MS Flight Sim As a Training Tool

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

This might be true if MSFS only tried to simulate one or two aircraft in a
limited amount of flight evelopes but it doesn't.

It's true for whole categories of aircraft.

It cuts corners so it can simulate everything from an ultalight to a 747.

It cuts corners on the aircraft models, not on the simulation. If you
use add-on aircraft (as all serious simmers do), you get vastly more
accurate models ... practically a different simulator.

The problem is MS
for some reason I can't quite figure out wnats to use all the CPU cycles to
run the graphics and not just the physics of the enviroment but much of the
rendering as well.

Graphics is the major workload for any flight simulator. Computers
got fast enough to handle the dynamics decades ago.

Instead of designing the software to offload the graphics
to a dedicated graphics card.

Most of the graphics cannot be offloaded.

Well this doesn't apply to me. I've owned every version of MSFS, except for
X, since the one I bought the day I bought an Apple IIe.

Wow.

I did download the X demo and I was really unimpressed. Since there were so
few planes on the Demo I tried out the ultralight which I had never done on
any of the other versions for some reason. I set the realizam to full and
the weather as bad as possible and was still able to fly the little guy. It
should have ripped the thing apart or at very least blown me over.

How do you know? Were you killed in an ultralight accident in bad
weather previously?

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

Jose wrote:

How do you set and ident the freqs? Using the mouse on the radio stack
and the OBS is pretty lame, and (at least for FS 2002) I can't find a
better way. So, I just have them preset and fly the approach.

http://www.flypfc.com/avionics/avionics.html



--
Peter

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

Gatt this thread and many others lately are here because of posts written by
an idiot named Anthony aka msxmaniac ...

Only if his other alias is Jay Honeck (the originator of this thread).
You might want to direct your venom towards the original poster, if
you really must spend your time on that instead of discussion of the
topic at hand.

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

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

Jay I will of course take you up on that... BUT you are letting the big
projection screen and chair fool you into believing the simulation.

That's the hallmark of good simulation. If it fools you, it's
working.

All that screen and controls changes nothing in the software itself
and that is where the difference is.

Not if it behaves just like the real thing.

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

Jose writes:

Will they have sim-bad habits to unlearn?

There aren't a lot of bad habits you can learn in a sim, depending on
the sim. On a PC simulator, it's more what you don't learn than what
you learn incorrectly. Sitting in front of a PC, you have no
movement, and not much in the way of visibility. By a strange
coincidence, those are the two differences that many pilots here claim
are more important than anything else, which is manifestly untrue.

If you learn in a sim where your primary source of information is
instruments, you'll tend to develop a dependence on instruments. If
you learn in a real plane that moves, you'll tend to develop a
dependence on sensations. I don't see how the latter is any better
than the former, particularly given that sensations are so unreliable.

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

Jay Honeck writes:

There is also the subtle but very real fact that you can't produce the
fear of death in the Kiwi. Although this sounds sensational and
silly, it's truly not -- since when you're flying a real airplane, your
life (and the lives of your loved ones) are literally in your own
hands.

Fear of death is a great reason to remain with a simulator. Why would
anyone want to be terrified of dying?

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

Jose writes:

[MSFS] allows me to remember to set and ident freqs, follow the
instruments, time the approach (I use my kneeboard and timer)

How do you set and ident the freqs? Using the mouse on the radio stack
and the OBS is pretty lame, and (at least for FS 2002) I can't find a
better way. So, I just have them preset and fly the approach.

I don't remember about FS 2002, but you can try using the mouse wheel,
if you have one, to set frequencies when you put the mouse over the
frequency knob.

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

Mark Levin writes:

I think the use of MSFS can be summed up pretty simply.

It won't teach you to fly a plane.

Sure it will. It will cover perhaps 90% of flying a plane (or some
other high percentage), which is about as much as actually being in a
plane would cover. However, the skills taught by the simulator are
different from those of a real plane. For example, you can learn to
use an FMS or GPS very effectively on a sim, but you can't do that on
a real plane if you don't have this equipment.

You can learn to fly with instruments on a sim; indeed, you don't have
too many other options, although you can fly visually with a somewhat
restricted visibility.

In order to make use of MSFS for procedural training however you can't slack
off. You have to fly the sim identically to the way you would fly the real
plane. Real charts, real plates, you have to change the radios manually,
not just let the sim do it for you. You need to talk *on the radio* exactly
as you would during a real flight even if there's no one to hear you.

Isn't that what all simmers are doing already?

If you use VATSIM, there will be plenty of people hearing you (and
talking back).

Emergency procedures for example are not only thought based but are physical
based as well. You don't have time to translate *fuel selector to fullest
tank*, for example, into a physical motion. You have to have muscle memory
trained and unless you have one of these high fidelity sim cockpits that
some folks build for themselves you're not going to train any muscle memory
on the sim.

Nor are you going to learn that on a real aircraft, since many
emergencies never arise and are too dangerous to attempt in a real
aircraft.

As nutty as this may sound, with some of the added scenery packs you can
actually start to train pilotage as well.

It doesn't sound nutty to me.

Note that none of this has anything to do with the mechanics of flying the
plane.

Nevertheless, it's a large part of flying. A hundred years ago,
flying by the seat of your pants was the be-all and end-all of
flight--there was nothing else. Now there is a lot else.

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

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

On the other hand I came across a model of the 601XL like I'm building and
when ever you stall it the engine quits and won't restart. And it doesn't
matter if it is a power on or power off stall. I talked to the guy that
designed it and he can't for the life of him figure out why it does it.

How much did you pay for it?

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

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

It is an example that there is a problem with the flight model. If there is
a problem there where else is there a problem.

Aircraft will spin in MSFS. It depends on the individual aircraft and
the quality of its model, of course.

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