Echo38

It also presents the problem of relative object size--if you artificially inflate the object size to try to account for the small apparent image size resulting from a low zoom level, then--at least in theory--sometimes one of those inflated objects will be obscuring something that it should not be. In other words, if two objects are close to each other and very far away from you, then you will be able to see both if they are at their true size, regardless of your zoom level (as long as they are within render distance); however, if the object size is "blown up" via smart-scaling, then one of the objects may be hidden behind the other, where it would not have been in reality. Of course, the actual occurrence of this would be pretty rare, I would think. But, it's another potential problem with the scaling. Another is that it could actually swing the pendulum too far--going from unrealistically hard-to-spot to unrealistically easy-to-spot. This is because of the focal distance issue we touched on earlier. In real life, you can miss seeing an aircraft even if you're staring almost right at it, because your eyes might not be focused at the right distance. Our monitors are 2D and our eyes are always focused on them, which can sometimes make it easier-than-life to spot large distant objects.

Right--if I implied anywhere that there would be anything that would cause this, I certainly didn't mean to. After the wire's broken, of course, only the MAP gauge would let you place the throttle at precisely mil power. (Unless you can feel the broken wire with your gloved hand--a point I'm not sure on.) [nod] Our positions aren't too far from each other. My only objection is that "throttle to the stop" on my gaming joystick isn't "throttle to the stop" in the virtual cockpit, before I've hit that key. I would like "throttle to the stop" to be just that, all the time, just like in the real aircraft. However, as I pointed out earlier, I don't fault E.D. for doing it the way they did, and I'm certainly not asking them to change it. I'm just pointing out that I understand Mogster's objection (even if I don't care for his proposed solution), and that my preference would be for the simulation to be "accurate software-side," rather than having something not-quite-accurate put into the software to compensate for our plastic controllers being wrong. Really, not a point I feel worth arguing over--I just wanted to clarify my position, and point out that Mogster's idea isn't any more unrealistic than the current system.

Heh-heh, won't argue with that! My original wording involved the phrase "ham-fistedly," but I edited that out; back when I was involved with Rise of Flight, I took some flak in the form of accusations of elitism, when I threw that phrase around a bit indiscriminately. : D

I meant that, in real life, pushing the throttle to the firewall will always give you maximum power--in the P-51D, out of the factory, this will be 67". Doing so will break the wire on the way forward--you don't need to make an extra step to break the wire, and merely breaking the wire won't change your actual throttle position (nor the throttle's firewall position). Both of these statements are true in reality, but not in the sim. In the sim, until you've hit the break-the-wire-and-firewall-it key, pushing your plastic throttle to the stops will only give you military power--61". Hitting a key to expand your virtual throttle's range of motion (and simultaneously adjust the virtual throttle's position to the new max) isn't all that realistic. As Mogster says, it changes what our real throttle slider's effect is at max (that is, what position our virtual throttle is when our slider is at max), something that isn't true in the real aircraft. Again, I'm not blaming E.D., although I perhaps would have done it a bit differently (the method I described in my previous post). The problem is that we simmers (and sim developers) have to deal with two very different mechanisms: plastic throttle sliders (or whatever other gaming controller you've bound to the virtual throttle), and digital renditions of real aircraft throttles. The sim has to try to reconcile these two rather dissimilar devices. Meanwhile, the real aircraft only has the real throttle. None of the methods of implementation, actual or hypothetical, are entirely realistic (because of the unfortunate differences between the real aircraft throttle and the plastic gaming throttles, not the least of which is the wire), and it's debatable which are more realistic than others. You can easily stop at 61" without looking at your gauges in the real aircraft, but only before you've broken the wire. Might be tricky if your throttle friction is too high, though, and you're trying to shove it forward quickly.

I'm with Xracer--aliasing is one of the "big three" discrepancies between sim and reality regarding visibility, the other two being eye focus and zoom/FoV (with its problems of apparent image size and such). There are others, but these are the ones which are, I think, the most responsible for the problems. When I was beta testing for Rise of Flight, I kept complaining about certain changes to the graphical engine because they increased aliasing (jagged edges on lines, or "jaggies") on my system. When the entire ground is sparkling or "shimmering" like this (something that the real ground doesn't do), it becomes harder to see another moving dot amongst all those moving dots. What I mean is, in real life, the ground is more or less stationary from your perspective, if you're flying straight and level; thus, any dot moving across the ground (or sky) will draw your brain's attention, because the contrast between its speed and the speed of everything around it causes it to stand out. But with aliasing in sims, the virtual ground isn't stationary like that--it's mostly a chaotic mass of frantically-sparkling dots, and so it's harder to spot yet another moving dot amongst the other moving dots than it is to notice such a dot in the real world. The CEO of 777 Studios couldn't figure out why I was complaining so hard; he thought that the jagged lines were just an aesthetic issue. But it wasn't; it was enormously affecting my ability to spot other aircraft, and since other users in multiplayer sometimes had much less aliasing (because they had different graphics cards), it was an unfair & unrealistic disadvantage in competitive virtual air combat. People were getting the drop on me when they wouldn't have been able to if we'd both had the same computer specs & graphical settings (and when they wouldn't have been able to in real life, for that matter).

Mogster raises a valid point, though--neither system is exactly realistic. It can't be, because our plastic gaming joysticks don't all have the wire. Current system unrealistically changes the position of the virtual throttle obtained when your plastic slider is at max. His proposed system would unrealistically disallow choosing MAP settings between 61" and 67". I prefer the current system over Mog's, but neither is a precise simulation of the real thing. The closest simulation possible to the real thing would be to simply make input linear, so that setting the plastic slider to ~91% of its range (100 / 67 x 61) would set the virtual throttle to the wire, giving 61", and setting the plastic to 100% would give 67", and so on. When the virtual throttle went past 61" (i.e. the real and virtual throttles are both past ~91%), the virtual wire would be automatically broken. This would mean that the user would have no way of knowing when he's broken the wire, unless he carefully watches the virtual throttle or MAP gauge in the virtual cockpit as he slowly pushes his plastic throttle forward, but it would be the most exact simulation within the software--having a real wire across your plastic throttle slider would then complete the simulation thereof, making it more or less exact. Needless to say, each system has significant problems--the problem with both the current system and Mogster's proposed one being that each works differently than the real deal (both in the software and in our hardware), and the problem with my hypothetical system being that you'd have no way to know when you broke the wire unless you had a real wire across your throttle slider, or were staring into the virtual cockpit while you slowly made the throttle change. For this reason, I don't think it would be reasonable to expect E.D. to implement each alternate system, when there's already a great deal on their plate.

At what zoom level?

Generally, I found it considerably easier to spot aircraft when I was flying real aircraft, but there are some situations where it is more difficult. As David said, sometimes you can be looking right at something and not see it. In the sim, that doesn't happen (unless your RL eyesight is poor or the aircraft is only a tiny pixel), because our RL eyes are focused at a fixed distance at all times, on the monitor a couple of feet away. But, in general, spotting real aircraft is much easier, because they appear so much larger than they do in the sim (unless you're at high zoom level in the sim, in which case you've lost all peripheral vision, and are thus again disadvantaged compared to reality). I can't speak for camo aircraft, but small white-painted aircraft (in the real world) are easy to spot against the ground in normal weather conditions, even at the distance of a couple of miles. Against the sky, it can be harder, but they're still easily visible at 5000 feet distance (to the point where you almost can't miss it), unless they're coming straight at you. YRMV; not only do different people have different eyes, but the way one's eyes scan and focus can be different from person to person as well.

I use the WASD keys to look around, which means that, like you, I have to take my hand off of the camera in order to work the throttle. I recommend having the camera also bound to your joystick hat switch, so that you can clumsily bump it around with the hat while you're working the throttle. It isn't going to be nearly as precise or natural as using the mouse (I don't recommend normally using the hat switch on the joystick to control camera; it's too much work for the right hand, which should be focusing on pitch & roll), but it's better than no control at all during those moments when you have to have your hand off of the mouse and on the throttle instead.

I did a search for all posts containing "EDGE" by user Wags, and then opened several of the thread results and did a search within each thread for all posts by Wags. I got some tidbits here and there, the following paragraph being the most detailed: There might be more info in that search; open each thread and use the "search this thread" function in each one to find all posts by Wags. Several of his posts mention EDGE by name, so it's real.

Unfortunately, the P-51D hasn't been getting very much love these last few months; the last several patches haven't touched the P-51 at all. Perhaps when the FW 190D comes out, they'll revisit the P-51 gun issues, because it will be a more pressing matter then (what with more people presumably flying the WWII birds).

I don't understand what you're describing. Rephrase?

Good grief. Really? I thought we just went over this. Again. Less than two dozen posts ago.

Willzah still flies the P-51? Glad to hear that--he's one of the better pilots I've flown with here.

See ninja-edit; I clarified the point while you were writing your post.

The P-38 is a very singular fighter--there was no other high-performance twin-engine prop fighter in history, at least not that made it into large-scale production. The Mosquito wasn't a fighter, although it was sometimes kludged into that role, and the Me 110 failed as a fighter (and couldn't be described as high-performance by any stretch of the imagination). The P-38 was also the only twin-engine fighter that had counter-rotating propellers, AFAIK. Add the extremely-unusual twin boom design (and the then-rare Fowler flaps), and you have a most unique airplane. Every fighter is different, but the P-38 is far more different to most than, for example, the P-51 is to the Me 109, or even the P-47 to the A6M. What's more is, there's never been anything more than a half-way decent portrayal of the P-38. Every sim-game I know of that featured a representation of a P-38 failed to acknowledge its gentle stall characteristics, its Fowler flaps, and/or its counter-rotating propellers (except for Aces High II, but AHII has more than a few flaws of its own). I'll grant that most other fighters have never had a decent portrayal in a sim, either, but the P-38 has gotten the shaft more than others, having had its weaknesses portrayed strongly (and over-done, usually--e.g. compressibility) but not its strengths. Perhaps in complete objectivity, the P-47 would be a better choice for Eagle Dynamics's next WWII fighter, after the FW 190, because it would be easier to make a P-47 than a P-38, and because the Fighter Collection possesses a P-47 at present. However, there's something special about the P-38 that makes me fervently hope that it is someday done justice in a flight sim, and perhaps that flight sim may be DCS.

The events I described happened around 2004.

ROFL! Well trolled, sir! : D

Ah, but Mr. Williams appears to be dealing objectively with facts, whereas Mr. Maddox went almost solely with personal feelings and perversely stuck to them, regardless of what facts were provided to him. The Browning may not have been the best weapon, but that doesn't mean that it is reasonable to portray it in a simulator as being far worse than it really was. There's really no excuse for sticking to a 300% error. Imagine if that'd been a speed error instead of a dispersion diameter error; that'd be Mach 2 prop planes. : /

My "bomber" and I would have a word with you later, Gav. [stare]

Yeah. I was there. I read his posts, I e-mailed the guy, I got dismissive response. Got proof? If it isn't Stalin-era Soviet documentation, it's American or British propaganda ... Christ, I'm so glad he isn't involved in making flying games anymore. Maddox's greatest accomplishment was convincing the majority of the flight sim community that he made an ultra-realistic simulator, when he actually made a mediocre flying game with shitty flight physics, lite engine management, and delusional aircraft & weapon performance and characteristics. P.T. Barnum could have learned something from that. However, I have relatively high hopes for Luthier. The fact that he wishes to make a sim at the level of DCS: P-51D is promising--I've only known about three flight sim development entities which have even expressed a desire to do so. The rest realize that there's not much money to be made there and don't even try.

Browning fifty-caliber dispersion. It was about three times wider than the real deal at all ranges. We were using unambiguous British wartime test documents (as well as plentiful and clear gun camera footage) to demonstrate the point, but Mr. Maddox insisted that his ridiculous 3-times-too-wide diameter was right. He only changed it when Ubisoft finally stepped in (very unusual--but I guess even they could see the error, since it was so large and obvious) and told him to fix it. ... Which is where it gets really interesting. His exact words on the forums were, I believe, "You wanted unrealistic and unhistorical? Well you got it." He put the .50's to their correct dispersion value (the value he was calling unrealistic), but he quietly nerfed them at the same time by setting them to fire exactly synchronized. Tightening the guns to their real-life value should have made it easier for a good marksman to make kills (though harder for an inexperienced shooter), but we were noticing that we were having less success than before. Maddox's lapdogs on the Ubizoo forum accused us of just sucking at gunnery, but it didn't take long for someone to notice the real problem. This fellow did an easily-reproducible test and posted the screenshots--before the change, all machine gun banks in the game would fire a steady stream. If you fired them at the ground while pulling G's, you'd see two lines of dirt puffs on the ground, one line for each wing-bank (the fifties' lines being three times wider than they should be). After the change? Well, the other guns were still making lines, but the new .50 banks were now firing in neat little packets, so there were two rows of dirt-puff clusters, instead of two lines of dirt puffs. The clusters were spaced far apart, instead of a solid line; the higher the AoA, the farther apart the clusters. What was happening was that, in hard turns, the enemy was flying between our bullet-clusters. I hope I don't have to point out that real aircraft gun banks do not fire synchronized with each other in this manner--every individual machine gun fires at a slightly different RoF, and this is good, because when firing them in banks, you have a constant stream of lead which the enemy cannot fly through under any conditions without taking hits. With a bunch of packets instead of a constant stream, however, resulting from Maddox's intentionally-unrealistic synchronization (again, specific to the new .50's, about which he was bitter after having been forced to set them to their correct dispersion), the enemy could "fly through" if the shooter were at a high AoA. Or, rather, the clusters were going around the enemy--one below him, the next above him, as your pitch has changed between the synchronized shots. Maddox fixed this ninja-nerf not too long after he was discovered, but this sort of stubborn disregard for realism (in both issues--the dispersion and the synchronization)--and his pettiness and intellectual dishonesty in sneaking in the nerf to try to have the last laugh--was the final straw for me. There had been hundreds of these sort of errors before, as well as Maddox's loud refusal to acknowledge any evidence presented (he once called official U.S. wartime fighter performance documents "American propaganda"--I wish I were only joking). But finally realizing how Maddox went beyond simply not caring about the reality, but actively opposed it out of some bizarre sense of pride--well, that did it for me.

Aye. I just wanted to clarify that the first time you use WEP, hitting the key not only breaks the wire but also firewalls the throttle. After that, you just use the throttle & prop lever to choose your power setting. I'm totally with you on using the gauges--whenever someone asks me what percent my throttle is at, I wince.

That's horrible! They discourage pilots from making emergency landings by threatening them with enormous fines? And no one is bothered that they're endangering the pilots by doing this?

This is true. It's about damn time I met someone else who recognizes this. Maddox's complete disregard for realism and historical accuracy--all the while swearing it was right--is appalling to me, even after all these years. I'm willing to give Luthier a chance, because he seems like his heart's in the right place, and CloD was a step in the right direction compared to the previous IL-2 games (as a sim, that is--never mind the frame rates and game crashes). But I swore years ago that I would never pay another cent to Mr. Maddox, and I never have. I am very glad that he no longer is making flying games. I can forgive little errors here and there, but the massive and countless flaws in old IL-2 were just horrid; I've never seen a 300% error in any other sim. Ugh.