Reply To: Brunner review by Austin

[aurel42]

Considering that Austin used X-Plane’s default C172 together with Stefan Brunner’s C172 profile (how much more authoritative can it get?), I feel Austin raises valid points. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect this combination to work perfectly out of the box and show off what the device can do.

blaser, if you have a C172 profile for the CLS-E NG (which, according to the video, is the device that Brunner provided to Laminar to test, and also the device that non-commercial users are most likely to purchase) that addresses the issues raised by Austin, please let me know where to find it.

I have spent hours in the profile manager and still I have no idea how to fix the stuff Austin complained about, like the motor vibration simulation which should not be based solely on the engine rpm, but also on what the propeller is doing.

Also, I have no real-world experience with most of the aircraft I fly using the yoke, so when I set up a new profile for an aircraft, I’m just winging it and using settings that I believe might not be totally unrealistic. That doesn’t mean they’re anywhere close to how the aircraft actually feels. Which is, of course, why I don’t like to share my profiles in the Profile Cloud (unless Brunner support forces me to).

I would love to be able to download “real-world pilot certified” or “real-world pilot approved” profiles for the aircraft I’m using. But so far, I haven’t seen any.

Austin certainly has more hours in a C172 than I do, and I agree with his assessment that the yoke’s feel is “synthetic”. Until now, I assumed the feel was limited by the capabilities of the device, not of the software or profile. (Prove me wrong by pointing me to your shared profile.)

I can just hope that Brunner will actually take Austin up to his offer to help them improve the software. Maybe he can even create new datarefs representing the forces an aircraft (as opposed to the pilot) applies to the yoke in future versions of X-Plane – after all, that’s how force-feedback racing wheels work and some racing sims do wonders when it comes to making a force-feedback wheel feel close to the real thing.