Additional F and HF variants

[snocc_]

Completely agree with the original post, it would be great to have more variants of the spitfire ingame in general

[king1hw]

It would be nice to get an MKIXe wing just for the 50 cal fire power. I still believe a Merlin 66 eng.  would also help!

 

[Art-J]

We already have a -66 engine, just with standard boost ratings.

Wouldn't mind having an e-wing option, though!

Edited February 9, 2024 by Art-J

[Gunfreak]

The E wing should be relatively easy to do. It's minor graphics fix. I don't think it changes flight modeling much. And they 20mm and .50 cals are already in game. However the .50 doesn't seem very effective in game. So I'm not sure 2 .50s will be any more effective than 4 .303s 

And I think most of Spitfires with E wing would also have the gyro gunsight.

[Skewgear]

6 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

The E wing should be relatively easy to do. It's minor graphics fix. I don't think it changes flight modeling much. And they 20mm and .50 cals are already in game. However the .50 doesn't seem very effective in game. So I'm not sure 2 .50s will be any more effective than 4 .303s 

And I think most of Spitfires with E wing would also have the gyro gunsight.

I also thought this until I started digging into it. The E wing internal layout snd external detailing was different from the C wing we have now. Creating that in DCS means a new X Ray damage model and a new 3D graphic model plus a new 3D damage model.

The wing layout is different which means the guns and ammo boxes are in different places. In turn this means changes to the flight model. The original Spitfire manuals give the weight and balance changes for different armament fits.

Finally, a new gyro gunsight means a new cockpit 3D model, including coding work to integrate the sight and its new controls with the new 3D model.

You end up creating a whole new aeroplane with substantial amounts of work. Sure, the starting points are there for some of it, but it's substantially more work than retrofitting the real thing would have been.

[Gunfreak]

11 hours ago, Skewgear said:

I also thought this until I started digging into it. The E wing internal layout snd external detailing was different from the C wing we have now. Creating that in DCS means a new X Ray damage model and a new 3D graphic model plus a new 3D damage model.

The wing layout is different which means the guns and ammo boxes are in different places. In turn this means changes to the flight model. The original Spitfire manuals give the weight and balance changes for different armament fits.

Finally, a new gyro gunsight means a new cockpit 3D model, including coding work to integrate the sight and its new controls with the new 3D model.

You end up creating a whole new aeroplane with substantial amounts of work. Sure, the starting points are there for some of it, but it's substantially more work than retrofitting the real thing would have been.

Changing minor flight model stuff can't be that hard. Flight model changes each time you add or remove weapons from an aircraft, that happened in all DCS models all the time.

The wing is still mostly the same shape. So nothing drastic is happening. It's mostly 3d work.

Same with the gunsight. The Mk II gyro is basically the same the k14 in thr 47 and 51(k14 being just an American version of the mk ii) so it's mostly 3d work and some coding to adapt the gunsight to the ammo used by the spitfire.

Not saying it can be done over a weekend. But hardly a new aircraft.

From my understanding our spitfire is already a bit of a frankenbird. Originally being a MkV upgraded to MkIX. But missing many standard MkIX features both visual and practical (I've been told standard mk XIs had bomb arming switches etc)