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68 CHAPTER 6. ADVANCED SIMULATION IN X-PLANE
6.6 Changing How Damage Affects the Aircraft
By default, X-Plane does not remove parts of the aircraft when the craft’s limits are exceeded.
However, by opening the Operations & Warnings dialog box from the Settings menu, you can
enable the following (located in the bottom left of the window):
• remove flying surfaces in over-speed, which causes X-Plane to remove wings and other
flight surfaces when you exceed the aircraft’s maximum speed by some percentage.
• remove flying surfaces in over-G, which causes X-Plane to remove wings and other
flight surfaces when the g-forces acting on the aircraft exceed the rated maximum by some
percentage.
• remove flaps in over-Vfe, which causes X-Plane to remove the flaps if they are extended
at speeds greater than Vfe (the maximum flap extension speed, noted with a white arc on the
airspeed indicator).
• remove gear doors in over-Vle, which causes X-Plane to remove the gear doors if they
are extended at speeds greater than Vle (the maximum gear extension speed).
Additionally, with the reset on hard crash box checked, X-Plane will automatically reload
your aircraft at the nearest airport in the event of a fatal crash.
By making these damage modeling features optional, X-Plane allows both easy, possibly unrealistic
flights, as well as much more accurate, more challenging simulations.
6.7 Setting the Weight, Balance, and Fuel
To modify an aircraft’s weight, balance, and fuel, move your mouse to the top of the screen, click
on the Aircraft menu, and click Weight and Fuel.
The dialog box that appears will have the Fuel/Payload tab selected. Here, you can use the
sliders to set the aircraft’s center of gravity, the weight of its payload, and the amount of fuel in its
tanks.
An airplane can typically stay in the air at very high weights, but it will have a hard time getting
off the ground initially. Additionally, moving the center of gravity forward (left on the slider) makes
the plane behave more like a dart, and moving the center of gravity aft (right on the slider) makes
the plane more unstable, and potentially unflyable. Flying a plane with the center of gravity far aft
is like shooting an arrow backwards—it wants to flip around with the heavy end in the front and
the fins in the back.
Since X-Plane calculates in real time how the plane is burning fuel, and the engines need fuel to
run, and the weight distribution of the fuel is considered in the simulation, the fuel put on board
does indeed matter.
6.8 Simulating Equipment Failures
X-Plane can simulate countless aircraft systems failures. The Equipment Failures window, found
in the Aircraft menu, lets you experience what happens when important pieces of equipment don’t
do what they’re supposed to in flight.
The World/MTBF tab of the Equipment Failures window controls things outside of the airplane,
such as bird strikes and airport equipment failures.