Has anyone played a flight simulator that has also studied physics?

[InvalidID]

Before you took high school physics, you all probably used your everyday experience to guess how the universe around you worked. For example: you probably guessed that everything eventually came to a stop. But then you learned Newton's laws and you realized that everything maintains constant velocity and never stops unless acted by an unbalanced force such as friction.

As soon as I learned some physics, I felt kind of arrogant. I saw the world in a different way and I felt like I had a solid understanding... until I played a semi-real flight simulator. I'm embarrassed to admit that my understanding on piloting an airplane was totally wrong. I feel embarrassed because if I had totally understood the basic physics, I should've been able to predict how it would work correctly before playing the flight simulator. I now understand the physics behind piloting an airplane and it matches what I learned in basic physics, but now I don't know if I'm just memorizing again or I truly understand it. ):<

 

[Ryan_m_b]

This post reminds me of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. Multiple times he espouces the opinion that he would obviously be excellent at a task despite never being trained because he understands the underlying physics

IMO this type of thinking is flat out wrong. There are few complex, practical and vocational tasks that having a grasp of the underlying physics will allow you to pick up easily.

 

[Kholdstare]

I did both in more or less same time of my childhood. I thought I would play the simulator well knowing the basic physics and mathematics and really did so.

BTW: I played Novalogic's simulators.

 

[Andre]

I'm a retired fighter pilot who once studied basic physics in an engineering course. How can I help you?

 

[Vorde]

IMO this type of thinking is flat out wrong. There are few complex, practical and vocational tasks that having a grasp of the underlying physics will allow you to pick up easily.

So true, the only proof I need is to know how bad I am at billiards, even though the math behind the perfect shots is trivial.

 

[jhae2.718]

Uh, I work with engineering flight simulators.

 

[InvalidID]

For those answering the title of this thread, I didn't mean to ask the question as a request - more as a "share if you had a similar experience to me" kind of question.

 

[jhae2.718]

If you've taken a flight dynamics course you shouldn't have that problem. A "basic physics" course, as you've put it, you really won't understand how aircraft behave (I am assuming something like a classical mechanics/"Physics I" course here). A simple example of something you most likely wouldn't take away from such a course is the coupling between pitch, roll, and yaw. If you've had flight dynamics, you could look at the yawing moment equation, for example, and see why that occurs:
$$I_{yy}\dot{Q} + (I_{xx}-I_{yy})PR - I_{xy}(\dot{P} + QR) - I_{yz}(\dot{R} - PQ) + I_{xz}(P^2 - R^2) = M_A + M_T$$
To simplify things, if we assume a "conventional" aircraft, we can make the approximation that the aircraft is symmetric about the $XZ$ plane and thus $I_{xy}=I_{yz}=0$. Rearranging,$$\dot{Q} = - \frac{(I_{xx}-I_{zz})PR}{I_{yy}} - \frac{I_{xz}}{I_{yy}}(P^2 - R^2) + \frac{M_A + M_T}{I_{yy}}$$
And we see that, depending on the principal inertias, the pitch rate changes with roll and yaw. The second term on the RHS is the "I_xz effect", and is another type of coupling.

The take-away is that it's hard to be an expert in everything, and as you progress further into science/engineering/mathematics you get into a lot of domain-specific knowledge.

 

[rcgldr]

I'm embarrassed to admit that my understanding on piloting an airplane was totally wrong. I feel embarrassed because if I had totally understood the basic physics, I should've been able to predict how it would work correctly before playing the flight simulator. I now understand the physics behind piloting an airplane and it matches what I learned in basic physics, but now I don't know if I'm just memorizing again or I truly understand it.

You didn't mention the specific issues that surprised you with the flight simulator. I don't recall any unexepected reactions of an aircraft, just a lot of new to me stuff that had to be learned, mostly aircraft specific, such as approach speeds when preparing for landing. I also fly radio control gliders, and used a flight simulator with a view from the tower for practice (the main learning curve is orientation, learning to fly an aircraft from an outside view).

In my case, the most unexpected reaction from a real radio control model was a snap roll that was induced with only elevator input (the model was an aerobatic model deliberately setup with excessive elevator throw to do this). I was aware of what a snap roll was, but still was surprised the first time it happened (since I wasn't warned the model was setup this way, I figured out what was going on and recovered, then had fun messing with snap rolls with that model). Some radio control flight simulators emulate snap roll, but I don't know if any full scale flight simulators model snap roll.

 

[InvalidID]

You didn't mention the specific issues that surprised you with the flight simulator. I don't recall any unexepected reactions of an aircraft, just a lot of new to me stuff that had to be learned, mostly aircraft specific, such as approach speeds when preparing for landing. I also fly radio control gliders, and used a flight simulator with a view from the tower for practice (the main learning curve is orientation, learning to fly an aircraft from an outside view).

In my case, the most unexpected reaction from a real radio control model was a snap roll that was induced with only elevator input (the model was an aerobatic model deliberately setup with excessive elevator throw to do this). I was aware of what a snap roll was, but still was surprised the first time it happened (since I wasn't warned the model was setup this way, I figured out what was going on and recovered, then had fun messing with snap rolls with that model). Some radio control flight simulators emulate snap roll, but I don't know if any full scale flight simulators model snap roll.

Well, I'm used to flight physics now, but I can remember one good example. It was a shock to me that when flying, you could exchange altitude and speed with each other. I knew that flying with an angle more perpendicular to Earth would require more effort but I failed to realize that as you go up in altitude, you also are storing more potential energy.

 

[Kholdstare]

I did not use many complicated formulas. Just kept track of speed, acceleration and torque of the plane, And yes I understood positive and negative feedback loop. So that helped.