Why your score drops · Air Virtua

A flight is scored against a checklist. Here is the whole list: what is checked, at which moment, against which limit and how many points it is worth.

How the score adds up

Every check carries a weight. A passed check awards its points, a failed one awards nothing, and a check that does not apply drops out of the sum. The total is scaled to 100 points, and the grade follows from it.

A90 and above

B80–89

C70–79

D60–69

Fbelow 60

Manual report without the trackerno more than 70

In a manual report the pilot types in the touchdown rate and nothing else can be verified, hence the cap. Such a report brings money, costs and XP only once the flight’s estimated block time has passed since booking (and no less than the time you entered). If the tracker saved the same flight as a free flight, the report page shows an “Attach tracker recording” button: the debrief is rescored from the track, your hours are not counted twice, and the money stays the same.

Flight stages

The tracker works out the stage itself and applies only that stage’s checks. The figure next to a stage is its total weight: the larger it is, the more the stage moves your result.

General (whole flight)30

Taxi out6

Takeoff7

Initial climb7

Climb4

Initial approach5

Approach13

Landing32

Taxi in7

Every check and its limit

Some checks watch a state and forgive a brief lapse, some ask once at the right moment, and some trigger at once. The common hold times are in the first table; a check with its own hold time has it in its row.

State (lights, configuration)a remark if the problem lasts 5 seconds in a row

Pitch and bank3 seconds in a row: turbulence does not become a remark

Moment (flaps by the roll, lights by liftoff and on approach)the best the tracker saw within 20 seconds of the moment counts

G-load, stall, crash, pitch on takeofffrom a single frame, no hold time

Pitch in the airfrom −20° (nose down) to +25° (nose up)

Bank in the airup to 35°

G-load in flightwithin 2.5G; ignored below 50 ft

Overspeednot allowed for more than a second in a row

Stallnot allowed

Crashweight 10, the costliest check

Runway excursionweight 6: the centre of the aircraft more than 5 m past the runway edge at 40 kt or faster, or past the runway end at 25 kt or faster; the server judges it from the runway coordinates, without them the check does not apply

Repositioning (no teleporting)weight 3; pausing costs nothing

On the ground: taxi and takeoff

Nav, beacon and taxi lightsnav lights and beacon on from the first movement, pushback counts as taxi; taxi light at least once before takeoff

Squawk codeset (not 1200, not 0)

Taxi speed (out and in)up to 30 kt, sustained 8 s

Flapsset by the start of the takeoff roll

Landing lightson at liftoff

Pitch on takeoffup to 25°; the same limit applies on a go-around

In the air: climb and cruise

Landing gearup above 500 ft AGL (on aircraft with retractable gear)

Transpondertransmitting in the air, not STANDBY

Speed below 10,000 ft (climb, cruise, descent)up to 260 kt, heavies (wake category H and J) up to 290; held 3 s

Flaps in the climb and cruisenot left out above 10,000 ft above ground; 30 seconds to retract

Landing lightsoff above 10,000 ft, above 18,000 when departing the US or Canada; asked above 10,500 (18,500) on the altimeter, 30 s of grace

Approach

Pitch on initial approach and approach−15° to +25°

Landing lightson by 1,500 ft AGL

Stabilisation gate1,000 ft above the arrival aerodrome; the next three rows are judged below it

Flaps and geardown, held 5 s

Spoilersarmed; dropped if the spoilers deployed by themselves after touchdown

Speed on approachunder 180 kt

Descent rate on approachno steeper than 1,000 fpm for more than 10 s in a row, from 1,000 ft above the touchdown point down to 50 ft; at a ground speed above 190 kt the limit is the vertical speed of a 3° glideslope

The server judges the approach descent rate from the track after you file, and only for the last approach. If the recording started below the gate or has a gap on the approach, the check is not judged.

Taxi in

Checks begin20 seconds after vacating the runway

Grace for lights and clean-up3 minutes after vacating the runway

Lightslanding lights off, nav lights on

Flaps and spoilersretracted; the rollout is fine too

Landing

The landing earns a share of its points, and it is the costliest stage. Full marks go up to 360 fpm (6 feet per second): that is the edge of normal in real aviation, where an average airliner touches down at about 180 fpm. From 360 to 600 fpm the landing is firm and the score shrinks gradually: the scale is continuous, so an extra ten fpm does not drop it a whole step.

up to 360 fpm (6 ft/s)full marks, this is how real airliners land

480 fpm85%, a firm landing

600 fpm58%; from here the landing is hard and the check fails

800 fpm and beyond32% and below

Bounce (a separate check)a remark if the next touchdown is more than 100 fpm harder than the scored one

With several touchdowns, the first one is scored, the one your landing-rate counter showed you. A free flight is judged the same way. Airframe damage is assessed from the hardest: the gear does not care which one it was. What the tracker counts as a touchdown is in the tracker chapter.

Touchdown G up to 1.18full marks, then a smooth decline

1.33hard landing threshold

1.55 and abovenext to nothing

We compute touchdown G ourselves, from how fast the vertical speed is shed, the same way in MSFS and X-Plane. It is the average rate while the gear compresses, so the number is well below the peak G of the simulator, other counters and real aviation. Compare it only with the thresholds in this table.

Flight debrief

Every check in the debrief has a “Why this” button (if the list is folded into “All checks and why”, expand it). It shows a one-line verdict, the scale with your value, the cost in points and the tracker’s decision log, and for the landing also “Touchdown second by second”. A check can pass and still cost points: “passed” is about the threshold, while points come off smoothly. If the nose gear met the runway first (MSFS, from the gear contact points), the chart shows a red “nose first” mark and the touchdown vertical speed gets a line about it. It is a hint and does not affect the score. If the tracker recorded the rollout, the chart gets a “Rollout” window: engines, reverse, spoilers, brakes, deceleration and ground speed down to taxi speed, and the “Load” tab shows the lateral load at touchdown. These are for display only and do not change the score. A free flight has the same debrief.

“Approach in 3D” replays the last seconds before and after touchdown from the landing recording, and “Realism” mode adds the runway, lights and sun around the same data. The runway axis comes from the simulator itself; if it did not report one, it comes from the airport database, and a landing right on the centreline may then look shifted towards the edge. Touchdown wind comes from the simulator recording. If unavailable, the arrival METAR is identified separately; the arrow points where the wind blows, with north up.

The Share button on your own flight’s debrief gives a permanent short link: guests see the whole debrief except the flight’s finances. The same window has a flight card you can download and attach to a message.

When a check is not applicable

A check that does not apply neither penalises nor rewards: it drops out of the sum, and the remaining weights are normalised again. That happens in four cases.

The aircraft does not have what is being checked: spoilers on light aircraft, or an arming lever on the E-Jet, ERJ and Legacy, whose ground spoilers deploy on their own.
The variable stayed silent all flight. Such a check counts as not measured and does not become a violation.
The stage never happened, or this recording never saw it: a takeoff straight from the runway, a tracker restart mid-flight. A free flight is not scored on its takeoff: its recording opens once the aircraft is already airborne.
You are flying a helicopter, gyrocopter or tiltrotor. Fixed-wing pitch gates, touchdown G and the approach descent rate do not apply. Touchdown vertical speed, speed and in-flight G are judged as for everyone.

Frequently asked

I switch the taxi light off at the holding point so as not to dazzle others. Is that a penalty?

No. The taxi light only has to come on at least once during the taxi. Nav lights and beacon count by the switch or by the light actually lit, either is enough.

I definitely turned the landing lights on, but the tracker did not count them. Why?

Most likely your aircraft does not report that channel. If neither the switch nor the light actually lit ever showed the landing light while you did switch other lights during the flight, the check is dropped as unmeasurable, with the reason in the decision log. If you did not touch the lights at all that flight, it is an ordinary remark. The “light off” checks judge by the switch alone.

I lower the gear late, as my aircraft’s SOP says. Is that a remark?

No, as long as it is down by the stabilisation gate in the Approach table. Above it a clean aircraft on vectors is flying perfectly legitimately.

My landing-rate counter showed a softer landing than the debrief. Who is right?

First check which touchdown you are comparing: the first one is scored. If the number differs on the same touchdown, the counter most likely did not take it at the moment of impact. How to check that yourself is in the tracker chapter.

It looks like a check fired wrongly. What do I do?

Open “Why this” on the check itself: it shows what was measured, which threshold judges it and how many points it cost. If the explanation still disagrees with what happened in the cockpit, write to “Feedback” with the flight number. The debrief keeps the whole track, so that moment can be checked against it.

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