So I’m curious as to the actual math driving this var. My understanding of turn coordinator balls is that they represent the angle of the G vector experienced by the aircraft, ie the atan2(lateral_acc, vertical_acc), and that most aircraft inclinometers have a range of ±15° of inclination.
I tried experimenting with the above math however and found it did not work at all with the body acceleration values from the sim. Can someone enlighten me as to what is happening here?
I’d also like to add that the simvar moves in a granular manner and not smoothly. It jumps from 1, to 2, to 3 instead of a continuous change.
Anyone? This is holding up a project here…
That is how the sim computes it, yes. Don’t forget to take the gravity vector into account when doing this calculation. The sim also applies a time constant for smoothing to simulate the oil suspension.
That is correct. The simvar is not a float (nor was it in previous flight simulator versions), it is internally represented as a signed 8 bit integer.
From memory (i.e. don’t trust me) that simvar isn’t working as it should. E.g. a test would be to sideslip with the left wing down. Apologies if my memory has failed me but I do remember programming a glider with that simvar and deciding not to use it.
I dont think the ball use the acceleration of the aircraft, but uses the forces given from the aerodynamic model, just like the G FORCE Avar.
if you kick the right rudder, you will see the ball move to the right shortly, as the rudder has not rotated the plane and the fuselage doesn’t have any side forces.
As the plane rotates and the side forces balance out, then the ball will move correctly to the left.
You can calculate the value and set the animation manually if you like, but you will need to do quite a bit of math as the raw simvars are not very helpful.
if only you could override the g1000…
Moot, because this model is using an external flight model so I needed to verify the math behind it.
In addition, acceleration is not an integral in the flight model. It is directly related to force by the equation F = ma.