reality vs fsx?

[Daube]

Here is a link that comes back often in this kind of topic:
http://www.flightsim.com/main/feature/question.htm
It shows you how close our little simulators are from the the real professionnal training sims for real pilots.
It also shows what Brett just told. There are people that play with FS, and there are people trying to really use the simulator.

[RitterKreuz]

the impression I get is if someone shows up at an airfield and says,

"I do MSFS and I want to fly." Then the instructor will take them aside and say,

"This is how it is kid!"

Not at all

I have provided instruction to dozens of hard core simmers. And i tell them two things

1. Your flight sim experience will help you here today

2. Expect that it will be revealed that MSFS has taught you some bad habits which must be untaught.

its a two way street.

in no way would i ever dream of pulling them aside and saying "ok this is how it really is"

it is helpful to me as an instructor because this person is coming in for their first lesson with AT LEAST a frame of reference.

most people have NO frame of reference when it comes to flying for the first time

[patchz]

I'm not really qualified to comment on the original question. But after reading all the comments, I would like to make a statement. Like Daube, I spend more time looking at the scenery than instruments. I also spend a lot

of time in exterior view mode, watching how the aircraft behaves. When you get a sudden updraft or downdraft, it is much more dramatic viewed from outside. And though I know it's not life threatening and don't even have

to worry about damage to the aircraft, I get very tense when in a near crash situation. I also feel that in an emergency situation, in a small GA aircraft and a familiar area with little or no wind, if something happened to the

pilot, I believe I could land safely. Mind you it would not be pretty, but as they say, any landing you can walk away from....

[Ang2dogs]

How real is it? Well When I'm flying my Jenny, I can Marvel at what it must of took for a fella to get in something like that and most of them had no formal training, no closed cockpit, maybe a fuel gauge, and sorry people no AP and Nooooooooo.............GPS! Had to have a good watch, a at least a handheld compass,

"There were no maps of value to airmen in those days. Official state maps of the region were all of different scales and showed only political divisions with nothing of a physical nature except cities, towns, rivers, etc. We had to fold large maps of the USA into a strip to have everything on a uniform scale. Naturally, they contained little detail. In addition to poor maps, the magnetic compass was highly inaccurate, affected by everything metallic on the plane. Pilots needed a sixth sense about navigating, and many didn't acquire this until they had flown a long time."


When I fly my Jenny just above tree top level with the luxury of an old Rand McNally road map, makes me wish I was born in at least 1890!

Here's a few more excerpts from:

http://www.aerofiles.com/airmail.html

"The best plane we have is the Curtiss JN-4D Jenny, and it will fly only an hour and twenty minutes. Its maximum range is 88 miles at a cruising speed of 66 miles per hour." He also mentioned the shortage of pilots, how very few Air Service pilots had any cross-country experience, and the lack of mechanics."

"Fleet selected Lts Stephen Bonsal, Howard P Culver, Walter Miller, and Torrey H Webb as the most experienced pilots available

[olderndirt]

Reading this thread reveals two lines of thought.

[machineman9]

It may sound obvious, but the first major difference I realised when I first took controls was just how immersive real flying is.

In the game you can pull the stick back and get +3g on the accelerometer, but what does that even feel like? How do you as the pilot actually respond to things like that? When you move the controls just a little bit you will change the acceleration and it will affect you like no game can.

So it was a bit of a shock at first. I can happily fly an Extra 300S upside down doing rolls and loops all day long, but go in a real plane and you just won't last as long. It's not all about not getting motion sickness, it's really about how the forces do affect you.



So that's kind of how I feel about the sim. Yeah, it teaches you the basics and it lets you learn all your skills (learn what pitch does, learn to use the throttle properly) but you just have no idea how it applies in the real world.


I think flight simulators are a great learning aid, but they shouldn't be relied on. So take the knowledge with a grain of salt. Flight Simulator X is not a perfect real-world example of flying... It does not model nor perform all the characteristics perfectly. But if you need to learn the key skills then it's fine. You can learn the controls, you can learn the locations of the key instruments, you can learn how they work. When you get out to the field it will be a lot more useful, but it won't be an exact reflection.

[dvir1161]

It may sound obvious, but the first major difference I realised when I first took controls was just how immersive real flying is.

In the game you can pull the stick back and get +3g on the accelerometer, but what does that even feel like? How do you as the pilot actually respond to things like that? When you move the controls just a little bit you will change the acceleration and it will affect you like no game can.

So it was a bit of a shock at first. I can happily fly an Extra 300S upside down doing rolls and loops all day long, but go in a real plane and you just won't last as long. It's not all about not getting motion sickness, it's really about how the forces do affect you.



So that's kind of how I feel about the sim. Yeah, it teaches you the basics and it lets you learn all your skills (learn what pitch does, learn to use the throttle properly) but you just have no idea how it applies in the real world.


I think flight simulators are a great learning aid, but they shouldn't be relied on. So take the knowledge with a grain of salt. Flight Simulator X is not a perfect real-world example of flying... It does not model nor perform all the characteristics perfectly. But if you need to learn the key skills then it's fine. You can learn the controls, you can learn the locations of the key instruments, you can learn how they work. When you get out to the field it will be a lot more useful, but it won't be an exact reflection.

thanks man. so why there is many people in youtube that saying that it took a year for them to do good landing like you shoud do with all the instrument?

[machineman9]

thanks man. so why there is many people in youtube that saying that it took a year for them to do good landing like you shoud do with all the instrument?

Probably a number of reasons:

1) They had to learn to actually fly that aircraft in the simulator. Yeah, the computer can land the aircraft, but if something goes wrong, you need to know what to do yourself. This is less of an issue in a simulator where you won't actually crash, but it's an issue regardless.

2) They may have just preferred the challenge of flying it manually. I certainly do. I prefer doing short hops where I'm fully at the controls than to set it in autopilot.

3) They may have been too busy to learn sooner.

4) It may just take them that long. If they were landing it properly, they were probably taxying, taking off, cruising and landing properly. All the correct procedures and fine tuning it may just take them a while.

[dvir1161]

thanks man. so why there is many people in youtube that saying that it took a year for them to do good landing like you shoud do with all the instrument?

Probably a number of reasons:

1) They had to learn to actually fly that aircraft in the simulator. Yeah, the computer can land the aircraft, but if something goes wrong, you need to know what to do yourself. This is less of an issue in a simulator where you won't actually crash, but it's an issue regardless.

2) They may have just preferred the challenge of flying it manually. I certainly do. I prefer doing short hops where I'm fully at the controls than to set it in autopilot.

3) They may have been too busy to learn sooner.

4) It may just take them that long. If they were landing it properly, they were probably taxying, taking off, cruising and landing properly. All the correct procedures and fine tuning it may just take them a while.

thanks man, does the fsx gonna help me to be a pilot when i grow up it is reflects the real life cause friend of my father is a real pilot and he told me that this sound and the instrument is like the real life thanks and plzz reply.

[Hagar]

thanks man, does the fsx gonna help me to be a pilot when i grow up

It depends how you use it. FS can be a great help with certain aspects of flying like flight planning & navigation. You could do a lot worse than follow Brett's excellent series of Sim Flight Training tutes. http://205.252.250.26/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1208113107

[machineman9]

thanks man, does the fsx gonna help me to be a pilot when i grow up it is reflects the real life cause friend of my father is a real pilot and he told me that this sound and the instrument is like the real life thanks and plzz reply.

As I said earlier, it can be a great way to learn, but don't believe everything as it occurs in the game.

You'll be able to learn what the main dials look like and how they all work. Things like the artificial horizon, altimeter, etc, all look fairly similar no matter which aircraft you look at. You'll be able to learn how the major controls work.


It may sound silly, but so long as you're willing to learn when you do start flying, you're in safe hands. FSX will not teach you everything, nor will it give you the 'best' flight experience. However, it will vastly help in the initial flight lessons as you'll recognise how things actually work far faster. You could get a bicycle simulator and learn that pedalling makes you go faster and the brake slows you down, but until you actually go for your first ride and really learn, you'll never know exactly how it responds.

X-Plane is a more realistic flight simulator if you're looking for a bit of a challenge, but FSX will be perfectly fine too.

[Dougal]

If my instructor had said "This is how it is kid", I'd have simply found another instructor