Learning FPV flying with Liftoff

[PaxB]

Hey everyone,

I recently started a new project on YouTube and while I'M still working on real FPV footage I decided to have a small discussion about learning to fly FPV in a sim. I used Liftoff as an example. Please let me know what you think of it and what your thoughts about this topic are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKOqnYnAYMI

[LuGus Studios]

Great video and thanks for sharing!

In this video you mention there's a lot of controversy around the use of simulators as a learning tool. However I think there's far less controversy around this than you might think. It's been proven time on time again that simulators can help, and even top pilots recommend starting with a simulator now.

You also mention the simulation used to be better on an update 2 months ago. Can you tell me more about those finding? We haven't really update the physics and flight behaviour code since our 0.10.0 update, so no changes for the last few months. What changes made the realism go down for you?

All our track elements are recreations of real life track elements, some older, some newer (FormulaFPV, IDRA, Paris Drone Festival). They have the exact same dominions as the real life versions. What track elements are missing for you?

[PaxB]

Hey,
thanks for watching the video and starting the discussion.

1. I probably picked the wrong word here. I'm not a native speaker so I mix up thinggs from time to time. What I meant was that while it is proven that simulators are a great learning tool it will never replace real stick time. And because of that some people don't want to use sims. I also pick up that point later in the video when I say that no simulator will ever get it 100% right. Things like wind, prop wash, etc are missing in all the sims I tried out.

2. I can't say which update it was exactly but at some point the physics felt less floaty. It's not as floaty as it used to be in the beginning (I think you got a lot of feedback about that) and it could be the effect of simulated air mode but the quad falls too slow if I compare it to my real one.

3. I'm pretty sure that all yout obstacles are recreations of the real thing but especially the standard gates (the ones which are in the video) feel like they are too high. If you compare them to gates used for example in the FormulaFPV London events you will see that the gates in Liftoff have a more rectangular opening while the real ones are more like half circles, giving them less height. But this could really be subjective here because I'm flying on my desktop screen and don't usem gogglesd with video-in (can't afford them right now).

But as I said in the video, the sim is great and my favorite. It's the most complete package with the track editor, workbench and decent graphics. Once the channel gets rolling I'm planning to do more in depth reviews of the sims I have at hand and will take a closer look at those points and see if I can give more detailed feedback.