Re: The endless influx of low-quality, low-realism, quantity-over-quality aircraft into FGAddon

Gary,
Fair, but I was only replying to Federico's comment on it.

I do however find that the problem is, how can one simulation system allow to simulate every plane? Going through YASim code, I see that it basically only simulates a few generic types of airplane, when in reality, many types of planes behave differently. How can I change the stall angle? Or the way the lift/drag varies with AoA, etc? This is the reason that JSBSim and how MSFS does things are more optimal, since they allow you to directly specify the behavior craft by craft, rather than trying to "force" a one-size-fits-all approach of YASim (assuming we're sticking to airplanes heli's obviously have differences).

But off topic...

As I said, I found that by working around the limitations, and making it "less" geometrically accurate, but rather adjusting the input data to adjust the output by studying the code, I was able to make it "closer" to what it needed.

The point being, simply copy-pasting the 3D visual geometry into a YASim definition does not yield the appropriate results, nor show as an indicator of flight model quality.

Hence my gripe with the many 3-star rated FDM's in FGAddon that don't do what the Wiki defines 3 stars should.

Kind Regards,

--
Josh Davidson
________________________________
From: Gary Neely <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2026 12:19
To: FlightGear developers discussions <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] The endless influx of low-quality, low-realism, quantity-over-quality aircraft into FGAddon



On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 12:37 PM Josh Davidson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


I have flown a few types of planes in real life, all GA - and am fairly familiar with how larger aircraft types behave due to my own simulation and aerodynamics work. I have never ONCE encountered a YASim FDM that flies like a real plane OR follows POH numbers to any reasonable closeness. I welcome anyone to point me to one and I will try it and report back.


This is straying from the topic, but I would like to add a few comments.

YASim gets a lot of criticism, which is valid but also unfair to its potential. The problem with YASim is that most developers have not made a thorough study of its limitations, and so they apply it to inappropriate aircraft. As YASim stood when I last worked with it, its limitations are extreme but also somewhat artificial, simply because with the appropriate enhancements many of those limitations could be removed.

According to a review from one actual pilot of the aircraft, there was at least one YASim aircraft that flies within reasonable POH parameters, but it does not reside in the FG repository and is now likely out of date with current FG. My point is not to validate that, but to illustrate that even the wrong tool can sometimes achieve good results with the right application and understanding.

-Gary

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