Turn rate has tanked with new update

[captain_dalan]

 

Had a chance to do some more detailed evaluations tonight. All in all, not that bad in this patch. Definitely better then before. But still a wee bit lacking. Bellow 250 both planes are OK. 300-350 they are both about 0.3 or maybe 0.4g behind. I  think the former rather then latter. That's about a degree, maybe slightly more 1.2 degree per second difference. Not fatal, but considering this is the "sweet zone", preferably corrected. 400-450 the A and B are spot on! 600-650, the A is again spot on. The B seam to spike about 1-1.3g extra. I would like someone else to double check this. I want to make sure it's not my clumsiness or bad interpretation of data. 650-670, the A is sorely behind, about a whole 1g, while the B is about 0.5g above. 700-730, the A is about 0.4-0.5g behind, while the B is again about 0.5g above. 

So all in all, aside from 2 spikes (transonc for A and high subsonic for B), not all that many deviations. Some slight adjustments still needed i guess, especially for perfectionism's sake and bringing the entire thing within  0.3g or less oscillations, but the plane is not in such a bad state right now. Looking forward to some input from the dogfighting crowd!

[Kula66]

Thanks for posting Captain. Definitely feeling better, but as you say, that 300kt point is where it needs to be spot on. Keep up the good work HB!

 

Edited December 25, 2020 by Kula66

[Hummingbird]

Any ETA on the update?

 

Performance is still quite subpar compared with the charts according to my latest tests, between 0.3-0.5 G below charted values for me still.

[Victory205]

You need to post your data, including which F14 variant you are flying, and the altitude, OAT, weapons load out, weight, airspeed, G and publish a screen shot of the charts that you are referencing. 

 

Work on setting up a level turn with a stable speed, alpha and altitude. It requires deft bank angle control, as even a degree of error causes the aircraft to climb or descend, which will affect sustained G commensurately. Ensure the wings are in AUTO and the maneuvering flaps are operating. The videos I've seen show poor control and incoherent consistency. Get stable on the parameter that you are testing, and then look at the numbers. Don’t chase.

 

My testing shows that the F14A is over performing slightly with a 4x4 load out at both 5000 and 15,000 MSL. It's very close.

Edited January 6, 2021 by Victory205

[fat creason]

There are updates coming but I can't promise a date as these types of changes are extremely time consuming and I work on this project in my free time. Unfortunately the turn rate and performance tuning is the last item in a very long process. We are currently investigating drag for fuel tanks and stores mounted in the tunnel, supersonic airframe drag, and AB thrust in the supersonic region. Turn rate performance can be evaluated and tuned after all these other issues have been resolved and set in stone, and the process takes almost twice as long as we now have 2 airframes/engines. Releasing these updates piecemeal will probably not end well so I plan to fix all these issues in another branch and it will show up when it shows up. Sorry I can't give a more concrete answer for the time being.

Edited January 5, 2021 by fat creason

[maxsin72]

19 hours ago, fat creason said:

There are updates coming but I can't promise a date as these types of changes are extremely time consuming and I work on this project in my free time. Unfortunately the turn rate and performance tuning is the last item in a very long process. We are currently investigating drag for fuel tanks and stores mounted in the tunnel, supersonic airframe drag, and AB thrust in the supersonic region. Turn rate performance can be evaluated and tuned after all these other issues have been resolved and set in stone, and the process takes almost twice as long as we now have 2 airframes/engines. Releasing these updates piecemeal will probably not end well so I plan to fix all these issues in another branch and it will show up when it shows up. Sorry I can't give a more concrete answer for the time being.

 

I think flight model is one of the most important problem to fix and i'm surprised and worried you work on it during your free time. I think all the people who play bfm is waiting for it. 

[fat creason]

5 hours ago, maxsin72 said:

I think flight model is one of the most important problem to fix and i'm surprised and worried you work on it during your free time. I think all the people who play bfm is waiting for it. 

 

Not sure if you're aware of this; at Heatblur we have some full time employees, but none of the programmers at Heatblur work for Heatblur full time. We all have day jobs which means work on the F-14 can only happen in our free time. I believe the majority of 3rd parties operate this way (I could be wrong). It's one of the reasons things can take so long. The reason we choose to make products like the Tomcat is only because we are as passionate about flight simulation as you are.

Edited January 6, 2021 by fat creason

[maxsin72]

1 hour ago, fat creason said:

 

Not sure if you're aware of this; at Heatblur we have some full time employees, but none of the programmers at Heatblur work for Heatblur full time. We all have day jobs which means work on the F-14 can only happen in our free time. I believe the majority of 3rd parties operate this way (I could be wrong). It's one of the reasons things can take so long. The reason we choose to make products like the Tomcat is only because we are as passionate about flight simulation as you are.

 

I understand, thanks for your answer.

Edited January 7, 2021 by maxsin72

[Captain Mete Pitchell]

On 11/18/2020 at 7:11 PM, Hummingbird said:

With the new update the sustained turn rate of the Tomcat has decreased below EM chart values for some reason, so much so that the F-15 is actually matching the F-14 in sustainable load factor at 0.5-0.6 mach atm. There also seems there's an issue with stores drag, as if removing stores doesn't help with drag at all.

Tinfoil hat time...

 

It's like the F14B flight model in DCS just hits a wall where the EM chart drops off/flatlines/describes no further performance data because of the 6.5G soft limit that the Navy imposed on all F14's in the real world to extend airframe life which the pilot situationally chose whether or not to comply with every time he pulled on the stick even though the F14B was capable of higher sustained G and turn rates at slower speeds than is stated in the EM chart I've seen circulating in this thread because that USN mandated G limit to preserve airframe life.

Edited January 10, 2021 by Ur_A_Cop

[Hummingbird]

Just to be clear, I have no problem staying in a level turn and maintaining altitude, been flying in this sim and flight testing for many years, I've got that down. With that said the F-14B is definitely underperforming in STR atm, anywhere between 0.3-0.5 G below charted values in the 4x4 config under the same atm conditions in the subsonic region. Haven't tested in the supersonic region, yet. HB can easily verify this by running tests themselves.

 

Also if they got the thrust figures right then I don't see any reason why the F-14A would be more accurate.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Hummingbird

[Victory205]

Can you take a screen shot of the chart you are referencing and post it here? 

 

Also, posting the data points that you are referencing will help- I need altitude, weight, configuration and specific indicated airspeeds that you are testing. 

Edited January 11, 2021 by Victory205

[GunSlingerAUS]

On 1/6/2021 at 8:47 AM, fat creason said:

There are updates coming but I can't promise a date as these types of changes are extremely time consuming and I work on this project in my free time. 

 

 

I'm a little surprised by this - does this mean Heatblur is no longer focused on DCS products?

[Hummingbird]

7 hours ago, Victory205 said:

Can you take a screen shot of the chart you are referencing and post it here? 

 

Also, posting the data points that you are referencing will help- I need altitude, weight, configuration and specific indicated airspeeds that you are testing. 

 

 

I can, but am I allowed? Rule 1.16 is pretty strictly upheld here.

 

 

[fat creason]

4 hours ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

I'm a little surprised by this - does this mean Heatblur is no longer focused on DCS products?

 

No, Heatblur has always been like this, at least on the engineering/programming side. I believe many other 3rd parties operate like this as well. All of the Tomcat code was developed by 5-6 guys in our free time.

Edited January 12, 2021 by fat creason

[Victory205]

Pretty amazing. It’s basically a labor of love...

[GunSlingerAUS]

3 hours ago, fat creason said:

 

No, Heatblur has always been like this, at least on the engineering/programming side. I believe many other 3rd parties operate like this as well. All of the Tomcat code was developed by 5-6 guys in our free time.

 

 

So, what would it take for y'all to come live in Australia and start a full-time studio? 

[draconus]

4 hours ago, fat creason said:

 

No, Heatblur has always been like this, at least on the engineering/programming side. I believe many other 3rd parties operate like this as well. All of the Tomcat code was developed by 5-6 guys in our free time.

 

It's no longer free time when you work and get paid. It may be not your day job, alright, but still a job - freelancing. If you did not get paid then I'm sorry, we'll come up with some funds

[fat creason]

10 hours ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

So, what would it take for y'all to come live in Australia and start a full-time studio? 

 

Can you afford to pay competitive western salaries for 6 experienced full time engineers?  In the US this would be in the $90,000-120,000+/year range.

 

9 hours ago, draconus said:

It's no longer free time when you work and get paid. It may be not your day job, alright, but still a job - freelancing. If you did not get paid then I'm sorry, we'll come up with some funds

 

We do get paid, but it's not enough to make a living from (in the West at least), hence the reason we can't all do Heatblur full time. The only reason the Tomcat exists is because we traded large amounts of our free time and experience/expertise for an extremely non-equivalent amount of money. I think something that is lost on many people in the DCS community is lack of awareness of the skillsets required to make these simulations. Experienced engineers and programmers with these skillsets are very hard to find and tend to be very expensive. If 3rd party DCS modules were about the money, there would be far fewer of them and they would be of lower quality.

Edited January 12, 2021 by fat creason

[Victory205]

8 minutes ago, fat creason said:

 

Can you afford to pay competitive western salaries for 6 full time engineers? 

 

 

We do get paid, but it's not enough to make a living from (in the West at least), hence the reason we can't all do Heatblur full time. The only reason the Tomcat exists is because we traded large amounts of our free time and experience/expertise for a non-equivalent amount of money. I think something that is lost on many people in the DCS community is lack of awareness of the skillsets needed to make these simulations. Engineers and programmers with these skillsets are very hard to find and tend to be very expensive. If 3rd party DCS modules were about the money, there would be far fewer of them and they would be of lower quality.

 

 

Count me as one who is continually astonished that all of this is created from nothing...

 

It’s kind of like walking down 5th Avenue in NYC and realizing that everything that you are looking at, the towering buildings, the vehicles, the products for sale in the shops, including Tiffany’s, all came out of the ground. Hell, the F14 came out of the ground, and the minds of a group of geniuses.

 

So why are so many perpetually pissed off about something trivial?

[TLTeo]

6 minutes ago, Victory205 said:

So why are so many perpetually pissed off about something trivial?

Because we're on the Internet, where everything is a world ending tragedy that must be addressed RIGHT NOW

[Hummingbird]

I'm not pissed off at all, I just want the aircraft to perform as it should, and want to know when to expect that to happen. Nothing else from here.

 

That said, it would be nice if updates that screw up the FM would be postponed until they don't, and that we can run with the version that performs correctly performance wise until then though. I say this as these performance issues actually prevent those of us who enjoy BFM'ing from flying the thing, which has now been a good couple of months, and that is hard for those of us who loved flying the thing. So I would've personally prefered for the "old" but correctly performing FM to be kept until the changes needed in other areas could be implemented without breaking the performance - that way many of us could keep on enjoying flying the aircraft until the next update which corrects another area, without breaking another, becomes available. That would be my only critique.

 

I sorely miss flying the thing.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Hummingbird

[Slant]

1 hour ago, Victory205 said:

So why are so many perpetually pissed off about something trivial?

 

While I generally agree with your points, this is a misconception. People tend to come across much angrier than they actually are when they post on forums. It's the curse of the written word that you can be much more dramatic in saying something that you would very calmly get across if you were face to face. Perhaps the lack of visual cues prompts people to emphasize their lingering mood that way. And of course, in a face-to-face situation, people's reactions (nodding or frowning) to the beginning of your argument's statement may temper how you end it. Which happens more often than people would like to admit. Since we do not have the ability to seek instant visual approval on a forum, we tend to go through unfiltered and only realise in the responses what bollocks we produced. Not everyone thinks their posts through the first time, but many would like to take their posts back, or at least rephrase them in a less confrontational manner.

 

Except, it's the internet, once it's out there, it's out there.

 

This post sponsored by: Rhetorical questions nobody wanted answered...

Edited January 12, 2021 by Slant

[SgtPappy]

1 hour ago, Slant said:

 

While I generally agree with your points, this is a misconception. People tend to come across much angrier than they actually are when they post on forums. It's the curse of the written word that you can be much more dramatic in saying something that you would very calmly get across if you were face to face. Perhaps the lack of visual cues prompts people to emphasize their lingering mood that way. And of course, in a face-to-face situation, people's reactions (nodding or frowning) to the beginning of your argument's statement may temper how you end it. Which happens more often than people would like to admit. Since we do not have the ability to seek instant visual approval on a forum, we tend to go through unfiltered and only realise in the responses what bollocks we produced. Not everyone thinks their posts through the first time, but many would like to take their posts back, or at least rephrase them in a less confrontational manner.

 

Except, it's the internet, once it's out there, it's out there.

 

This post sponsored by: Rhetorical questions nobody wanted answered...

 

I think this needs to be in everyone's heads before they post an angry retort. I am no exception. As HB has said many times, we are all passionate and sometimes it comes out as angry.

 

Still I think sometimes it's easy to see things like sarcasm and direct insults which is definitely not productive and sometimes pop up which in the grand scheme of things aren't justified for something as "trivial" as our hobby. We are playing a game after all - a masterpiece and work of art but no need to rage over a game.

Edited January 12, 2021 by SgtPappy

[Victory205]

Speaking generally, far beyond just sims and gamers, there is an inordinate amount of drama about pretty much everything. It’s ridiculous and childish. The sim world is beyond the pale, and it’s a facet of human nature. People love to complain, it makes them feel important, many are just immature kids that haven’t experienced the seasoning effect of adulthood. 

 

You see it every time an update is release. Someone will immediately snark about something missing. Some of the IL2 gang are seemingly playing the game from the looney bin, and don’t get me started on the YouTube creators. It’s often loudest by the people who fly the worst, who would be far better served spending time learning to run systems, or practicing basics. There was a guy bitching about single engined performance being all wrong on a light twin (I happened to have gotten my ATP in it) slagging the add on MSFS 2020 aircraft mightily. Well, he didn’t have the failed engine’s prop feathered, he didn’t have the aircraft at zero side slip, and he didn’t have the cowl flap closed. I wonder how many sales he cost the developer?

 

Most of what we’re doing is what I call “Historical Entertainment”. It’s a blast, but it’s largely meaningless, but you can learn relevant lessons about overcoming obstacles. Most don’t, they want someone else to fix their problems and make everything easier. I respect folks who take pride in being good at something that his difficult. They want it to be difficult, they take pride in overcoming challenges.

 

Take Hummingbird’s “So I would've personally prefered for the "old but correctly performing FM...” statement. This isn’t a diss on him, he understandably doesn’t know better, because there is no way for him to know, but the FM has never performed accurately. It’s had flaws from day one, and will continue to have flaws that we will flight like hell to get right. It’s a great example, because he is really saying that he was comfortable with the “old buy correctly performing FM” performance that wasn’t correct.

 

It’s a bit amusing that you are upset about minor things, when there are massive things still present that you don’t notice because they are in parts of the envelope with which you are unfamiliar. I mean really, if you knew, you’d be laughing too. 

 

Lastly, we’re all lucky to have Fat Creason working on this. He’s dedicated to getting it right, and has spent countless hours fighting to juggle the myriad of aerodynamic variables that permutate, cascade, and interact. One little change addresses one deficiency, but it causes nine more in a different part of the envelope. Depending upon your attitude, it’s either massively frustrating, or happily fascinating.
 

The only fatal mistake that you can make, is to fail to enjoy a remarkable opportunity to enjoy a very cool opportunity to experience flight. Don’t let negative people drag you into their world.

[Hummingbird]

54 minutes ago, Victory205 said:

Take Hummingbird’s “So I would've personally prefered for the "old but correctly performing FM...” statement. This isn’t a diss on him, he understandably doesn’t know better, because there is no way for him to know, but the FM has never performed accurately. It’s had flaws from day one, and will continue to have flaws that we will flight like hell to get right. It’s a great example, because he is really saying that he was comfortable with the “old buy correctly performing FM” performance that wasn’t correct.

 

I really wish you would've read the whole thing, because as I said "the version that performs correctly performance wise", which the old one did at least in terms of STR in the subsonic region (to within 0.1 to 0.05 G infact), something we tested exhaustively, and do so for pretty much all the aircraft  - DCS F-15 for example is spot on the charts for the entire speed range: 

 

Link to verify it is legally and publically available (https://www.eflightmanuals.com/ITEM_EFM/SITEM_EFM.asp?cID=3778)

 

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Hummingbird