Phoenix Pallets are not influencing aircraft performance...

[Callsign JoNay]

This is a formal bug report to let the team know that the phoenix pallets are not influencing aircraft performance. It is not just a bug of the weapon loadout screen in the mission editor, which seems to be the understanding of the HeatBlur team.

Two months ago a user on Reddit asked a question about the weight of the phoenix pallets, and whether or not the current flight model was accounting for them or not. @Cobra847 replied to the redditor and claimed that the Phoenix pallets have always been accounted for in the flight model, and that if there is something causing them to not influence the model it should be reported as bug. Cobra's reply garnered 67 up votes. I replied to Cobra stating that the users of the HB F-14 proved in 2021 that the Phoenix pallets were definitely not affecting the F-14 flight model performance, and I referenced the topic and pages where the data was provided. My reply garnered 10 down votes, go figure.

Here is a screen capture to the reddit conversation:

And here is a link to the old Performance/FM Discussion topic that I referenced in my reply to Cobra:

In pages 19-21 of the discussion topic we provided data to the team to prove that the FM was not correctly modelling the weight of the Phoenix pallets. Even Victory205 was involved in the discussion, and advised us how to properly test it. This was reported to the team in 2021, and nothing ever came from it.

At the time of this Reddit discussion I knew that there were more flight model updates on the horizon, scheduled for the beginning of 2023 as per Iron Mike, so I refrained from testing until after the most recent update just in case the Phoenix pallet weight issue would be solved by Fat Creason's newest update. Today I tested again, (in MT on the latest OB), and I can confirm that the Phoenix pallets are still not affecting the F-14B's in-game performance.

 

How I tested:

I tested three aircraft. The first aircraft is a clean F-14B, loaded with 10,000 lbs internal fuel (set to unlimited fuel in the settings so that the weight stayed consistent), no pallets or stores. The second aircraft was the same except it had four Phoenix pallets equipped. The weight of the pallets including the fairings, should total approximately 2,200 lbs of weight, according to public sources. The third aircraft was the same as the first except it was equipped with four AIM-7P in the tunnel instead of the pallets. Each Sparrow is approximately 500 lbs, so they should be a very close approximation of the weight/drag that should be created by equipping Phoenix pallets in the tunnel. 

I tested all three aircraft at 800 feet, same weather conditions, same heading, gear, flaps, and hook down, DLC engaged in neutral position, trimmed until on-speed according to the AOA indexer and HUD staple. Then I paused the game to reference the IAS according to the F2 view.

Aircraft #1, clean loadout, trimmed on speed: 137 IAS:

 

Aircraft #2, 4x Phoenix pallets, trimmed on speed: 137 IAS:

Aircraft #3, 4x Sparrow in the tunnel, trimmed on-speed: 143 IAS:

Attached here is the miz file I used in case you want to test yourself.

Pallet weight test.miz

[fat creason]

Hey @Callsign JoNay thanks for the testing and info! Facts and hard numbers are always appreciated!

I'm generally not the stores/loadout guy but this must have slipped through the cracks or been the product of an internal misunderstanding, I'll take a look. The good news is this doesn't impact the FM tuning since all the testing that informed the tuning was done with non-Phoenix loadouts. This will only add some extra weight so the performance should work out accordingly. Now we just need to figure out why the weight isn't being added properly...


Everyone else: take note of how this FM bug report was presented and formatted, I will ignore reports that are based purely on feelings!

Edited April 20, 2023 by fat creason

[Scotia]

Spoiler

2 hours ago, Callsign JoNay said:

This is a formal bug report to let the team know that the phoenix pallets are not influencing aircraft performance. It is not just a bug of the weapon loadout screen in the mission editor, which seems to be the understanding of the HeatBlur team.

Two months ago a user on Reddit asked a question about the weight of the phoenix pallets, and whether or not the current flight model was accounting for them or not. @Cobra847 replied to the redditor and claimed that the Phoenix pallets have always been accounted for in the flight model, and that if there is something causing them to not influence the model it should be reported as bug. Cobra's reply garnered 67 up votes. I replied to Cobra stating that the users of the HB F-14 proved in 2021 that the Phoenix pallets were definitely not affecting the F-14 flight model performance, and I referenced the topic and pages where the data was provided. My reply garnered 10 down votes, go figure.

Here is a screen capture to the reddit conversation:

And here is a link to the old Performance/FM Discussion topic that I referenced in my reply to Cobra:

In pages 19-21 of the discussion topic we provided data to the team to prove that the FM was not correctly modelling the weight of the Phoenix pallets. Even Victory205 was involved in the discussion, and advised us how to properly test it. This was reported to the team in 2021, and nothing ever came from it.

At the time of this Reddit discussion I knew that there were more flight model updates on the horizon, scheduled for the beginning of 2023 as per Iron Mike, so I refrained from testing until after the most recent update just in case the Phoenix pallet weight issue would be solved by Fat Creason's newest update. Today I tested again, (in MT on the latest OB), and I can confirm that the Phoenix pallets are still not affecting the F-14B's in-game performance.

 

How I tested:

I tested three aircraft. The first aircraft is a clean F-14B, loaded with 10,000 lbs internal fuel (set to unlimited fuel in the settings so that the weight stayed consistent), no pallets or stores. The second aircraft was the same except it had four Phoenix pallets equipped. The weight of the pallets including the fairings, should total approximately 2,200 lbs of weight, according to public sources. The third aircraft was the same as the first except it was equipped with four AIM-7P in the tunnel instead of the pallets. Each Sparrow is approximately 500 lbs, so they should be a very close approximation of the weight/drag that should be created by equipping Phoenix pallets in the tunnel. 

I tested all three aircraft at 800 feet, same weather conditions, same heading, gear, flaps, and hook down, DLC engaged in neutral position, trimmed until on-speed according to the AOA indexer and HUD staple. Then I paused the game to reference the IAS according to the F2 view.

Aircraft #1, clean loadout, trimmed on speed: 137 IAS:

 

Aircraft #2, 4x Phoenix pallets, trimmed on speed: 137 IAS:

Aircraft #3, 4x Sparrow in the tunnel, trimmed on-speed: 143 IAS:

Attached here is the miz file I used in case you want to test yourself.

Pallet weight test.miz 8.15 kB · 2 downloads

 

Thanks for doing the research on this, I hope they get it corrected soon!  Very through!

[fat creason]

Should have a fix for this in the next OB...

[Callsign JoNay]

41 minutes ago, fat creason said:

Should have a fix for this in the next OB...

Thanks. Although it will almost surely nerf performance, it will be nice to finally need to factor pallets into the max trap weight. 

[fat creason]

Indeed. Just a heads up it won't appear in the mission editor displayed weight...the extra weight had to be added on our side manually since we can't add it via the loadout API.

Edited April 27, 2023 by fat creason