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OutOnTheOP

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  1. To an extent, realistic. Most FLIR systems have both OPTICAL zoom, and DIGITAL zoom. The optical zoom actually zooms in and views a narrower area with the sensor, allowing it to see greater detail. Typically thermal sights only have fairly low optical zoom available (like 3-4x) The digital zoom just takes the image and makes it look bigger- but the actual data (the pixels) are not increased, it's just making it look larger on your screen. Most cell phone cameras do the same thing when you "zoom in". The image doesn't actually gain any detail, it just enlarges part of the image. Most 1980s-mid 1990s FLIR systems (and even a lot of very modern ones) don't even actually take a rectangular picture; what they do is rapidly scan a "strip" of pixels, and use a reflector array to sequentially scan that line across the imaged area. The strip is usually only 200-300 pixels resolution. So what we usually get in the game is better than many real-world systems anyhow. That said, I don't know the actual optical resolution for the TADS thermal sensor on the real-world AH-64D
  2. I meant what I said: that I had to click "submit", then wait almost 10 minutes before the post would complete. It did not appear to be linked to the internet connectivity on my side, as I had no issues at that time with high-data-throughput tasks like streaming video at the exact same time that the ED forum was taking so long to complete the post. Perhaps your server was undergoing maintenance
  3. The current DCS implementation actually feels like it limits the extent to which the radiator doors can be opened: at max open, it allows higher speed than the real aircraft, but also less effective cooling. This limits the aircraft's abilities in a low speed/ high engine power scenario. At low speeds, drag is less a factor, but cooling is critical, as it is the limiting factor on performance in a hard-turning low speed turn fight: less cooling means that the engine oil will rapidly overheat unless the pilot reduces engine power (which, in turn, reduces sustained turn performance). This means that the apparently artificially narrowed scope of radiator door positioning in DCS strongly negatively impacts P-51 turn-fighting capacity. Yes, I know, P-51 is not a classical "turn fighter", but there are situations where that performance is necessary to finish an opponent. And beyond that, the current implementation isn't quite true to the real aircraft at the edges of it's envelope, which should be reason enough to want to tune it. As an aside: the changes to the forum here are a bit oppressive; you can't edit or delete posts whatsoever, and it takes 10 minutes of "saving" for them to post in the first place. Not great.
  4. Except that the airflow coming off the oil cooler exits by it's own ducting without ever touching the radiator cooling air-stream. And the supercharger charge air is never routed through the coolant radiator. The radiator air scoop positions should have basically nothing to do with charge temperature; only engine temperature and coolant temperature should have anything to do with it; the radiator scoop position is only very indirectly involved (in that it impacts coolant temperature). The intercooler itself is part of the engine accessories and the chin scoop, not the belly scoop. I don't think a 8 C difference in temperatures and 19 mph difference in speed at the extreme ends of oil radiator positioning compared to the flown test data, are quite "the same results as RL test" though.
  5. The Germans in 1944-45 didn't really have the luxury of making perfect to-spec Bf-190 K4s with high-quality materials and fuels, either, but we have THOSE in the game. A German attack bomber would be useful for gameplay, and for mission design (to include online scenarios). Personally, I would most like to see an Me-410 before any other German aircraft. It fills the role of heavy fighter, night fighter, and ground attack, so it is imminently useful for mission design, and it has some (but not extreme) defensive turrets, making it challenging to attack.
  6. Well, the good news is that the Ju-88 does in fact die, and you can kill it with snapshots from the P-47. The bad news is, it doesn't die QUICKLY. It seems like the mechanism of kill for me, almost every time, it to bleed the engines of oil or similar: it doesn't take too many round to kill them, but they don't actually die until several minutes after you shoot them up. I have only managed to get an immediate kill on them a couple times: with pilot kills in a head on pass, and by knocking a wing off one. To do the latter requires getting way too close, and you will get shot up. Related: the windshield armor on the P-47 appears to do precisely nothing, because the Ju-88 gunners manage to kill the pilot with 8mm through the windshield ENTIRELY too often. I have to report the same as some other folks in this thread: The Ju-88, even when assigned to a WW2 bomber section formation and "no reaction", will immediately break formation.
  7. No, but limiting the availability of MW50 via mission editor would make a huge difference for online play. But... then the luftwhiners get their turn to gripe and moan about how unfair it is. Personally, I wish we could just go back to the days when it was only Doras vs Mustangs, because that's actually a pretty fair match-up. The Dora has a tiny edge in low altitude speed, roll, and weaponry, the Mustang has a tiny advantage in situational awareness, gunnery, and turning. And the dogfights were fantastic. The introduction of Kurfursts saw the devolution of the online scene into 3:1 Luftwaffe gang-up vulching (at least, as of the last time I bothered checking in on it a few months back). Wow, such fun. Much happy.
  8. I am very, very skeptical of how ED calculated the engine failure chances, and what historical data they polled to get the failure rates. As far as I can tell, they looked the officially sanctioned power ratings provided by the respective air forces, and took them as gospel. Feel free to surprise me and inform me that they did an actual metallurgical analysis of the components of historical engines, then did a physics-based stress simulation of all component parts of the engine in real-time. I suppose all that computing overhead would explain the persistent frame-rate performance issues... :music_whistling: The problem with that is that the higher rating does not mean the probability of failure of a DB605 at it's maximum authorized rating was *actually* the same as the chances of a Merlin failing at it's maximum authorized rating. I would strongly suspect the struggling Luftwaffe in the last years of the war were willing to approve far riskier boost levels than was the RAF or USAAF... but it doesn't seem to be reflected in DCS, where the Merlin seems much more fragile. As to Merlin-engine pilots blowing their engines... ok, maybe, but give us that chance. Having the option to take that risk should be our choice as a pilot. Having the extra power means you can start the fight at faster speed, you lose speed less swiftly, and you can keep the fight at a higher airspeed (unless you're an idiot that goes straight to "stick-in-gut-turn"). By having more power, you have more speed, which means more airflow, which means more cooling, which means.... more power. It's a positive feedback loop. Having that extra couple hundred horsepower really *is* important. ....and it's already modeled for the Mustang: a (fairly rare) damage state is (or at least was, a few updates back) the loss of manifold pressure regulation, which then allows the aircraft to go up to 75" MP. What has my experience been with fighting in that state? Exactly what I mentioned above: that the power lets me stay faster, that the speed keeps the engine cooler, and that positive feedback loop gives the Mustang a huge boost in combat performance. Would it help the Spitfire that much? Perhaps not; I haven't flown the Spit extensively enough to have a good feel for the way the cooling system acts at different power/airspeed settings, and the Spitfire wing design is optimal for low-speed turn-fighting anyhow, so it probably wouldn't benefit from the higher boost nearly so much as would the Mustang.
  9. Really? You think that a performance boost for the allied aircraft, which the current consensus agrees are outmatched by the axis aircraft, would not be a really, REALLY good thing to have? Even though we have actually experienced the slow death of the WW2 servers and players drifting away from them (myself included) because of the imbalance (which is further exacerbated by the numerical imbalance that is a direct result of players gravitating to the superior machines)? I think anything to level the playing field (within the bounds of historical accuracy) should be applauded and enacted as quickly as possible. ...I mean, unless you like watching your product die a slow death in the face of market forces like "consumer opinion".
  10. No, I don't think I will bother. You bring nothing of value to the conversation, and it is not worth wasting any more time on your trolling.
  11. The paper isn't entirely irrelevant, only your note about the pump failures is irrelevant. Papers exist that show the raw performance from the +75" Mustangs, yes. Other papers exist that show the mechanical reliability of the up-rated Merlins (running for up to 7 hours straight on WEP in acceptance testing). Yet other papers exist that show the performance from +67" Mustangs. I chose *this* paper because it provided a convenient comparison between the performance of a Mustang at +67" AND THE PERFORMANCE OF THAT SAME MUSTANG WITH NO CHANGES BEYOND INCREASING HORSEPOWER. The point is that it shows that if you increase from a +67" rating to a +75" rating ON THE SAME AIRFRAME, exactly what performance increase you get. The fact that the horsepower increase was gained through an engine modification is irrelevant; the later V 1650-7 did not require the experimental fuel pump in order to attain +75" (or indeed, +81") power ratings. Therefore, the pump failures referenced are irrelevant as well. That pump cannot fail on the V 1650-7 Merlins, because the Mk II pump did not exist on the V 1650-7. The Lavochkins were swept from the skies in weeks, and it wasn't the P-51s that were tasked to do it. As I mentioned already, they were doing CAS work. ...I guess that means you want to re-equip all of the A-10 squadrons with F-22s, because clearly it is the wisest decision to give high-end air superiority airframes to CAS squadrons? You know... just in case?
  12. Not exactly. The test I posted was for a test conducted with a standard Mustang, using a standard Merlin 65 modified for increased fuel flow rate in order to test out what the performance gains for the airframe would be if it mounted an engine of higher power production. The test was commissioned in preparation for fielding the new Merlin RM14SM engines. As it happened in reality, the Packard V 1650-7 Merlins as mounted into the USAAF P-51D were capable of pulling +75" for 7 hours straight with no pump failures (or any other failures of any type, besides possibly spark plug fouling, easily avoided by periodically running the engine at high power setting for a short while) when fed 44-1 fuel. The point of my posting that test was to show the level of performance increase from the airframe, given the extra power. It is not, however, the same engine that was used in service to *provide* that extra power (as Solty has already pointed out). So the performance numbers are of use; the failure stats are not.
  13. And my experience is that Kurfurst pilots in-game do exactly the same thing. The performance available in the airframe makes them lazy, and that makes them stupid.
  14. Irrelevant. That was the test of a 1943 EXPERIMENTAL modification (and was likely a -B or -C model, though never explicitly stated). Note that in the modifications list, the pump (to deliver the required fuel flow) was listed as a new part. The 1944 P-51D, however, ran at up to 81" with the standard pump. The mechanical reliability is not transferable from this test aircraft to a production aircraft. The performance, however, IS. Horsepower is horsepower. If the engine did not change the exterior profile of the aircraft (aerodynamics), did not change the overall weight of the aircraft, and did not change the center of balance, it will perform the same when provided the same horsepower to the prop, regardless of what model engine is providing that horsepower. The Merlin 65 may have weighed a few pounds more or less than the Merlin 66, but not so much that the performance difference would be greatly out of line with the testing. I will grant, however, that as the -B and -C are marginally lighter than the -D, the climb rate increase seen on a production -D may have been marginally lower. Perhaps +850 fpm instead of the +960 fpm noted in the test. The Mustang did gain 9% weight moving from the -B/-C to the -D, so +873 feet per minute would be the extrapolated gain. Gee, I can't imagine why they didn't continue making fighters from an entirely obsolete line of development after the introduction of jet engines. I just cannot fathom why.... Or do you mean "why did they use -D models in Korea instead of -H?" In which case, the answer is: because the Mustangs were used for CAS instead of air superiority, and therefore the increased performance wasn't required, but having plenty of spares on hand was useful. Not that many spares (either airframe or parts) available for the -H.
  15. And you will note I am talking in strategic terms. In the overall all-up scheme of risks to western allied fighter pilots in late 1944, you were statistically more likely to die in a mishap or equipment failure than being shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter. Light caliber (15-37mm) AAA was much more statistically dangerous than Luftwaffe fighters, as far as enemy action goes While there is no doubt that the RAF/ USAAF risk/benefit analysis on engine boost and aircraft modernization really cost a tiny handful of pilots that found themselves on the wrong side of the performance envelope, STATISTICALLY it saved lives and aircraft to not push the engines too far. To reference the excellent "Cost of WW2" post by Tusler: Almost half of the overseas losses (all types, all theaters) were non-combat accidents and mechanical failures, even WITHOUT the USAAF risking more engine failures with increased boost levels. Note that the statistic includes bombers, which had a higher combat loss rate, and includes the early days of the USAAF combat operations, when combat loss rates were MUCH higher than in late 1944. This means the losses by cause for Mustangs in late 1944 are probably skewed even more toward "accidents" than "enemy fighter action" than is indicated in the above statistic. I will see if I can look up the Mustang-specific losses by cause for 1944 later, but I haven't the time right this instant. Suffice to say that mechanical failure was a VERY significant threat, when compared to enemy fighter action. edit: from what I can quickly find, 41% of all 8th AF Mustang combat losses were lost to AAA; only 23% of combat losses were to enemy aircraft- meaning that out of total Mustang losses in the 8th AF including accidents, only around 13% were lost to enemy aircraft. Around 40% of the total were lost to accidents and failures.
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