Echo38

That definitely wasn't one of the planned aircraft for this project, neither before nor after ED picked it up. I mentioned the P-38 because someone wondered what was supposed to come after the Spitfire. The original plan was that the P-38 was going to be the next WWII fighter after the five we're getting, but that was Luthier's plan rather than ED's. This isn't the thread for future aircraft speculation, really. Edit: Hrm. I can't find mention of it being the next in line; that was the Me 262, evidently. The P-38J-15 is mentioned on the Kickstarter page I'm looking at right now, but only as a sort of hopefully-in-the-future, along with four other aircraft (none of which have been announced as being planned by ED). I wonder if I'm grossly misremembering, or if there was a different page for this project which had different information? I'll look some more. Edit2: This English translation of one of Luthier's posts on the Russian section of the ED forum is the closest I can find to what I'm sure I saw before: http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1855507&postcount=1 This may be where I got the idea that the P-38 was next, because it lists the P-38 first in the paragraph about stretch goals. "With successful Kickstarter funding of stretch goals, the project will include more famous historical aircraft, such as the Lockheed P-38, de Havilland Mosquito, Messerschmitt Me.262, and even a flyable version of the Boeing B-17." This appears to have been no more than wishful thinking, sadly.

Oh, of course! Dora! Damn stupid of me. When I hear FW 190, I always think of the FW 190A, because that's the one I always saw & read about when I was young. You see, I've not yet flown (or flown against) the FW 190 in DCS, as I haven't been able to use a joystick since just after the P-51D was released proper (quite a while before the FW 190 was even in playable beta). Without the familiarity gained from hours of seeing/flying it in DCS, I forgot that the 190 that we have in the sim is the in-line D. I must be going senile to miss something like that; my apologies. : /

After that Spitfire, the next WWII fighter that was originally scheduled was the P-38, but that was before the original project sorta crashed and ED moved in to pick up the pieces. I do hope that's the next one, though! Oh, man, I hope!

I don't have the knowledge to answer your question, but a couple of things to note: the FW 190 has a radial engine, while the other two have in-lines. The Merlin-equipped P-51D was specifically meant to be a high-altitude bomber escort, and it's really cold up there. Not sure if these factors can explain the disparity, but they might be involved.

Oh, come on. How many hardcore flight sims out there are covering WWII? If you count CloD as hardcore, that makes it exactly one, other than DCS, and how many fighters are even in CloD? Three, four ... ? I've said it before: gripe about WWII fighters if you don't like 'em, but don't pretend us hardcore WWII-fighter folks have significant options beyond DCS. We don't. CloD is the only other thing that comes close, and ... well, I'm sure you've heard about CloD ... There has never been a DCS-level P-38, F4U, F6F, A6M, Ki-43, P-40, etc., and, other than DCS, there's never been a P-47, FW 190, or P-51, either. Don't tell me there are plenty of flight sims covering those topics, unless you're counting the ones that don't bother to do it properly. Do I look like the kind of person who's interested in a flying game that only models half the aircraft? There's only one viable option for maximum-fidelity WWII fighter sims, and that's DCS. Begrudge us the one sim we have, if you must, but don't pretend that we have other options within this niche.

Have I ever told you how much I freakin' love you, Yo-Yo? : )

Tagert, did you check if the tests referenced in those sources all shared a standardized procedure? E.g. one hand, pulling X lb. of force, etc.

Thanks.

Very cool. Can you elaborate a bit on the sources? I own a copy of America's Hundred Thousand, but what's NACA 868, and where can one find the other two sources?

La-7 I can't tell you how much I want to not see this thing charging around the skies out-performing damn-near everything else in damn-near every area, 'coz that's how it's been in every flying game that's ever tried to portray it.

Yes, absolutely--I've believed for many years that a chair/floor-mounted, life-size/throw stick would be the best solution, both for my hands and also for other reasons. A real aircraft stick (the old fashioned kind--I'm not counting the short side-sticks in fly-by-wire aircraft) involves far less rotation of the wrist and thus less hand stress in general regarding the grip (I didn't find myself gripping a real aircraft stick tightly, the way I subconsciously grip a simming joystick). Unfortunately, a good full-size joystick is prohibitively expensive, and/or must be built or modified, which I don't have the skill (nor the hand capacity) to do. That rules out full-scale sticks as an option, although a full-scale stick would be ideal, if not for those barriers.

Depends on which aircraft and which ratings we're talking about, but it often could mean the difference between which aircraft was faster and which was slower, at various altitudes, or even altogether. Maneuverability was similarly affected. Which is why I'm so concerned with the issue. The idea is to get evenly-balanced matchups without reducing the sim fidelity & historical accuracy. And, by carefully choosing/including WEP hp. ratings, this is possible. Simply modelling all the U.S. birds at their lowest historical WEP ratings is not the way to do this. When pitted against German aircraft which are idealized (and I'm glad that they're idealized! I don't want the German aircraft simulated to be examples which are worn and have manufacturing defects, because I love the German fighters, too), it just isn't good, neither for balance, nor even for historical accuracy. I'm rather baffled, at this point, by the resistance to the idea of "fair & balanced, without reducing fidelity & historical accuracy," so I guess I'm just going to have to trust in Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo is a very smart dude, and he loves these birds as much as I do, and so I guess I can trust him to recognize the problem when/if it arises and incorporate any necessary fixes as soon as possible. Didn't someone say that ED had already acknowledged plans, or at least the possibility, of incorporating a wider range of HP ratings after all of the initial five WWII fighters were released? Anyone have a link to the post?

Thank you very much for the suggestions, everyone. With my specific injuries, and on my budget, it seems that a mouse joystick emulator is the way to go, but more possibilities which hadn't occurred to me before are always a good thing. I'll be investigating external joystick emulator software, but if anyone else has any ideas, I'm still very much open to hearing them. Again, my thanks.

Why would you say something like this? I've never insisted that Allied aircraft be based on their higher-end examples. Rather, my post (see footnote) clearly stated that I thought that it would not be a good idea with the 109 we have in the sim. So why the false accusation? A 64" P-38L is a lower-middle-range example, not high-end. In fact, 64" is closer to low-end than it is to high-end, given that 60" was the lowest and 75" was the highest I've seen confirmed to have been used on the L. Even 66" is lower than the mode on that range; that is, 66" is closer to 60" than to 75". Our Me 109K is running a boost that is higher than its lowest historical one, right? Somewhere in the middle between its lowest and highest, if I recall aright? So why do you object to a P-38L doing the same thing, with 64" or so? Surely you don't think it would make the P-38 dominant? Footnote: (from a few posts back in this very thread. I think there isn't much room for misinterpretation.)

But that doesn't answer my fundamental question: why are some people so insistent that the aircraft on the German side be based on higher-end examples than the aircraft on the U.S. side, when the end result of this is a situation is both less well-balanced and less historically-representative than choosing similar examples for both?

I thought it was fairly common knowledge that a well-maintained Me 109 wasn't quite the standard late in the war, when German was facing serious logistical difficulties, such as material shortages and quality control problems. Hence my perception that our Me 109K in the sim is an above-average example, even if it isn't running at the highest boost pressure that any Me 109K ever ran at. Meanwhile, even though not "every Allied airplane" used the high-grade fuel, boosting them higher than factory settings (with or without high-grade fuel) was commonly practiced, to the point that the average WEP rating on the P-38, P-47, and P-51 was higher than factory. (How much higher than factory was the average, of course, is questionable, since we don't have, AFAIK, hard numbers of how many ran which settings; or, if we do, it isn't an easy job determining such, but it was unarguably higher than the factory setting.) I agree that trying to model everything in the sim on its best historical example is neither representative nor even competitively balanced. However, I see no reason to avoid modelling the fighters on both sides on the most historically-representative, "middle of the road" examples, when doing so has the added bonus of naturally improving the competitive balance, and in this case, this means using the normal, somewhat-higher-than-factory WEP ratings on the U.S. birds (especially given that we're already using a rather idealized Me 109K). It doesn't make the sim any less realistic, it doesn't make the sim any less historically representative, and it can make the sim better balanced competitively. Current situation is this: Medium/high-end Me 109K Low-end P-51D Low-end P-47D Are you now seeing why I have a problem with this? It's neither fair from a competitive balance standpoint (given that the factory P-47D is significantly inferior to the high-quality Me 109K below 20,000 feet or so), nor is it historically representative of how things usually were. Look, I'm not asking for a 75", ~1900 hp. P-38L. That would be uncalled for, unless we were facing the 1.98 ata Me 109. I'm just asking for comparable, historical, representative, fair, balanced horsepower ratings. Why is this such a problem? Why are some people so insistent that the aircraft on the German side be based on higher-end examples than the aircraft on the U.S. side, when the end result of this is a situation is both less well-balanced and less historically-representative than choosing similar examples for both?

There's actually three concepts being discussed, here. They are: "stick fixed," used to mean hands on, but not moving the controls from their position, nor allowing them to move ("definition one"); "stick fixed," used to mean hands on, moving the controls to adjust for various phenomena ("definition two"); and "stick free," used to mean hands off the controls. And I am thoroughly confused now. Crumpp, when you say "stick fixed," do you mean definition 1 or definition 2?

Gotta admit, despite the P-38 being my favorite airplane, the Double Wasp is my favorite engine. Specifically, the one in the Hellcat sounds so wonderful. Jeff Ethell said that the reason the R-2800 in the F6F sounds different than the ones in the P-47 and F4U was that the F6F had irregularly-spaced exhaust stacks. However it works, it works!

I have Bodie's The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, but not his P-47 one. Maybe the former is where I found the info. Perhaps I'll go hunting for it later.

Argh! So we do have different definitions, after all? Because what the rest of us are saying is that "stick fixed" means that hands are on the controls, holding them in a fixed position throughout the maneuver, i.e. our hands make sure the stick doesn't move from its initial position for the duration of the time in which the stick is said to be "stick fixed." Okay, start out in straight and level flight, coordinated. Don't touch the throttle, don't move the elevator, don't move the rudder. Simply deflect maximum aileron and hold it there. Elevator and rudder stay where they are, you hold it there with your hand & foot, never mind trim settings. During the roll, three things will happen. At some point, the nose will drop below the horizon and you'll enter a shallow dive, because you were "trimmed" (either by actual trim, or by holding the controls with your hands & feet) for straight and level flight, but then you changed your lift vector's position relative to the gravity vector, effectively reducing your lift vector's ability to cancel out the gravity vector, right? The second part, which is the first of the two relevant parts: as you deflect aileron, adverse yaw causes you to leave the state of being coordinated; you are now in a slip. The third part is, as you roll into different points of the roll manuever, something changes in the forces (TBH, I'm not sure exactly what, but one of the factors is gravity), with the net effect that (in a WWII fighter and modern light aircraft, at least; I don't know if jet fighters are affected by this, as their weight distribution et al. are considerably different) the tail will slip out of coordination, regardless of whether the adverse yaw from deflected aileron was accounted for via rudder (which, in this specific case, recall, it wasn't, so the slip from adverse yaw is added to the slip from the bank angle having changed without being accounted for with rudder).

Do note that even if it's showing up at a pixel, if you're flying at normal zoom level with a normal monitor (& eye-to-monitor distance), it would be much large in reality! In order to make this dot as large as it would be in reality, you have to zoom in to the point where you have a small fraction of your real-life FoV, because of the small amount of our real FoV that our P.C. monitors occupy. There's no getting around this unless you have a multi-monitor setup or a massive wrap-around screen. This is the primary reason (though far from the only one) that spotting is harder in the sim than in reality. It's our damn monitors, I'm telling you. They're too small, occupying about 20 degrees of our real ~165-degree FoV, which means that, in any first-person sim or game, we must end up with a much lower zoom and/or FoV than reality. Pull one end of the string ...

Crumpp, it looks to me that we may be saying the same thing, but two different ways. In which case, I think, the issue stems from your phrase, "fixed by the pilots foot as he puts in the amount of rudder required to keep it trimmed." From what you said in your post immediately preceding this one of mine, it sounds as though you meant what I meant (foot put in one place before the test, for coordinated straight & level flight, and held in that place throughout the test), but, without clarification, it sounded like you meant (by your original phrase) that the foot moves to continually keep the aircraft coordinated throughout the roll (because in order to "keep" coordinated flight during the roll, you have to move the foot). Perhaps this is merely a misunderstanding of phrasing, then, and we're all attempting to describe the same thing?

The P-38, too, was initially intended to be a fighter. Not a bomber interceptor, as often is claimed, nor a multi-role combat aircraft, but a long-range fighter. That was the express desire of those who initiated its creation & those who designed it. It just so happened to be, by nature of its power and structural strength, suitable for carrying heavy ordnance for ground attack as well, which it was used for, at length, after the Luftwaffe was largely defeated.

I've always had a much easier time spotting fighter-sized aircraft in reality than in sim/games. And, yes, DCS is the sim in which I have had the most difficulty spotting things. There are cases in reality where it's even harder to spot aircraft than it is in DCS (e.g. a white aircraft against cloud, coming at you head-on, while your eyes are focused on the cloud behind it, can get surprisingly close before your eyes stop "seeing around it"), but, in general, I've always found it much easier to spot aircraft in real life than in sims, including DCS. Your eyes do have a handicap in spotting real aircraft compared to spotting aircraft on a P.C. monitor; in reality, your eyes must focus at a certain distance, which makes it hard to see apparently-small things that are farther or closer than that distance. However, your eyes also have large advantages in spotting real compared to spotting on the monitor. One of these is apparent image size; at normal zoom levels, in the sim, the apparent image size is much smaller than reality, because our (real-life) monitors are much narrower than our (real-life) FoV. This makes a big difference in ease of spotting. Zooming in (in the sim) can make the sim-objects have their real-life apparent image size, but then you lose almost all of your real-life FoV (in the sim). Furthermore, your real eyes don't suffer from aliasing, which makes differentiating a small moving dot from the stuff around it much more difficult than it is in reality. There are other ways that the real eye is superior to the virtual one in P.C. flight sims, but I think most of them are self-evident.

Whatever control I use for elevator & ailerons needs to have at least four inches of throw on each axis. Minor mistakes become amplified with short-throw controls; short-throw controls have a low potential precision.