Seaplanes have always had a sort of second-class treatment in X-Plane but with version 12, I’m starting to address that. We’ve got some professional seaplane pilots on the internal test team and they are really helping me get it all dialled in. And we have 3D water now, with the 3D rendering perfectly matching the actual wave height passed into the physics engine.
How seaplanes work
So, here’s how seaplanes work. Everything I am about to explain is how real seaplanes work and is also simulated in X-Plane 12.
At zero speed, the floats simply work by displacing water, as with any stopped boat. The plane bobs in the waves like a cork. You already knew that but here’s where things get interesting. Thanks to all the friction with the water, idle taxi speeds are in the order of one knot thanks to all the drag on those floats. And once you start building up some speed, the friction between the floats and the water starts getting really bad. In fact, in plenty of aircraft, if you’re holding the stick full aft to really keep your prop up high, the entire float will be in contact with the water, all dragging along and making huge waves and you might not be able to exceed 20 knots, even at full power. T…
