I am not sure if this has been mentioned before, but I wanted to discuss the use of ailerons during flight. I have noticed that during a turn in flight, while there are numerous forces shifting but something has to start the process to have the plane bank, which is the elevators or ailerons.
But I notice that, in IF, the ailerons and elevators do not move during flight. I have not tested every airframe, but I was just flying in the MAX and the ailerons don’t move during flight.
You need to move the yoke hard and be taking off or landing to see the spoilerons move when flying. I think Dan did this when he previewed the Max and A380 just before release.
The ailerons are different from the roll spoilers @Sturmovik
The ailerons DO in fact move during flight, especially on takeoff and landing, as that is when you are traveling the slowest @Gonzo
@Gonzo if you are talking about the roll spoilers, those do activate, but as @Sturmovik said, it takes significant yoke movement to activate them, and typically only at lower speeds. However, when you do your control surfaces test (which all of you do, right? ) you can see them activate like a plane irl when you bank left and right all the way
Of course, once established in a bank, control surfaces will return to roughly neutral position.
As far as ailerons and other bank control surfaces, it takes only a little wing asymmetry to start a rotational acceleration into a bank. As already mentioned, (for a given bank rate) deflection is dependent on airspeed.
It’s pretty cool to witness this from low to high speeds by fixing your drone view for a closeup of an aileron.
You can definitely see the subtle deflection.
Of course, maximum extension is needed when you need to rapidly bank at the slower pattern speeds, say, to avoid traffic.
As far as elevator deflection during takeoff, you obviously need comparatively more movement. Besides being at the minimum of the flight speed range, there is a lot of mass distribution along the length of an aircraft that needs to get rotated. So, this higher “moment of inertia”, requires more torque to produce a given rate of angular acceleration, that is, to pitch the aircraft at a fast enough rate.
@Gonzo the ailerons do move, slightly. If you go into the wing view camera and wait for a turn, you’ll see them move a bit. At high speeds, the movements aren’t very noticeable, but when landing, they should move more. Do a test landing and bank as much as possible, then go to the replay of the landing, and see if they move more.
If I understand correctly, this is dependent on factors like wingspan etc. causing enough wing warping at high speeds from aileron deflection, to change the lift of the wing in the wrong direction.
But apparently not all aircraft have this issue.
I don’t know how much to trust AI, but I asked for a list of aircraft with vs without aileron lockout (errors?). Clearly aircraft size is a distinguishing factor:
They definitely do move but I don’t think they are a good recreation of real-life.
Watch a real life window view of a plane landing and you’ll see that the aileron deflections are significant and constant, even if it’s good weather. In IF, you can pretty much hold your device still when landing. Sometimes on very windy occasions, the aileron experience is more realistic. But yeah, they definitely need some work IMO.
I was curious, because I know what you mean about having watched significant aileron movement irl on various approaches. So I went and reviewed a bunch of irl videos just now.
Contrary to my memory the deflections all seemed be relatively small during approach, except during gusty conditions.
Then I thought: what about that smaller control surface near mid wing on the 787? It always seems to move comparatively more. So I compared an irl video with IF’s 787 (but I was mimicking irl control movements a bit more than usual). The amount of extension looked pretty much the same.
Yep, I’ve noticed that the flaperon on the 787 seems to be pretty accurate. But other planes are not really accurate at all. The MAX, for example, barely has any aileron deflection despite often having roll spoilers deploying when close to the ground IRL. The a380 is another one - the ailerons move quite significantly on approach in IRL. This does not happen in IF.
Seems to be a sensitivity issue but I’m on default settings so its not a user error.
) you can see them activate like a plane irl when you bank left and right all the way
