The more I fly the spitty...

[122sqn Bruv]

I appreciate your enthusiasm for the Spitfire and your comparison. 

 

I've recently upgraded my CH combatstick to a VKB stick and whilst giving a slightly different feel in the handling the most important thing is getting the pitch Axis setup correctly.   You'll need to fly it for many more hours to really appreciate the glove like feeling.

 

Practice makes perfect.  

[Holbeach]

21 hours ago, Finnster said:

So... how much time to you have in real airplanes? I understand the frustration of developing expertise that suddenly is no longer required, but wouldn't you rather have realistic flight?  DCS does some things very well. I think it hits most of the climb and speed numbers, and once trimmed it flies ok. It's just the missing elements (stall buffet and snap roll) that, along with the strange landing behaviours, that frustrate me.

 

Quite a bit actually, including taildraggers.

 

The Spitfire and Harrier are my favourites and both required an enormous ammount of effort to get right.

 

If I have time off and come back, I have to re-learn and put time in to get back in shape.

 

After contiually crashing back in 2016, I finally got the hang, (a light bulb moment), when it all came together and I did 3 landings in a row.

 

This is what makes it all so good.

 

 

[Davee]

14 hours ago, Finnster said:

Hi Catseye This extreme behaviour at very low speed is one of the issues I was talking about. If there is no wind, as you come to a stop with throttle set to low or minimum,  there is no reason for the airplane to suddenly head into the woods. Here's what I've found helps.  As you come into land, keep your feet moving on the rudder pedals. As soon as you get the tail down, start applying the brake in gentle 'bumps'.  As you slow keep your feet reacting SLIGHTLY to the motion left or right. Don't get heavy handed.  In truth, once the spit's tail is down and you are slowing on a straight line, there really is no earthly reason other than a sudden heavy gust of wind for your airplane to veer at low speed. The first control to become effective in flight, and the last to lose effectiveness is the rudder.  In real life, once you're so slow that  the rudder has no effect, you should be pretty much stopped. 

Thanks for the feedback Finnster,

I did not think of the wind factor so will check to see what those conditions are.

 

[DD_Fenrir]

Bear in mind the Spit will want to weather vane into the wind so any crosswind component and she'll want to point her nose at it.

Edited January 17, 2021 by DD_Fenrir

[Finnster]

On 1/17/2021 at 2:36 PM, DD_Fenrir said:

Bear in mind the Spit will want to weather vane into the wind so any crosswind component and she'll want to point her nose at it.

 

yes... but it's  less of an issue in low wing planes than high wing.  Still even a slight wind can require you to hold a bit of aileron into it and as alway, keep busy on the rudder pedals.

[mrprime]

OP pretty much reflects my experience with the Spit to date. I appreciate the majority of consumer sticks have nowhere near the throw of the stick in the spit, but I have a Virpil WarBRD base with no extension and find the spit uncontrollably twitchy without heavily desaturating the pitch/roll axis. 

 

There's very little feedback in the aircraft for when it's about to do something crazy. Dog fighting with wake turbulence enabled really exaggerates these issues where flying through the trail of an aircraft a couple hundred feet ahead of you can flip the spit upside its head. 

 

I understand the need to 'git gud' but I really think this module is asking too much of the user when compared to other WW2 modules that don't suffer these issues. Seemingly everyone uses aggressive curves as a necessity, and requires that we can maintain the flight envelope with no significant audio/visual feedback for what the aircraft is about to do. 

 

In real life you'd have a better sense of the wind, the vibrations in the pit and through the stick, we get none of that and it's pretty tough to fill in the gaps.

 

[grafspee]

I found no issue in any of that. Plane is very sensitive to to stick movement, it is just matter of precision in your arm then.

[Doc3908]

My biggest issue with the Spit is how easily she overheats. Yes, it may have been realistically modeled, but it takes all the fun out of flying it in combat (at least for me...). 

 

In terms of stalls, I find the Spit much tamer than the Mustang. I find the accelerated stall on the P-51 to be ridiculous (no idea how it is in real life) especially considering how smooth and "non-twitchy" the Mustang feels compared to the Spit. The "twitchiness" of the Spit makes it feel more "real".

 

As for the landings, my problem was that, once slowed down enough, she would just decide to turn left or right, do a 360, and then scrape a wing. Eventually, I learned that if I bind the slider on my Thrustmaster throttle to the breaks and set it on landing so that the breaks are "applied" at 15%-20% or so, then I can slow down and stop straight without any wing scraping. This is in effect the same as keeping the breaks handle on the real plane slightly pressed as you're landing. I don't know if this is right or wrong technique, but it certainly helps me tame the Spit once she's on the ground. Makes taxing much easier, too...

 

[Pikey]

There is a lot here I can agree with but in completely different ways. For example, with all due respect fellow simmer, you cannot say that you expected the module to fly more like a Spitfire whilst not having a frame of reference on flying a Spitfire, and have the logic remain unchallenged!

I'm sympathetic as far as flying the DCS sim doesnt feel like I imagined it to be either, considering every film you watch on it the Spit is extolled for its ability to charm pilots. But that's not going to wash because we are stuck with peripherals that dont give the forces back. There is no real stick simulation going on, Im using a super heavy Warthog stick, the stick doesn't create a feeling of "light handling" it creates a sensation of twitchy, just like you say. I humbly suggest that at step one of these observations, we are left with the unfortunate difference on simulation vs real world.

Snap rolls. No problem getting 1 roll but recovering is an issue.here. Too dangerous for me, I keep getting into a spin when the plane requires the roll to stop. The nose is too high over the horizon on the recovery and opposite rudder seems to accelerate the spin. The yaw swing is horrific and takes a long time to settle down. Quite interesting though, It's harder than the Tomcat to recover, it's downright dangerous. Are there references for the behaviour by people that flew it?

 

Buffet, It's very easy to see but its only a very small aoa you get it for in the sim. Easiest way to see it is in level flight. Any roll or yaw at the time will make this a wing stall and you dont see the buffet.

Ease of landing. Not had an issue other than the landing rollout where I always get a yaw that ends up in a nice loop and scratched wing. But not sure this is really a problem as you said you didnt have problems, kind of mixed messages.

[philstyle]

On 1/17/2021 at 6:18 AM, Finnster said:

II have posted a video comparing the behaviour I experience in DCS to that in Aces High. 

I think you all will find it pretty fair minded.  It's a bit long, (even having two minutes of me flying to an airport edited out), and a bit verbose, but I hope you'll see what I'm talking about. AND what I love about DCS. Sorry the resolution is so low. DCS looks fantastic on my Pimax 8kx, and this video can't do it justice.

 

Just watched your video a couple of times.
The DCS spitfire absolutely will snap-roll. You just have to add in some aileron to assists the roll. The modern "stunt" method for snap rolling in stunt aircraft (i.e. no aileron) doesn't work with the spitfire's wings. It needs a touch of aileron to help it around at the beginning. But it WILL snap roll.

Furthermore, the amount of power you have on will dictate the duration and recovery. Lower power will often get you two snap rolls in quick succession. High power and good airspeed generally means you can and almost always will, roll once and then recover after a small period of instability.

As for the "twitchiness" in the spitfire, yes, you are right this is the result of hardware and hardware setup. Can be easily resolved with physical extensions to hardware (I use a 10cm extension on my warthog stick) and/ or input curves.

Edited January 27, 2021 by philstyle

[=475FG= Dawger]

Having flown extensively in the real world, including several thousand hours in heavy taildraggers, as well as a few thousand hours teaching and flying in full motion simulators, I find the DCS Spitfire to be excellent. Not perfect, mind you. 
 

Someone earlier mentioned that DCS only provides visual and auditory feedback. I cannot stress how important this point is. Any simulation of aircraft will SEEM more sensitive or “harder” to operate than its real world counterpart even if it is actually perfectly replicating its subject. In a real aircraft you feel before you see changes and can react with much smaller corrections.

 

I have confirmed this myself in direct comparisons of a real aircraft and its simulator specifically approved to be exact in its replication.

 

The DCS Spitfire flies like I expect it to, requiring a very light touch on the controls. In the real world, we talk more about applying control pressure than “moving” the controls in a light, responsive aircraft. 
 

I once flew an experimental aircraft with very large ailerons. Single seat so no friendly advice. During the first stall recovery, the aircraft kept entering secondary asymmetric stalls, indicating aileron induced secondary stalls. I was holding the stick dead center as I had been trained but that was not dead center with the precision required for this aircraft. I let go of the stick and the aircraft recovered nicely.

 

The DCS Spitfire requires that sort of gentle treatment and flies beautifully. 
 

Not perfectly. Like all DCS warbirds, engine torque is severely lacking and ground handling is not modeled well. The first could be fixed but the second probably can’t be and probably shouldn’t be fixed. Taxying a taildragger with proper ground handling simulation when you are unable to feel side force would be a miserable experience. 

[grafspee]

34 minutes ago, pmiceli said:

Not perfectly. Like all DCS warbirds, engine torque is severely lacking 

At which part of the flight this severe lack of torque is the most visible ?

[Yo-Yo]

1 hour ago, pmiceli said:

 

Not perfectly. Like all DCS warbirds, engine torque is severely lacking 

Stating this you have to refer to trim diagrams that are available for several DCS planes. The torque itself is presented with aileron deflection required to trim the plane, as well as rudder deflection required for yaw counteracting. So, if you have something you can refer to, we will be very glad to see it here instead of simple declaration.

[Pikey]

Yes indeed, Yoyo is touching upon something that simmers and pilots both forget, to put this in other words:

The torque is absolutely hitting that tail in the sim, but what we all forget is that the stick/rudder we hold, is sitting neutral.
In a sim with a non force feedback stick or rudder, holding the stick/rudder centered, takes no effort, it is supposed to stay centered, we are commanding it to stay centered! But we don't realise that centered is the only command we make that requires no effort!! Without force feedback, holding them centered is actually a FORCE that we don't even realise we are exerting because we arent't touching the controls, its just staying centered because there is no force feedback.

Watch the rudders move on the P-47 when you add power! And that is an entire force that you can't feel, dont often see and your controllers are counteracting without you ever knowing about it, just by virtue of the way a controller works without force feedback. It's so sad, all that effort to sim it and we dont get to feel it!

You have to imagine the feeling of power that would come through the controls if they were a real plane, instead of this dull plastic crap we get We need decent FF hardware to get into simming, the sim works, its just it can't tell you whats going on properly.

[john4pap]

Please forgive the simplistic way I may think over this. I fly the Spitfire with a sidewinder force feedback 2 and MFG pedals. I got the pedals last year and they made a huge difference compared to the twist axis. I got my joystick back in 2001 and don't have any real experience with any non-FF joystick. I feel that the DCS Spitfire is a very easy plane to fly once you get the curves right to account for the greater throw on the real airplane.

But this forum gets more and more reports of people who have trouble flying the plane. So this gets me wondering if those who have no problem with it are us who fly it with FF...

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Tapatalk

[zcrazyx]

2 hours ago, john4pap said:

Please forgive the simplistic way I may think over this. I fly the Spitfire with a sidewinder force feedback 2 and MFG pedals. I got the pedals last year and they made a huge difference compared to the twist axis. I got my joystick back in 2001 and don't have any real experience with any non-FF joystick. I feel that the DCS Spitfire is a very easy plane to fly once you get the curves right to account for the greater throw on the real airplane.

But this forum gets more and more reports of people who have trouble flying the plane. So this gets me wondering if those who have no problem with it are us who fly it with FF...

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Tapatalk
 

 

I dont fly with force feedback, i have X56 Rhino and Pro Flight rudders, i think its perhaps i just have a curve that works for me though, in saying that i have been flying the ww2 stuff for years now

[Weegie]

I'm rubbish had a go in a real aeroplane perhaps 40 years ago for 30 minutes, that's my total experience.

Do quite a lot in sims though but really only DCS now

 

No feedback peripherals at all.

 

I find the Spit perfectly fine and it flies and trims well for me.

 

I usually can't get the trimming quite perfect but I can trim it well enough to remove my hands from the stick without any drama at fixed engine settings.

 

Landing is tricky but not so hard with a bit of practice, so you know what to expect

 

That said I'm not a combat guy, the joy of this sim for me is the comms, navigiation, weather, flight characteristics etc:

[Saetta]

Hello. I have both hotas warthog and force feedback 2, and I can say that with ww2 aircraft in DCS having the FF makes a huge difference.

[golani79]

3 hours ago, john4pap said:

Please forgive the simplistic way I may think over this. I fly the Spitfire with a sidewinder force feedback 2 and MFG pedals. I got the pedals last year and they made a huge difference compared to the twist axis. I got my joystick back in 2001 and don't have any real experience with any non-FF joystick. I feel that the DCS Spitfire is a very easy plane to fly once you get the curves right to account for the greater throw on the real airplane.

But this forum gets more and more reports of people who have trouble flying the plane. So this gets me wondering if those who have no problem with it are us who fly it with FF...

Sent from my SM-J510FN using Tapatalk
 

 

Would you mind posting your curves for pitch / roll - I also have a FFB2 and so far I´ve flown without any curves - wouldn´t mind to try them out though.

[Pikey]

I just checked to find I've added 15 curve to pitch and roll and 19 to rudder and enforced a small 3 point deadzone which isnt my normal approach to other modules.

I don't believe people have trouble flying it. Not with enough practice. I do believe people can say that its twitchy, that I can believe readily. And I can believe have various "funtimes" taxiing (who hasnt) and landing and taking off require a bit of ballet. And that we aren't all superhuman makign up for the lost sensations in simulators vs real machine.

That's it, I think the rest is perception, wording, comparisons to "other games", expectation and hyperbole from a small number of people who ended up short on time and rolled it and take that personally and voice their feelings. Nothing wrong with that, but its not wrong or broken, is all I believe, fwiw.

[reece146]

I think it is just a matter of not bothering to put in the amount of time to understand how to fly this plane in DCS.

 

Putting aside whether it is accurately modelled or not...

 

There is no reason why anyone can't take-off and land like a "pro" in the DCS Spitfire as shown on countless examples on Youtube.

 

That said, I'm suggesting this with the caveat that the user has a joystick, rudder pedals, and analog brake handle. I can't imagine being successful with a keyboard but there's probably people that have done it.

 

If this old fart can do it with a T16000/TWCS set up then anyone can.

 

There is a point where things "click" and suddenly you can feel (see actually) the momentum changes in the aircraft and are able to control it without thinking  - once comfortable with the controls.

 

Also, framerate, framerate, framerate!

 

2¢

Edited January 28, 2021 by reece146

[reece146]

I think that if people get frustrated with the Spitfire or others... take a break and go take the TF51 for a spin.

 

I did this a coupple days ago when discussing things with a friend that was new to DCS. I hadn't flown it in almost a year. I was shocked/surprised at how docile and easy to handle it was on the ground and how it seemed to jump into the sky on take off. This is after after messing around with the other warbirds for the last year.

 

So, if people could take a step back and fly the TF51 I think they would see concrete improvement if feeling discouraged.

 

2.5¢

[cromhunt]

???

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by cromhunt

[john4pap]

7 hours ago, golani79 said:

 

Would you mind posting your curves for pitch / roll - I also have a FFB2 and so far I´ve flown without any curves - wouldn´t mind to try them out though.

Certainly. Check out this video by DD_Fenrir. It works for me:

 

 

No curves on the MFGs.

 

 

It's good to hear that people with non-FF joysticks have no problem with this plane. After all my Sidewinder is old and I'll be moving to a conventional stick sooner or later (unless some miracle happens with FF production).

 

5 hours ago, reece146 said:

I think it is just a matter of not bothering to put in the amount of time to understand how to fly this plane in DCS.

If it's not FF then it must be it. It took a lot of beating online before I felt comfortable flying the DCS Spit. But it is rewarding; and to be honest this plane is the only plane I've ever flown in any sim from which I can feel like I'm flying. It's a little sad seeing people criticizing it that much lately throwing data and testimonies into discussion while it is evident that the problem is their hardware or their lack of devotion in learning how to fly it.

[reece146]

Also, @philstyle has a decent video on landings with the Spit. After watching/implementing the ideas in that video I had a Eureka moment a few hours later and landings were no longer a big deal.