a 10,000 hour plus RW pilot) tweaked many, many aircraft to feel natural, much preferring that to an exact match on the "numbers" and they were (and are) a delight to fly in the sim, being able to do most anything with those aircraft with maximum immersion (even tight formations and aerobatics, even spins in some of them) and without having to think about it, though he spent a LOT of hours on it, sometimes weeks on a single aircraft, then sending me the mods to test and comment on, then sometimes he'd further tweak them until we were both happy with them. This has all spoiled me for the aircraft, both freeware and payware, that has not been tweaked by him.

 

As background on that, we met in 1974 when he was running a glider operation in Albuquerque, and I soon became a tow pilot for him part of the time. We soon became good friends, and as his operation progressed into flight training with a variety of fixed wing aircraft (Cessnas, Grumman Americans, PA-11, PA-18, Stearman, Citabria and more) I started instructing part time for him (I had a "day job" too) and we got to know each other well.  In addition, starting with FS98, though he was then in Dallas area and I was in the Denver area, we started flying multiplayer together, progressing through the sims through P3D V2.4. Of course voice communication was essential for that to work very well, and we tried a lot of things over the years, including Microsoft meeting, Freetel and several others. We finally settled on Murmur/Mumble, a free/open source VOIP program that works very well indeed, after configuration.

 

All this to say we knew each other well and had similar flying preferences. So his tweaks are very special, but due to the hassle involved with posting and distributing such things, along with the complaints and "gimme" expectations of some, he was never willing to share with the general public, and likely most simmers wouldn't much care anyway. After he passed I uploaded a couple of his tweaks and got little response.

 

So there's a variety of ways in which sim aircraft behave, some a bit realistic and some not very, and apparently a lot of simmers don't much care how the aircraft handle, or even prefer strange things. On the other hand, as I've said here many times, most versions of MSFS are excellent procedural trainers when it comes to how VORs and other aircraft specific things work, how to fly on instruments, traffic pattern procedures and much more.

[PhrogPhlyer]

1 hour ago, lnuss said:

So there's a variety of ways in which sim aircraft behave, some a bit realistic and some not very, and apparently a lot of simmers don't much care how the aircraft handle, or even prefer strange things.

The variety of options is one of the aspects of simming I enjoy. Many times I find an aircraft I like, but am disappointed with the cockpit, or visa versa. Often I mix and match aircraft and cockpits for the look and feel that I prefer. For me, this is one of many aspects of simming I enjoy. The key is to find what you like, and just have fun.

[jgf]

I think that is all quite true of any sim;  when driving a car you subconsciously process so much tactile information - g forces, chassis flex, suspension movement, etc. - that cannot be replicated in any sim;  I'm sure flying is the same.  While i am interested in what real pilots thinks of flight sims, I'm also interested in what they think of the real planes.

 

I would be interested in those realistic files, though I may not have the experience to appreciate them.

 

"On the other hand, as I've said here many times, most versions of MSFS are excellent procedural trainers when it comes to how VORs and other aircraft specific things work, how to fly on instruments, traffic pattern procedures and much more."

Years ago, probably on this site, someone said "MS FlightSim has always been more about navigating than about stick-and-rudder flying".

[jgf]

3 hours ago, PhrogPhlyer said:

The variety of options is one of the aspects of simming I enjoy. Many times I find an aircraft I like, but am disappointed with the cockpit, or visa versa. Often I mix and match aircraft and cockpits for the look and feel that I prefer. For me, this is one of many aspects of simming I enjoy. The key is to find what you like, and just have fun.

Much the same here.  I've made many panels for many aircraft, mostly going for a more realistic panel than the default (which in the early days of FS2004 could be quite generic), but also, the past few years, creating wide screen panels.  Never uploaded any since I've no idea where most the gauges are from (recently whittled my gauge folder from over 9000 gauges to less than 5000, some dating to FS98 days, many with my own graphics), so cannot credit the creators much less get permissions.  Also enjoy updating old aircraft with modern flight gauges and avionics, though usually retaining the default engine gauges;  current project is wide screen DC3 panel with Garmin 1000.

 

My Bristol 170 panel, for the old Mike Stone model-

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

1 minute ago, jgf said:

I've made many panels for many aircraft

Learning to make panels is definitely on my to do list!

[jgf]

Get the FS Panel Studio, you won't regret it.  It doesn't do VC but will let you view the graphics for them.  Reads cab files, and most gauges from FS98-FS2004, even some FSX gauges; create popup windows, create 2D views, etc.  Can even open and edit gauges (if you know how).

 

This is my wide screen 172 panel, stitched together from a couple of photos, a screenshot of the VC, and an FSX background.

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

1 hour ago, jgf said:

Get the FS Panel Studio, you won't regret it.

On my list now! Thanks.