Echo38

In every flight sim game I've used which featured accelerated stalls of any sort, pulling back hard on the stick at low speed results in a stall, while it's usually safe to pull hard at higher speed without fear of stall. (Fear of losing your wings, maybe, but not stall.) Lately, I've been wondering about this, the fact that we're able to pull more backstick without stalling, at higher speeds than lower speeds. Is this because of sims' portrayal of virtual stick forces? I.e. pulling back on the (real-world) gaming joystick at high speed results in less pull-back on the virtual aircraft stick than at low speed, because of higher stick forces? Or is this true in the real aircraft, as well, that you can pull back more without stalling at high speed than at low speed? And if so, why? I've been ruminating on all the factors I can think of. Higher speed allows you to pull more Gs at the same stick deflection, right (because the energy hitting the constant-angle elevator is higher), and higher G means higher stall speed--so with that alone, I would expect to be able to pull more back-stick without stalling at lower speed, rather than higher speed. But that isn't the only factor. There's also the relationship between turning speed and turning circle. And--hoo boy, my head is kinda spinning here, but ... a lower speed means a tighter turning circle ... but not at the same elevator deflection? And now I've thoroughly confused myself, and I'm a little shaky on some of these physics things, and can someone who has a good grasp of physics clear this up? I've been telling sim-pilots to pull back less on the stick at low speeds, to avoid stalling, and in sims, this is right. But is it also true in real aircraft? Why (or why not)?

Oh, Yahtzee : D

I had a Saitek X52 and found it much too imprecise for competitive flying. I don't think I'd be able to win a dogfight against the AI in P-51D using the X52. I also wouldn't even think about trying to fly P-51 without pedals ... food for thought. Regardless, I still recommend, even with the sloppy X52, direct input--no curves, no dead zone. (The X52 has a large dead zone in its hardware, but as this is a physical flaw in the design of the stick, there's nothing you can do about that.) Do you understand the basic theory of what goes on during maneuvers? The difference between pitch and angle of attack; stall speed changing with G-load; effects of flying uncoordinated, slip & skid; fuel load and CoG ... that sort of thing? Or are you new to real-life flying physics? You wanna try to get on TS3 and see if I can give you a hand in real-time? Forum's no place for trying to help you out with this sort of problem. At least seeing you fly would give a better idea of what's going on.

There was a problem with faulty ASI readings due to pitot tube error. At one point, it was erroneously announced in the news that a P-40 had exceeded the speed of sound. In actuality, it was going maybe 450 MPH (don't remember if they figured out quite how fast), but at transonic speeds, air compresses inside the pitot tube, causing the ASI to display highly inaccurate readings. Or something like that, anyway. Took 'em a while to figure out that they weren't always going as fast as the ASI said, and develop charts to try to calibrate the error.

I was under the impression that "the DCS standard" meant, by definition, AFM & full 'pit. Guess maybe that changed, but to a lot of us, that's still what it means. By this standard, the only true DCS titles released so far are the Ka-50, A-10C, and P-51D. The beta Huey, too, if you count modules not made by E.D. Everything else so far has SFM and/or simplified 'pit, ruling it out.

Ha, yes! "We were bounced by about a hundred Me 109s" ends up really being fifteen or twenty of them.

Ignore the foolish animation and listen to what the man said. The maneuver he described (something like a loop-turned-hammerhead, but with positive elevator instead of rudder) is quite possible in a WWII fighter. The silly maneuver that is shown (a vectored-thrust somersault ... supermaneuverability like Pugachev's Cobra) on screen is not. They're rather different things altogether. I would bet good money that Candelaria never saw the animation until after the show aired; if he had, he surely would have corrected them. Neither the will to perform a maneuver, the need to do so in order to survive, nor adrenaline can alter the physics of what an aircraft is capable of. Nor, beyond how much force one can exert on the controls, can it improve a pilot's flying abilities in the short term. (Long term, it can convince him to train harder, but we're talking mid-battle.)

This is my problem with this sort of game design! Real life is full of bullshit. Games are supposed to be fun.

When pulling G's? Yeah, normal and working as intended. If you don't want to keep raising and lowering your virtual head as your target pulls and unloads, you may want to simply move your virtual head forward, closer to the gunsight, until you are done shooting. This should make it easier to see the sight without having to fiddle with your head. (When I say moving the virtual head forward, by the way, I don't mean zooming in. You probably know this, but I've had a large number of people get confused about this in the past.)

It's only a problem when joining certain servers hosted by people in your squad, right? There is a file which can over-ride individual users' view settings. Not exactly sure how it works. Perhaps whoever is host has accidentally done something with this file?

This is why I quit playing Day Z after a couple of months (which was a couple of months to many). Games like these are unduly stressful, and promote a genuine mean-spiritedness in the player base ... out to ruin everyone else's day, as much as possible. Did I say ruin one's day? Week, month, months in cases like this. Rewarding bad behavior ... you know, I'm not even going to continue.

Loop nothing; that was a somersault! [cut to Peppy the rabbit hollering an instruction]

[nod] I consider it a B movie (the plot can best be described as "cute") but it's in my top 5 films altogether, just the same. One of the most singular things about it (other than the dogfighting) was the way the characters progressed in their flying abilities throughout the film--the earlier dogfights have them doing the classic Tom Cruise "bitch wobble" (which is about all you see in most flying cinema), but by the end, they're pulling every trick that the top pilots do. I thought that was a really cool element. Battle of Britain is, in my opinion, the best aviation-related film of all time, but I was disappointed at how tame the dogfighting sequences were, compared to what real aces were capable of. I mean, it was historically accurate; the average fighter pilot probably didn't do much more than they did in the movie. And I can't fault the stunt pilots for flying safely (what with them being real airplanes and pilots). But, as a virtual dogfighter, I was disappointed that there wasn't any really aggressive dogfighting--mostly just fighters following each other in more-or-less straight lines, with a bit of wobble thrown in. I have this problem with pretty much all flying cinema, excepting Flyboys. I'll take your word for it. I saw a P-51 indulge in some thrust-vectoring in the trailer and decided to give the flick a miss. [grin]

Yup, painfully aware of it. Kind of ironic that I'm in this slot in this discussion--when Flyboys came out, I was the one on the other end. My flight sim buddies were all, "I didn't like Flyboys because it had historical errors and the rotary engines didn't rotate," while I said: hey, maybe if the serious aviation folks hadn't all snubbed it, it wouldn't have failed at the box office. Its failure sent movie producers a message: "flying movies aren't profitable, don't make any more." I'm aware of the flaws in Flyboys, but I enjoyed it anyway; I can't think of any finer dogfighting in the history of flying movies (even if the birds do move like aerobatics planes, but I can't blame the producer, 'coz he was an aerobatics pilot!).

Typo. Ninja-edited before you replied--drastically alters the meaning.

except that the airplanes wouldn't fly like the x-wings in star wars

Well, it sure wouldn't hurt to use the ones that exist. If pretty much no one notices that the aircraft fly wrong--which seems to be the case--then no one should notice if the aircraft fly ~right in the WWII episides and fly wrong in the Korean War & Vietnam ones. ; ) I believe that I could make a vastly more realistic portrayal of History Channel's WWII dogfights, if I had the budget that their animation team had. I'm no fan of IL-2 (if you search my name and IL-2 on this forum, you'll see that I regard the series as a failure as a flight sim), but even using just that, my hypothetical team could make the dogfights much closer to the reality than what there is. Oh, well ... woulda, coulda, shoulda ...

Like I said, a low budget doesn't prevent a show from using a flight sim to solve the problem. That's why I'm not buying that the budget is the problem. Heck, even shooting the fights in old IL-2--with all of its flight physics flaws--would look more realistic (in terms of aircraft motion--heck, probably also in terms of graphics, even) than what Dogfights ended up with.

Last time I flew against it, the AI did not climb or turn better than a highly-skilled human opponent. Indeed, the AI is considerably easier to beat than the best human VFPs I've faced. The AI does have a few shortcomings in terms of realism--notably, it doesn't have to deal with torque & gyro effects, which gives it a bit of an edge if you take the fight to stall speeds--but its abilities to turn and climb are humanly possible to match. I expect it to take one a few years to learn how to, however. Took me at least three years of daily practice to get to that level, back in the day--these days, I can't quite do it, because only being able to fly ~once a month leaves me horribly out of practice. So, the DCS: P-51D AI is a bit below the level of the best human VFPs, but is a good deal above the level of even intermediate VFPs. This is why I say that the AI is good for an ace-level AI, but much too hard for a rookie or veteran-level AI. Unfortunately, last time I checked, all AI settings in DCS have the same flying abilities. Hence my observation that the addition of an easier AI would be a good thing for those who aren't quite at ace level.

I can't agree; I don't think that the problem with Dogfights dogfights is the quality of the CGI, or even the level of complexity in the animation. Rather, it seems that the person(s) responsible for portraying the way the aircraft move don't understand how the aircraft should move. Not even approximately, like someone who's observed fighters and aerobatics airplanes at air shows, but rather no idea, like the people who work for LucasArts. Big budget films' CGI almost invariably display the same lack of understanding of basic aircraft physics I'm griping about (I'm not even talking about advanced aerodynamics or fine-tune details, but the basic stuff); this is also why I don't think that Dogfights's low budget is the problem. History Channel Argentina, I believe it was, used a modern flight sim (Jet Thunder, I think) to shoot their air battles. Dogfights does not have graphics that are better than those of a flight sim (which, do note, was not one of my gripes--I can easily overlook sub-par graphics), so I don't see why they can't just shoot the scenes in a decent flight sim. Would surely be much cheaper than paying animators, wouldn't look any worse in terms of graphics, and would look a world better in terms of the way the aircraft move. In short, I feel that the problem with Dogfights in its kinetic aspects comes down to the relevant people not knowing their field the way they should.

Thanks for the link. I've watched more than a few episodes of Dogfights; it's cool hearing from some of the pilots in person (so to speak). Unfortunately, the show's animator doesn't know much about flying, and they don't use a physics program at any point, so the animated aircraft don't at all move the way real aircraft do. Still, most of the time, the show does the job, mostly.

I'm with Gav. An option of a less-formidable AI would be a good thing, because even intermediate-level VFPs have a problem with the DCS: P-51D AI. However, the present AI is very much defeatable (even when handicapping oneself), and it's good for skilled VFPs to practice on.

Ilya was the one responsible for CloD, right? And the bugs aside, that seems to have been a big step in the right direction, compared with old IL-2. Well, best of luck to the new guys--may they make the best Second World War fighter sim that can be.

I'll bet Yo-Yo would have a blast with the flight physics for that.

Well, since you spoiled my ninja-delete, probably not. ; )