FlyPT Mover

More customization options are always welcome! Ideally the options should be limitless.

The only problem this causes (cancel that, I forgot the real problem is adding these kind of features is likely to add a lot of bugs that PMVCDA must chase down and fix in the future as the software is updated and the code for these features does unexpected things.) is that it could further encourage many people to have their sims giving all kinds of false cues due to misconceptions about what the sim should be doing in various circumstances, but so many do that anyway it hardly matters!

I know my own flight sim cues were screwed up in all the typical ways for the first few months until I began to learn and gradually correct these common errors. Later guests would sometimes complain that they weren't feeling what they expected so I created what I called the "theme park" profile. =D

You've definitely got the right idea in general, though I'm sure that over time you will find room for improvement in your profiles as you learn more and more of the analyses and creative ideas this forum has produced. =)

Please make sure you read the last parts of my previous message, I think I figured out your problem and man that's a GOOD ONE! Something I never thought of and hadn't had brought to my attention previously.

@Trip Rodriguez

Yep, just had a read trough and it is pretty much spot on! We are on the same page now.

@Trigen , assuming my explanation of your problem several posts above is more or less correct, how do you intend to use your proposed mixing features to improve it?

Off the top of my head I don't see how that could be used to help.

The only way I can see to improve this would start making the software options awful convoluted and confusing for any but the most advanced users. That would be to have the ability to add a washout filter for sway that only becomes active if a large sustained heave cue is present. Again, I'd love to have these kind of features but the confusion it could cause not to mention the potential for it causing software bugs anytime the software is updated would probably make these things more trouble than they are worth. Let's not forget that we are already driving @pmvcda crazy enough with our bug reports and feature requests! That man deserves a big fat paycheck from us FlyPT Mover users!

As you say the force is still there but in real life you cant really feel it due to the overwhelming G pushing you into the seat of the plane.

I think its own filter is actually a good idea. Its hidden enough not to overwhelm and easy enough for advanced users. Since you can then add a some LP and Cubic3 DZ filter on that you could fine tune its starting point if you wish, need to think about that one.

I would want this to be directly related to the Heave/pitch though as the change can be either fast or slow. With a washout its just one speed regardless.

For my part i would keep it on at all times as i think that would give the smoothest operation. You can also choose which force to apply it to and tune from there. If either or both heave/pitch should be used i think will be down to testing and your own feel. They are to a large extent the same force. Possibly it could also be the easiest to implement without having to do lots of UI changes.

On the other side even though i f up on this in the beginning myself when i was blinded to the filter next to mix sway in roll and wasted peoples time i would really appreciate a UI where you had the same setup and a button to Mix Sway in heave, Mix Sway in Pitch. Im really not sure on this one as it just needs to cancel the force with a given speed/smoothness related to heave/pitch so you could just need those two options in a filter

On the bug side of things i don't think there's that much of an issue. The code to mix and cancel out Roll/sway forces is already there. Its mostly the same thing being done, just to another force so i dont think there needs to be much of a modification. Then the question is do we need both? It depends very much on how the specific rig is set and what main force it is using so i would say both.

I also believe this would be most suited to a G seat but perhaps also to slow GA flying in a rig. It's a bit hard to say so lets call it 90% a G seat feature.

That's my initial thoughts.

With current features you can already do anything you want to maximize the heave cue (motion and G), so the only thing that could be done in addition to that is to reduce the sway cue after the pitch/heave cue begins. That being the case I'm having difficulty following some of your thoughts.

As for mixing sway and heave and/or sway and pitch, that's a bit more complicated. Since these are on totally separate axes and can never be opposite or in line with one another you can't really mix them directly. They are in two totally different dimensions.

So it would have to be done so that say a positive heave cue would reduce any sway cue in progress toward neutral, regardless of whether it was a left or a right sway cue. I'm not sure that would be easy to implement, and it also could do more harm then good, neutralizing sway cues in other situations and ultimately resulting in missing sway cues in other circumstances. Admittedly I can't really think of any examples where it would be a problem at the moment though since NET sway cues are rarely sustained in normal non-aerobatic flying as the forces present usually cancel one another out.

I'm getting a bit off topic here, but out of curiosity can any real pilots here (@Dirty maybe?) tell me what forces the pilot feels while conducting a "slip"? This is really just out of curiosity rather than thinking it's something that would need to be specifically tuned for on a motion sim.

Time for my standard related complaining: They don't teach pilots to fly any more, they only teach them how to take off, navigate (sorta), and land! Unfortunately most modern pilots have apparently never done a slip and it seems like most don't even know how, which is ridiculous considering how simple it is to learn and practice, and the technique's potential to avert disaster in certain emergency circumstances. When my Dad got his pilot's license in 1943 or so he learned in Stearman Bi-planes and J2's/J3's etc. and the classes and the exam included power on stalls, power off stalls, spins, power on recoveries, power off recoveries, slips, and more. In your lessons and even in your final examination the instructor would give semi randomized instructions like "give me four and a half spins to the right", and you were expected to give him exactly the number of rotations he requested! Back when pilots all knew how to fly! I really believe there would be a lot less fatal GA crashes if these things were still taught.

Its a bit of a tough nut in terms of its usage vs work needed to make it work. After a bit more thought i would say heave only because pitch can happen at any speed but G force will be very different. You mentioned earlier that you used pitch for your heave so that would be an issue in that sense but its a compromise i think one would have to make

Including it in the filters will be a bit more involved but i think its fairly straight forward with the code. Need to do either negative or positive to 0 though and im not good enough of a programmer to know much on that. If you have 2 values on the filter you can tune the strength and LP it

Code:

Heave = inFromSim
Sway = inFromSim
If heave is more than x% reduce sway by % but no more than to 0 so it wont reverse
Else do nothing.

I'm into combat flight sim and interested in aerobatics so I'll actually be tuning my sim for this situation as well. Between really good G-systems, and large heave travel (over 1 meter), I think I'll be able to get good results without needing any special features to support it though. It does make me wish I was going to have actual pitch motion available though. This is the first thing that made me regret that I won't.

Hey

I don't see knife edge missing Knife edge flight is just a very very very very un-coordinated flight and it will lead to the rig being tilted to one side with the simulator pilot "hanging" in there.

Here's the same image I posted earlier


The continuous lateral acceleration will NOT be filtered out, because it never goes through a HP filter.

Give me a minute and I will re-arrange the flow chart to match the Mover UI. Take this for now:

Here's the flowchart re-arranged to match the Mover UI:


You can see, it's all there.

I explicitly support the pilots-should-acquire-and-maintain-solid-stick-and-rudder-skills claim of that statement! Just the "slipping" part is I'd say somewhat over-rated

Slipping a plane is something that (afaik) every pilot learns at some point during initial flight training

...BUT...

if you intend to ever leave your local barnstorming club behind and begin flying expensive high performance jets you should ban slipping from your repertoire. In my training we were taught about it only in the context of "This is how you do it - It's a great way to show everyone around that your flight training was done by amateurs - Now don't ever do it again!".

• If you plan your approach properly (like any half-decent professional would) you won't ever need it. --> Don't do it
• On a jet engine, it might disrupt the engine inlet airstream --> Don't do it
• If you over-do it, you might unintentionally induce a spin --> Don't do it
• Some jets even have beta limiters or yaw dampers that either prevent it, or give strong warnings --> Don't do it
• On swept wings the induced roll can overcome the ailerons roll authority by a factor of five --> Don't do it.

I know plenty of private pilots brag about how they "saved" an approach with their slipping skills, but my view on it is this:
A superior pilot uses superior judgement to stay well clear of situations that require his superior skills.

Technically, there is ONE situation I can think of where you do something similar intentionally. When you De-crab a jet for landing (about 10-20 feet above the runway), you are for a second or two in a state of slipping flight. Then you touch down. And even in this case, instructors teach you to de-crab, not slip! If you start this maneuver at 50' your instructor will have you repeat it until you are able to do it proficiently at 20' or less.

That being said, it feels just like any other un-coordiated flight. A slight continuous side load on the pilot. That's it! If I had to guess, I'd say 0.1G or less.

Have I uploaded this picture before?


I don't think you need anything special for it in the software, just the side load that will deflect the rig in the roll DOF. Mover has everything you need for that,..... and more!!!

Cheers,... Dirty

Nope its not missing , never was. It was mainly used to create the scenario of what happens in RL vs RIG when you start pulling on the stick. Hence it needs a Sway to heave mix that cancels out Sway. Im sure you have already read trough it by now

Does anyone have a .mover config for Nolimits rollercoaster sim they could share, I'm having issues on inverted rides. Cheers

Hi @Dirty !

My feelings on the importance of knowing how to do a slip is specifically aimed at small GA aircraft such as C172's that have suffered an engine failure.

Being able to slip off altitude without gaining airspeed IMO gives you significantly more flexibility in choosing an emergency landing location.

Keep in mind I don't claim to be an expert by any means so I could be wrong, but the simplest example of this is that your fan stopped turning but the only good emergency landing area candidate is a bit too close and you a bit too high. Not enough to make a turn and come back, but enough that your airspeed will be to high for landing when you get there.

As for your statement that this is not a useful thing in other circumstances, I will not dispute that you are the expert here. I am a little bit curious however as to your thoughts on the use of a slip in a B747 during the famous "Gimli Glider" incident.

Also, I would assume that commercially licensed pilots have had quite a bit more stick and rudder skill training than the hobby GA pilots I complain don't know how to actually fly!

@pmvcda and @Dirty

Re: @Trigen

I figured out what Trigen is getting at, and it is interesting. It's an aerobatics type situation.

You are flying knife-edge and the motion sim is working well giving you a continuous sway cue. Then you pull the stick straight back for a LONG sustained 4G turn, maintaining your 90 degree bank throughout.

What happens?

The problem is this: The 1G sway acceleration for the 90 degree bank remains as it should, but the 4G heave acceleration that should now exist was only momentary.

Now you would expect to be feeling the crushing 4G heave acceleration and not even be aware of the sway acceleration that is still there, but because the sim is incapable of providing that heave cue you are left with the strongest force being sway which feels very, very wrong!

It's a problem caused by the physical limitations of a motion platform, not by any flaw in the cueing logic. Trigen is looking for a way to cheat to cover up this glaring defect in the motion simulation during air-show type maneuvers. A pure pitch/heave acceleration is not in any way opposite a sway acceleration, so the sway cue remains at full strength

IMO the thing to do is work on ways to add strength to the sustained heave cue (G-seat and motion sim pitch), and after getting as much as possible out of that, decrease the strength of the motion sim roll for sway cue until the balance is acceptable. Your' sway cue in knife edge flight will be weaker than you'd like but at least it's correct.

Aerobatics is probably the #1 most difficult thing for a motion sim to do well. Before you guys started at solving these various problems it was absolutely awful! Trust me, I tried!

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PS- What @Trigen is asking for is a feature that will allow him to link heave and sway so that as heave acceleration levels increase (away from neutral (1G) in either direction), motion cues for sway are proportionately decreased (toward neutral from either direction). I know just enough about programming to know that providing this would likely be FAR more work than a non-programmer would expect. Also that every feature no matter how simple can cause bugs that seem totally unrelated in future updates. Further complicating the possible usefulness of this special feature, it would need to have a 2G "dead zone" from -1 to +1, because heave's "neutral" reading is 1G when flying straight and level, negative 1G when inverted, and zero when flying knife-edge.

If the feature could be added experimentally without too much effort, I think it would be worth a try. I just worry about over-burdening our generally unpaid programmers who are already working very hard for us constantly improving things and fixing bugs.

Ah,... that sounds different indeed

Still, the same mechanism apply if you pull Gs.

If you are EXACTLY at 90°, then you will need "top rudder" to keep the aircraft flying. Basically you are flying a circle while in knife edge flight. --> This is un-coordinated flight. The lateral lift from the fuselage will keep you afloat. You will have 1G side load. --> The rig will be tilted

If you are only at say 80° of bank, but flying coordinated, you will have to pull 5.7 Gs to not loose altitude. Flight is coordinated and it is the vertical component of your lift vector (from the wings) that keeps you afloat. You will have zero side load --> The rig will not be tilted

The difference comes from using top rudder or not. Whether you pull Gs is not relevant, only the present of side load.

If you want to transition from knife edge flight (using rudder) to pulling Gs for the turn (no rudder), then you will almost automatically transition from un-coordinated flight into coordinated flight. It is this transition to coordinated flight that will lead to the disappearance of the side load and thereby to the disappearance of the tilt.

Cheers,... Dirty

You're right. In GA aircraft (straight wing, front prop) you can get away with it. Still, proper approach planning would be my measure of choice

That's good one

Air Canada Flight 143 was a 767 that ran out of fuel at 41.000ft. They managed to land the plane on a closed airfield. On one hand you could praise them for their flying skills, but on the other hand one has to ask: How many mistakes were made to end up in a 767 with passengers too high on approach to a closed airfield WITHOUT FUEL!

They have confused imperial units with metric units while fueling. And then failed to realize their errors in flight.

I don't wanna bash them, many factors came together, different people on different levels of responsibility screwed up prior to the flight and in the end both pilots were suspended or degraded after the flight. And while on approach to a closed airfield without fuel, whey misjudged the glide angle and ended up too high.

Afaik, the Captain was also an experienced glider pilot who then resorted to slipping the plane like a glider (which is totally fine in a glider) to increase descent. It worked. They landed. No injuries.

Still, slipping is highly discouraged in a jet or swept wing aircraft. And it is often a sign that some poor decisions were made prior to the "skillful" slipping flight

That being said, Mover is totally able to display it nicely like any other state of flight.