hello

i've been playing the G3 simulation. i found that with the nexstar, you can go over 2500ft in altitude and over 80+mph in a dive. i just want to know how real are the simulators.

also, i broke a wing during a dive at around 80mph. does this really happen in real flying??

Sims, can help a lot in your learning for some things... It'll help you in the
basics and how to gain better control in the advance stuff... But being real to
life..... I'm not sure, But it is a good tool... I have G3( Won in a raffle.. Thanks
Kingman) and AFP... I still use them quite a bit....

Over stressing a plane will result in bad things happening.... Wings and more
have come apart at our field.... It a good reason to stay on the outside of the
runway away from the pits..... You never know.........

They are VERY real in what you can learn and then apply directly to the field. I learned about everything on the sim and then almost seamlessly transferred it to the real thing.
Here is what I am talking about. Watch this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvHGhjW8CHo

In December of 2004 I was a pretty good hotdogger and an ok pilot. I got the sim and within 4 months I had learned to fly at this level. Not that its earth shattering skill, but all of the skills I learned on AFPD I can now re create in real life.

So you can do all of that will your real plane?

and what happens when you bounce your elevator on the ground like in the video?


electric or glow?

Which do you like better and why?

Thanks

LOL, yes I can do all of that with a real plane. .. I figured someone would ask eventually. And no, I do NOT bounce the elevator on the ground. In high alpha rolling maneuvers like a rolling harrier I will come down to about 2-4' in real life. Thats about as low as I dare with my 35% plane, too much risk of the ground reaching out and grabbing me if I go any lower. With high speed slow/point rolls I keep the fuselage about 10 above the deck becaise things are happening so fast. I will hover and torque roll right down on the deck but I stop before the tail touches, again too much risk. Its not really a bg deal one muscle memory and 50 bozillion reps take over. Now I just have to clean it up and make it look cleaner.

Heres a couple of pics that are about 2 months old.

And you got the skilled in at least part due to the AFPD simulator?

Oh man I am not kidding when I tell you that those skills came from my simulator practice. I would have never had the courage to try those things without first learning on the sim. Once I got it down on the sim then I would start up high with my real plane and then as I gained confidence I naturally worked it down. It has taken me about 2 years to get that confident, but I would have never gotten this far this fast without the simulator so yes I am telling you from EXPERIENCE not opinion that they are a PRICELESS tool for a person that wants to learn to fly good solid aerobatics. Many a person has done it without a simulator, but they are very few and far between and it took them WAY longer to master.

Something that also helped me was competitive precision aerobatics. Whether IMAC or pattern, they force you to use the rudder and learn to put the plane exactly where you want it exactly when you want it to be there and in the attitude you want it. With the sim and drums of fuel practicing pattern and then finally 3D skills I have finally become a halfway decent pilot but it has taken me every bit of 4 years and no telling how many hours of repetetive practice sessions at the field working on specifically one skill at a time.

I am just ok, you should see the really great pilots fly. Most of the newer and BETTER pilots are teens and young adults that cut their teeth on video games. They are destroying the middle aged guys and getting closer and closer to knocking off the big boys like Chip and Quique. Well Mark Leseburg (about 20) has already overtaken them. [8D]

I am 39 (as of 2 days ago) so I will NEVER be that good.[]

Hi gaz393,

FWIW I have found students who have a sim "generally" progress much more quickly than those that don't. However, (isn't there always a however) the sims don't appear to help with landing and the associated need to recognise speed commensurate with depth perception.

Cheers,

Colin

Agreed. There is a unique sense that the sim can not reproduce when it come to dealing with depth perception on landing approaches. If you can land on the sim it will definitely help and maybe get you through in the real world, but there is certainly a significant difference. I STILL struggle to put the plane right in the midle of the runway. I have a stigmatism and I guess it has my perception a little jacked up. Another instance when you can lose the plane in reality is in knife edge. Sometimes I am looking dead at the plane and suddenly I cannot tell how far away it is or if the wings are vertical. Then suddenly my brain unlocks and I see it again and I quickly correct. This is worse in a KE circle where the plane is a little farther out and going straight away or at an angle. When its close in its not so bad.

Years ago the sim helped my overcome a HUGE problem I had. I just couldn't fly anywhere near the ground. I rarely got below 75ft or so. I used the sim to practice flying low to the ground. Now I rarely fly ABOVE 75ft!!!! But I owe it all to the simulator. I made me feel comfortable flying that close to the ground!!

As far as which sim? I fly Realflight G2. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of G3 or AFPD but it does a pretty good job IMHO. That partially comes from the fact that I refuse to own G3, even if it was given to me!!!!!!! But that's another story. If you come across a copy of G2 on Ebay or in the marketplace it might be well worth it to pick up at a lower price, it will definitely help improve your flying skills

Hope this helps

Ken

without a doubt the sim has done wonders for my flying trying different planes working the basic skills and trying new things is a huge advantage for me it translates to more confidence

NightOne.... G3 is good, Maybe a "bit" better than AFP, But there is a lot of plus with
AFP The Big one is more "free" stuff online instead of paying $30 for most of the planes
that you don't want on G3..... As I said I won G3 at a fun fly raffle....
If I was going to buy... It would be AFPD... JMO....

Just curious, in what way is G3 better to you? Im honestly curious, because maybe I missed something when I tried it, I may need to go back and try it again. [8D] The physics just did not feel as realistic to me. They were good, really good. But not as realistic as other sims. And it did not seem to have the setup options available that AFPD has to modify flight parameters, but again perhaps I just overlooked it.

As a new instructor this spring that's pretty much what I have found with students. They tend to fly better from the get go if they've had some sim time but don't know anything about landing.

rclement,
While simulators are a good thing most of the time, I've found that they can also be a bad thing. Especially if somebody spends a lot of time on one before meeting an instructor. It's possible for the student to pick up bad habits from the simulator. Then the instructor has to spend time "un-learning" the bad habits before they can teach them to fly. This doesn't happen to everybody, but it does happen.

Ken

G3 was a tremendous help to me. My instructor came by to check it out and he found it very helpful for practicing new stuff before he tried it with his 33% Sukhoi. He noticed a huge improvment over a months time once I started using the simulator.

Hey Mike.... I was refering to "AFP" Their first sim vs G3.... I tried G2 once and
it was way off compared to "Aero Flight Pro" But since I got G3, I thought it was
about even with AFP flight wise, and as it should looks better, but man it burns
my old "puter" up.... But I still favor AFP.... And AFPD would be my choice if I
was going to buy another....
I was told that you can the modify all the flight parameters, I've looked and
messed with it some but have not really got into it. Right now some adjustments
does not seem/is as simple and stright froward IMO as "AFP"....
Also G3 was a bit better from the first time, after I got the latest program update.

Flight parameters on AFPD are real easy to change. All you really have to do is point and click once you get into the edit aircraft menu. They give you a picture of an airplane and you click on the part of the plane you want to modify and then it pops up a little menu of parameters that you have the option of modifying. You can change pretty much every aspect of the airplane imaginable except for modifying the dimensional shape of the wing, fuse, stabs etc. However, you can change the airfoil shape. What I am saying is you cannot modify an Extra wing to be shaped like a YAK or a CUB. You can modify propwash effect though, you can increase the effectiveness by a numeric factor to get a particular control surface to respond a certain way. ie, more prop wash on the rudder so that it is more/less responsive. Its all about getting the plane to perform as realistically as possible..

But, all that being said the stock planes that come on AFPD are really accurate. The downloads can be somewhat more/less realistic, depending on which plane and who designed it.

as a sim beginner the parameters on G-3 are a pain to understand . been hitting the knifeedge.com forums and there is allot of help trying to figure it out never used the AFPD sim but it sounds a bit easer to change values,I have to add knife edge is starting to have more downloads for planes there are still allot more for AFPD for sure ,still any sim is going to help with your "skills" I have added on to my sim and am super happy with it after the kids are in bed rip a few touch and goes and some tricks the more stick time the better, before the sim landings were well lets just say a good chance of success, maybe LOL, after sim solid and reliable mistakes are corrected faster just better flying in general allot more pieces in my bag of tricks.

Here is my G3 versus other sims Mantra... sorry to those this offends...

G3 beats AFDP hands down when it comes to physics and many other areas.

I have both... and learned to fly both RC Heli's and Planes with the former... soloed first time out on the field, certified the second, thanks completely to G3.

There are a lot of things that AFDP fails to model properly... e.g. inertia affecting forward travel in a stall situation, wing tip stall rates varying as wing curvatures differ, etc.

The physics editor in G3 is far better as well, permitting tweaks to parameters, in turn allowing anyone to make a model fly just like the real thing.

Many AFDP user created models need some adjustments due to minor errors but the editor does not lend itself to this task.

AFDP's model deformations effects are very good, something I wish G3 had.

Then there is AFDP's abysmal heli modeling.... but that is another matter.
BTW: all of our field heli instructors now recommend G3 training first to all newbies.


Neither program really includes anything to actually model new 3D aircraft though... something that should be included IMHO.


G3 also excels when coupled with things like Stereo LCD shutter glasses and a TrackIR.

Combine those with G3, and there are NO DEPTH/SPEED PERCEPTION issues as the display is rendered in true 3D and you see things with fairly accurate depths... of course this requires 3D photofields with good rendering.

You have to try this to appreciate it, although getting Stereo glasses to work properly is a frustrating exercise...

Once done the sim permits a newbie to progress quickly...

Hey Mike.... It's the same with G3, They have a ton of things that can be adjusted,
I don't have AFPD, but G3 has a lot more adjustments than AFP...And it sounds
almost like the same type of menu screen as AFPD.. As I said after the update of
the program, G3 is not too bad... My main problem is plane upgrades.. Ohh and
reading the manual....

I agree Ken. Just that so far my experience with students is that they've only spent a little bit of time on the sim and then come down to the field to fly the "real plane". I did have one student that said, on his third flight, "when can I get my solo card" That was too funny. He hadn't even landed or taken off yet.

There is really only 1 bad habit that I have seen that was significant. That is taking the fingers off the the sticks and letting them "spring" back to the center when they are ready to relax the sticks. That is a bad habit fundamentally due to the wear on the pots and gimbles not to mention the undesirable things it does to the flight,,,, but frankly it just bugs me to hear the springs resonating.

Specifically what are the bad habits that you guys have seen from simulator use? It would be good to know so that we can look for them during training sessions.

I hope this doesn't come out sounding like I know what I'm doing, because I don't. I can remember when I was learning how to fly ... full scale planes, when my instructor would tell me to do this or do that a specific way. Not doing it that way might cause me to develop a "bad habit" and could eventually lead to me crashing the airplane and killing myself. I paid close attention.

Somehow I don't think that releasing the sticks on the controller for an RC plane is going to have the same effect. I must say MikeEast that if my instructor told me that letting go of the sticks would cause undo wear on my gimbles, I'd thank him for the advice, try my best to stop doing it and keep flying. If he then "insisted" that I stopped. I'd look for another instructor.

Unless those bad habits lead to an unsafe situation for myself or others, lets not get insistant about changing them. Tell me about what I'm doing wrong, suggest ways to stop, but don't stop my learning progress or my ability to fly. Doing so will be the quickest way possible to discourage someone from progressing in our hobby. We're here to learn how to fly RC and I want to have fun doing it. I can only assume that others feel the same way. Please don't put undo restrictions on people trying to learn just because they do something that bugs you.