airspeed indicator in B-737

  • First of all, thank you for a terrific new flight simulator - possibly the best yet in terms of straight-out-of-the-box appearance and performance!

    There is one small bug in the Boeing 737 instrument panel, perhaps not noticeable to most, judging from the lack of mention on it in this forum thus far, but annoying to someone who has flown airplanes like the 737 for some time. The airspeed indicator has somehow been put in in the wrong orientation. If you look at photos on sites like airliners.net you will find that the lowest indicated speed, usually 40 knots or so, is always at the 12 o'clock position or very nearly so. That puts the 200 knot indication around the 6 o clock position and so on.

    In the Aerofly 737 the indicator has been rotated about 90 degrees clockwise from its proper orientation. All that would need doing is to rotate it back 90 degrees counter clockwise from where it is now.

    The other airliners all have glass primary flight displays and are not affected by this error. All of the other round dial airspeed indicators in the other airplanes are correct.

    In essence, at zero airspeed on a round dial indicator, the needle should be at the 12 o clock position.

    Otherwise this product is outstanding. Best photo scenery and terrain mesh I have ever seen, including many years of airline FAA Level D simulators in the course of my career. In fact, the scenery is better than any of the airline sims I saw when I was in that business! Lightning fast load times and from what I have experienced thus far quite realistic flight response characteristics, at least for the airliners, to say nothing of the payware level airplanes themselves.

    Tony Vallillo

  • Sorry to disagree, but you must be looking at a picture of some obscure foreign airline configuration. I flew 707's and 727's that had identical indicators, as well as more modern airliners which had that sort of round dial as a standby indicator, and never in a 42 plus year career did I ever see an airspeed indicator that was oriented that way. Not only at my airline but every other airline that I jumpseated on. If I could figure out how to insert an image into this message I would show you. Or, you can check it out on airliners.net

    I would suggest that perhaps you offer an option to correct that, for those who might want it the other way. Some products, such as the 767 and 757 add-ons that are available for FSX and XPlane have airline specific options such as the flight director configuration that are buyer selectable.

    Having the airspeed oriented in an unusual (for US airlines at least) configuration is perhaps not the end of the world, since we have the option of having an entire panel worth of indications along the top of the screen. But it is a nagging bit, at least if you have a lot of experience in the real thing and are looking for indications similar to what you are accustomed to!

    Thanks!

    Tony Vallillo

  • Here is the airspeed indicator in a 757. This is the standard orientation and in over 42 years of professional flying I have never seen anything different. All round dial indicators in every airliner at least in the USA (and in any foreign airliner I have ever been up front in - not a large number but a few) looks like this.

    One reason they are set up this way is that the normal takeoff and landing airspeeds (from around 120kt to around 160kt) result in the needle being around the 3 oclock position, plus or minus a few, and this makes it easier to scan quickly.

    Tony Vallillo


    Tony Vallilllo

  • Aerofly FS2 use the same kind of ASI used on 737-200C. The same ASI you can see in the cockpit of the MILVIS BOEING 737-200C. And this is an ASI used on most of the BOEING 727s and when BOEING invented 737s they used some parts of 727, including ASIs. So, IPAQ Team is correct here, this kind of ASI was in use with 737s:)

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boei…6030766901).jpg

    From the other side, avallillo is also correct, I believe, that most of the people expected to see the mostly usual ASI for a post 737-200 plane.

    This one, or this one

  • Yes, I can see that there was at least one airplane set up that way! On the other hand, there are many more, over many years, that were the other way.


    Oh well, what is a developer to do?!! This is one area where involvement of real pilots can help out. It may well be that no one else either notices or cares!

    As I said - you have a terrific product here, and even if this has to stay as it is, I will learn to live with it!

    Tony Vallillo

  • American Airlines B-727-200 simulator, showing the configuration that AA had on all of its airplanes.

    There are other pics on Jetnet and airliner.net that show this orientation. Note that the instrument is essentially the same, it is the orientation that differs.

    Individual airlines had a lot of leeway, during the era prior to the modern glass cockpit era, for equipping their airplanes as they saw fit. Of course, it was and is of the utmost importance that all cockpits at a given airline be as identical as possible, and this certainly applied to the flight instruments, as well as the autopilots and radios. Misreading an airspeed indicator, which could easily happen if someone switched from the orientation above to the one in the FS2, or vice versa, might be tragic. In actual fact, the first Lockheed Electra accident at LaGuardia back around 1958 was determined to have been caused, in part, by the pilots misreading a new type of altimeter instrument that was just coming into use on the Electra.

    I suppose that researching cockpit layouts and the suchlike is a daunting task for simulator developers, give that there are apparently differing configurations. I myself was very fortunate when both the Level D 767 and the Dream Fleet 727 were produced for FS9 - they both used the AA version as their source and I was completely familiar with that. Got spoiled back then, I did! When the very fine 727 came out for XPlane a while ago it had a strange autopilot that was totally different than the one I was familiar with from my days flying it. Never have learned to use that thing, but then we seldom used the AP in the 727 because it was such a delight to hand fly.

    Tony V

  • If many are used to it already, even just an option would suffice. As I said, I can get used to it! This is much to good a simulation overall for me to get bothered about a small item like that, particularly when you have shown that it is, in fact, prototypical at least in some installations!

  • This just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser! I changed the title of this thread since it is obvious that it is I who is in error, not the cockpit model in FS2!

    The N number of the 737 in the picture you quoted above is that of a United Airlines airplane. I decided to check airliners.net to see what UAL was doing with their cockpits. Unbelievably, there seems to be a range of possibilities within this one airline! Their early 737's seem to be set up the way you have it, the 300's and 500's seem to be set up the way my 727 picture above is oriented, and several of their 727's seem to be set up differently than either of these examples. It is amazing to me that there would be such non standardization in a large airline within different cockpits! At AA, whenever we got different models within a type, such as during the late 1970's when we bought a dozen or two 727's from the failing Braniff Airlines, we spent a lot of money making them identical to ours, and required differences training if our pilots would operate them prior to them being standardized.

    UAL seems to have done things differently, at least from the evidence of airliners.net.

    I guess you're never to old to learn something new!

    Tony Vallillo