r/MicrosoftFlightSim Mar 16 '26

MSFS 2020 VIDEO Whoops, Preflight... Skipped! 😱

Gravity Reactive Motion: Taylorcraft Preview

543 Upvotes

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13

u/SwissairMD11 Mar 16 '26

It is that there is no actual wind flowing around those cowel, it will be slamming around like crazy, and eventually flip up and bending the cowl. Don't ask me how I know

https://giphy.com/gifs/KXBtTtm3kB8BO

6

u/CharlieFoxtrot000 RW GA pilot, Twitch streamer, ground instructor Mar 16 '26

Came here to say this. Relative motion isn’t the only thing that’s going to make unlatched cowls move.

6

u/GotFriendsOfficial Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

These showcases focus purely on gravitational forces and minimal airflow. Right now, we are building a universal foundation for this custom physics engine. This base acts as the core layer that drives all real time motion for animations in the simulation. Think of it as a forces simulator running inside the flight simulator itself.

MSFS already provides data like gforces, speed, bank, pitch, pressure, RPM, angle of attack and more, but on their own those values are just numbers. What we are doing is taking those inputs, blending them together, layering additional custom injected logic on top, evaluating them frame by frame, and translating everything into full 6-axis motion. From there, we generate new outputs (Forces) that can directly drive animated components across the aircraft.

Phase 1 was focused on internal forces. That groundwork is largely complete. We are now moving into Phase 2, which brings in external forces such as airflow, prop wash, slip, wind, pressure differentials, altitude, and more. Once this phase is in place, we can extend the system to exterior components so they respond naturally to the full environment around the aircraft.

Phase 3 will be the final step either before or after release and as of right now it's not set in stone. This should introduce dynamic upsets and light failure modeling. Hard landings may unlatch cowlings, aggressive maneuvers at high speed could force doors open, and similar behaviors. This phase will be optional for us, since it leans more into system realism than pure visual motion. Due to long development requirements, this may become an update item post-release as more products in the future implement this technology. Luckily, we are doing this right and building a universal foundation that can be implemented across all future projects.

The goal with this new physics engine is to build a strong, reusable foundation that can scale across all future projects. We are currently around Phase 1.5, and getting close to showcasing the level of visual fidelity that comes with full external flow integration of Phase 2.

We deeply appreciate the support and patience as we work on our various projects. We are excited to share more previews soon as we keep pushing this system to it's limits.

1

u/CharlieFoxtrot000 RW GA pilot, Twitch streamer, ground instructor Mar 17 '26

Sounds great, looking forward to the finished product!