Gliding simulators?

[Oscar]

Anybody here uses flight simulators, such as FS2004 or SFSPC? What is the
opinion as to using one of those as a teaching tool for basic gliding skills
or for navigation training? Or as a pastime to sim-fly in locations and in
conditions that are unavailable or inappropriate in real life?

Anybody wants to share opinions, pros and cons, etc?

[Nick Gilbert]

G'Day Again Oscar,

You should check the recent history of Rec.Aviation.Soaring . This question
comes up regularly.

Nick.


"Oscar" > wrote in message
...
> Anybody here uses flight simulators, such as FS2004 or SFSPC? What is the
> opinion as to using one of those as a teaching tool for basic gliding
> skills
> or for navigation training? Or as a pastime to sim-fly in locations and in
> conditions that are unavailable or inappropriate in real life?
>
> Anybody wants to share opinions, pros and cons, etc?
>
>

[Peter Millenaar]

Have you tried Sailors of the Sky (SotS)?
Download the demo at: www.sailorsofthesky.com and visit the forum at
www.tvwebradio.com/sailorsofthesky
Download add-on planes and sceneries at www.sots-downloads.tk

The price is 29 euro's.

In the next version of SotS there will be some MAJOR updates, I can't tell
too much about that (I'm in the SotS-team).
If you buy V2.x you will always get version 3 or 4.x for free.

Regards,
Peter.

"Nick Gilbert" > schreef in bericht
...
> G'Day Again Oscar,
>
> You should check the recent history of Rec.Aviation.Soaring . This
question
> comes up regularly.
>
> Nick.
>
>
> "Oscar" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Anybody here uses flight simulators, such as FS2004 or SFSPC? What is
the
> > opinion as to using one of those as a teaching tool for basic gliding
> > skills
> > or for navigation training? Or as a pastime to sim-fly in locations and
in
> > conditions that are unavailable or inappropriate in real life?
> >
> > Anybody wants to share opinions, pros and cons, etc?
> >
> >
>
>

[nyffeler]

In article >, "Oscar" > wrote:
>Anybody here uses flight simulators, such as FS2004 or SFSPC? What is the
>opinion as to using one of those as a teaching tool for basic gliding skills
>or for navigation training? Or as a pastime to sim-fly in locations and in
>conditions that are unavailable or inappropriate in real life?
>
>Anybody wants to share opinions, pros and cons, etc?

May be the beta version of SilentWings is of interesst for you
http://www.silentwings.no/

[Stewart Kissel]

http://virtualsoaring.org/index.html


This is an active group...they have created a functional
logger, LNAV, lift and sink programs. Also some very
nice addon ships. They conduct races and the such.
Yes, I know it is M$...and some of the flight dynamics
are not quite right. The current supported platforms
are FS2k2 and FS9.

[Bill Gribble]

A few thoughts reflecting only my own opinion and experiences:

Soaring Flight Simulator (http://www.sfspc.de/index_e.htm)

For its price the graphics are now a little (arguably a lot!) dated, but
the flight models remain good and the lift modelling (at least as far as
ridge and thermal lift is concerned) is excellent. Great for practising
centring techniques on thermals, obviously within the limitations of the
fact that it is a simulation so you don't quite get that same seat of
the pants feel.

Good simulation of both winch-launching and aerotow, complete with the
occasional cable break to keep you on your toes. Nice range of glider
types available. Biggest downside is that you only get to fly in Germany
(which is fine, if you're German, I suppose, but I'd prefer something
more local to me!).

Don't really know if SFSpc is at all useful for practising your
navigation, in that I've never been to the location it recreates. But if
you want to know why not to barrel roll a Ka8 or Immelman your ASH25
then the simulation does have its uses. Does a much better job of
stalling and spinning than Microsoft Flight Simulator.

MS Flight Simulator.

Personally, I brought this (in my case, FS2004) because it was going
cheap on eBay. I had no intention of flying gliders in it, mainly
because (up until the last time I checked at the time I considered this)
the only way of launching a glider was to "slew" it to the launch height
(for the uninitiated read that as being as "realistic" as just "starting
in the air").

Worse, the only sort of lift available was pre-designed static scenery
lift (ie. Thermals and/or ridge pre-positioned by a scenery
designer/builder prior to the flight, thus always in the same place
whenever you flew over that area again).

Finally, although the weather modelling is superb, it is detached from
the lift, so your thermals aren't marked out by puffy white clouds.

That said, FS2004 comes to life with the various addons available. With
a decent (LOD9) terrain mesh, photographic landscape scenery and
customised replacement autogen FS2004 does a superb job of visually
recreating any given area of the planet. The very least you need is the
enhanced terrain mesh, but the photographic scenery really does complete
the illusion if you can get it.

If you want an example (this one is UK based), visit the Visual Flight
site
(http://www.visualflight.co.uk) go to the forums hosted there and look
for the photographic scenery screen shots. More specifically, the
following is one somebody posted of a virtual flight out over Snowdonia
in Wales:

http://www.visualflight.co.uk/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3072

Many of the various freeware glider models available for download are
equipped with "VET" which, whilst it doesn't entirely replace the
winch-launch (and still isn't a patch on SFSpc) it does give a fairly
convincing recreation of one. Somebody already mentioned
http://www.virtualsoaring.org - that's an excellent place to look for
gliding related FS information and downloads.

A dynamic lift generator has also been developed as a freeware addon
(it's called Cross Country Soaring, and you'll find a link to it on the
virtualsoaring.org site, I expect). A definite improvement over the old
static scenery lift, you still don't get Cu capping the thermals,
however, as nobody has yet cracked how to do that. And the thermal
modelling doesn't feel as authentic as the modelling in SFSpc. But that
might be me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I haven't actually
loaded up my copy of SFSpc for a while, I've been too busy soaring
around in FS2004 :)

The Cross Country Soaring addon is also supposed to do a good job of
recreating hill/ridge lift when set up right, though I haven't go around
to playing with this yet.

The glider flight models in FS2004 are not all that bad, I suppose,
though with my limited RL experience (about 15 hours solo in a Ka8, so
very limited!) I'm not one to judge. The biggest failing in FS2004 is in
the simulation of stalls and spins (or almost total lack thereof).

If I were to compare the two, I'd have to say that the flight models,
launch simulation and lift modelling in SFSpc are far superior to FS2004
despite its age. But graphics are all, and along with the weather
modelling, a decent mesh and photographic scenery, Microsoft produce a
simulator that I'm sure has some merit as an aid to practising you
navigation .

Though again, my limited RL experience means that I can only say this
authoritatively insofar as I know what the ground within a 10nm diameter
of Aston Down looks like from about 4000', and so I know this, at least,
is fairly well recreated in my copy of FS2004.

And its the being able to launch from Aston Down and explore a very
convincing replica of my own local countryside that keeps me hooked on
FS2004 and relegates my copy of SFSpc to shelf-ware.

A final note. I tried the Sailors of the Sky demo a good while back,
when trying to decide between it and SFSpc. Didn't get on with it at
all, so went with SFSpc. But others swear by it, so I wouldn't presume
to dissuade anybody from trying it and making up their own mind. Both
SotS and SFSpc have demos available for downloading from the Internet,
so both are well worth investigating.


--
Bill Gribble
http://www.scapegoatsanon.demon.co.uk

[Nick Hill]

Stewart Kissel wrote:
> http://virtualsoaring.org/index.html
>
>
> This is an active group...they have created a functional
> logger, LNAV, lift and sink programs. Also some very
> nice addon ships. They conduct races and the such.
> Yes, I know it is M$...and some of the flight dynamics
> are not quite right. The current supported platforms
> are FS2k2 and FS9.
>
>
>

The other thing about M$ FSXX is that you can get simulated GPS out of
the serial port while flying. See

http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html

This is an add on which transmits NMEA sentences out of the COM port so
you can plug in your favourite PDA and try out all those
Winpilot/GlideNAV/SeeYou Mobile style applications without leaving the
ground. Much safer to play with the buttons and familiarise yourself
with the application on the ground.

Nick Hill

[Oscar]

Thanks Bill, for this very detailed response. Also thanks to all the others
who took the time to reply.

I am a long term user of flightsims and have been using FS2002/04 for a
couple of years to sim-fly GA aircraft, but only recently had a look at the
glider side of this program. Have also seen the VirtualSoaring site and
downloaded some gliders from them. Also am aware of VET and static lift
scenery, but have not seen the Cross Country Soaring module yet, sounds
interesting.

As for SFSPC and SotS, I have not used either of them -- but the main point
of my initial post was to gauge from experienced glider pilots if any of
these simulators have any "carry-over value" or teaching value, if one were
to take up gliding in real life. Or are these sims still too unrealistic to
be of much value in their current form.

I believe that the high end of consumer grade simulators will sometime soon
be accurate enough to become a fair representation of reality, the question
to me is how close are they at this point in time. There was also a mention
of slip and spin (or lack thereof) in FS2004, please note that some FS2004
models are reported to simulate that quite well (RealAir - not gliders but
powered a/c).

To re-phrase: are FS2004, SFSPC, etc just games to be enjoyed or are they
valid teaching tools? Is there any place for simulators in the learning
process? Does anybody here use sims regularly (say over the winter month) as
a substitute for real gliding?

Cheers -- Oscar




"Bill Gribble" > wrote in
message .. .
> A few thoughts reflecting only my own opinion and experiences:
>
> Soaring Flight Simulator (http://www.sfspc.de/index_e.htm)
>
> For its price the graphics are now a little (arguably a lot!) dated, but
> the flight models remain good and the lift modelling (at least as far as
> ridge and thermal lift is concerned) is excellent. Great for practising
> centring techniques on thermals, obviously within the limitations of the
> fact that it is a simulation so you don't quite get that same seat of
> the pants feel.
>
> Good simulation of both winch-launching and aerotow, complete with the
> occasional cable break to keep you on your toes. Nice range of glider
> types available. Biggest downside is that you only get to fly in Germany
> (which is fine, if you're German, I suppose, but I'd prefer something
> more local to me!).
>
> Don't really know if SFSpc is at all useful for practising your
> navigation, in that I've never been to the location it recreates. But if
> you want to know why not to barrel roll a Ka8 or Immelman your ASH25
> then the simulation does have its uses. Does a much better job of
> stalling and spinning than Microsoft Flight Simulator.
>
> MS Flight Simulator.
>
> Personally, I brought this (in my case, FS2004) because it was going
> cheap on eBay. I had no intention of flying gliders in it, mainly
> because (up until the last time I checked at the time I considered this)
> the only way of launching a glider was to "slew" it to the launch height
> (for the uninitiated read that as being as "realistic" as just "starting
> in the air").
>
> Worse, the only sort of lift available was pre-designed static scenery
> lift (ie. Thermals and/or ridge pre-positioned by a scenery
> designer/builder prior to the flight, thus always in the same place
> whenever you flew over that area again).
>
> Finally, although the weather modelling is superb, it is detached from
> the lift, so your thermals aren't marked out by puffy white clouds.
>
> That said, FS2004 comes to life with the various addons available. With
> a decent (LOD9) terrain mesh, photographic landscape scenery and
> customised replacement autogen FS2004 does a superb job of visually
> recreating any given area of the planet. The very least you need is the
> enhanced terrain mesh, but the photographic scenery really does complete
> the illusion if you can get it.
>
> If you want an example (this one is UK based), visit the Visual Flight
> site
> (http://www.visualflight.co.uk) go to the forums hosted there and look
> for the photographic scenery screen shots. More specifically, the
> following is one somebody posted of a virtual flight out over Snowdonia
> in Wales:
>
> http://www.visualflight.co.uk/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3072
>
> Many of the various freeware glider models available for download are
> equipped with "VET" which, whilst it doesn't entirely replace the
> winch-launch (and still isn't a patch on SFSpc) it does give a fairly
> convincing recreation of one. Somebody already mentioned
> http://www.virtualsoaring.org - that's an excellent place to look for
> gliding related FS information and downloads.
>
> A dynamic lift generator has also been developed as a freeware addon
> (it's called Cross Country Soaring, and you'll find a link to it on the
> virtualsoaring.org site, I expect). A definite improvement over the old
> static scenery lift, you still don't get Cu capping the thermals,
> however, as nobody has yet cracked how to do that. And the thermal
> modelling doesn't feel as authentic as the modelling in SFSpc. But that
> might be me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I haven't actually
> loaded up my copy of SFSpc for a while, I've been too busy soaring
> around in FS2004 :)
>
> The Cross Country Soaring addon is also supposed to do a good job of
> recreating hill/ridge lift when set up right, though I haven't go around
> to playing with this yet.
>
> The glider flight models in FS2004 are not all that bad, I suppose,
> though with my limited RL experience (about 15 hours solo in a Ka8, so
> very limited!) I'm not one to judge. The biggest failing in FS2004 is in
> the simulation of stalls and spins (or almost total lack thereof).
>
> If I were to compare the two, I'd have to say that the flight models,
> launch simulation and lift modelling in SFSpc are far superior to FS2004
> despite its age. But graphics are all, and along with the weather
> modelling, a decent mesh and photographic scenery, Microsoft produce a
> simulator that I'm sure has some merit as an aid to practising you
> navigation .
>
> Though again, my limited RL experience means that I can only say this
> authoritatively insofar as I know what the ground within a 10nm diameter
> of Aston Down looks like from about 4000', and so I know this, at least,
> is fairly well recreated in my copy of FS2004.
>
> And its the being able to launch from Aston Down and explore a very
> convincing replica of my own local countryside that keeps me hooked on
> FS2004 and relegates my copy of SFSpc to shelf-ware.
>
> A final note. I tried the Sailors of the Sky demo a good while back,
> when trying to decide between it and SFSpc. Didn't get on with it at
> all, so went with SFSpc. But others swear by it, so I wouldn't presume
> to dissuade anybody from trying it and making up their own mind. Both
> SotS and SFSpc have demos available for downloading from the Internet,
> so both are well worth investigating.
>
>
> --
> Bill Gribble
> http://www.scapegoatsanon.demon.co.uk

[Marian Aldenhövel]

Hi,

Take a look at X-Plane, too. The visuals are not up to par with the other
programs already mentioned, but the flight-model is superb.

Ciao, MM
--
Marian Aldenhövel, Rosenhain 23, 53123 Bonn. +49 228 624013.
http://www.marian-aldenhoevel.de
"Wir brauchen keine Opposition, wir sind bereits Demokraten."

[Jancsika]

Oscar wrote:

> To re-phrase: are FS2004, SFSPC, etc just games to be enjoyed or are they
> valid teaching tools? Is there any place for simulators in the learning
> process? Does anybody here use sims regularly (say over the winter month) as
> a substitute for real gliding?

Definitely!!! We use to came together and organize small xc contests
(longest was 300km). It's amazing that you feel almost the same
excitement when you miss a thermal and you have to fight hard to catch
others. The fear of outlanding is also there... Special high level of
concentration over the hills (stall or spin is fatal, there are traps
etc-etc), considering wind strength and direction.
Sots can provide nmea output so you can use your PDA to navigate and
log your flight.
Here are some pictures, igc file some of our contest days:
http://bauerj.fw.hu/SOTS/party
http://bauerj.fw.hu/SOTS/1213/
http://bauerj.fw.hu/SOTS/0204
Regards,

/Janos

[Jancsika]

> Oscar wrote:
>
>> To re-phrase: are FS2004, SFSPC, etc just games to be enjoyed or are they
>> valid teaching tools? Is there any place for simulators in the learning
>> process? Does anybody here use sims regularly (say over the winter
>> month) as
>> a substitute for real gliding?

One more picture:
http://bauerj.fw.hu/SOTS/eddigiek_12_01.jpg
It was done from all igc files what we did in sots. We know Minden
quite well from sots. It was funny to see the face of a pilot flown
there, when after a fairly long discussion about the Minden mountains,
it turned out that I wasn't there at all.:)
Nowadays we fly on Sion scenery. That is also seems to be realistic.

/Jancsika

[Marc]

YES, flight sims DO have LIMITED value in training for real-life soaring but
most gloss over details that every student encounters and must know. Each
program has its good points and shortcomings, and unfortunately the hardest
thing to simulate is low-speed handling; just what real-life students need
most practice with. Your interest is in learning for real-life, so I'll
list my suggestions in order of flight model accuracy, from easiest to most
realistic.

http://www.sfspc.de/index_e.htm
SFSpc is a fun game but not the best teacher for real life. It is engaging
but too easy to use. Tow and winch practice don't show realistic airspeed
and slack-line issues. Thermals are unrealistically cylindrical and smooth.
Thermals realistically start/stop with tops/bottoms instead of just shutting
off. All SFSpc thermals drift with the wind, where IRL some do ("bubble"
types, once well above ground level) and some don't ("fountain" types
continuously flow from a trigger point on the ground and SLANT as they rise;
performing "turns about a point" on a breezy day is a skill this program
won't bring up). Pitch and speed control is too easy. Yaw control is WAY
too simple and needs a LOT of improvement; once established in a turn it
does not require inside rudder and outside aileron as a real aircraft does.

MS Flight Simulator is fine for flight well above stall speed and I love it
for keeping instrument skills up in the deep winter, but I can't recommend
it for teaching flight close to stall speed (e.g. thermalling). Mind you, I
use FS 2004 a LOT because I like the graphics; everyone has a price.

http://www.x-plane.com/
X-plane is my favorite for rotary-wing practice and it does have a
respectable flight model. I miss the fun of competing sailplanes on a
cross-country task so I rarely spend more than 15 minutes soaring with it.
The graphics are about on par with SFSpc. Aero-tow and winch launch are
moderately accurate.

http://www.sailorsofthesky.com/
SOTS has possibly the best graphics, and very accurate handling. Spin
recovery may be MORE difficult than IRL, but that teaches you NOT to spin
without planning (and always plan for the possibility). SOTS thermals do
not drift with the wind. Like SFSpc they are cylindrical and too smooth. I
don't recall having to work upwind to avoid being pushed out of a thermal,
but that's because I sometimes use the delightful autopilot to thermal for
me. Slack-line problems on tow are not part of this program. I'm thrilled
to hear a new release is planned, as it is my current favorite soaring
simulator.

http://www.silentwings.no/
Silent Wings (still in beta) is my top pick for realistic aero-tow handling,
and the graphics are more than satisfactory. The aero-tow is EXCELLENT
because it is the only program that simulates slack-line problems. There is
no winch option. The beta has no wake turbulence from the tow plane so that
reminder is missing if you drift high/low on tow or when "boxing the wake".
The beta can't be stalled or spun, but the crossed controls needed during
low-speed circling feels JUST right. Inertia feels right too; press and
release the rudder and the nose oscilations damp slowly just as they should.
This makes three-axis control while thermalling in ragged lift feel VERY
real. This is (currently) the only program to model thermals as less than
mathmatically perfect cylinders from bottom to top. Thermals appear to
drift with the wind and clouds swell and fade noticably over time. If the
first released version of Silent Wings adds stall/spin then it may become my
top pick. The developers' hearts seem to be in the right place.