Flight Models

Editing flight models really involves three parts - the first part is the basic dimesions/weights/gear positions. Next is are the performance data. Lastly, is the supplemental data. Editing FMs is rather easy to do as long as you don't touch the Performance data. Editing FMs to be accurate is more difficult.

Doghouse utility is created by Julian “Codec” Onions who present time works for LeadPursuit (LP) and the utility is not available for the public.

Aircraft FlightModels can be found inside Zip/simdata.zip/sim/ACDATA file.

If you unzip the simdata file to main directory (creating the inner sim folder there), all files there will override the same files existing in simdata.zip… means you can edit this files straight from the folder with no need to zip/unzip each time you change something and want to test it.

The .dat files themselves holds not only flight data but also lots of other data with variables. At least that's true for BMS based versions like RV and OF.

AFAIK best resource for FlightModels variables in F4 should be the RP5 manual. You can also find some interesting data on the other variables introduced by BMS back then, here on this Frugals topic.

Regarding performance curves/data - this is where FM Doghouse is useful. It provides a graphic output of the curves - so you can compare relative performances - - This will allow anyone, to simply tweak the curves to more closely simulate a given flight performacne desired. The main problem I have with the FM's in Falcon is with regard to having some sort of measureable standard or normalizing of performance values across all models. This may be a source of frustration for the user because sometimes the FMs attributed to a given aircraft may not be realistic and either the a/c has a better or worse performance than it actually should have.