The flight model seems to account well for varying loads – taking the cargo out and dropping down to 20% fuel can result in some dramatically short takeoff rolls. The autothrottle is an enormous help for bugging speeds and sticking to them. I shot multiple ILS approaches and the autopilot captured and tracked the ILS with no problems. The autopilot and flight director modes seem to perform well as long as you study how they work and practice with the different modes. The A400M on X-Plane would be a personal dream come true. X-Plane has always given an infinitely better feel for ground handling. Let’s face it – FSX/P3D/and FSX:SE are fairly good flight simulators, but they are horrible ground interaction simulators. Ground handling is a bit slippery in an unrealistic way in that it feels a bit frictionless. I need to explore whether there are click-zones for clicking on the throttle quadrant that would make selecting each FADEC position a bit more intuitive. The FADEC is modeled with TOGA, Max Continuous thrust, climb, and cruise, but I seem to often overshoot the settings using my Thrustmaster Warthog. As well, I’m not sure if there is enough drag modeled at flight idle where you’d think those massive prop disks would add enormous drag. It is possible to stall the aircraft and the fly-by-wire isn’t quite as “stick it there and it will stay” as I would think the real thing would be.
Things like alpha-floor are modeled if you are on the auto-throttles (if you pitch and try to stall the airplane it will go to full throttle), but I don’t know if flight controller limiters are really modeled. While the flight model feels pretty good, I’m not quite sure it models the real thing in all aspects. Thus, when you pitch and roll the airplane, the flight computers correct the aircraft trim to give you that steady state input after you release the controls. I don’t know much about the A400M specifically, but I think it is a “zero trim” airplane driven by a similar fly by wire system as their commercial airlines. I still have some questions in to Laborie regarding some aspects of the flight model. its actually very helpful and i never expected someone to take thier time to write all of this just for a question, thanks it really helped me a lot.The flight model appears to be pretty good. Originally posted by Rogen:Yep there are tons of freeware planes, sceneries, utilities, tools and enviromental addins besides those on Steam.Ĭheers First of all, i am currently reading this and i just want to thank you for this essay that you wrote for me. each is different in their own way and muddies the waters of choosing fairly considerably. Of course now there is new active development with multiple sim platforms looking to gain a foothold in the market with an eye to entice some of the thousands spent on sims their way.
You might say FSX is merely the platform for which others can build for, the results being a huge range of both free and payware. I'd go as far as to say FSX as a whole has survived so long and garnered such a huge following due to it's abilty to be expanded with addons. There are of course many additional sites/orgs and a quick Google search of the web or indeed of the Steam FSX-SE forums will reveal links to some great quality sites and freeware. I recommend joining a few of the flightsim website/forums and have their newsletters delivered, for instance FlyAwaySimulation delivers a newsletter once a week chock full of links for freeware.
You can infact pay way more than the cost of FSX-SE for a single addon and many of these forum users have testified to spending literally thousands of (insert local currency $$) on their flight sim, which would make FSX fairly unique in the game software world, as where else could you buy a complete software package that models the entire world for less than $12.00 US (on special currently) and then expand it with any of thousands of additonal DLC.
Both for paid addins and freeware and while there is some truely amazing freeware items that have clearly had huge amounts of development put into them, I've found that majority of the best stuff are paid for items, for instance you cannot beat A2A for a quality GA aircraft, infact all their aircraft are of an amazing quality and that is why they attract premium pricing. Yep there are tons of freeware planes, sceneries, utilities, tools and enviromental addins besides those on Steam.Īnd yep the quality is variable.