Andrew

When flying in a light rain, a starburst pattern seemed to show, dancing around the screen as my plane rolled, yawed, and pitched. This dancing around was quite disorienting as it was related to the velocity and acceleration of the plane, rather than its orientation.

Now for an aside: One thing I’ve always felt was missing from flight simulations is the disorientation of IFR flight; that one is constantly fighting their inner ear, having to rely on their instruments rather than their instincts.

The starburst dancing around the screen brought that too me. Laid against the windscreen, even if it was in my peripheral vision, it constantly added a conflicting signal of what the plane was doing. It would give me the “sensation” that the plane was pitching into a dive when the instruments were telling me I was on course.

In other words, it did a *wonderful* job of adding a sense of the realism of the human element to the simulation.

I would *love* to see there being an option to have IFR conditions add some sort of “starburst” to the screen that dances around based on the accelerations on the aircraft, in order to help add this sensory conflict.

I think such a feature could add value to IFR training. (and, indeed, when I first observed this issue, I thought it was a feature to do just that!)