I had my first experience with the Elite simulator today (I missed the version -- sorry) at a Precision Controls station. Here are some observations. To my understanding, Elite is the most commonly-used FTD at flight schools in Canada and the U.S., so I'll post some initial observations, on the understanding that they might not apply to the most recent versions.
1. The physical controls have a nice solid feel, especially the rudder pedals, compared to my flimsy USB controls. It's nice having actual knobs to turn for the radios. Unfortunately, the electronic trim button tended to get stuck, so I had to recover five or six times from runway trim. 2. The graphics are very simplistic, but that's no big deal since it's meant mainly as an IFR simulator. The panel is pretty similar to our 2D panel, though slightly more complete. 3. The C172R flight model left a bit to be desired: in a 20deg turn, the nose dropped about 5-10 degrees and needed a *lot* of elevator to maintain altitude. They should hire Tony to help them improve it. 4. The update rate for the gauges is horrendous -- maybe 2-4Hz at best. It was very hard to fly IFR at first with the jumpy needles, until I learned to anticipate the indications. Similarily, the controls seemed to work in fairly large steps rather than smooth gradiants. 5. The instrument lags and errors are no better than ours. For example, a real VOR needle doesn't center instantly when you spin to a new radial, but Elite's (like FlightGear's) did; the Elite mag compass was not nearly as impressively confusing as Alex's in FlightGear. In summary, then, I don't see much preventing FlightGear from becoming a certified IFR FTD other than the trivial problems of time, money, and political influence, once we finish wiring in the electrical system. We'd need to work a bit on an instructor console, making it easy (for example) to place the plane 5.5 miles out on a specified radial from a navaid, but that's no big deal. By the way, thanks to FlightGear, I didn't go through the usual newbie initiation of spiraling out of control in the first simulated vacuum failure -- my instructor was impressed that I diagnosed every failure relatively quickly. I spent most of the time practicing holding patterns. I'm still trying to decide whether to love or hate them: I'll write a tutorial for sim users some day if anyone is interested. I understand that ATC almost never uses holds any more, but I have been in them twice as an airliner passenger: once over East Anglia inbound to Heathrow from Helsinki (because of congestion), and once over London Ontario inbound to Toronto from Seattle (because of thunderstorms). All the best, David -- David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
