Okay i see. So, you still use mostly the planning document. I wasn’t sure if you use operation manuals or not because they have far more (better) data. I understand you can’t post certain documents if they are not public. I can’t post/share any airframe data from work in any form, either.
Is it even possible for the team to date and release the performance data (obtained date) along with a catalogue of changes over time, if this doesn’t already exist? This might clear up the issue of people accusing the team of not doing anything with new data. Maybe the data is updated, but people are still blaming it because it’s not meeting their expectations, especially when sometimes some people like to think they know everything… You might be able to track what got changes though dev log, but I don’t think it’s that easy to track
if i understand correctly, i think they need first-hand data, like the operational manual or aircraft characteristics documents. There is no guarantee of the information’s reliability for second-hand data. Same way as someone here refusing to acknowledge any information reliability for non-western planes. I don’t know what exactly is the Tu214 landing/take-off distance, but i know it’s not one number because weight, runway condition (dry/wet), etc all matter. I assume they need more data to work with to obtain the final number, but i could be wrong. I think it might be a bit hard to find these documents, though; I don’t think I can find these documents from a quick search
I can understand Midas frustration. As a player I have for a very long time been annoyed at the current performance system in the game. While I am not so much bothered about the actual difference of a specific aircraft type, I was very much annoyed that all AS aircraft can fly much further than their real counterparts. AS currently does not take into account reserve fuel, headwinds, slightly longer actual flight paths (compared to the great circle) due to take-off/landing, holding patterns, etc. The range/performance obviously also doesn’t degrade over the age of the aircraft, which can influence the actual range quite a bit.
On the other hand I am very much with the team (as I have previously worked on that as well). When a new aircraft is entering service, it is (or at least was at my time) often difficult to find reliable data (i.e. ARJ21). Or in case of the Embraer E2, I was never able to find the manuals at all. So when players are screaming for a new type to be introduced to the game, not finding reasonable data (Boeing just wouldn’t release MAX data in their manuals), and trying to fit the aircraft somehow into the game to make it reasonable, it is like an impossible task. Then there are a bunch of (older) aircraft that have wrong values. If you try to fit in relatively a new aircraft type, you sometimes have to skew actual values to make it fit. The alternative would be to adjust the values of older aircraft (for which data might not be available anymore), which then affects enormous fleets in-game that suddenly have different performance and wrecks havoc with existing flight plans.
So, is the C919 in AS not 100% correct to the second comma? Most likely, yes. Can you make it exactly match the (latest) performance data published? Definitely not. Unless you can bring comparable and real data for ALL other aircraft in the game too (good luck with that). Even the data published by Boeing and Airbus is not comparable 1 to 1, and good luck finding data about all the other smaller and more exotic aircraft out there.