Simulated aerodynamic stability

  • Is/are there a/some file value/s that can be changed to adjust stability in FS2?

    I have control sensitivities on minimum and would like the longitudinal or pitch stability increased and lateral or roll stability significantly decreased. This would improve the realism of the sim for me.

    A greater tendency for a disturbance in pitch to result in the pitch quickly returning to near the previous position would simulate increased real world static stability, the dynamic stability is a perhaps a bit slower than I like? having some adjustment ability would allow trial and error experimentation.

    LATER!!!. I did an in game joystick calibration and it was many times more smooth afterwards than after using the windows calibration.

    Edited 2 times, last by Overloaded (July 28, 2022 at 12:54 AM).

  • Jet-Pack (IPACS) May 12, 2022 at 6:46 AM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Core sim' stability” to “Simulated aerodynamic stability”.
    • Official Post

    All of the aircraft aerodynamic parameters are defined in the aircraft's TMD file. There is no single parameter for pitch and roll stability and it's the result of many factors.

    Try some of these parameters for pitch: down wash factor, airfoil cm alpha and flap cm, fuselage rigidbody R0 x component (fuselage center of mass in longitudinal direction).

    For roll: fuselage R0 z component (vertical center of mass of the fuselage), aerowing BetaSlope and BetaMax (side slip effects), airfoil cm alpha, cm flap, stabilizer airfoil cm alpha, propwash parameters,...

    What aircraft do you want to see improved in particular?

  • Thank You so much Jan, my favourite is the 737 so I’d tolerate letting the rest of my Aerofly fleet drift away from their current niceness to reduce the 737’s possible static (short term) neutrality in pitch. The other planes I just use occasionally but they seem very reasonable, in fact the Piper Arrow is really nice. Of course this is only my individual perception.

    I realise the turbofan engine acceleration lag and the underslung engine’s big thrust moment from the centre of gravity, worse with the wider CFM56s really, really complicates the handling. The current values of the factors you so kindly suggest might well turn out to be my favourites.

    Possibly the rate of change in attitude deviations might be worth playing with, short term static pitch deviations (like the basic stability of a dart or weather vane) could dampen down more aggressively? and slight roll excursions could (largely in the straight wing planes) eventually go more divergent in dynamic stability? initial static (opposition from dihedral and side-slip) stability seems fine to me.

    Hands-off but well trimmed planes tend to hold altitude reasonably but over say 20-40 seconds or more progressively roll off their heading. The sim might be just a bit more the other way round.

    (Are the TMD file stability related factors you mentioned arithmetic relationships or is there any exponential growth or decay?)

    Thanks again.