MS Flight Sim As a Training Tool

It's not a matter of logged or not... the reality is that MSFS on your
everyday home computer will cost you 50 bucks... (or 5 bucks if you buy
the previous one) and the overall introduction that you get to seeing
how the instruments work and trying things that you're told about from
your instructor at home can save you thousands on flight training.

Can you log it? No, for one the flight models are rubbish.

Is it worth paying 5 bucks to a student who can take flight simulator
and see what they can do about flying approaches, especially DME arcs
etc on a sim, which they can pause and see whats going on, instead of
doing it cold turkey in an airplane the first time burning valuable
time and too busy doing the next thing before they grasp the last
thing? Yeah, the 5 bucks goes a long way.

Personally, I've been saving some money (in the line of several
thousands) to make a complete mock-up of a stationary flight simulator
for an ATR-42 and ATR-72.

Why? Pure fun I guess, plus it's a great way to get people interested
in aviation. If you are interested in seeing what can be done using
just flight simulator as a tool take a look at a company called project
magenta (google it to find their website), if you were to add a
hydraulic system to what they do it could be considered the same sort
of full motion simulator I did my Dash-8 training on.

Can you log it? No, for one the flight models are rubbish.

Actually, I've found this is NOT true. What I *thought* were bad
flight models was actually the computer lagging just a split
millisecond behind my control inputs. It was imperceptible, and
everything *looked* smooth -- but it was obviously there.

When we hooked everything up to a truly world-class computer, the
impact was immediate and everyone noticed it. Suddenly, the "flight
models" were dead-on, because the controls were finally responding in
real time.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Really?

Spin the plane, stall it and put it in a spin... the models are not
full, it won't do a spin.

wrote:
Really?

Spin the plane, stall it and put it in a spin... the models are not
full, it won't do a spin.


I'm not a pilot, but there add-on aircraft that according to their
developers will spin. The description for the (free) RealAir Cessna 172
specifically states that "it will side-slip and spin".

fromTheShadows wrote:
wrote:
Really?

Spin the plane, stall it and put it in a spin... the models are not
full, it won't do a spin.


I'm not a pilot, but there add-on aircraft that according to their
developers will spin. The description for the (free) RealAir Cessna 172
specifically states that "it will side-slip and spin".

Great I'm getting into one of these arguments...

Anyway, the only readily available simulator that can be bought at a
store that simulates aerodynamics "properly" is x-plane, in fact the
engine that is used to simulate the physics of an airfoil does so
completley without using benchmarks of real world aircraft, just their
virtual models, and does it accuratley. X-plane is also endorsed by the
FAA as a PCATD... or something along those lines, I don't remember
exactly what, but it's a lot better (from a physics standpoint) than
Microsoft's release.

wrote:
Great I'm getting into one of these arguments...


I'm not trying to be argumentative at all. You said that MSFS aircraft
won't spin, and that isn't necessarily true. I even went so far as to
state that I'm not a pilot and so am only going off what the developers say.

"fromTheShadows" wrote in message
...
wrote:
Great I'm getting into one of these arguments...


I'm not trying to be argumentative at all. You said that MSFS aircraft
won't spin, and that isn't necessarily true. I even went so far as to
state that I'm not a pilot and so am only going off what the developers
say.

It's my understanding is that MSFS has no Physics engine it is table based
where as X-Plane does have a Physics engine. The better add-on planes for
MSFS just have more data in the tables but still there is no way a table
based simulator can have every possible combinations.

Even X-Plane's physics engine isn't as good as that in some of the more
complex games such as "Half Life." It really surprises me that someone
hasn't come along and used a modified Half-Life engine in a flight sim.

writes:

Anyway, the only readily available simulator that can be bought at a
store that simulates aerodynamics "properly" is x-plane, in fact the
engine that is used to simulate the physics of an airfoil does so
completley without using benchmarks of real world aircraft, just their
virtual models, and does it accuratley.

There are many ways to accurately model flight.

X-plane is also endorsed by the FAA as a PCATD... or something along
those lines, I don't remember exactly what, but it's a lot better
(from a physics standpoint) than Microsoft's release.

When you do remember exactly what you're talking about, come back and
explain it again.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Mxsmanic wrote:
writes:

Anyway, the only readily available simulator that can be bought at a
store that simulates aerodynamics "properly" is x-plane, in fact the
engine that is used to simulate the physics of an airfoil does so
completley without using benchmarks of real world aircraft, just their
virtual models, and does it accuratley.

There are many ways to accurately model flight.

X-plane is also endorsed by the FAA as a PCATD... or something along
those lines, I don't remember exactly what, but it's a lot better
(from a physics standpoint) than Microsoft's release.

When you do remember exactly what you're talking about, come back and
explain it again.

The details are here ( http://www.x-plane.com/FTD.html ) Found them in
10 seconds as you could have if you bothered at least a little bit to
look things up on your own.