Since we are comparing sims, I can relate my own experience. I got to sit down at a C172 sim that was partially complete. Unfortunately the primary funder of this project was killed when his 3/4 scale P-51 crashed.
Anyway, they did the bulk of their panel using 2d graphics similar to our 2d panel, but had a separate radio stack (ok, but sort of chinsey, probably similar to PFC equipment.) And they had a *really* slick magnetic compass. The 2d graphics were a lot nicer than ours (as in much more closely and completely matching real C172 instruments) but as you looked real close, they had chunky pixels ... like they did the instruments at too low of a resolution, but weren't using any sort of magnification filtering so the result was blocking/chunky ... like running your new laptop at 640x480 full screen res. Their yoke was functional and felt good, but was really clunky looking and didn't quite look like a C172 setup. Their rudder pedals were great with working toe brakes the drove hydraulic pressure sensors. They had purchased a visual system from someone down in FL that covered the whole state. Compared to FlightGear's visuals we pretty much rock. They had more detail modeled in the airport environment, towers, vors, hangers, etc. but not a lot beyond that. They had full approach lighting, although it was omni-directional. Our ground textures were much nicer, and they had no real ability to do terrain that I could see which is probably why they picked florida as their area to cover. They were running 5 display channels and the update rate was really chunky, slow, and jerky. With a couple exceptions, our open source visuals smoked their commercial visuals (although neither of us are MSFS from what I hear.) One of the guys that put this together does aircraft instrumentation for the purpose of deriving simulator flight dynamics and so their C172 was *really* good. They of course do all the fault modeling, and they have a nifty turbulence/gust model. I believe their turbulence model came out of Stanford, so perhaps with a little googling or research, someone could come up with a paper and perhaps we could get soemthing similar implimented? Overall, I think FlightGear compared very favorably on most fronts to their sim. We still have work todo, but the barriers we have between us and a 'full fledged' sim are rapidly being overcome. Once we get full approach lighting implimented it's going to be hard to find significant reasons not to do a 1.0 release ... Regards, Curt. David Megginson writes: > 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 -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
