Posts by Jet-Pack (IPACS)

Quote from mickatmian

am on the runway. Anyway it is what it is and no one else seems bothered by it...

I've already noted down your concern and will forward the issue to the developer. I can imagine he will increase the PAPI light brightness towards the approach sector so that you can see the PAPIs better if you are aligned with the runway.

In the mean time try to increase the zoom of the camera so that the PAPIs fill more of your field of view and are rendered larger. If they are bigger than a few pixels they may be better to see.

Once we do simulate a reduced mass, fuel imbalance and asymmetric weight distribution will be a byproduct. I think it's easy to forget to switch the tanks in the Cessna for example. Sure failure simulation isn't around the corner currently but if some add on developer hops on board this could become near future. I can think of a lot of causes for a fuel imbalance, add on developers have total freedom in the Aerofly here.

Yes it would be nice to have one master option to display fuel in lbs or kg. The Q400 is prepared to feature both units as far as I remember. Changing the learjet is no big deal, getting the option into the different aircraft will probably be more difficult.

Quote from jcomm

Does the Q-400 come with simulated fuel consumption ?

Not yet. We have to program the mass reduction when fuel level is reduced over time yet and we need a GUI to set the fuel levels as well. And currently there is no option to refuel either, so there is some work to do before we can do that properly. But for now, yes we could make the fuel quantity go down and then kill then engine, would be nice to have a low fuel warning trigger and then see the engines actually fail

I can try to make the localizer center better by adding an integrator of the LOC-offset to the roll command. From my experience while testing I managed to get a perfectly centered loc in the q400 with a properly trimmed aircraft. But I'm going to attempt to fine tune it, so that you can approach with asymmetric thrust and still maintain centered LOC. The LOC on the HSI in the Q400 is actually a bit too sensitive. It should be less sensitive than the LOC deviation directly underneath the attitude.

Hm, I'm going to check the speed charts that I used.

Does the 4° come from the real aircraft or from the pitch angle that you saw in the Aerofly? The further you deflect a flap the lower the stall angle becomes. Without any slats the stall angle of the wing with 35° flaps may be just that low

Quote from bbrz

Nice video and the flying (and talking) was about a million times better than the one on the previous video

Three questions

1. Why didn't the Q400 Autopilot track the LOC correctly ?

2. The stall speed is 98kts. This seems to be a bit too high, given the fact that V_REF at MLW is 123kts AFAIK.

3. Closely related to the question above; What's the simulated weight of the Q400 ?

1. for several reasons:

a) rudder was not trimmed so he had a constant slip angle and constant side force.

b) Autopilot currently assumes a symmetric aircraft and doesn't correct a constant error (not needed for all other aircraft)

c) the localizer for this runway is at an angle to the runway in the database.

2. V_REF with flaps 15 is 122kts as far as I remember. He approached with 35° flaps where the speed needs to be lower. The effectiveness of the flaps is a bit too high for flaps 35. But the smaller flaps settings are pretty good. It's probably unseen in real life that a Q400 approaches a 3.5 or 4km runway with flaps 35. Maybe London City airport but for such a long runway as in KSFO, use flaps 10°... or 15° max.

3. Current Mass calculates to 24942 kg in total

RC helicopters typically feature electronically assisted stabilization. At least for the tail rotor. Most RC helis have symmetrical airfoils and no twist in the rotor blades.

A helicopter like the R22 doesn't have that any assistance for example and you need to use the tail a lot more. Also RC helis are way more powerful compared to their takeoff mass as well. That and aerodynamics are a little bit different at greater Reynolds numbers (more particles and less honey like viscosity compared to the size of the blade) and fully sized helicopters have transonic effects on the rotor blade that advances into the wind (part of the air is going super sonic in fast forward flight). It's this high impact velocity on one side of the helicopter's rotor which causes a lot of drag and increases the power demand and the other side of the rotor has to fight great angles of attack and even reversed flow direction in the inner part as well as stall effects. RC helis don't have that much of a problem with their higher rotation speeds or at least I think it is, have not actually run the numbers yet.

And when you fly down low the rotorwash physics could be expanded, also when you are descending though your own downwash that should be simulated better as well I think. Don't know how far the RC physics are simulating this.

If we want to create a realistic implementation of helicopter physics for full scale machines we're eventually will have to implement the transonic effects as well as more advanced ground interactions, maybe some turbulence when cutting through the own tip vortexes or when transitioning from hover to forward flight. At some point you're leaving the air mass around you that swirls around because you pushed it downwards before and you get into fresh air that is much smother, thrust increases, etc. I don't think the RC physics model that yet, there the effect might not be noticeable since your headspeed is much higher and your pitch is much smaller and air-ground-friction is greater compared to the size of the helicopter...

So yeah there are numerous differences, mostly we want to get the helicopter physics as realistic as possible for a fully sized helicopter.

The windows are only available in my developer version as I wrote in the post. Since this isn't fully functional right now this won't be added to the public versions just yet. Sorry but you'll have to wait a bit for that feature.

I actually read about the Airbus flight controls laws on this page couple hours ago. Very interesting page, thanks!
Another good page is http://www.smartcockpit.com/

There you can find a number of flight crew operating manuals.

Quote from bbrz

With the TOD indicated on the screen it's not likely that you are going to miss it and you know that you should descend.

It's much more likely that ATC doesn't let you descent when you want/need to (about 90 times out of 100)

For that reason the Airbus wants you to decelerate as you are already too high/fast as you are apparently not able to descend for whatever reason.

That makes sense, yes. If ATC doesn't clear you down at least start to reduce the energy of the aircraft by reducing speed.

Thanks!

But actually you speed up during the descent to catch up with the profile.... so it's actually not "slow down" its "get down"....

I would have written "DESCENT" instead.

The 747 just goes from VNAV PATH to VNAV ALT and pops out a message on the FMS: select lower or something like that.

This message comes on if you have flown over the top of descent but the descent has not been initiated yet.

I don't know why airbus called this "DECELERATE"...

Quote from J van E

Funny little 'bug' or oddity in the Airbus: when the PFD showed MORE DRAG I could see the top of the letters DRAG on the videoscreen next to the door. Seriously! I checked it a few times (turning the speedbrake on and off) and DRAG showed up everytime on that videoscreen! LOL No problem at all, of course, but quite odd.

Uh that is interesting! Nicely spotted!

Steam doesn't check if you edited the files manually. This is why there is a user-folder in the Aerofly that is untouchable by Steam.

In the Aerofly RC series we had the option to create modifications of the aircraft and store them inside this user folder as well. Currently there is no in game option to switch between modifications of the same aircraft so all you can do is copy paste the Learjet folder to the user directory and have your personal setups there.

I'm afraid if you didn't backup the files prior to the update they're probably gone. With the changes of this update you wouldn't be able to directly use your files anyway, but you could have copied over the cameras at least to restore them.

These game folders are "hot" and subject to change. Never assume your manual modifications are safe there. I'm sorry if you lost your files this way and really hope you have some backup hidden somewhere.

Hi Ray, maybe delete the all assignments to the airbrakes and start new. Jeff repeatedly said this may be required, so please try this for us.

Quote from Mickey123

In my opinion maybe also the glow could be even a bit less. in general I think that there might be a bit too much glow around lights in Aerofly (e.g. lights on aircraft).

This is true for daylight flying. At night any camera would create such intense glow as well. The landing lights are insanely bright. Back in the days when I adjusted the brightness of the lights I made them all of similar brightness so that this glow could be fixed easily. Now this is a shader problem not an aircraft problem anymore. And it's only problematic at day I think

1. The pedals are locked in the center position and if you overcome the breakout force and somehow manage to only deflect the pedals it's not that bad. Plus if you stopped it's not really a factor.

2. Yes with tiller input the AP might not disconnect and your steering tiller might not work while the AP is on. I can implement that the tiller is useless as well.

I would like to add the simulation of the breakout forces of the stick and pedals as well... This needs to be optional though, don't know how a setting like this can be done yet. I'll look into it. If you have an iPad and turn on the autopilot the last thing you want is a nose dive when you put the tablet down on the table.

The PEDAL DISC is just a button on the tiller. The tiller is used to control the nosewheel steering. You can assign a different axis in the controls just for the steering. If you don't assign an axis your rudder will be used to generate a tiller signal. So in your case the twist handle is either still assigned to the steering tiller or your twisting is used to generate the steering. As speed increases the deflection of the nose gear is reduced from almost 90° to only a few degrees since you don't want the nose gear to slide across the ground.

Now the steering of the nosegear can also be done by the rudder pedals in the real world. The maximum deflection of the nose gear with just pedals is only 6 degrees which is enough for keeping the aircraft on the centerline but not enough for tight turns. This is where the tiller is used in real life.

If you depress the PEDAL DISC button on the tiller (not modeled yet) you can remove the steering by pedals. Then you can fully deflect the rudder pedals for a control check while moving and the aircraft will no longer steer left and right. When you release the button the system returns to normal operation mode.

So to summarize: You can assign your twist handle to the tiller function in the Aerofly FS 2, the spring loaded PEDAL DISC button is not implemented yet. Well I have it implemented but it's disabled since you can't to a "activate while mouse button is down" type of thing yet. And since the 3D model of the tiller doesn't allow the pushbutton to be depressed there is no way of telling if it's on or off. So i removed it for now.

the right hand ND has a different ILS receiver than the left side in real life. In the Aerofly aircraft I have setup only one receiver but I must have overlooked the ND on the right.

Thanks for reporting this!

Quote from bbrz

It's been almost 2 years since I've flown the A320 but I'm pretty sure that this doesn't happen (it doesn't on the 767 either)

That's one of the items FIs love to watch in the sim. After landing the pilot is trying to vacate the runway at his chosen taxiway but the plane continues straight ahead.

It would be bad IF the AP would disconnect in that case because CAT IIIB means just a single visible runway edge light and you definitely don't want the plane to veer off the centerline due to an unintentional tiller/rudder input!

Didn't J v E post the AP disconnects when trying to turn off the runway?

Well one of my airbus captain contacts just said that you can disconnect it with the pedals but it's not good airman ship. Since the AP is also using the nose wheel steering it might disconnect but I see couple reasons why it shouldn't (as you also mentioned). The tiller doesn't have an increased break out force when AP is connected to it might just not work then.

The A320 in the Aerofly disconnects when the localizer is deflected too far or when the heading and ILS course deviate too much. That usually happens when you turn off from the runway.

Quote from TomB

Hi Jan

I am sure that something went wrong with the steam update, the idea of corrupted files. Today when I opened steam it took quite a while (I guess it updated again). My following tests were all successful, no ap problems anymore.

Sorry for the confusion and thank you for your time. Aerofly FS2 is a wonderful product. I would love to see my 13 GoFlight products working one day.

Regards from Switzerland,

Thomas

Hi Thomas,

thank you for keeping me updated. That sounds promising.

And Ray, man what are you downloading? Is your connection slow or do you try to geoconvert the entire planet?