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When the weathers bad, the fuel starts dissappearing and then you notice a large hole in the fuel tank surrounded by feathers you wish you were back in front of the PC....

Only about the one about the bird that punched a large hole in a fuel tank of an aircraft reknown for its lack of fuel capacity...

It landed safely, and when the crew got out they found the large hole, but until then knew nothing of the strike (just a very large fuel consumption problem), which is quite strange, as quite often you see the bird/s before they hit you, or miss if you're very lucky...

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Birds tend to gather in flocks, and aeroplanes travel very fast (relatively) and have big vacuum cleaners to suck them in!!!

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I hit a vulture with my wing once while flying a Bonanza, it did nothing but bugger up the paint and make quite a noise.

From what I have seen at the local airports, FS can help you to judge approaches, airspeeds, et cetera, but it doesn't teach you what a lot of pilots use, feel. Great thing to help the flying out.

Bird stories, I've got one. Of course I have seen a few planes come back to airports after takeoff because they hit a bird or birds. My bird story, was flying in a 737 one day up in the Northeast I believe, hit some sort of bird during an approach doing, it hit right on the nose and threw blood all over the windshield. Made landing quite interesting, and had some amusing looks from the guide who was parking us. He didn't seem to understand that I couldn't see him through the windshield.

OK, I'm behind here... bird stories. I used to see a hawk at Morristown Airport who would dive on planes just as they turned base for one of the runways. Probably protecting the nest or the hunting grounds from those big ugly noisy "birds"... just missed me a few times; he'd stoop right at you, then peel off at the last second. I used to do t&gs there, and he'd be waiting each time I came around. Kinda cool, once you gt used to him. Now who is it here who has a picture like that in his sig....?

As many have said already, yes flying in FS doesn't have feel.

More than that, it doesn't have mass, momentum.

The planes in FS (especially the prop planes) feel like cardboard compared to real life.

There's nothing like flying a 70 knots approach, getting hit by windshear and having to fight with the plane's momentum to get it back on the glideslope and line it back up with the runway.

The plane has MASS ... a big FAT METAL MASS (mine does at least).

No plane has that feel in FS. They feel like they all have the same momentum. You twist the yoke, the turn around. That's it. No feel of inertia coming from it.

The flight model in FS doesn't really model winds, crosswinds, ground effect or turbulence very well.

You can't learn how to land with crossind landings cause wing low somehow doesn't really work the same as in real life.

The only thing that FS simulates well is straight and level ... that's about it.

Anything more than that, anything that will somehow make the flow of air go around the airplane in a slightly unconventional way ... and the FS flight model departs from reality big time (at least that's my impression).

I especially have a beef about not having ground effect in FS ...

Visibility also has a LOT to do with all this. Depth perception is just not good enough on a computer monitory.

Especially when landing I rely on my peripheral vision and the ground's sight forward of my wingroot during the flare.

In FS ... it's just not that effective. It's too hard to twist the view around ... especially in a critical moment like a landing.

Just my 2c.

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Ha, after I saw that bird get hit by Randy Johnson I didn't look at birds getting hit by planes with such a sideways face anymore.
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Forgot about that! Like it's sliding all over the place, right? It was awful!