FSX on Mythbusters | The Coffeehouse

DoomBringer
Doom!

I saw the new episode of Mythbusters where they tested out a few myths with airplanes. Adam and Jamie were lucky enough to use NASA's full-on flight simulator. The idea was to try landing a plane without any experience and only an ATC person talking them down.

Right when they started showing playbacks from inside the simulator, a small caption showed up stating "Images courtesy of Microsoft" and I recognized the thing as FSX. That was pretty neat to see that I too could use essentially the same code as NASA (but they had actual LCDs for the glass cockpit and authentic controls).

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

That sounds interesting. I'm downloading the episode now to check it out.

Provided conditions allow for the use of autoflight (the autopilot) and the aircraft is operating normally and ATC gives you priority (so you don't need to worry about other traffic), landing a jet with no experience shouldn't be that hard, if my own experience with FSX is anything to go by. Not riding-a-bicycle easy, but not impossible either.

Of course if the weather's even remotely not ideal it becomes a whole different story. Just recently I screwed up an approach in FSX because of unexpected thermal lift just before the runway, so I ended up way too high. Smiley

DoomBringer
Doom!

Sven Groot wrote:
That sounds interesting. I'm downloading the episode now to check it out.

Provided conditions allow for the use of autoflight (the autopilot) and the aircraft is operating normally and ATC gives you priority (so you don't need to worry about other traffic), landing a jet with no experience shouldn't be that hard, if my own experience with FSX is anything to go by. Not riding-a-bicycle easy, but not impossible either.

Of course if the weather's even remotely not ideal it becomes a whole different story. Just recently I screwed up an approach in FSX because of unexpected thermal lift just before the runway, so I ended up way too high.

They weren't shown the autopiloting features until after they tried. Of course, I didn't figure them out until after several hours of jet flight. That made my simulated trip home this holiday much easier to keep on course and even line up for approach at O'Hare for my first connection.

They did try landing without any help at all first, and then had an experienced pilot run the virtual ATC. They crashed pretty well of course. They added some headwinds and turbulence on the final attempts, so the landings were harder.

I'm debating getting a new joystick with separate throttle quadrant. Managing the fuel mix, prop rotations, and throttle all at once is impossible with just the single axis I have on the all-in-one I have. I just stick with jets and that keeps it simple.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

I usually fly jets as well, mostly the 737 which is my favourite. What I want are rudder pedals, but those are so rediculously expensive. Sad

I'm watching the episode now. One thing I noticed is that the simulator cockpit uses an Airbus style sidestick. They also just said Jamie was doing a 45 degree bank. If it's indeed an Airbus they're simulating the fly-by-wire system won't actually let you do that, so that seems a bit strange.

Of course, it's not uncommon for such a simulator to simulate other types of aircraft. I can't really tell by the outside view what it's supposed to be.

If I were in such a situation I would use autoflight and since I can already read the instruments and use ILS I'd have a considerably easier job at doing it. I also have a rudimentary knowledge of the FMC and the autopilot's HNAV and VNAV modes (which FSX doesn't simulate in any of the built-in planes but which real jets do have).

EDIT: "Why is it telling me not to think?" Lol! It's saying "don't sink". Smiley

Not a good sign if you're hearing that.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Actually I don't think the NASA simulator uses FSX. They probably just use the FSX graphics engine for the visualizations. If you look at what happens when Jamie crashes, FSX doesn't do that.

EDIT: And either they're using rather low settings, or it's FS2004.

DoomBringer
Doom!

Sven Groot wrote:
I usually fly jets as well, mostly the 737 which is my favourite. What I want are rudder pedals, but those are so rediculously expensive.

I'm watching the episode now. One thing I noticed is that the simulator cockpit uses an Airbus style sidestick. They also just said Jamie was doing a 45 degree bank. If it's indeed an Airbus they're simulating the fly-by-wire system won't actually let you do that, so that seems a bit strange.

Of course, it's not uncommon for such a simulator to simulate other types of aircraft. I can't really tell by the outside view what it's supposed to be.

If I were in such a situation I would use autoflight and since I can already read the instruments and use ILS I'd have a considerably easier job at doing it. I also have a rudimentary knowledge of the FMC and the autopilot's HNAV and VNAV modes (which FSX doesn't simulate in any of the built-in planes but which real jets do have).

EDIT: "Why is it telling me not to think?" Lol! It's saying "don't sink". Not a good sign if you're hearing that.

I was laughing pretty hard when he said that. I think the aircraft was one of the Boeings, but I could be wrong.

Sven Groot wrote:

Actually I don't think the NASA simulator uses FSX. They probably just use the FSX graphics engine for the visualizations. If you look at what happens when Jamie crashes, FSX doesn't do that.

EDIT: And either they're using rather low settings, or it's FS2004.

I'm thinking it is a customized version of FS. If you go to the website they have an extra video where you see more of the flight simulator that they see in the ATC room. They watch the plane and when it crashes it gets the text on the bottom like FS does. As for the low settings, heck, I've got a quad core Intel and a GF8800 and I can't push all the sliders all the way up.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Sven Groot wrote:

Actually I don't think the NASA simulator uses FSX. They probably just use the FSX graphics engine for the visualizations. If you look at what happens when Jamie crashes, FSX doesn't do that.

EDIT: And either they're using rather low settings, or it's FS2004.

More likely, NASA or one of their contractors licensed the FS engine off Microsoft.

Doesn't the FS team have a blog or anything? Why not ask them or something.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

I've seen the online video now. It's definitely FSX because you can see the cars on the highway. Looks like they have autogen scenery turned off completely though.

DoomBringer wrote:
As for the low settings, heck, I've got a quad core Intel and a GF8800 and I can't push all the sliders all the way up.

You should be able to get good settings on that though. Are you running Acceleration/SP2 (SP2's not out yet, but acceleration contains all the fixes)? It's supposed to fix some quad core issues.

I have Core 2 Duo E6420 and a Radeon X1950 XT, running on Vista, and I can run very nice with most of the stuff on high or ultra high. I can't go beyond that (for people who don't use FSX: ultra high is the highest "standard" setting but some stuff can be pushed up quite a bit higher if you go into detail settings) with the exception of air traffic, I push commercial air traffic up to 70% (that eats quite a lot of power especially at airports but it's worth it). One really good tip I got from Phil Taylor's blog is to lower water effects to "2.0 Low". You lose reflections but that saves you a second pass and effectively doubles the framerate. Occasionally I'll use "2.0 Mid" but I can't do that with a lot of scenery around (so high-detail cities or airports with water nearby can't handle that setting).

To give you an idea of my settings, here's some screenshots (not all were taken with the same settings, particularly the first three were taken with lower scenery settings and no anti-aliasing). They all lost some quality due to jpeg compression as well.

Sunset - Boeing 737

Top-down - Boeing 737

Night landing at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport - Boeing 737 (KLM livery)

Final approach at Yokota Airbase - Beechcraft Baron

At the gate at Schiphol - Boeing 747 (KLM livery)

Over Marseille at night - Boeing 737 (KLM livery)

harumscarum
out of memory

Great episode. I still can’t believe the auto piloting functionality on the plane.

I did learn that I never want to fall from an airplane without a parachute.

DoomBringer
Doom!

Sven Groot wrote:
I've seen the online video now. It's definitely FSX because you can see the cars on the highway. Looks like they have autogen scenery turned off completely though.

DoomBringer wrote: As for the low settings, heck, I've got a quad core Intel and a GF8800 and I can't push all the sliders all the way up.

You should be able to get good settings on that though. Are you running Acceleration/SP2 (SP2's not out yet, but acceleration contains all the fixes)? It's supposed to fix some quad core issues.

I have Core 2 Duo E6420 and a Radeon X1950 XT, running on Vista, and I can run very nice with most of the stuff on high or ultra high. I can't go beyond that (for people who don't use FSX: ultra high is the highest "standard" setting but some stuff can be pushed up quite a bit higher if you go into detail settings) with the exception of air traffic, I push commercial air traffic up to 70% (that eats quite a lot of power especially at airports but it's worth it). One really good tip I got from Phil Taylor's blog is to lower water effects to "2.0 Low". You lose reflections but that saves you a second pass and effectively doubles the framerate. Occasionally I'll use "2.0 Mid" but I can't do that with a lot of scenery around (so high-detail cities or airports with water nearby can't handle that setting).

To give you an idea of my settings, here's some screenshots (not all were taken with the same settings, particularly the first three were taken with lower scenery settings and no anti-aliasing). They all lost some quality due to jpeg compression as well.

Sunset - Boeing 737

Top-down - Boeing 737

Night landing at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport - Boeing 737 (KLM livery)

Final approach at Yokota Airbase - Beechcraft Baron

At the gate at Schiphol - Boeing 747 (KLM livery)

Over Marseille at night - Boeing 737 (KLM livery)

I don't have Acceleration yet, and I have SP1. I should trade in my copy to get the one with more aircraft, as I got the basic edition of FSX without thinking about it. I can definitely push the graphics really high, but a few sliders have to remain around medium-high. Part of the problem might be trying to run at my LCD's native resolution of 1680x1050 as well as a decent level of AA. It basically becomes an issue of where I want to make sacrifices. At least its not Crysis, that crushes my machine into submission.

SP1's fixes did help a bunch though with the multicore improvements in that. If acceleration pack improves it even more I'll go buy that and give it a try. The F-18 looks fun.

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Sven Groot wrote:

I'm watching the episode now. One thing I noticed is that the simulator cockpit uses an Airbus style sidestick. They also just said Jamie was doing a 45 degree bank. If it's indeed an Airbus they're simulating the fly-by-wire system won't actually let you do that, so that seems a bit strange.

Of course, it's not uncommon for such a simulator to simulate other types of aircraft. I can't really tell by the outside view what it's supposed to be.

At the beginning of the episode, they said they were simulating a "passenger airliner." I don't know if that means the simulator was actually simulating a generic airliner (take that how you will) or if they simply weren't allowed to name the jet they were simulating on the air, though.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

DoomBringer wrote:
SP1's fixes did help a bunch though with the multicore improvements in that. If acceleration pack improves it even more I'll go buy that and give it a try. The F-18 looks fun.

FSX SP2 is now available for download.

This contains the same fixes as Acceleration (but obviously not the new missions, aircraft or scenery). It does improve performance even more even on my dual core system, and I read there were some quad-core specific issues in SP1 that were fixed in SP2 so it should be worth checking out.

And since you have a DX10 card you'll also get some extra effects, not a lot though, plus the DX10 engine is supposed to be faster than the DX9 one too.