Simviation Forums

what does it actually do to an aircraft and what are the causes of it? sory if it is already posted. tnx in advance

Aircraft stress occurs when the airframe or engine is operated beyond its design limits.

The aircraft stress is the effort that is applied on the physical structure of the aircraft.
For example, when you go too fast, or when you make an extreme manoeuver like a looping or a very tight turn, there are great efforts applied on the wings and the fuselage.
If those efforts get too strong, then the parts concerned might break, resulting in the destruction of the aircraft.

In FS, though, instead of having a realistic damage that might give you a chance to perform an emergency landing, you will just get a stupid "CRASH" or "Aircraft Damage from stress" message, and the game will stop.

The only flight sim featuring realistic stress damage is the IL-2 series, which make the experience very interesting (I had once to land with elvators partially destroyed in a dive...). I've been told that the newest WW1 simulator, called Rise of Flight, is doing that even better !

if you have a Manual Transmission in your car.. leave it in 1st gear and try to do 60mph in 1st gear.   You will blow the motor due to extreme high RPM.

same with an aircraft.  run the engines at too high an RPM and you'll blow gaskets and manifolds.  .. now try to fly a 737 at 500KIAS and youll rip the wings off.  - BOTH not a good idea.

FS8 / 9 / X will just stop your flight and say "CRASH" or "AIRCRAFT STRESS CAUSED DAMAGE".  then it will restart your flight either at the airport that you took off at, or where you where 5 min ago in flight before you "overstressed" the craft.

Yes, it would have been nice if the stress option was abit more realistic were you get at least a chance to make a emergency landing ( or even a crash landing ) instead of the dreaded "Aircraft Damage from stress" message, and then the sim just ends ! Bascilly there's really no warning when the stress option kicks in and ends the flight ( other than the overspeed warning), and most of the time it seems to go off for no apparant reason (so because of this I shut it off, lost to many flighthours because of ? who knows ). It would be cool if the stress option worked in away like landing gear collapsing if you land to hard, or damage happening from flying thru bad weather. On the wish list for the next sim ( who ever makes it ) a maintanance option would be nice, where if you don't take care of your aircraft, stress will hurt you. usally I just play around with the failure option to keep me alert, and have the stress option turned off.

there is a program called NICK'S MASSIVE CRASH FINAL that if you have "visual_damage=1" in the aircraft.cfg under each [fltsim?] section (and you have an FS9 adapted craft) if you fly through a building, then your wings, elevators, ailerons, etc would rip off and if the damage was not severe enough then you MIGHT be able to control your landing.... but you WILL still crash.

thanks for the replies guys, they were great. cheers