> I'll probably be shot for saying this on this list, but if you are building > an entirely new aircraft from scratch you may find X-plane far more useful > in this respect - not open source or free I know - but it does offer the > capability to design and test fly completely new aircraft without > needing to be an aero engineer. > > Duncan
That's a bit of regurgitated hype. :-) Seriously, nobody is better at hype than Austin. I say that with all seriousness and some amused "admiration". X-Plane does command some degree of respect, and it is a fine looking flight simulation program, which - from what I hear - does a pretty good job with modeling decent flight dynamics in a normal regime and plausible dynamics in the extremes. I am extremely skeptical that anyone would use X-Plane to "design" new aircraft, or to model flight dynamics for critical engineering or training simulators. Here's a challenge. You write up an X-24B, or XB-70, or X-15 flight model (from scratch) for X-Plane, flight test the resulting flight model from high supersonic speeds down to touchdown, and show me the coefficients and stability derivatives within the flight envelope. I'll compare the results with actual flight test results. I'm not sure how that would turn out, one way or the other, although I have my suspicions. Jon _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
