If I can fly the chopper in this game, does it mean I can do it in real life too?

[Boneski]

How many times have you Crashed in DCS: Black Shark?

 

Was just wondering about this. Surely the real helicopter would be more difficult to fly?

[Downey Jr.]

can someone please use an analogy somewhat more relevant? look I'm shooting and running around in Counterstrike with a mouse and keyboard...not an actual gun... again I think controls do make a difference here.

 

The nhl and counterstrike analogies are terrible...yes the feel of the heli and atmosphere etc. make all the difference I understand...but you gain much knowledge and at least some level of understanding of the flight mechanics from a solid sim.

 

Many people use the Cessna example from FSX, I fully agree, I think stepping into flight school I feel much more prepared than a student who doesn't play flight sims like we do.

[Frederf]

It is like asking:

If I can drive some car in a game (Grad Turismo, for example), does it mean I can do it in real life too?

 

An analogy I've used before - if you play a very realistic hockey game, will it teach you how to ice skate?

 

Booooo! Bad analogies. OK, Gran Turismo is not that bad but the hockey one is waaaay off. Hockey games are focused on the game-level aspect, passing, shooting, positioning. They are not skate simulators. The level of abstraction of both of these is well apart from DCS:BS's. DCS:BS's level of abstraction is far less than these others, thus it is a much better mirror of real life.

 

It's the old elitist bit... oh a simulator can never prepare you for a real thing. Only actual seat time is of any value whatsoever. BULLPLOP! On my very first $99 introductory flight in a Cessna 172N (yes, designed to be easy) I handled the controls for the very first landing. The instructor was right there of course but he didn't touch the yoke. During ground training I had a huuuuge leg up on the other students for two reasons: One, I was still in high school so that kind of learning was normal to me (it's harder to be 40) and Two, I had plenty of hours in MS FS. Most of the help was all the technical knowledge like how a VOR works and how to read a map.

 

If you are a diligent student of the sim you would most likely accomplish a simple flight even in a Ka-50 without incident. "Stick n' rudder" is something that familiarity makes better, but it's like your first drive in a car... it felt unfamiliar but you didn't kill anyone! Of course "am I guaranteed to?" "is it legal?" "is someone likely to put me in this position?" questions are going to be an obvious "no." But these are distractions from the heart of the matter. In a world where a Ka-50 was available to you the academic question is "is it possible?" Then I think for the wide variety of sim pilots the answer is yes. The accident rate would be higher than a seasoned and traditionally-trained pilot and the flight would hardly be smooth, fast, and potent, but I think it would be done.

[SFJackBauer]

Since EvilBivol used the analogy of iceskating, I'll use the analogy of firearms.

 

You may play counterstrike or any other fps game for years and have an amazing talent and be the "king of hill" online. I'm not saying you'll have a hard time to shoot with a gun... but will you be able to hit the bullseye?

 

First Person Shooters does not simulate the mechanics of using a firearm - bead alignment, weight transfer, posture, etc. Thus when using a simulator we are limited to the mechanics and variables that the sim exposes us to.

 

However in "games" like ARMA 2, which have much better ballistics and recoil simulation than Counterstrike, you can get closer to the mechanics of using a firearm than someone who never touched a gun before. Still then, you will need training to deal with wrong habits, procedures and with situations you never encountered while playing the game.

 

Example, have you seen any PC sim where you could, while landing, by applying too much pressure too long, overheat the brakes and perhaps blow up the tires? It is perfectly possible to simulate this, but it could not be feasible for a number of reasons: complexity, irrelevancy to the sim in question, lack of real-life cues and so on.

 

Then for the original question: "If I can fly the chopper in this game, does it mean I can do it in real life too?"

 

Only someone who flew both can assert accurately how close to real life this sim is. But given that all computerized simulations are approximations of reality, and limited in several ways, you never could jump directly into the real cockpit without first getting true flight training time, to learn all those little (but sometimes hugely important) things you never learn in a simulator.

[EvilBivol-1]

Obviously the ice-skating analogy is only a pointer to illustrate the differences between "knowing" something and "experiencing" it. I agree it is highly abstract. However, IMHO, unless you are flying Black Shark with a HOTAS set-up that accurately simulates the actual feedback and response of the real Ka-50 controls, you would probably crash the real thing. I think it's easier for fixed-wing aircraft, but helicopters are just hard to control and require a lot of feel experience.

Edited April 5, 2010 by EvilBivol-1

[Luke.S]

well if you couldn't get it off the ground knowledge of the weapons systems would be useful. Say you were captured by the russian army or something and escaped. I'd head straight for the nearest KA-50 and open fire with the 2A42. Then I would risk it and fire up the shark and try to fly out of there. But that will never happen.

[Downey Jr.]

well if you couldn't get it off the ground knowledge of the weapons systems would be useful. Say you were captured by the russian army or something and escaped. I'd head straight for the nearest KA-50 and open fire with the 2A42. Then I would risk it and fire up the shark and try to fly out of there. But that will never happen.

 

 

... .... yes...well...thanks for the input

[Shaman]

I though I post it here, since it is quite relevant to show (even from historic point of view) how different real life flying is from simming :) Hey :)

 

http://vodpod.com/watch/3368576-how-to-fly-the-b-17-flight-operations-1943-training-film

 

I like what instructor says here in the middle of the flight:

"don't improvise, plan they way they're written"

Edited April 6, 2010 by Shaman

[MBot]

I found flying small aircraft for the first time to be incredible easy after having extensive time with PC flight simulators (I am talking about pure vehicle control, not airmanship). Upon approach I thought: "hey, this just looks like on the PC" :)

 

But I guess for helicopters it is different, because they generally don't "fly on their own".

[Rickenbacker]

I, like most people here, have lots of time in various simulators, and love to fly helos in DCS, X-Plane and so on. I also have a glider PPL and about 300 hours. When I tried a helicopter I found that I had no problem whatsoever flying it straight and level, turning etc - not surprising, considering it controls like an airplane except with less pedal input in turns. Hovering was another matter, I could hold it within about a 10-20 foot circle, but that's nowhere near enough to land without tipping it over or breaking something important. Still, the instructor did put his hands and feet up to show the people on the ground that it was me hovering, and I think I'd have a head start if I tried to get a PPL-H today, not least because the sim really helps you understand what's going on, what systems do what and so on.

 

That said, flying any amount of hours in a simulator won't teach you the necessary stick-and-rudder skills to safely operate an aircraft, but it'll give you a better idea of what's going on that if you had never seen the inside of a virtual aircraft.

[ARM505]

I currently fly or have flown both the A320 and B737-3/5/7/8/9/9ER for a living. I promise you that anyone who hasn't flown a large plane (12,500 lbs+/5700kg) in the real world would have a very difficult time landing without breaking something. With enough X-Plane time, and calm winds, you probably will survive the experience but that's about it. If you do decide to try it, make sure that you engage both autopilots prior to glideslope intercept for autoland. Oh and don't forget to disconnect autothrust after touchdown

 

Yeah, I fly 737's (-2/3/4/5, soon to be -8 as well, for what thats worth) for a living too, hence my comment - just to clarify:

 

- As much time on a realistic sim (I suppose PMDG's is fine) as possible, with all sim documentation, which can actually be reasonably thorough, given what it is. So, assuming the sim pilot knows how to use all AP modes he/she would require in other words. So, they know about both AP's, how/when to disconnect the AT etc.

 

- Using all available automation, all the time (ie take off manually, the rest is on AP, hence my -600 comment, less likely to scrape the tail during the only manual bit)

 

- As mentioned, an autoland, and I'm of course assuming appropriate ground facilities.

 

- Assuming perfect conditions and no failures.

 

Perhaps I should have been more clear. Maybe I underestimate my job, but on a CAVOK day, perfect conditions, all the time in the world, I think it's doable by somebody who has never flown a real plane.

[Bushmanni]

I think it's pretty clear, that if you are proficient pilot of some simulator aircraft, it still doesn't make you as proficient with it IRL as a pilot with real experience with it. But just as it's with driving cars, I don't think it really necessary to have a feel of the vehicle to operate it. My experience is that feeling the vehicle can actually be more confusing than helpful at times. I have flown a ultralight in a turbulent weather(turbulent for ultralight) and I could have only a very coarse sense of the aircrafts movement or attitude (like am I upside down or not) as it was bumping all over the place. Simply leveling the aircraft by feel was impossible.

 

I used to play a lot of Richard Burns Rally when it came out and eventually learned to handle the car pretty well automatically so that I didn't have to think what I should do the make the car do what I wanted but could just concentrate keeping the driving line. I once happened to watch bumpercam footage of Sebastian Loeb's driving from TV and I could, to my surprise, deduce from the movement of the camera and sounds all the driving inputs he was making. I'm not sure if I actually got it right, but I had a really strong feeling of what was happening. It would be pretty logical for that to be possible because basically all the feedback from the game I got was bumpercam movement. Braking, left foot braking, over steer, power slide, sideways-g, etc. all have their visual and aural signs that can be noticed if you know what to look for. As I haven't been playing RBR for a long time I have lost that ability.

 

As I have been driving cars sideways on gravel and snowy roads I know that RBR has the principles right. RBR version of Subaru might not handle like the real one but it handles like a car going fast on gravel in general. So i'd say it's completely plausible to drive a car to the limits with visual feedback only. Of course you can do it more easily and better when having a feel for the car but for just driving a car in a fast manner, it's not absolutely necessary.

 

I think this same analogy is correct for flight simulators as well. A good simulator can teach you at least how to fly helicopters or airplanes in general while you might not know how some type of helicopter you flew in simulator handles IRL. After learning the simulator you still need to adjust your skills to the bit different characteristics of real aircraft and a bit different sensory feedback. But like it has been stated, it's rather easy and quick process.

 

I think the reason why some real pilots and drivers overlook simulators is that they don't feel right rather than elitist arrogance. They have learned flying by feeling from the start and lack of feel just feels unnatural and wrong and for them it's very important to have the feel of the aircraft. From that viewpoint it would be very plausible that without actual seat time you just can't fly. But I think it's been stated clearly enough by empirical evidence that requirement to feel the aircraft is a bit overrated although still important.

 

Of course there's a lot more to driving and flying that simulators don't show you and it would be arrogant to assume otherwise. Weather, ATC procedures, traffic patterns and mechanical & maintenance concerns are some that come to my mind that I know I don't know about and are stuff that could kill me if I took a flight with a real thing.

[Paco]

Okay, I'll weigh in. I have over 7000 hrs in military and civilian aircraft. Could a person having been trained only on FSX or BS fly the real thing? Doubtful. Desk-top sims teach procedures, sim mock-ups teach procedures and to some extent muscle memory. But Airmanship comes from air under the butt. At major airlines and corporate jobs, pilots transition from plane to plane with only simulator time. But these pilots have thousands of hours of real airtime.

As a datapoint. I have never flown an F-16, but have lots of Falcon 4.0 time. I jumped into an F-16 dome simulator recently and had zero problems flying the thing, but it was a sim. I don't think I would be as good in a real jet on the first try. By the way, that sim was a lot fun and I want one in my basement.

Just my two cents.

Paco

[norm]

I have flown fixed wings simulators for years, and was cleared tolled that I was ready to solo a SGS 2-33 with 4h, 38m. unfortunately, the season ended before I got the chance, but it starts again in a few weeks. My instructors were quite pleased with my first fights, so I certainly think it helped.

[Downey Jr.]

Okay, I'll weigh in. I have over 7000 hrs in military and civilian aircraft. Could a person having been trained only on FSX or BS fly the real thing? Doubtful. Desk-top sims teach procedures, sim mock-ups teach procedures and to some extent muscle memory. But Airmanship comes from air under the butt. At major airlines and corporate jobs, pilots transition from plane to plane with only simulator time. But these pilots have thousands of hours of real airtime.

As a datapoint. I have never flown an F-16, but have lots of Falcon 4.0 time. I jumped into an F-16 dome simulator recently and had zero problems flying the thing, but it was a sim. I don't think I would be as good in a real jet on the first try. By the way, that sim was a lot fun and I want one in my basement.

Just my two cents.

Paco

 

if you have 7000 hours logged in real civilian and military aircraft which seems like quite a bit, why don't you tell us the differences in flight dynamics from something like FSX and BS and Falcon?

 

I hear everyone give their 2 cents but I'd like real pilots to actually specify the differences with details rather than saying yes or no hypotheticals.

 

I read several accounts at least crafts like Cessna (simplest to fly) simulators do a great deal to benefit those interested in flying.

 

But even real pilots here are not actually telling us simmers what is different and what is wrong about the sims...the whole feel and environment is granted yes we all know its different but thats to get accustomed to with real flight time and training.

[Frazer]

A slightly convoluted answer:

 

You flew the helicopter in BS like a REAL pilot would, ie. with the same restrictions on maneuvering and on board equipment use, then you'd have a good chance of hopping into the real thing and after a few training flights, being able to fly it right.

 

If you flew the sim however the heck you please, without knowing/caring for/following actual pilot techniques and restrictions, you'd quickly kill yourself, no matter how good you flew it in the sim.

 

Aaaawwwww, so I never get to fly the real thing???? :cry: :D

[EtherealN]

Downey, that's because the differences between real and sim is largely in the details. For example, when it comes to helicopter handling at low speed it is difficult for a simulator to adequately simulate what it'll do with slight turbulence - simulating those kinds of ultra-detailed airflows is just not possible on a desktop computers, it's the kind of stuff they use mainframes for days to do for research purposes. So a weather setting that in a simulator is "easy" might flip you over on your back and kill you IRL, if all you've got is said simulator training.

 

There's also such things as how the G's affect you. It may be simple to keep a steady 3G-turn in a simulator, but trust me - in real life it's a lot harder to keep that stick stable when you suddenly weigh three times as much. We won't even talk about 7+ G's. :P

 

There's tonnes of "little things" like that. Another personal favourite is how poor the human balance senses are at detecting very minute changes in attitude - there have been many instances of people flying into clouds and thinking that they've flown straight and level constantly, but find themselves coming out of the cloud in an inverted dive. (That usually ends up pretty bad.)

 

The reason we don't "specify" that often is that these things are very much a case-by-case thing. We might not think about a specific difference until we run into it in the simulator and go "hm, wait, that's not right". Same with conversation, we might not think about the difference until the conversation touches on that aspect - but we still know there's a lot of differences in there.

 

On your final point - the "whole feel and environment" is actually a very major component in this. In an aircraft it is a very major sensor input, and if you only have simulator training in the desktop sense, you will not be used to using those senses as actual sensors to detect what you and your aircraft is doing. This means that you are very liable to completely misjudge what said "sensors" are actually saying - and then you end up in a situation where you never got "real flight time" because you flew into a barn.

[beers]

YOU TOO CAN FLY A REAL HELICOPTER

 

... an R/C heli ... Experience the shift of simulator to real flight for yourself. There are a few simulators out there, some a bit $$ but some cheap, and there are all sorts of heli's.

I taught myself how to fly DCS:BS, reasonably well enough to wonder if I could get a real one up and down without mishap. When I saw how current r/c helicopters have advanced in technology, it's a nifty hobby, so I took a stab. I bought a small fixed-pitch 4ch and a sim (that uses the controller for the R/C with a usb hookup), and here is what I learned;

I first tried to get the r/c heli in the air. mistake.

While waiting for replacement parts I tried the sim. I had the same trouble that crashed the real bird. duh. Corrected my mistake, invested several hours of practice and got to the level that I expected it a sure bet I would get the real r/c up in the air, 1 minute of steady hover, back on the ground. SURE BET.

I tried to apply my sim lessons to the real r/c. mistake.

While waiting for replacement parts I found a wealth of information on the web about learning to fly a "real" R/C heli, starting with "scooting" around on the skids on a flat floor and working up from there.

I now can fly the little guy quite well, indoors, out in mild wind, nothing fancy, but functional take-off, flight and landing consistently (more than i can say for my DCS:BS skill).

Summary of lesson; sim helps, but real is a different world.

Edited April 6, 2010 by beers
neglected to denote R/C in one place, didn't want someone thinking I meant a real heli

[Frederf]

There's still the old "you have real no experience, you will kill yourself" argument. Clearly then every real life student pilot killed himself the first time he had his hands on the real controls, he had no prior experience! In fact I must be a ghost because I died on my first flight... OoooOOooooOOooooo (be scared).

 

I used flight sims before getting behind the yoke of a real airplane. The real thing was partially unfamiliar and partially familiar but overall my MS FS experience improved my real life skills. Sure the feel of the controls and the aircraft's movement were new but it wasn't a complete departure from the entertainment-grade sim. You pulled back, the nose went up in both cases. The amount of rudder correction for anti-yaw was similar. In many ways the real thing was easier because of the wider sensory stream to the pilot.

 

Tricky weather, over-confidence, reckless behavior, advanced maneuvers... sure these will get you in trouble. However I maintain someone approaching a real Ka-50 with a solid sim background and the humility of a beginner student pilot will most likely complete a simple trip around the block. It might take 30 minutes tooling around at a partial hover for control, taxing around the airfield several times for control feeling, and flying it like a 747 but up, around, and down I would put money on.

 

Flying is not some Godly act. It requires respect, education, concentration, humility but anyone can do it. It bugs me to hear flying spoken of as if there is some insurmountable gap between the elites and the rest.

[zahedia3]

A slightly convoluted answer:

 

You flew the helicopter in BS like a REAL pilot would, ie. with the same restrictions on maneuvering and on board equipment use, then you'd have a good chance of hopping into the real thing and after a few training flights, being able to fly it right.

 

If you flew the sim however the heck you please, without knowing/caring for/following actual pilot techniques and restrictions, you'd quickly kill yourself, no matter how good you flew it in the sim.

 

I agree. I flew sims since I can remember. FS3 (in black and white) on my old 286 was my first one. When I finally flew my first real airplane, I had to break really bad habits. Before I went on to train on the jet, I practiced like crazy on my computer first. The basic Instrument skills were there, but all the CRM, procedures, limitations, flows and profiles had to be learned. As a matter of fact, flight sim did hurt me a little bit there too, for I am a slow learner.

[Downey Jr.]

There's tonnes of "little things" like that. Another personal favourite is how poor the human balance senses are at detecting very minute changes in attitude - there have been many instances of people flying into clouds and thinking that they've flown straight and level constantly, but find themselves coming out of the cloud in an inverted dive. (That usually ends up pretty bad.)

 

ok for instance this, I know what you mean, actually I believe FSX simulates this quite well, and you with a jet liner you get that feeling where you think you are level but in reality gaining altitude rapidly or losing it for that matter...also when you are in the clouds in FSX you could easily lose orientation in fact the bermuda mission takes this to a whole new degree requiring you to fly by instrument only...

 

all I'm saying is that like anything else of course you would need to fly the real thing to gain the proper training and ability...HOWEVER

 

simulators especially new ones I believe really do assist in giving you many aspects of training...navigation both gps, vor...military also, weapons etc...

 

Pilots and trainees that have attested to being helped by being sim fans I truly believe...pilots who just say 'nope totally different you cannot fly the real thing' are either elitist or don't acknowledge the fact that sims help...

 

I think sims help, and many real world pilots do too...the pilots who claim they have thousands and thousands of hours and say you'll crash and die before even taking off is a bit extreme, now as for blackshark? I think blackshark is a bitch to fly meaning extremely hard...no idea if ED made it harder than real life or not but then again every heli sim I've played has been modeled so wildly different that I simply cannot tell.

 

So to answer the OP's question...no he can't fly one in real life, but it would sure hell give him a huge head start depending how good he got at blackshark if he went into real world training program.

 

Just like all the other academic knowledge training courses require, much of that can be gained in a faithful simulator

[EtherealN]

Yeah, and I believe I mentioned it earlier (or was that a different thread?) - there have been test programmes that relied on desktop simulators that allowed the student to go solo a lot earlier than is normal, but it doesn't remove the need for regular dual-command training to begin with.

 

But reducing the average of 20-25 flights on dual control to just 5 is a big difference. Mind you though, that was fixed wing, and relatively stable and gentle ones at that. Helicopters can be a whole other beast, at least when translating to and from hover, ensuring avoidance of VRS and so on. So there are advantages and a student will get a "head start", but no-one in their right mind would take a DTS-only student and ask them to fly solo in the real thing. It might work out fine, but it might also end up in a barn.

 

You could look at DTSes like this: they relieve you of the need to fly the "real thing" for those parts of training that are pure procedure and theory-oriented (like, stick back=nose up), and concentrate the actual flying on airmanship. Makes it a lot cheaper to train a pilot, which I expect is why militaries are getting more interested in DTS type software. You don't have to save many hours of jet fuel burn to cover the expense of developing a PC programme. (I think my old fuel burn calc for the Su-27 was ~100 hours at MIL power being 1 million dollars, but that's an old and foggy memory.)

 

There's also the danger of false learning from simulators though. For example, when I entered flight school I had extremely jerky controls movements. I eventually traced this to the fact that for simulators I had used twist-sticks, where a firm grip is needed, and the jerkiniess was easily defeated through tweaking axis curves. In a non-FBW aircraft that wasn't quite as easy and for my first 5-6 flights (during the Basic Flight stage) I actually made my instructor sea-sick. :D

 

But even before that, first time I held the controls of a real plane in flight, I still knew how to handle it relatively well and had no problem keeping it up there and doing turns. They weren't all that coordinated though, but again that was largely because I had been using twist-stick and therefore was unused to using my feet. I really wouldn't have wanted to do a landing though. Even a 95% chance of doing it right is too big a chance of disaster.

Edited April 7, 2010 by EtherealN

[J3ff]

There IS something out there you can fly. It is MADE for us simmers almost:music_whistling: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?135670-UAV-s-and-UV-s-pictures-thread

Sorta neat how some of those UAVs look:pilotfly: Oh, link is picture heavy, sorry to some of the low bandwidth users

[yallu]

I'm not guessing either way. But I am saying you cannot expect people to automatically freeze when they get under pressure. Many people do. But also, many people get their absolute best performance out of themselves when under extreme pressure.

[Panzertard]

I can fly anything - I just can't get it back on ground in one piece. :D