MSFS2020 Flight Aerodynamics [Video]

[Snoober]

Interesting video on flight aerodynamics updates that Asobo has been doing: https://youtu.be/2KdM2pT1hI8

I have definitely noticed some of these updates such as turbulence over water -> land and mountains. Hopefully a good sign that this sim will turn into a great platform for A2A products as well!

[MarcE]

They move into the right direction for sure. But as long as they don't stop to play around with more and more settings for the input axes instead of correct airfoil and control surface calculation there will always remain big issues with aircraft handling. The sim requires a correct simulation of the air so aircraft developers can adjust their addons to this air and physics environment. Having 100 million diffrent controller setups however will end up in nothing but issues.

[Dogsbody55]

They move into the right direction for sure. But as long as they don't stop to play around with more and more settings for the input axes instead of correct airfoil and control surface calculation there will always remain big issues with aircraft handling. The sim requires a correct simulation of the air so aircraft developers can adjust their addons to this air and physics environment. Having 100 million diffrent controller setups however will end up in nothing but issues.

Totally agree. This business of messing about with null zones and sensitivities, which is almost mandatory, is a joke. If the flight modelling was really any good in MSFS, the tweaking of these settings would be unnecessary. Most people don't actually know how a given plane will fly so the seemingly necessary messing about with these will negate any attempt to produce an accurate study level add on, such as those offered here. After all, you only have to look at the recommended controller settings here.


Cheers,
Mike

[sdflyer]

They move into the right direction for sure. But as long as they don't stop to play around with more and more settings for the input axes instead of correct airfoil and control surface calculation there will always remain big issues with aircraft handling. The sim requires a correct simulation of the air so aircraft developers can adjust their addons to this air and physics environment. Having 100 million diffrent controller setups however will end up in nothing but issues.

Totally agree. This business of messing about with null zones and sensitivities, which is almost mandatory, is a joke. If the flight modelling was really any good in MSFS, the tweaking of these settings would be unnecessary. Most people don't actually know how a given plane will fly so the seemingly necessary messing about with these will negate any attempt to produce an accurate study level add on, such as those offered here. After all, you only have to look at the recommended controller settings here.


Cheers,
Mike

I don't about that. LOL I adjust my controls in any sim DCS, Il2, XP11 and so on. MSFS is not an exception!

[MarcE]

Adjusting input curves (for example via FSUIPC) is actually there to translate the travel of a joystick or yoke to the different travel range of a yoke or stick in the plane so it doesn‘t snap around but has the same percentage of movement in the sim like on the desk. I use this in the Piper Cub or the Mustang as my T16000 doesn‘t travel as far as the planes‘ sticks and hence there is an assymmetric snap effect. FSUIPC‘s axis calibration can correct this.

In MSFS they let you build completely strange curves to work against (or „correct“) a totally messed up flight model, all above with the rudder effect. So everyone will end up with a setting he likes best and third party devs will have to deal with several thousand of input settings whose owners will complain that the addon doesn‘t behave as expected. But you actually can‘t even let it at default as every currently available airplane, default or addon, overacts completely if you use default sensitivity and dead zone settings.

[Dan M]

Yes, but that's nothing new for flight simulation. That whole debate of "how should it handle" gets messy sometimes but I think developers who incorporate real pilot feedback into their models can make a lot of headway by explaining why their aircraft perform as they do.

Control adjustment options have to be there so they can establish a baseline setting against which optimized (realistic) flight modelling can be measured. There will always be hardware that needs calibration to reproduce the realism as closely as possible.

The sim itself still has a long way to go but having a solid choice of sensitivity options is going to be important when companies like A2A, PMDG etc. start creating products for it.

[Caldemeyn]

Hm..i always try to fly with completely linear settings and (depending on the sim options) no damping even if it might seem a bit twitchy at first and even with dcs helis, one gets used to it and you learn to fly with a light touch at least you evade problems with varying sensitivity of the axis and you have full deflections available and reacting immediately.

[Dogsbody55]

Adjusting input curves (for example via FSUIPC) is actually there to translate the travel of a joystick or yoke to the different travel range of a yoke or stick in the plane so it doesn‘t snap around but has the same percentage of movement in the sim like on the desk. I use this in the Piper Cub or the Mustang as my T16000 doesn‘t travel as far as the planes‘ sticks and hence there is an assymmetric snap effect. FSUIPC‘s axis calibration can correct this.

In MSFS they let you build completely strange curves to work against (or „correct“) a totally messed up flight model, all above with the rudder effect. So everyone will end up with a setting he likes best and third party devs will have to deal with several thousand of input settings whose owners will complain that the addon doesn‘t behave as expected. But you actually can‘t even let it at default as every currently available airplane, default or addon, overacts completely if you use default sensitivity and dead zone settings.

I've never found the need for third party add ons such as FSUIPC to help me out with my controllers. I'm presently using the Saitek yoke and rudder pedals, and previously the equivalent CH product, and have always had them set with no null zones or any other setting which basically only slows the controller response. I should add that I am only talking about FS9, FSX and P3D, and can't speak for DCS or XP11 etc. I do understand that all the controllers I've mentioned have only half the travel they should have to be considered realistic, but I've not had a problem adapting to the "unrealistic" nature of most FS controllers. I've always believed that to make such adjustments in the sim only dumbs down the flight characteristics that the developer is trying to achieve. It is also quite clear to me that MSFS was released about a year too soon, especially as Asobo are still working on this very area of the sim.

Setting up and calibrating the controllers in Windows should be all that is required. To have to do anything more only results in too much wasted time in discussing "how it should handle" to a bunch of people who have never flown that particular plane. So if such messing about with controller responses continues to be needed in MSFS, how on earth are developers such as A2A ever going to get an Accusim or other high fidelity model on to the market with any degree of success?


Cheers,
Mike

[MarcE]

Adjusting input curves (for example via FSUIPC) is actually there to translate the travel of a joystick or yoke to the different travel range of a yoke or stick in the plane so it doesn‘t snap around but has the same percentage of movement in the sim like on the desk. I use this in the Piper Cub or the Mustang as my T16000 doesn‘t travel as far as the planes‘ sticks and hence there is an assymmetric snap effect. FSUIPC‘s axis calibration can correct this.

In MSFS they let you build completely strange curves to work against (or „correct“) a totally messed up flight model, all above with the rudder effect. So everyone will end up with a setting he likes best and third party devs will have to deal with several thousand of input settings whose owners will complain that the addon doesn‘t behave as expected. But you actually can‘t even let it at default as every currently available airplane, default or addon, overacts completely if you use default sensitivity and dead zone settings.

I've never found the need for third party add ons such as FSUIPC to help me out with my controllers. I'm presently using the Saitek yoke and rudder pedals, and previously the equivalent CH product, and have always had them set with no null zones or any other setting which basically only slows the controller response. I should add that I am only talking about FS9, FSX and P3D, and can't speak for DCS or XP11 etc. I do understand that all the controllers I've mentioned have only half the travel they should have to be considered realistic, but I've not had a problem adapting to the "unrealistic" nature of most FS controllers. I've always believed that to make such adjustments in the sim only dumbs down the flight characteristics that the developer is trying to achieve. It is also quite clear to me that MSFS was released about a year too soon, especially as Asobo are still working on this very area of the sim.

Setting up and calibrating the controllers in Windows should be all that is required. To have to do anything more only results in too much wasted time in discussing "how it should handle" to a bunch of people who have never flown that particular plane. So if such messing about with controller responses continues to be needed in MSFS, how on earth are developers such as A2A ever going to get an Accusim or other high fidelity model on to the market with any degree of success?


Cheers,
Mike

I‘m totally with you with everything you say. It IS not necessary in P3D. I donit with the cub abd the P51 for one reason: I have flown a Cub for about 20h and I‘ve set myself up with the A2A Cub in VR so I have my T16000m joystick between my legs as I would have the Cub‘s stick with my legs going over its stand. This feels incredibly immersive but has one downside: in the real Piper you need a lot of left/right movement of the stick and you easily do that naturally as the stick is pretty long. With the joystick between the legs that‘s difficult and when you actually do it you see the stick in VR to snap to one side after an initially smooth movement. This comes from the natural curve when you translate the 15ish cm travel of the Thrustmaster to the 40 cm of the real stick. It can‘t be linear and so you can adjust the curve in FSUIPC to get rid of this „snapping“ effect. Same in the P51.

And that is ALL a controller input curve for a flight sim must ever be adjustable. This terrible cutting here, adding something there and modelling that curve so and so in MSFS makes every serious effort obsolete to recreate a correct flight model. People will end up with a C172 that will be the same responsive as their Extra. And this is something Asobo will eventually HAVE to understand or this sim will fail as a sim in the long term.

OR the developers will clearly say „Standard settings for controllers, anything else will not be supported like the reshade topic in P3D.

[MkIV Hvd]

Interesting video on flight aerodynamics updates that Asobo has been doing: https://youtu.be/2KdM2pT1hI8

I have definitely noticed some of these updates such as turbulence over water -> land and mountains. Hopefully a good sign that this sim will turn into a great platform for A2A products as well!

Thanks for posting this! It's really interesting to see what they're working on and how they're progressing. As far as I'm concerned, there is far too much negativity out there about MSFS (note no "2020" ) and I do not understand how anyone could be dissatisfied with a simulator that provides worldwide real scenery and live weather that costs about the same as some addon airplanes for other sims.

Come on folks, the future of flight simming has never been brighter!! I am glad it's under constant improvement and I've been completely pleased with sightseeing trips in the Pitts and cross country flight in the Citation CJ4, which is now on par with higher end addons, even though it's all still free. I am happier than a pig in poop with this sim for the above reasons and with P3Dv5.1, because it has A2A airplanes!! I have so many future missions planned in my head for both sims that I don't think I'll ever catch up, but I'm sure as heck gonna' give it a try...with a bigass smile on my face...

Btw as far as replicating real flight through sim programming is concerned...my first trip to Flight Safety in Wilmington, DE was with our Chief Pilot, who was actually kind of a knucklehead and he got into and argument with the instructor while in a session in the multimillion dollar full motion simulator about how it didn't fly like the real Westwind 1123 we had. The instructor's response was that he was aware of that and that just as there will be differences in different airplanes of the same model, there will be differences between the real plane and the sim...and your job as a pilot is to figure it out and just fly the airplane.

Cheers,
Rob