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With these 7 ways you can easily improve your flight training with X-Plane 11. Even without virtual reality, the flight simulator can help you immensely in your training. If you follow these steps, you are going to improve your flight training, will be a better pilot and will probably save some money in the process. Now, I am not going to tell you how to fly, as that is up to your flight instructor. I am merely going to guide you in the right direction to get you practicing the right way.
For those that are listening to the podcast, I have included my resource links below. Please note that they are affiliate links, which means I get a small commision if you purchase something after using my link. This doesn’t affect your purchase and won’t cost you anything. It just helps me to keep building great content.
Logitech G Saitek PRO Flight Yoke System
Logitech G PRO Flight Rudder Pedals
Oculus Rift
Now let’s get started!
So, you have this nice flight simulator and you just can’t wait to get up in the air… before you go ahead and start X-Plane 11 with the engine running on the active runway, think about all of the steps you are missing. If you start on the runway, you are missing out on so many opportunities to improve your skills as a new pilot, or even an experienced pilot.
When I go to do a practice flight, I get my plane setup exactly where I would start in real life. My plane is sitting with the engine off waiting for me exactly where I left it on my last real world flight lesson.
The amazing thing about X-Plane 11 is that it has virtually every airport out there, including the little ones. So don’t pick a big airport because you like the scenery around it. Pick a the airport you fly from. It’s amazing when you fly around the airport you know, you can actually use landmarks, as most of the scenery is pretty accurate in the X-plane.
So now that you are back at your hangar, don’t let X-Plane 11 auto start your plane. Grab your checklist, go through it and hit every step, just like your real flight. You can even go as far as doing your walk around your plane. Obviously you won’t be able to check your oil or dip your tanks, but you can go around your plane systematically and verbalise everything you would be doing. This will really help cement in good habits. Do it the same way you were trained in your flight school.
Now that you have started your plane and are going through your checklist, there is an important step that most people on flight sims will neglect… Your radio.
This can be done in several ways, such as using the built in traffic control for X-Plane 11 but one of my favourite ways to do this is to make the calls to myself. If you verbalise the calls out loud, you will get comfortable with making calls. This can be a real stumbling block for a lot of people because you have to remember the structure for the call, the alpha, beta, charlie, and the awkward niner. There is a lot to remember, and on top of this, if you are a student pilot, you are learning to fly. Once you start to practice the calls at home, you will feel more comfortable with the calls and you will be able to focus more on the flying.
If you stumble on this step or just want more help with any type of flight training, then I wanted to let you know about a service I recently stumble across.
This is a service that allows you to fly with a real life instructor. The instructor and owner is Mike Catalfamo, who is a real world flight instructor (CFI and CFII). He was also an airline pilot. If you really want to take your flight training to another level, then this is something I would try. Please note that the link is not an affiliate link, however VR Flight World is affiliated with Zero Sideslip. If you mention that you came from VR Flight World, then I get a small commision. I really appreciate the support as this helps me to keep VR Flight World running strong.
We want our flights to be as realistic as possible. When I talk about being realistic, I am not talking about the stunning graphics in X-Plane 11. No, I am talking about creating a flight that imitates a flying in real life. You want that flight to feel the same, you want to control the plane in the same way and you want the freedom to look around in the same way you would in a real plane.
Allowing yourself to control your plane in the same way as you do in real life just helps to build great muscle memory. When you are taxing with rudders, you are not building bad habits. If you don’t have the rudder pedals, X-Plane will control the rudder for you. On the ground you would end up steering like a car, which would be a habit that your instructor would have to spend time trying to break.
Before I began any flight training, I ended up making a pair of rudders out of old Playstation 2 racing pedals. This was not perfect, as they move slightly differently then in real life, however it got me in the habit of using my feet for taxing and flying. When I jumped in a real plane for the first time, my instructor was surprised to see how well I was able to taxi. I eventually got myself a proper set of rudder pedals which I share later in this post. The fact is that the proper equipment really helped my initial lesson and I am sure I saved some money because of this.
You need to get yourself a yoke, rudder pedals, trim and some type of throttle quadrant. Now if you are flying in VR, you could probably get away with the rudder and yoke, however that would be my minimum requirements for a realistic flight. The reason you can get away with less in VR, is that you can use your touch controllers to control the throttle and trim. It really does feel like you are reaching out and grabbing something…even though nothing is actually there. It’s is amazing how realistic it feels when using it. Still would not hurt to have a proper throttle quadrant and trim, as then you can rest your hand on it and feel the controls.
For me, I use a yoke, rudder pedals, the Oculus Rift (for VR) and a PS2 steering wheel for my trim wheel. The steering wheel works great when mounted sideways on a desk… Just an idea for anyone that wanted to DIY some of it. Below I have included links to my equipment.
Amazon links for the VR headset, yoke, rudder pedals and throttle that I use in my video. They are affiliate links, so I really do appreciate it when you use them but feel free to look it up on Amazon if you would rather. It doesn’t affect you in anyway, it just helps me, as amazon pays me a small advertising fee whenever someone buys after using my link.
Logitech G Saitek PRO Flight Yoke System
Logitech G PRO Flight Rudder Pedals
Oculus Rift
For me this isn’t even a question, as I could never go back to flying on a monitor. Flying in VR puts you in that plane, it just makes your flight completely immersive.
Picture this, you are flying along side your runway on the downwind. You want to ensure you are travelling parallel to the runway, so you adjust your view to a bit of an angle, so that your monitor captures the runway… but now what has happened to your plane. For me, I found that when I adjusted my view, I would start to climb, start to descend, get close to a stall or have other things happen, that would never have happened if I had control of my view. With VR, you have complete control of your view. You look to the left with a glance and when you need to look forward, you look forward. Simple. No need for hotkeys or quick hat key action. It is just like real world flying. You just can’t beat that.
Another quick reason that I believe VR is necessary, is that you end up getting actual depth perception. You can actually judge your landing flare. Like I said earlier, I would never go back to flying with a monitor.
If you are interested in VR, I use the Oculus Rift, which does an amazing job. A word of warning though, make sure you have a decent computer, as VR can be tough on a computer. Here is a post I did on what system requirements you will need Virtual Reality Flight System Requirements.
So, you have taken off to practice circuits at your home airport. On final you notice that you are just too high to make the landing. Instead of going around you go into a full on dive, loose the altitude and land the plane like a pro….No! don’t do this. This is not the way you would fly in real life, so why practice it on your sim. Ok, I understand every once in awhile it is fun to fly like a maniac, but don’t fly like this when you are trying to practice. If you are not going to make the landing, then practice a go around. Make the radio calls and get back in the traffic pattern to make a proper landing. Again, its all about practising the way you play. If you want to fly like a maniac, then set out for a flight with that intention, or jump in a fighter jet.
I have read so many forums and so much information on flight sim vs real flight and the biggest complaint I have found is that real world student pilots with a flight sim background focus on the instruments. They fly as if they are flying IFR. Of course, if you are flying IFR, then continue, however if this is a VFR flight, try to keep your eyes out of the plane. Practice proper climb attitude with a horizon reference. Listen to your flight instructors and use the same techniques in your flight sim. Don’t fixate on the instruments because then you aren’t watching where you are going. You can even add other planes in X-Plane 11 to help make it more realistic. Gives you something to avoid if you forget to keep your eyes out of the plane and in the skies.
This is probably one of the best things you can do in X-Plane 11. This is where a flight sim can help even the most experienced pilot. You can setup an emergency that you would never be able to practice in real life. Have your plane start on fire, cause an engine failure, or have the gear fail. There are so many different failures that can be created. You can even set them to go off at a certain altitude or airspeed. Or just trigger the failure manually. It is a great tool to use when practising. There are certain things that you don’t want to practice in a real plane and a real emergency is one of them.
Here is a quick youtube video I produced where I simulate an engine failure in the Cessna 172.
Lastly I wanted to give you one more way that you can improve flight training in X-Plane 11. This is less about the flight sim, however will help you improve your flights in X-Plane 11 while improving your real flight training. It is Rod Machado’s books and courses. These will truly help improve your flight simulation as well as your real world flight. The link is an affiliate link, however I only promote Rod’s products because I truly do believe in them. He was the voice behind FSX, which is pretty amazing. As well, he has 10,000 flight hours and countless other aviation accomplishments.
Also, remember if you want one on one training with a real life flight instructor, CFI and CFII, then take a look at zerosideslip.com
Again, please note that the above link is not an affiliate link, however VR Flight World is affiliated with Zero Sideslip. If you mention that you came from VR Flight World, then I get a small commision. I really appreciate the support as this helps me to keep the lights on at VR Flight World.
Now I hope I gave you a bit of an incite into why I believe that flight sim, especially VR flight sim, is an amazing tool for flight training.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Thanks,
Dan
Dan: Hey guys, and welcome to VR Flight World Podcast. This is Dan here from
VRFlightWorld.com. Today we’re gonna be going over seven quick tips on how to
improve your flight training with VR Flight.
Dan: So there’s a few ways we can do this. So we’re going to go over the first one here. The
first is gonna be starting from the beginning. In this one we’re gonna be bringing our
plane right back to the start, and instead of having X-Plane put us on the runway with
the engine that’s going, we want to start back where our plane would actually be in a
real life situation.
Dan: So if you’re doing flight training right now, put yourself at your actual runway and get
your plane set up in the actual location. Shut it down and then save that, I believe it’s
called “Situation”, you can save it as a situation in X-Plane 11 and if you do that, you can
actually go back to that location and load it next time and you will start right from there.
So, that’s the first one.
Dan: The second one, don’t take shortcuts. So this kinda goes back to our first one a little bit.
You want to have your plane at that location, shut down completely, you’re gonna go
through your checklist now, start your plane up the proper way, don’t let X-Plane start
up with the auto start. Start it up yourself. Go through everything, your checklist
completely. You can even walk around your plane and do the walk around and just in
your head, imagine what you’re actually checking when you’re going around there. Are
you checking the pitot tube? Are you checking all these different things you can check as
you’re going around your plane, but think about that as you go around, because that’s
gonna help you when you’re doing flight training, right?
Dan: So number three is get on the radio. So when you’re going out, you start your plane up.
Make your radio calls to the tower and let them know what your intentions are, just say
it out loud and then imagine what they would say back to you and respond and then
continue on. You can do all this in your head. It’s probably easier than setting it up on XPlane.
That’s probably the best way you can do it. There’s other ways, actually to set it
up, so there’s a real live person on the other end, but I don’t know how accurate they
are and I haven’t used them a whole lot. I tried one once, but I never got into it, so for
me I just want to do my radio calls by myself.
Dan: So number four is to get the right equipment. So you can’t fly with a mouse and
keyboard. You need to have something. You need to have a yoke, a rudder pedals,
throttle quadrant and a trim wheel would be great. In VR you can probably get away
without having the throttle and the trim wheel. That’s because you don’t necessarily
need those in VR because you can actually use your right hand to manipulate the
throttle and to use the trim wheel. It works pretty well! So if you’re looking at getting
into VR flight, so you may not need to use a trim wheel and you may not need the
throttle quadrant.
Dan: If you’re interested in what I have, I’m gonna leave a link in the show notes. They’re
actually gonna be affiliate links so if you use ’em they’re Amazon links, I appreciate you
using ’em because I get a little commission from you using them and it won’t affect … if
you buy it, it won’t effect your price or anything to do with your purchase, they just give
me a commission for essentially advertising ’em. I only have affiliate links for things that
I use and like, so that’s one of those things that I have that I use and like because I really
enjoy having the rudder pedals. I don’t feel the need to use my yoke to steer my plane
around. I think that’s a natural tendency of a lot of people to drive like a car, but if you
have the rudder pedals and practice with them, you don’t get that tendency, so. On to
the next!
Dan: So next one here is flying in virtual reality. So my website’s VRFlightWorld.com so it’s
pretty obvious I’m a fan of Virtual Reality flight, but there’s reasons for that. You can
look around. It’s … for me that’s probably the biggest thing, is I can look around, I can
look to the left. I can look out my window. I can kinda stretch my neck up and get a
different angle if I want. I can lean down, see if I can see a plane above me. I can tilt my
head. You just have such freedom when you’re in VR to look wherever you need to look.
That’s probably one of my … things I enjoy the most. You’ll also have some depth
perception and you won’t get that with the monitor. You have the depth perception so
if you’re coming in for a landing you can judge the landing a little better than you could
if you were just flying with monitors.
Dan: And again, like I said before you can technically fly without as much … without buying as
many physical controls. You can actually fly with just oculus touch and the headset …
the oculus rift headset. I don’t know if I’d suggest that forever, but you can try, you can
start that way. ’cause you can actually crab the yoke and it locks onto your yoke and the
way you twist your hand acts as your control of your yoke. I did try it once and it worked
pretty well.
Dan: So the downside to flying in VR is some people say they get motion sickness from it.
Now, I haven’t got motion sickness from it. I know one person that gets car sick. I’ve
driven ’em before around. He’s saying he’s getting sick, we have to pull over
immediately ’cause otherwise he’s throwing up in the middle of the car. So I know he’s
very sensitive to that and I’ve thrown him into the VR sim and he was able to make his
plane do a type of barrel roll and he still felt fine, so I wouldn’t suggest practicing barrel
rolls. It does kind of have that rollercoaster feeling if you pull back or do something a
little crazy, but if you’re just flying around, you don’t get that sensation. Some people
report it to happen to them, but I would suggest it’s not as common as we’d think.
Dan: It also depends, I’ve heard, it depends on your system and how fast it’s running. Mine’s
running around 45 frames per second which is … seems to be great. There’s some stuff
that happens in the background … magic that happens in the backgrounds that makes it
feel even faster so it’s smoother, but if you have a really strong system you can run at 90
frames per second which would make it feel like butter. Smooth as butter.
Dan: Anyways, going on so this is tip number six, so fly like you would in real life. Now, when I
was talking about doing the barrel roll or all these crazy maneuvers, that’s the stuff I’m
talking about. If you’re practicing flying like you would in real life, then I suggest you
stick with flying like you would in real life. Don’t do barrel rolls when you’re practicing.
Every once in awhile it’s fun to do, but try to keep that separate from when you’re flying
your patterns or you’re flying different things like that.
Dan: You don’t really wanna mix those things together, it just creates bad habits. You wanna
be focused when you’re flying. Yeah, ’cause otherwise you’re gonna end up practicing
flying sloppy. You’re not worried about your airspeed and these things that you don’t
really wanna implement if you’re flying in a real plane, ’cause you don’t want to go … be
sloppy on your airspeed and you’re going slow and all of a sudden you stall when you’re
coming down to your landing. Probably keep those separate would be one of my tips.
Dan: Number seven, the last tip I have here. Set up an emergency. The best thing you an do is
set up an emergency. It’s amazing how many things you can do in X-Plane 11. You can
pretty much do anything you can think of. You can have your engine fail. You can have
your gear fail. You can have your plane start on fire. These are things you can’t practice
in real life, but you can get back in a flight sim and give it a try, right?
Dan: You can go up in the air. You can set it for an altitude. You can set it for a speed. You can
set it for a time. You can even set it … to act on a button, so you hit a button and your
engine fails. You can have it so it comes on random. You can … I believe it works off of
engine hours, so you can set it per … different for each plane as well. So you could have
your Cessna 172 have every so many hours, a failure comes up and you can set different
failures to come on at each different time period, so it’s pretty in depth when you start
looking into it and maybe I’ll do another podcast episode just on that and we can really
dive in to some details on that.
Dan: So that’s it for now. Those are my seven tips, so I hope you guys enjoyed ’em. Hope you
guys make use of them and practice. If you enjoy the show make sure you subscribe and
I’ll see you in the session. Thanks!
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View Comments
I assume if I get the VR system that I could still control my simulator with the yolk and pedals I currently use instead of having to use that hand controllers that come with the VR goggles ?
You definitely can. That is what I do. I only use my VR hand controllers when I have to operate some switches.
How do you have your steering wheel set up for trim? Both in terms of physically and in the xplane settings? Most wheels return to center automatically versus how trim wheel works in most planes, so I'm curious.
The racing wheel I use doesn't have a reset to center unless it is plugged into the wall. It is a force feedback wheel (older Logitech racing wheel). So, as long as I don't have it powered, it doesn't reset to center.
I have x-plane 11 along with an Oculus Rift, and a pretty good gaming PC. X-Plane in VR makes me very sea sick. I definitely prefer to not use VR. But at this point in time, I'm training for IFR. So most of my flights are almost entirely with nothing to see anyways except for the gauges. Most approaches take you straight in, so there isnt much of a need to look to the side to line up.
Have you used IVAO? I havent tried it yet, but it supposed to link several different flight simulators with people training to become ATC. You can fully interact with them. Thats the next step for me with my IFR training.