Al,

IMHO, weakness of FMS flight model is not related to a wide variety of the flying objects. It's not even about the sloppy PAR files (there are so many beautiful planes, which have unrealistic parameters listed in PAR file). The main weakness of FMS flight model is its linear nature. Look at PAR file--the scope of aerodynamic parameters listed there suggests that the flight time integration is linear. This inevitably leads to inability of modeling high-angle-of-attack modes. Look how FMS planes behave when you throttle back: the most they can do is to turn down and dive. I doubt that any 3D maneuvers are possible at all.

I would agree that full non-linear time integration (which accounts for the non-linearity of aerodynamic forces vs. the angle of attack and Re numbers, as well as non-linear integration of the differential equation of motion, let alone in-flight vibration and flow separation analysis) is too computationally demanding to implement on PCs. But other R/C sims do some clever tricks to improve the flight modeling! I wonder if there are any publications on this subject (they should be as long as NASA crowd continues to spend tons of taxpayers’ money). Too bad the flight model implementations of particular flight sims are the trade secrets of their developers…

Just my $.02 worth,
Boris
(totaling 10 years in Aerospace education--I must had nothing better to do then!)