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  • $\begingroup$ that said, MSFS back then, and AFAIK to this day, places the aircraft on rails rather than modelling actual aerodynamics. This leaves it with inadequate behaviour in certain corner cases, and this would likely be one such. X-Plane handles things better. $\endgroup$
    – jwenting
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 8:26
  • $\begingroup$ While I have not audited available information thoroughly, MSFS 4.0, according to Wikipedia, was released in 1989 had an aircraft editor which allowed the user to alter paramaters such as frontal area, aspect ratio, etc. giving some clues about it's underlying aerodynamic model. Xplane appears to be more sophisticated; I believe it "bakes" a panelized model into easier to compute coefficients. On the other hand, I think saying that MSFS is/has been "on rails" is giving it short shrift. $\endgroup$
    – 2NinerRomeo
    Commented Jun 21, 2023 at 22:45
  • $\begingroup$ I just took another look at x-planes brag sheet on its model, which reminds me that they don't bake the panel model into a set of stability derivatives, but run the simulation on a somewhat simplified (10 elements per side) panel model. This is much more sophisticated than what is probably common, however, in the context of this question, this simpler models will be more than adequate. $\endgroup$
    – 2NinerRomeo
    Commented Jun 21, 2023 at 23:18