How do you find the limits of areas on a chart?

Judah writes:

You can use multiple points to determine your location with a fair amount
of precision, and you can estimate with a fair amount of accuracy your
distance from the landmarks.

Even as you are flying? There are a lot of airspaces to worry about.

Where is this?

Many places. By the time you've carefully calculated whether or not
you're in one of them, you're no longer there, but you've violated two
other airspaces. Even in small private planes, things move quickly.

How wide, exactly?

A good ten miles or so, at least, depending on many factors.

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Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Judah writes:

You can use multiple points to determine your location with a fair
amount of precision, and you can estimate with a fair amount of
accuracy your distance from the landmarks.

Even as you are flying? There are a lot of airspaces to worry about.

Yes. When you are driving, how do you ensure that you are maintaining a
safe distance from the guardrail, or from the car in front of or next to
you? How about from a Stop Sign or Traffic Light?

Do you do this equally as well as you did the first time you got into a
car? Do you need a GPS to do this?

The same sort of judgement of distances is possible when piloting an
airplane. Someone who learns to fly in the real worlds learns to discern
three dimensions and estimate distance. Unfortunately, this cannot be
effectively done on a two-dimensional simulator screen.

Many places. By the time you've carefully calculated whether or not
you're in one of them, you're no longer there, but you've violated two
other airspaces. Even in small private planes, things move quickly.

Careful calculation is not required. And certainly there is no harm in
leaving yourself a bit of lattitude if you don't have tools to do it with
exacting precision.

Judah wrote:
Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Judah writes:
The same sort of judgement of distances is possible when piloting an
airplane. Someone who learns to fly in the real worlds learns to discern
three dimensions and estimate distance. Unfortunately, this cannot be
effectively done on a two-dimensional simulator screen.

That's a good point. While you can pick out some landmarks on a sim
screen, it's very difficult to constantly rotate your view around and
get the spatial relationship that you can in real life.

Many places. By the time you've carefully calculated whether or not
you're in one of them, you're no longer there, but you've violated two
other airspaces. Even in small private planes, things move quickly.

Yes, things can move quickly. That's why it takes training to become a
real life pilot. The latter must learn to be constantly aware of the
airplane's location and heading, and to stay one or more steps ahead of
the plane. It's a skill that can get rusty, for sure.

Kev

"Kev" wrote in message
oups.com...
That's a good point. While you can pick out some landmarks on a sim
screen, it's very difficult to constantly rotate your view around and
get the spatial relationship that you can in real life.

A joystick with a POV hat-switch makes it pretty easy to look around.

--Gary

Gary Drescher wrote:
"Kev" wrote in message
oups.com...
That's a good point. While you can pick out some landmarks on a sim
screen, it's very difficult to constantly rotate your view around and
get the spatial relationship that you can in real life.

A joystick with a POV hat-switch makes it pretty easy to look around.

Yeah, but how many simmers constantly flip their view around? Pilots
using it for practice, sure. But non-pilots wouldn't normally do it,
methinks.

Now if you had one of those head-tracker thingies, or multiple screens
with side views, that might be a different story. No work involved.
Still, you wouldn't get the effect of easily leaning over and looking
below you (unless you had a screen below you too. Which is an
interesting idea :-)

Cheers, Kev

Kev writes:

Yeah, but how many simmers constantly flip their view around? Pilots
using it for practice, sure. But non-pilots wouldn't normally do it,
methinks.

I don't do it a lot, but that is more because it is so awkward than
because I don't want to. I'd certainly like to be able to just look
off to the right or left, although the aircraft blocks a lot of the
view (you can turn the aircraft off in the sim, but that's cheating a
bit).

Still, you wouldn't get the effect of easily leaning over and looking
below you (unless you had a screen below you too. Which is an
interesting idea :-)

What happens when you need to look down to the right? When I do that,
all I see is the wing. In fact, the wing is a problem on the left
side, too.

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"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
I don't do it a lot, but that is more because it is so awkward than
because I don't want to. I'd certainly like to be able to just look
off to the right or left, although the aircraft blocks a lot of the
view (you can turn the aircraft off in the sim, but that's cheating a
bit).

Still, you wouldn't get the effect of easily leaning over and looking
below you (unless you had a screen below you too. Which is an
interesting idea :-)

What happens when you need to look down to the right? When I do that,
all I see is the wing. In fact, the wing is a problem on the left
side, too.

In real flying, you can turn the plane to get a better view of something
that is blocked by a wing, strut, cowling, etc. You can also change your
position to get a better view by leaning forward or whatever. One of the
maneuvers that we do during training and FR's are turns-around-a-point, bank
the plane and put the wingtip on a landmark and circle that landmark keeping
it in sight; probably not (as) easy to do on a sim.

As we look out the windows while flying, we'll see a lake there, a railroad
track running that way, a town over there and can easily figure out from the
current view where we are on the sectional. As we pass the lake, town, etc.,
we'll pick out other landmarks to determine our current position. It's not
that hard to do.

GPS just makes it easier but isn't required.

Gary Drescher writes:

A joystick with a POV hat-switch makes it pretty easy to look around.

That's what I've configured, but it still is awkward. First, if you
don't turn off all the cockpit details, there's a pause as the sim
generates them when you change your viewpoint. Also, at least on my
joystick, it's hard to position the hat precisely for 45-degree
angles, and there is still some bizarre interaction with the throttle
and other controls that I don't understand. I still use it sometimes,
though. If it were instantaneous and easier to manipulate, it would
be very convenient. Maybe then I could fly patterns a little bit
easier.

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"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Gary Drescher writes:

A joystick with a POV hat-switch makes it pretty easy to look around.

That's what I've configured, but it still is awkward. First, if you
don't turn off all the cockpit details, there's a pause as the sim
generates them when you change your viewpoint. Also, at least on my
joystick, it's hard to position the hat precisely for 45-degree
angles, and there is still some bizarre interaction with the throttle
and other controls that I don't understand. I still use it sometimes,
though. If it were instantaneous and easier to manipulate, it would
be very convenient. Maybe then I could fly patterns a little bit
easier.

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Sounds like your toy isn't very realistic and definately does not represent
real flight.

Dave Stadt writes:

Sounds like your toy isn't very realistic and definately does not represent
real flight.

It is much more similar than different.

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