Ignition Override,
Thank you for your inputs.
There seems to be a consensus that more challenging malfunctions, especially with catastrophic engine failures would be a distinct benefit.
There are a few opportunities to present this type of feedback into the industry with the annual ARINC organised FSEMC conference being one of the best with all users, operators, certification bodies, simulator and airframe manufacturers and their vendors attending.
Attendees have the opportunity to raise issues in advance and maybe if enough pilots via their respective training/sim depts raise this as a topic for discussion, something could be accomplished.
I will of course be reviewing these types of malfunctions here to see just where we can improve quality of training within our organisation
Elliot
<< Why aren't the manufacturers forced to build to a defined set of standards in these respects when they already are with respect to basic handling, visuals, etc?>>
The simple answer is that they are. JAR-STD-1A and AC-120-40B (and others) currently define (fixed wing) standards. Obviously from your recent experiences down under they certainly do not to have been applied correctly in this particular case.
To go back on what has been repeatedly stated in previous posts, there really is no excuse for anything less than 100% fidelity with systems simulation.
I don’t have any knowledge of the CRJ 100/200 sim you refer to, however from the symptoms you describe it would seem that this is not a malfunction issue but rather the basic electrics software model is less than perfect. Electrical systems are one of the easiest to model as just about every aspect is physical and defined. It really is not rocket science to correctly model power generation, control, bus distribution and bus loading. Similarly, it is again quite straightforward to verify the fidelity of these systems during the acceptance phase.
None of this of course helps you, the end user when the sim verification/approval process fails, as it appears to have done in this case.
I wish I knew what the answer is to resolving this. Certainly the problems must be solved before it goes into service as opposed to retrospective action afterwards. Maybe an answer is for the approval authorities to regulate the acceptance team more? Maybe the QTG should be expanded to include more in depth system fidelity checks?
What does confuse me a little is how these sims retain their accreditation each year. A review by the Inspectors of Open Defects and Deferred Defects should highlight these problems.
<< To me there is a lot more negative training to be had due to incorrect system response than the realism of the airport visual scenes>>
I couldn’t agree more. It’s ironic, but more time is spent during annual sim certification renewal on visual luminescence, geometry and scene content than on just about anything else. I say ironic because the majority of sim details are in Cat II or Cat III conditions where the visual is ‘seen’ for only a few, albeit important minutes.