Although this not entirely X-Plane related, I think that this subject must be addressed in such manner, that will give simmers a general a better understanding why this term is heavily misused, and what we must use instead.
I should probably give you my background, so you can judge if I’m “entitled” to have an educated opinion about this. I’m retired Hellenic Army Aviation AH-64A Apache pilot. Also I have flown UH-1 Hueys, and S-300C. I have logged about 300 hours in real life, full motion simulator (was called CMS: Combat Mission Simulator). Think of it as a LEVEL-D simulator, plus the combat element. So, I do think I know a few things about simulators.
What “study level” actually means?
Study is an act or effort made in the pursuit of knowledge. In our case any aircraft that allow you to learn “things” about aviation, aircraft operations from simple take offs and landings, to full IFR/RNAV approaches… and much more! In that manner, the humble default C172 is a study level aircraft, because can provide you with a platform capable of achieving the above! I have used it many times to keep my instrument proficiency sharp! No joke!
Wait, you might say, ok you can do stuff with the C172, but what about the systems? Let’s cut to chase.
Systems’ simulation – This is not “study level” !
This sounds a bit weird, but please bare with me. There are many levels of how close to the real aircraft, the system’s simulation can be. From basic to very deep. From systems that just allow to perform a flight, to systems that work in the background that the virtual pilot will never be aware of.
Could a plane that have all the important systems to perform a flight, working as in the real aircraft, per real aircraft manual, declared as study level aircraft? Must all switches be operational? If have FMS, should be 100% simulated, even with features that you night never use? If it is 80% simulated, does this count as study level? Or the FMS has pages that are not in the real aircraft, like pages for settings. Is it study level, if you cannot use circuit breakers to try to disable part(s) of a system and check the response? What about failures? Where, a line can be drawn, to be commonly accepted if an aircraft is study level or not?
Additionally, do you “study” the pneumatic system of an aircraft when you fly, or you just operate it? Believe me, studying the systems is not like operating the aircraft. There are manuals beyond the usual FOM/AFM etc, like theory of operation with the description in detail of the logic and operation of every system, or interactive computer-based simulators for each system.
Time for conclusion!
The act of studying related with the aviators flying skills/proficiency can be performed even with the basic aircraft, but studying systems is almost impossible, even with the cream of the aircraft addons.
So, those highly regarded. expensive addons are… useless? Not at all! In the contrary, they give you an exceptional feeling of accomplishment, when operating a highly complex, or old-school, steam gauges, VOR-to-VOR airliner, or a highly detailed GA aircraft! Operating, not studying though.
Can a highly detailed airliner, be a complete study level simulation?
Not totally impossible. But the effort to reach such levels has some difficult obstacles to overcome.
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- Data collection. You need so much extra data to have available, that might not be possible to be available to you, except you are the real aircraft operator, or pay a crazy amount of money to acquire.
- Effort. In case you are able to collect all the data, the extra effort to include that into the aircraft is going to be so vast, many times bigger than the development of the rest aircraft. Already highly detailed aircraft take years to be developed, such one might take a decade.
- Performance. What will be the performance penalty having a ton or more stuff running on the background.
- Audience. What will be the audience for such aircraft? The extra mile to include all the systems in study level, will be used from how many?
- Price. If the price of the best addons now, have reached history’s high levels, what will be a representative price of such addon. Is there any actual/logical ground for such addon to be flourished? In the niche flight simulation market, is it possible an addon with price $200 – 300, or more, can have sales to return the investment to the developers?
My view is that such addon has no real place in desktop flight simulation.
Proposal: A way to judge and categorize aircraft addons
Been only critical in something, to my opinion, is useless without a proposal “to do things better”. A point-like system can be much more accurate, but a bit hard to follow. Works for the reviewers, but not the casual simmer.
The best way, again my opinion here, is to use a bit of a short checklist of a few categories that an addon much check, not to be “study level”, but “high quality”. I prefer this term, which is more exact, not misleading, and puts things in the right perspective.
Here is my proposed checklist:
- Flight Dynamics: The most close to the real aircraft, the addon flies, the higher quality is. Since we are talking about flight simulation, this is the most important aspect.
- Graphical Quality: Known as “eye-candy”, is a very important category, though some “hard-core” simmer might agree. A realistic aircraft with nowadays PBR materials is a must for a high quality aircraft.
- Systems Operations: The more systems that are working as they should in an aircraft, the higher the quality of the aircraft it is. If you can use the real aircraft Operation Manual to fly the plane, then is top quality.
- Price: Yes price is a part of the quality, because addons are products and the price must reflect the quality.
In conclusion, if an aircraft checks all the above items, it a high quality aircraft. These are the 4 pillars that make an aircraft great.
Epilogue
We must never forget that we are using a desktop PC, with very finite resources. Also, developers doing their best, but they are not match with the armies of real-world engineers, and their resources, who built the aircrafts. For me, the term “study level” is more a “PR stunt”, a “fanfare”, and not an honest representation of the quality of an addon. Better off using the term high quality, a more accurate and honest term.
A few things about X-Plane 