Turbulence and Light GA Aircraft

[teeps]

Hi,

One of the things that seems out of proportion to me is how much turbulence there seems to be in X-Plane when using real world weather (the built in system, no addons).  For instance, in the Falco at LESA I find the aircraft constantly getting chucked around the sky, and pretty much impossible to fly hands off.  This seems at odds with what I see in GA planes flying about in the real skies, and with my limited gliding experience too.

Is it just me, or is the turbulence a bit mental?  If it's not just me is there anything that can be done to tame it when using the real-world weather option?

Cheers,

Mark

[Ben Russell]

Most people find the turbulence a little bit too strong and too constant.

I don't think there's much you can do to tweak the built in real weather.

[teeps]

Ah, well at least it's not just me!

Thanks for the reply.

[Morten XPFW]

I don't think there's much you can do to tweak the built in real weather.

There is

Try my PA28 or B757 and you'll find they can handle alot more turbulence

and crosswind than other comparable acf.

M

[tkyler]

One source of turbulence that people forget is in the weather settings...and that is "thermal climb rate".  it's usually set at 500 ft/min.  You don't see that kind of climb rate except on hot days...so I almost ALWAYS turn this down to zero or some number below 50.  It's a additional source of turbulence in addition to the regular turbulence setting.

[Jack Skieczius]

Turbulence in X-plane is sometimes the most annoying thing, especially at those high flight levels when you are suppose to be running thru some no turbulent cirrus clouds, but instead your rocking all over the place and wondering why.

[Jedipie]

In real life there is usually turbulance but very light. Im a pilot and 99% of the time i encounter light to moderate turbulance. But XP does seem to overdo it.

[LA]

In real life there is usually turbulance but very light. Im a pilot and 99% of the time i encounter light to moderate turbulance. But XP does seem to overdo it.

I've basically turned the turbulence in X-Plane off, except for naturally rough weather situations. I found it rather annoying.

As a pilot/plane owner..........I'll fly a lot of cross country flights of several hundred miles or more. During the warmer months, the air is usually very still in the early morning hours. The plane is so rock solid, that it seems like we're barely moving, although GPS ground speeds are between 175 & 200 mph.

As the morning progresses into afternoon, I can usually count on mild turbulence until the later afternoon hours, in which the air mass settles down again. During winter months, I've often flown thoughout the day, with little or no turbulence.

Note: This airplane is a Van's RV6A. About the same size as the Falco, that's offered as a simulated aircraft. Flight area is the Rocky Mountain area of the USA.

LA

[Jedipie]

I fly a PA28 235. In the mornings and late evenings are the best cause the air calms down. It is a great feeling when theres no bumps at all.

[XPAfrica]

i agree that turbulence from the x-plane weather is too strong and pretty annoyingly "cyclic" or constant - it has just as much randomness than the vibrations my washing machine sends through the basement walls. That's one hing Austin could maybe consider enhancing a bit.

[YYZatcboy]

The weather model is being completely re done in XP10, so I am sure Turb is going to be looked at for that release fellas

[crs]

The weather model is being completely re done in XP10, so I am sure Turb is going to be looked at for that release fellas

Sorry for posting it here, but once you mentioned XP10 here I could not find better place to ask that question. Will XP10 be supporting multicore CPU's?

I found it extremely annoying as I suspect CPU now is a bottle neck of my PC (got fast GPU today), I can see one core being constantly used in 100% while wnother 3 do nothing.

Kind regards,

Kamil

[Kesomir]

These blogs might be useful

http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/2009/06/constraints-of-hardware.html

http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-previous-post-i-discussed-basic.html

It's all speculation really, but I would doubt big leaps in multi core use - more slow evolution

[scubajuan_new]

Now that XP10 is out and even though the weather has some significant changes in reference to XP9 (I think mostly visual stuff), I would like to share my experience in the 2012 FS Lan Part in Belgium organised by the IVAO Belgian Division: http://www.fslanparty.be

First of all it was a memorable event for me since is the first of this kind of events that I attend. there were over 50 pilots and a good and sufficient number of ATC covering the main positions for the scheduled flights. This weekend the location for all the flight was the caribbean and it happen to be really stormy in some of the locations (TFFR and TNCM). Also I would like to mention that I was the only pilot flying on X-Plane. For the event I chose the CRJ200 with a free FWI (Air Caraibes, French West) livery. I wanted to do all flights in sequence based on TFFR (home of Air Caraibes).

I arrived a bit late to the event (during the welcoming briefing) and by the time i got set up and ready to file my first flight plan, most of the planes departing from TFFR were either taxiing or taking off, so I sat and watched the Boeing 737's, Avros, ATR's, Airbuses and the like take off in the heavy rain with no problems and I thought to my self "courage you can do this too Juan"

So I got everything ready and begin my procedures to start, taxi and line up, looking really nice with the JRollon's great rain drops and wipers effect, everything so far with no problems other than the drop in frame rate do to the intensive traffic and significant weather. I got clearance, lined up and push the throttle, having some difficulties to stayed on the center of the runway (I don't have rodder pedals) but not too bad, got positive rate of climb, gear up and start to gain altitude and speed, but as soon as I reached the first layer of clouds between 180 and 220 KIAS climbing on RWY HDG, the turbulence was so intense that busted my airframe and went down in flames as I was being watch over my shoulder by a few visitors and other members. Oops, lets try again... and this happen to me 3 times in a row and I was forced to change my departure point to a location without the severe weather. As i was approaching TNCM where the weather was no so bad ( still rainy and with poor visibility but at least the weather radar on my instruments was not ALL RED like in TFFR, boom first bit of turbulence encountered at about FL080 descending at 240 KIAS and there goes the airframe again. This was starting to be really annoying. It got to the point when I switched the IVAO WX Off after an initial download ad disabled the turbulence off so I could complete a flight at least.

Bottom line is the turbulance in X-Plane is just too unrealistic cuz I know airplanes are designed to fly trough turbulence specially at low speeds without breaking up in mid air, and another thing I would like to see improvement in XP is the representation of other traffics (none of the other planes looked like they were supposed to be).

Is there a way to tune real weather turbulence to a more realistic level? is there a library of generic planes without the complex 3d models to use just as either AI traffic or online traffic?

Thanks for reading

Juan.

Thanks to Aerosoft and Peters Aircraft for donating great products for X-Plane for prices (A full X-Plane 10 Global, Toulouse Scenery and a A321)

I am the happy winer of the Airbus, just waiting for instructions of where to download and how to install form Peter. Yuhoo!

Edited October 1, 2012 by scubajuan_new