Most Realistic flight modeling

Which Flight Sim has the most Realistic flight modeling?

  • Total voters
    109
M

Major_Spittle

Charter Member
FYI, you can pick more than one answer in the Poll to denote if you haven't flown the other suggestions.

For people who have flown more than just FSX, what flight sim do you think provided the most realistic flight modeling and why?

I would have to say Rise of Flight, X-Plane, and then FSX out of the flight sims I have flown. Rise of Flight and X-Plane are fairly similar but Rise of Flight seems to handle ground contact better for take-offs and landing. FSX is way behind IMO and doesn't even seem capable to produce the feeling of flight like the other two can.
 
In FS there are models with a very realistic flightmodel, but also models with a less realistic flight model (to put it mildly). Personally I think Rise of Flight has a realistic flightmodel for all aircrafts in the sim.

Cheers,
Huub
 
I can't even answer.... there's some FSX planes that are horrible, some XP planes are worse, and I'v never flown RoF.
 
Whitehawk said:
RoF by a long shot, then FSX payware i.e PMDG, A2A, VRS etc.

Most of FSX stock is pretty awful..
Click to expand...

Not to pick on you.... but how many people have flown WW1-era aircraft? How do you measure the quality of the flight physics for an aircraft you haven't flown?
 
ryanbatc said:
. . . . .How do you measure the quality of the flight physics for an aircraft you haven't flown?
Click to expand...
BINGO!! Exactly why any question that concerns how "realistic" any FDE for any of the airplanes we fly is, comes down on the side of "opinion" and not "fact". Yes, there are real world pilots here that have the time in the cockpit to say that a particular airplane in FSX or any other sim flies "just like the real thing". But for the most part we are relying on conjecture and not fact, what we think a plane should fly like and not based on any real world experience, and no, a 1 hour "Get Acquainted" flight doesn't count, lol.
These questions are great for bantering about what we think is real, but the bottom line is "most" of us have no idea other than our gut feeling.
 
Voted for RoF, and then I saw Other option. For me the most realistic simulator is DCS: Black Shark.

FSX is very good until aircraft is in stable flight. Extremes doesn't feel right to me. I don't like XPlane. I don't feel inertia force there.
 
falcon409 said:
BINGO!! Exactly why any question that concerns how "realistic" any FDE for any of the airplanes we fly is, comes down on the side of "opinion" and not "fact". Yes, there are real world pilots here that have the time in the cockpit to say that a particular airplane in FSX or any other sim flies "just like the real thing". But for the most part we are relying on conjecture and not fact, what we think a plane should fly like and not based on any real world experience, and no, a 1 hour "Get Acquainted" flight doesn't count, lol.
These questions are great for bantering about what we think is real, but the bottom line is "most" of us have no idea other than our gut feeling.
Click to expand...

I have flown a lot of RC airplanes. I know how wind effects things, I know planes don't slide sideways down an asphalt runway, I know 747's don't fall 3000ft out of the sky straight down tail first when stalling....... FSX fly's like the planes are on rails for the most part. It isn't close enough to worry about " real life experience is needed ". Lift, balance, drag, enertia, AERODYNAMICS from cross winds or the plane falling backwards as in example don't really seem modeled at all.

So be it a combination of a gut feeling or just a basic understanding of physics, I would disagree with the "most of us have no idea" comment.
 
ryanbatc said:
Not to pick on you.... but how many people have flown WW1-era aircraft? How do you measure the quality of the flight physics for an aircraft you haven't flown?
Click to expand...

Think of it as which flight sim seems the most realistic in the most realistic plane you can think of for that game.

Crabbing, slipping, stalling, general rudder control on plane. I would say most planes in FSX either have such poorly modeled Flight Dyamics when it comes to the rudder it is totally useless or they have the rudder modeled well under very limited conditions to perform very specific manuvers but as soon as you use the rudder outside those conditions it gets pretty unrealistic in a hurry.
 
To many variables to answer this accurately. In FSX there are several very accurate flight models but not all considering they are on a $39.00 simulator package. In X-Plane 9.30 the same issues exist. Some are fairly accurate but not most. Rise of Flight seems accurate but I have never flown any of those aircraft in R/L so I really don't know. I like the feel of Rise of Flight but can't seem to get excited about it. In FSX I get the planes I have flown in R/L and now with the FTX Australia and PNW I'm really pleased.
Ted
 
<---- Voted FS9 or 'Other'


Rise of Flight: I kept crashing on take-offs and landings. I would spin around, flip, ground loop, etc. I never did shoot down one plane, not one single time, in all my days of having RoF. Not once. I could fill their plane with 100 pounds of bullets and they get 5 bullets in my plane and I crash and burn. Whats up with that? Also, visibility out of the plane, and handling was 'scrappy' (said with Scottish accent). You look around and suddenly your planes angle of attack is 30 degrees up or down. It couldnt be trimmed and flew extremely unsteady. This could be my joystick but I doubt it. A plane should be half way stable to allow you to look around and find the other planes. I could just be really bad at it though in RoF.

Also, if I turned up the sliders in RoF, like ground terrain so that it looked really nice, (and not maxxed out mind you), it brought frame rates down to the bottom, almost to un-flyable.

FSX: Glitchy, plane blips around. I do not have a super computer and having the blips and glitches really drives me nuts. I also do not like low settings.

FS9: Easy to fly, smoooooth on frames, planes can be trimmed, stable platform.


Now I am old, a vintage Sim flyer, so that probably explains alot. I am not putting down other sims, only saying that I couldnt fly one as the planes seemed really unstable, and the other seemed to stagger. I really like the 'Other'.

FS9 has beeeeen vary vary goot to meee....! :d


EDIT: I do not mean to shoot down another sim. If you all want, I can delete this. I dont want to start a sim shooting match. I am only stating what I like and why.
 
huub vink said:
In FS there are models with a very realistic flightmodel, but also models with a less realistic flight model (to put it mildly). Personally I think Rise of Flight has a realistic flightmodel for all aircrafts in the sim.

Cheers,
Huub
Click to expand...

That pretty much sums it up for me.
 
Major_Spittle said:
I have flown a lot of RC airplanes. I know how wind effects things, I know planes don't slide sideways down an asphalt runway, I know 747's don't fall 3000ft out of the sky straight down tail first when stalling....... FSX fly's like the planes are on rails for the most part. It isn't close enough to worry about " real life experience is needed ". Lift, balance, drag, enertia, AERODYNAMICS from cross winds or the plane falling backwards as in example don't really seem modeled at all.

So be it a combination of a gut feeling or just a basic understanding of physics, I would disagree with the "most of us have no idea" comment.
Click to expand...
lol, and I will stick with my assessment despite your background with RC Aircraft. Yes, lift, balance, drag, inertia are all components of the aerodynamics of any airplane and those with specific knowledge of those components as they relate to the "hands on" experience of actual flight in a real aircraft are better suited to judge.
 
falcon409 said:
lol, and I will stick with my assessment despite your background with RC Aircraft. Yes, lift, balance, drag, inertia are all components of the aerodynamics of any airplane and those with specific knowledge of those components as they relate to the "hands on" experience of actual flight in a real aircraft are better suited to judge.
Click to expand...

Yeah, those RC airplanes don't really fly. How could anyone learn anything about realistic flight from them.
 
cheezyflier said:
so what would you say are some of the worst, among the more popular aircraft for fsx?
not counting the EH 101
Click to expand...

I won't say the name but I once downloaded a demo of a commercial FSX aircraft. I put in a whole lot of left rudder and the plane yaws left, a bit of right aileron to counteract the roll and keep the wings level and then guess what happens? The plane starts turning to the right! Left rudder and the plane is turning to the right!!

There are a lot of things you can control in FSX with aerodynamics but at the end of the day it is still FSX that determines how the aircraft will actually fly and to a large extent you are limited by what FSX can and can't do.
 
anthony31 said:
I won't say the name but I once downloaded a demo of a commercial FSX aircraft. I put in a whole lot of left rudder and the plane yaws left, a bit of right aileron to counteract the roll and keep the wings level and then guess what happens? The plane starts turning to the right! Left rudder and the plane is turning to the right!!

There are a lot of things you can control in FSX with aerodynamics but at the end of the day it is still FSX that determines how the aircraft will actually fly and to a large extent you are limited by what FSX can and can't do.
Click to expand...

And you somehow knew that the flight modeling wasn't right without flying said airplane in real life? LOL.

This is what I'm talking about, FSX probably didn't take into account that the landing gear kept the plane from banking right so it still calculated a flight path the same as if it was in the air " slipping " with opposite inputs. But hey, I just fly RC so maybe "real" planes do that.:kilroy:
 
I love the Ant's Moth...very nice character in the air

I am familiar with light GA so I know a little about this stuff

I like the RealAire Citabria pack for FSX also

but FSX is not an advanced platform for simulated aerodynamic flight modeling.
its based on shortcuts and approximations in this regard...

FSX is about gleaming 3d models and environments that look appealing (or can look appealing with tremendous 3rd party efforts in those areas as well)

For that reason I think that the best developers have done amazing stuff within the framework of FSX
 
I'd say FSX does a pretty good job of flight modeling for things like airliners or large GA aircraft, but it falls flat on it's face when presented with "outside the envelope" situations.

As an example, the flight model in the default 172 is pretty accurate in terms of power settings and performance for most maneuvers compared to the 172's I fly as a CFI, but it doesn't slip properly, and FSX appears to give aircraft tires a level of friction about equal to greased Teflon for things like crosswind landing or figuring out when a wheel has locked under braking.

The default Baron and King Air are even more entertaining. As far as I can tell, FSX doesn't model propeller windmilling drag at all, since feathering a propeller in the sim produces almost no difference in performance, when it's absolutely crucial in real world twins.

Aside from the prop drag, FSX also does a terrible job with VMC for twins, since all of the default twins (and a lot of 3rd party aircraft) will happily fly around with one dead engine and the other at full power well below VMC with minimal rudder pressure, instead the uncontrolled roll and yaw (usually followed by spin and crash) that happens below VMC in the real world.

Finally, FSX has a fundamentally broken turboprop flight model, since it treats turboprops as early turbojets, with comically long spool-up times, virtually no torque, and absolutely zero propeller drag at idle.

That said, 3rd party flight modelers have found ways around most of the hiccups in the FSX engine to produce some great flight models, so I'd say the flight modeling in FSX is only as good as the person who created the one for a given aircraft.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top