• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS Thoughts about the 3rd-party helicopter add-ons?

tml

tml

Messages
89
Country
finland
Firstly, note that I definitely don't want to insult anyone's feelings. I just want to discuss this from a technical, software engineering point of view. I have the deepest respect for the skills of the two developers/teams that have managed to produce helicopter add-ons for MSFS in its current state. I.e. the H135 and the Bell 47G. Also, I very much understand that both products have or will have many very satisfied users. A common feeling among the end-user community seems to be something like "you said you don't support helicopters but these leet modders did it anyway, haha, take that Asobo".

But. As we know, it isn't just empty talk that MSFS wouldn't support helicopters. There really is no way to describe a helicopter in the aircraft and flight model configuration files. (Or any way to properly describe aircraft in general that differ too much in configuration of aerodynamic surfaces etc from the "normal" single wing in the middle of the fuselage, up to four engines, single tail.)

So how have these developers then managed to produce helicopters that even behave as helicopters? Well, I don't know, but what I am worried about is that they are intentionally "misusing" corner cases in the configurations. In other words, are they essentially taking advantage of bugs in MSFS that allow aircraft with "pathological" behaviour to work, more or less by accident, by creating operating conditions for the simulator that are outside its design space? How can this be a stable and future-proof approach? Does this mean that Asobo is now "locked-in" for all future to keep these add-ons working, or risking making lots of customers (and add-on developers) angry? Or that these add-on developers will have to constantly modify the very basics of their products as MSFS evolves and the "loopholes" of unspecified corner case behaviour they possibly have taken advantage of go away?
 
Last edited:
rhumbaflappy

rhumbaflappy

Administrator
Staff member
Resource contributor
Messages
5,945
Country
us-wisconsin
First, Asobo is under no obligation to lock-in anything, much less a non-standard aircraft. I don't believe they would think twice about these chopper-type SimObjects.
Second, enabling work-arounds is almost the bedrock of FS developing since FS98 or earlier. This website was basically created to deal with work-arounds and poorly documented "features".
Third, I do believe 3rd party addons will need to be modified as the Sim evolves. We are all participating in a paid beta.
 
M

Milviz

Messages
77
Country
canada
Just FYI... they are likely avoiding the mess that is the flight dynamic system in msfs entirely. This has been done by several devs, including us (unreleased) so we know it's possible to do.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tml
tml

tml

Messages
89
Country
finland
Milviz said:
Just FYI... they are likely avoiding the mess that is the flight dynamic system in msfs entirely. This has been done by several devs, including us (unreleased) so we know it's possible to do.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I am actually nowadays experimenting with that myself, too;) Not sure what I will eventually use what I learn for, but my experimentation is public: https://github.com/tml1024/flying-brick . If/when I start working on some add-on aircraft for real, it will surely not be yet another "normal" aircraft but something that is in some way special, and thus requires some amount of custom flight dynamics.
 
D

dieselweasel

Messages
1
Country
australia
tml said:
Yeah, I am actually nowadays experimenting with that myself, too;) Not sure what I will eventually use what I learn for, but my experimentation is public: https://github.com/tml1024/flying-brick . If/when I start working on some add-on aircraft for real, it will surely not be yet another "normal" aircraft but something that is in some way special, and thus requires some amount of custom flight dynamics.
Click to expand...
tml said:
Yeah, I am actually nowadays experimenting with that myself, too;) Not sure what I will eventually use what I learn for, but my experimentation is public: https://github.com/tml1024/flying-brick . If/when I start working on some add-on aircraft for real, it will surely not be yet another "normal" aircraft but something that is in some way special, and thus requires some amount of custom flight dynamics.
Click to expand...
Hey @tml thanks for making your source available to us all, but I’m having some challenges in taking off. Basically I compiled your flight sim objects and loaded it in MSFS. Engines turned on but the brick didn’t take off. I tried to use it on the simple aircraft template replacing everything but the same issue, zero take off
Are there any tips or possible systems I need to make sure are on? I’m flying with a gamepad mapping the throttle to the thumbsticks which is how I fly the H135.
I’d love to help contribute if I can get the brick to fly 👍
 
tml

tml

Messages
89
Country
finland
dieselweasel said:
Hey @tml thanks for making your source available to us all, but I’m having some challenges in taking off. Basically I compiled your flight sim objects and loaded it in MSFS. Engines turned on but the brick didn’t take off. I tried to use it on the simple aircraft template replacing everything but the same issue, zero take off
Are there any tips or possible systems I need to make sure are on? I’m flying with a gamepad mapping the throttle to the thumbsticks which is how I fly the H135.
I’d love to help contribute if I can get the brick to fly 👍
Click to expand...
Not sure how the thumbstick mapping works. 50% throttle keeps it at static height, below 50% descends, above 50% ascends, so to take off you would just need to apply full throttle.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top