I don't know about you guys, but one thing I have really been hoping is that Microsoft will come up with some better crash effects in FSX.  I really doubt that I am not the only one who gets mad when they hit a building (or the ground, or another plane) and it says "CRASH" on the top and the plane just sits there    Ridiculous!  Am I the only one who wants to see the plane come apart and the buildings fall down and the ground react?  I mean, seriously.  Not like I try to hit the ground , but when I do I want to see something happen !  Am I alone?

I think im with you to a point....just be carefull it doesn't turn into one of these Threads

If you want crash effects, maybe spend your time with another type of software!

This is a simulator, designed to "simulate" flying.
It is not designed to see crash effects....

There are 3rd party effect packages you can get to add this to your sim.

I am sure I can say that Microsoft is not going to add crash effects as there is probably .01% of the users who really want this.

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I will suffice to say that you are one of the only ones.

Crash animations aren't going to get any better than they are now (assuming they are enabled)...get used to it.

Face it, it's flight simulator...crashing is a failure. There's no reason for them to make failure more interesting.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=FSX;action=display;num=113...

The only conclusion was that most SimV members have strong veiws on it ranging from:

yay! explosions rock
to
Oh noes a breaking plane I shall now cry!

no one could agree what level of damage simulation would be best and the whole exersized just seem to prove how stuben people can be

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Yeah I know,

I was just preparing you for what some people may think...

I'll say what I said in Kipman's huge thread:

Crash effects = no. Damage (bent props, collapsed gear etc) = perhaps.

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I'll agree with that.

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Well as im sure you know, there are a few planes that, while in the air, when you open the main exit the people will bail out!

Then the aircraft either:
1)flys itself to the ground (and crahses)
2) the plane dissapears and you stear the pilots, W/chutes, to the ground.

nope fs2002 was ment to have full featured crash effects untill the attacks on the world trade center in 2001.

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Already use it, let that be our dirty little secret 
(I also have massive crash installed )

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And in what game or sim, exactly, are you SUPPOSED to crash?

I would like to be able to have minor crash FX.  Things like emergency landings, where the gear won't come down fully and you have to make a belly-up landing, or complete gear failure when you hit the runway too hard and you have to try to keep the aircraft from smashing into the tower while it grinds pavement and throws sparks.  Adrenaline is something I feel has been sadly lacking from FS for oh, so long.

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You should see Kent Pietsch! He does a performance in a interstate cadet and half way through the performance he "loses" different parts of the aircraft.

It's a verry fun performance...

Here's a video.Here

Ok sorry for changeing the course of this thread

Ah, Sgt. Gabe has made a great point. Real crashes. No, not crashes as in hitting buildings or nosediving into the ground. Instead, like it has been said many times, damage, damage that actually happens without having control over it. I completely agree that wanting to "play the terrorist" and hit buildings or deliberately nosedive completely deserves a stopped game and a . But as people have stated, we dont need crash effects, we need damage. But damage only to the point that it is still possible to get the plane on the ground (by whatever means necessary) without causing it to explode. So like Gabe said, real crashes. Real crashes most of the time in the real world are not because of deliberate stupidity, but because of forces beyond the control of the pilot. And real crash situations many times do not lead to death. A real crash can involve the gear on a plane failing, and it is still perfectly possible to get that plane on the ground without it exploding, so why cant M$ allow us to do the same in Simulation? Things go wrong on airplanes, and planes are made to be able to recover from most minor problems, so if I brake a little too hard, or hit the runway to hard, rather than my plane simply burying itself in the ground, maybe some blown tires or some sparks? Cause right now it seems that the ground is intangible to anything other than the wheels sometimes.

Theres my buck and a quarter.

X-Plane has already implemented the realistic damage features such as blown tires, wings ripping off due to aircraft stress, etc. and yet no one has complained about it [until an idiot comes along and ruins it for everyone].

I totally agree we need damage to the effect of minor dents and scratches. So that we may try to land the plane as it would be in the real world. No more than a few sparks are needed here 

and ahh stupid poor Nemesis_5.4 only made it to 30 posts before realizing we was a total friggin idiot. 

As many people have said, it's not that we want to see massive explosions and buildings falling down or anything sick like that, its more along the lines of having realistic damage to a plane. For example, having part of your wing missing after hitting a tree and being allowed to carry on flying instead of the game freezing with you stopped in mid air.

If I remember rightly, we had this discussion before FS2004 came out too but it was more aimed at realistic emergency situations.

I think that crash damage would be ok to an extent but MS would have to stop things which could be interpreted as morbid or terrorist

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Yes, THAT would DEFINITELY be great    I hate this lack of precision that makes you crash in the air while you where trying to follow the terrain. I never understood the reason for those crashes...

As for the crash effect, I agree that destroyable buildings would not be very politically correct, not to say "shocking" for some persons. Such a feature would be just useless and misplaced.

BUT, I agree that what would be very usefull and would add a very great sense of realism, just like already stated in the past few posts, is an accurate damage model of the plane in case of:

- excessive stress: I would love the challenge of getting back to base with an airplane that has a missing engine, a missing part of wing or a missing rudder etc...

- mid-air (when formation flying) or scenery collision: oops that tree was to high (naaa I wasn't too low  ) and now one of my gear is not there anymore...

- violent landing, crash landing: I would love to see accurate damage to the aircraft in case of landing with no gears, on tarmac, mud, water, ice, snow etc... no just  an ON/OFF crash...

and there are surely plenty of other examples.
To say it clear, I think most of us are not interested in the effects of a crash on the scenery, but rather on the real effects of a "crash" on our own plane, that would be additionnal realism

Well well well...

I'm sure people have tried this before, but here I go.

in FS9, find the Cessna 208 in the 'aircraft' folder, and open the '.cfg' file.  add visual_damage=1 like this:

[fltsim.0]
title=Cessna 208 Caravan Amphibian
sim=Cessna208
visual_damage=1
model=
panel=
sound=
texture=
etc...  (and to every other variation)

Now, open FS, and choose the caravan amphibian and fly in alaska (you can fly anywhere, but I like alaska).  Taxi off the runway, and completly off the airport.  find some autogen houses.  Use, the slew to make sure that ur wing (but not ur plane) will hit the building (also, you should lift the plane off the ground).  now, turn off slew....
You will notice that if ur FS automatically sets ur plane at the default cruise speed, the building will rip ur wing, right off!  If you put the simulator at half-speed or more, you'll see that ur remaing wing will have alot of lift, and tip ur plane.

I've only done this once, and managed to get both wings completley wiped off ( hilarious at the time, expecially in spot plane, cuz ur pilot just sits there, not even panicking ).  I think u can have sections ripped off, if the plane has the wings fold/unfold capabilities.

This doesn't help much with realism under damaged circumstances cuz the wing is either there, or nowhere.  Still funny tho!!!    

Crash effects, let's "accident effects" in FS9 are strange. I was recovering from a stall and was so low that i hit a tree!!
There it was with the screen frozen with a jet airliner balanced by one wing on the uppermost twig!!!!!!!!!!!! Not very realistic. I'm certainly not into massive explosions etc etc but some evident damage would be more real!!
Vololiberista

If you havent played the game Burnout ??? (for PS@ Xbox, etc.) then you really have to .  Burnout Revenge is the best.  When you crash, you can watch your car get crushed .  If a car hits you on your right side really hard, you get a huge dent, and you go flying .  Don't get this the wrong way, you can also smash and crush your way through the track (you also gotta dodge traffic) .

I'd like MS to get together with 'Critereon' and 'EA' to create aircraft mesh changes to make everything in FS more realistic.  That would be da' BOMB!     

Even if we can do stuff like that, we would have to rebuild, OURSELVES, the default aircraft, then build it with the damaged parts.  Not very convienient.

The problem here also is that, as I explained in my rip of your Cessna's wing thing, the wing is either there, or its not, visually and physically (in the game).

Even if we did make damaged parts, like for a wing, if the wing gets hit, and is replaced by the damaged wing (visually), FS still thinks the wing is (physically) gone.

The Best FS can probably do is have only the winglet ripped off, with the wing still on.  I highly doubt this tho.

Also, when you turn on visual damage, not even the landing gear (visually) comes off.

If you want to land your plane with the gear broken, and save countless lives, set your realism levels to 0.

There have always been damage effects in FS. At least since FS2000. Str1ker pointed out how it's done. In every aircrafts .cfg file there is the line:

[fltsim.0] 
visual_damage=1

As always, 0 is off, 1 is on. Turn it on and you can lose any part of your aeroplane and crash in a realistic fashion.

So really, it's not a question of adding crashes. It's a question of keeping them. Which, as it's already in the software from FS2000, 2002, FS2004, is highly likely.

Something I could not see on the videos of FSX were the vibrations in VC mode, for example during overspeed or turbulence. I guess this won't be included in the final version ?
In FS9 (and all the previous releases), I really miss an indicator for aircraft stress. Actually, nothing happens at all until you see the "too much stress" message...
There alo, IL-2 series have some nice stuff

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Spins ? I usually get out of a spin (when I enter, which is quite rare) in two or three rotations max
At least you can feel the spin is coming, not like in FS, where you don't feel or hear or see anything until it happens...MS should include a new red message in the bottom of the screen, written "Surpriiiiiiise "

Finally, I was making a comparison with the flight/damage model, not with the features of the sims. The fact that IL2 does not allow addons doesn't alter its qualities (or flaws) regarding flying.

I would love to feel that I used the flaps at too high speed, or the gears, or hear that this turn was on the limit for the structure of my plane etc... things FS doesn't offer right now. This is feeling, and this is an important part of the realism for me.

There are just bugs in the flight model that goes crazy if you exit the normal flight domain of a given plane. With some planes you can manage to do a spin (sort of), especially with the CFS2 planes.

But most of the times, if your aircraft flies backward for too long, it will just adopt sensless rotations and will eventually gain some altitude from time to time

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I already read that somewhere. I doubt real pilots were handling their commands as we handle ours. Sure it's easy to bring the joystick at maximum position anytime, but the real pilots could not do that. This explains why the exit of the flight domain seems so easy to us.

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Because it's harder to get in a spin ? Try Ace Combat, or Crismon Skies even better then...  
As far as I remember, the planes in CFS2 were very touchy on carrier takeoffs as well, stalling very easilly, am I right ?

I had a lot of problems with those spins in IL2 series as well at the beginning. Then I increased my skills and learned to fly with precise movements, not barbarian style stick handling.

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Sure IL-2 had a lot of inconsistencies in its flight data, like roll rates, top speeds, powers etc... It was discussed, they were some corrections and some things remained just wrong, that's true.

But still, even if the flight model is not fully correct, the general behaviour of the airplanes was more pleasant than in FS series.

Concerning 1% planes, they are done on CFS because CFS is the only platform that is open enough to let them realize and tweak the planes exactely as they want. If IL-2 would have been more open-platform like FS/CFS to allow addons, I'm sure some 1% guys would have tried to do some tweaking there as well.

I'm not trying to say that IL-2 or FS is better. In fact I have stopped playing IL2 since a long time now, because of several reasons:
- no addons
- no clickable cockpits
- view system (don't like the control of the view)
- no complete world, solo flight is quite limited.
- etc...

I'm just trying to tell that IL-2 has several elements that FS should adopt to increase the quality of the flight feeling. Exact top speeds, ceiling and rol rates are not enough... this is what I am trying to say

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I can understand that, and I think FS is good for simulating the normal flight conditions of normal aircrafts. I was just complaining a little bit about the lack of "feeling" stuff, meaning that there is still room for updates on this area
But on the other hand, some of us want to explore the other side of the flight, pushing the limits, and even going beyond. Aerobatics and stuff like that, that FS will not allow...


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I agree, the only XPlane I tried was the version 6 (bought it ) and it was just a waste of money.
But nevertheless, I could recongnize all the advantages that XPlane has over FS, just like the rendering of the flight model as you said (real vectors are good ) and some other functionnalities. So I understood that I really had to keep a close eye on the evolution of this one.

XPlane now almost everything FS has, plus some addtionnal stuff. Graphic are below but evolving very quickly, and I think Xplane will be worth the try in a few releases...

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Could you explain this ? I'm trying to figure out what kind of airflow gets around the wings, and I don't understand why aelerons have any influence there.

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That's also one of the main plots of a good flight sim: Allow you to test what you would never test in real life, and show you the most precise result possible.

I just hope they fix the damn collision detection... not realistic when you're flying a C-5A Galaxy and taking off over a C-130 and when youre about 15 feet over it you crash...Or when you just bump a building. CRASH

When it comes to crash detection, this is what happens.

This is my theory [and a plausible one]:

The sim renders an invisible crash-detection box around the aircraft and the size of the box is determined by the farthest contact point indicated by the "aircraft.cfg" file of the aircraft. I'm not sure it's either a box or a sphere of influence. But if the contact point dictate the size then it's most likely a sphere since the contact point can is being used to indicate radius and radius is a term used to measure the circumfrence of the sphere.

If this is true, then the sphere of influence must also extend upwards and downward in the same distance as the farthest contact point. Or maybe the distance downwards is probably affected by the location of the landing gear when extended.

I don't know, but it seems logical doesn't it? It could also explain an-225's situation. If this is the case, then it's only a matter of moving the contact points a little closer to the aircraft's center.

As for the case of the buildings, that's easily explained.

According to gmax gamepack sdk provided by Microsoft, FS will render invisible crash-detection "BOXES" around the scenery objects exported from Gmax to FS9. The boxes are then "STACKED" like blocks to conform to the "GENERAL" shape of the scenery object. However, the boxes will "NOT" be molded to the exact shape of the scenery object. For example, the boxes will be stacked like a "step" pyramid to confirm to the shape of the house's pointy roof. As a result, the remaining parts of the crash boxes around the scenery object will stick out like sore thumbs. But then again, the crash boxes on a square building will extend outwards anyways. Thus the inevitable "crash" will occur even when your plane's wingtip is only five feet away from the building.

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You'd be surprised...

Actually, I don't think this bubble thing applies.  When you make an aircraft, I you make no contact points, the aircraft would go through anything.  Once, I flew a 777 through 2 close-by buildings, side-ways, and I made it through.  If the spherical bubble rule applied there, i would turned of the sim cuz of the anoying 'crash' sign.

I think FS only cares about the contact points, cuz you hav point_class_wheel, point_class_float, and point_class_scrape.  I believe that any false collision detection is only caused by errors in the terrain collsion mesh, or badly placed contactpoints.

by da way, i think this reason is highly plausible too.

I actually agree with your invisible box/sphere theory there Katahu. Wouldn't it be nice if the collision detecion actually scanned the aircraft  model for perfect collision? Anyway I hope we get something like Battlefield 2's crash detection.

I tell ya, ya know how MS made FSEdit for FS, well, maybe they should make a short program which would actually load the visual model and put it in 'worst-case' crash scenarios, and automatically generate contact points for the aircraft.

Much simpler, and definatly accurate contact points.

But MS are probably not going to do that.  If any of you MS guys are watching this particular thread...

!LOOK HERE!

In FS9, when the wheels are overstressed, (and quite often should be ripped off) the wheels stay stationary, but when u try to land, they go thru the ground.  Stupid.  Hope they fix that in FSX.

By da way, the URL thing under ur avatar, not working...
Properly...

We gone from Crash effects to avatar comment advising.

back to the subject.

From the video with the bad pilot flying the Extra200s in the redbull airrace, it seems that MS are still doing their visual_damage=0 thing.  No doubt, som1 will make a program to take care of that!...  I hope...