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Old May 31st 07, 04:04 AM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Mxsmanic
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Default Coordinated turns without rudder, and autopilots

Snowbird writes:

MSFS has for a long time been known to have a rather inaccurate flight
model. MS tends to focus on the eye candy aspects of simulation.


Which aspects are inaccurate?

In my own experience, the stall/spin entry behavior is an easily explored
area which quite clearly reveals the inadequacies of MSFS' flight modeling
as compared to the real world. And it reflects of course as well in other
areas of the flight envelope.


A coordinated turn is neither a stall nor a spin.

Years ago I flew extensively with a popular WWII networked combat airplane
simulator (Warbirds). One of its claims to fame was that its flight dynamics
model was based on actual real-time calculation of the motional differential
equations that govern the flight dynamics of an aircraft. This in contrast
to the "simplistic table-driven flight dynamics model of the mainstream PC
simulators" probably referring to MSFS.


Table-driven models are often more accurate. They don't have to calculate
anything; they just look up the data taken from the real aircraft. They don't
work in exceptional regimes of flight because the data for those in the tables
are either absent or incorrect (as the real aircraft may have never been flown
in those regimes to gather the data). But they work better than physics
calculations in normal regimes of flight because they are guaranteed to match
the real aircraft--after all, they are just reproducing what the real aircraft
did in those cases.

Physics models are better at handling all regimes of flight, since they
calculate behavior on the fly. However, they rarely match the real aircraft
precisely, because inaccuracies in the model are extremely difficult to
correct completely enough to reproduce real-world behavior in flight,
especially in real time. It's much easier to just measure the real aircraft
and put that in a table. Additionally, if you want to certify a simulation,
table-driven simulation is a lot easier to certify because it's very easy to
make the simulation match a specific real-world aircraft.

Marketing talk aside, I found that simulator MUCH more realistic in the
flight dynamics modeling than MSFS. Especially at the edges of the flight
envelope, where the differences between different airplanes were very
significant.


See above. I don't fly at the edges of the envelope--on that path lies
danger.