Post by Tom Goodrick on Dec 22, 2008 20:37:37 GMT -5
It is very dissappointing that FS9 does not simulate the effects of icing. During the cold months, most small planes are grounded except for the occasional sunny weekend day when small airports get real busy with people flying the pattern or hopping to a neighboring airport just to get some flight time. Serious use for business-related flights can only take place with careful planning and a fair amount of luck. Pilots and passengers must be prepared to spend a night or two in motels along the way if the weather turns bad.
The reason is structural icing. It stops airplane from flying, whether parked or trying to fly. It is best to be parked when it happens. It changes the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft wings and tail surfaces, rendering them inoperable. It can also plug up pilot tubes and clog engine inlets. None of these things are healthy for the people in an airplane.
In earlier versions of Flight Simulator, even before Microsoft took over the marketing of Flight Simulator, you could see the effects of icing. Just set up a snow storm and take off into it. First you would lose the airspeed though you could revive it by turning on the pitot heat. But as you continued to fly your climb rate and airspeed would decay. Then you would start down. You would be lucky to make it back to the airport.
Try that today and nothing happens except the loss of airspeed.
I just spent several days experimenting with this. I set up a scenario with below-freezing temperatures and snow from the surface to 6400 ft in the Chicago area (and actually all over the world the way this silly sim works today). I set visibility at half a mile. I set some veering winds that increased with altitude and reversed direction over 8000 ft. I turned on "severe icing." The ice caused the airspeed to shut down but flipping the pitot heat switch brought it back in a few seconds.
I flew simple singles, singles with retractable gear and turbocharging and twin piston planes. I did not bother with turboprops and fanjets because they can climb so quickly I did not expect any problems. In real life they are all cleared for flight in "known icing" anyway. Visibility was hampered. But there were no icing effects on performance.
What a shame. Microsoft had an opportunity to keep the icing effect in the sim as they improved it in many ways. But they did not keep it.
They even screwed up another aspect of messy IFR flying that they helped invent. As a visual aid to making an ILS, you can't beat the visual "highway in the sky" that can lead a pilot down through the big mess in the sky to a safe landing. I have used it in many versions of FS. It puts red rectangles in the sky along the glide slope leading to the runway. You just manage power and speed, drop the gear and flaps at appropriate times while you maneuver the aircraft to stay within the rectangles. The last rectangle is right over the end of the runway.
This feature is now available in aircraft as small as Skylanes in real life. But Microsoft has messed it up. The red rectangles will "look" as though they are outside ahead of the aircraft leading down to the ground. In real life they are imposed on a display prominently placed on the panel. They may even be projected onto a glass panel raised up so you look through it and through the windshield. In these real-life cases, the red rectangles are always clearly visible. Those jerks at Microsoft put them outside - in the rain, fog or snow! In bad weather they can be almost invisible. On one approach in 1/2 mile vis, I usually only saw two rectangles even though the spacing was at medium density. I passed through the last rectangle and still saw NOTHING. (I landed hard at an angle to the runway I could only see after llanding on it.) I changed the vis to 1 mile and the rectangle density to high.
The only way you can even try to set icing is when you build weather manually. Get "Real Weather" and you'll see no icing even on the pitot tube when flying in rain at -10C.
The reason is structural icing. It stops airplane from flying, whether parked or trying to fly. It is best to be parked when it happens. It changes the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft wings and tail surfaces, rendering them inoperable. It can also plug up pilot tubes and clog engine inlets. None of these things are healthy for the people in an airplane.
In earlier versions of Flight Simulator, even before Microsoft took over the marketing of Flight Simulator, you could see the effects of icing. Just set up a snow storm and take off into it. First you would lose the airspeed though you could revive it by turning on the pitot heat. But as you continued to fly your climb rate and airspeed would decay. Then you would start down. You would be lucky to make it back to the airport.
Try that today and nothing happens except the loss of airspeed.
I just spent several days experimenting with this. I set up a scenario with below-freezing temperatures and snow from the surface to 6400 ft in the Chicago area (and actually all over the world the way this silly sim works today). I set visibility at half a mile. I set some veering winds that increased with altitude and reversed direction over 8000 ft. I turned on "severe icing." The ice caused the airspeed to shut down but flipping the pitot heat switch brought it back in a few seconds.
I flew simple singles, singles with retractable gear and turbocharging and twin piston planes. I did not bother with turboprops and fanjets because they can climb so quickly I did not expect any problems. In real life they are all cleared for flight in "known icing" anyway. Visibility was hampered. But there were no icing effects on performance.
What a shame. Microsoft had an opportunity to keep the icing effect in the sim as they improved it in many ways. But they did not keep it.
They even screwed up another aspect of messy IFR flying that they helped invent. As a visual aid to making an ILS, you can't beat the visual "highway in the sky" that can lead a pilot down through the big mess in the sky to a safe landing. I have used it in many versions of FS. It puts red rectangles in the sky along the glide slope leading to the runway. You just manage power and speed, drop the gear and flaps at appropriate times while you maneuver the aircraft to stay within the rectangles. The last rectangle is right over the end of the runway.
This feature is now available in aircraft as small as Skylanes in real life. But Microsoft has messed it up. The red rectangles will "look" as though they are outside ahead of the aircraft leading down to the ground. In real life they are imposed on a display prominently placed on the panel. They may even be projected onto a glass panel raised up so you look through it and through the windshield. In these real-life cases, the red rectangles are always clearly visible. Those jerks at Microsoft put them outside - in the rain, fog or snow! In bad weather they can be almost invisible. On one approach in 1/2 mile vis, I usually only saw two rectangles even though the spacing was at medium density. I passed through the last rectangle and still saw NOTHING. (I landed hard at an angle to the runway I could only see after llanding on it.) I changed the vis to 1 mile and the rectangle density to high.
The only way you can even try to set icing is when you build weather manually. Get "Real Weather" and you'll see no icing even on the pitot tube when flying in rain at -10C.
