You don't need to involve Mythbusters to understand what should happen. If the engine comes off the CG will shift aft of the center of pressure. The CG can sit forward of the center of pressure in normal operation because you have a tail down force (the horizontal stab being a wing with a lift vector acting downwards) with a long arm balancing it out. This lever arm is providing the stability and pitch control. Move the CG aft of the center of pressure and you have an unbalanced system. If you were in a vacuum, it would result in a sustained backwards tumble. In the atmosphere, there are going to be some chaotic and extreme aerodynamic loads that would be applied to the airframe, which in reality would probably result in some significant structural failures.

So, it's safe to say it's not accurately modeled at present. It's also probably too much to ask for realistic CG and center of mass modeling under all flight conditions. What they should do consider is to have the loss of an engine result in a rapid pitch up and general structural failure. For a multi-engine, it would be more of a roll into the good engine side with structural failure at the root of the wing that lost the engine.

I second that (Since I have not got the sim yet, I must say what I have seen from vids posted on youtube.)
I guess it would take quite some time to strap yourself off the seat or get up from a bellygun etc and climb up or down if the plane is diving in a spiral.. :D

A sidenote: also they seem to drop their bombload almost immideatly after being shot at aswell..? I might be wrong, Ive just seen a couple of clips..

Not having done that myself, would the current effect be more realistic at night when the tracer movement would tend to burn in? In other words, it should be ball like in daytime but a bit more light saberish at night.

Yes, Hoverbug.. great Idea about loss of engine/loss of tail section !

Okay.. lets keep the thread living, show us some vids!
Gunkan, por favor.. mas videos!!!

:D

My old neighbor was a togglier/bombardier in a B-17 who flew 31 missions out of Grafton-Underwood and he said that if the plane starts spinning you get pinned against the fueselage and cant move so if these planes are spinning almost no one should be able to bail out.

Less flood, more research. One has been uploaded

I believe from what I've seen that they've cut that out. Imagine this:

If the spitfire has a bailout sequence, all planes should eventually have a bailout sequence..

That means the developers not only have to make 1 unique animation for each plane, but infact Multiple animations for each bomber with all the different crew positions. That requires a LOT of work. Maybe we'll see something like it in the future.

Also, such an animation would not be realistic in all circumstances, say in a steep 500 Km/h death-dive you wouldn't get far out of the cockpit with those wind strengths. I'd say you could easily hit the horizontal stabilizer doing a jump like that one in the video at high speeds. I read somewhere that the common way to bail out (also as seen in the movie Dark Blue World) was to open/jettison the canopy, release your harness, and with both legs retracted towards your body - kick the stick forwards so that the negative G dive would "launch" you clear of the plane.

I think as far as bailouts go, the devs should reconsider the skydiving animation for a more "tumbling and rolling" animation. I've never seen a guncam video or a 40's era parachute instruction video where the men are in a "spread eagle" move. They usually tumble about for a little until they can reach the rip-cord.

Also it looks like the pilots don't follow/retain the planes speed as they initially bail out. They seem to fall straight down whereas they should more or less fall like a bomb (with higher speed bleedoff because bombs are streamline unlike falling humans.) If they could combine this with a better animation and perhaps the pilot bailing out in a random direction (to simulate that the pilot leaps away from the plane instead of "spawning" inside it and falling straight down).

And finally, I think the chute should generally use a little more time to fully unfold. Right now it's quite instant, but chutes like that can use up to 2 seconds or more to deploy fully, actually it's quite random.

Interesting listen about bailing out :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrKzz9P794A

More "evidence" ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgWWIDNzM78

Very true in a bomber because you won't usually be able to get to an exit without effort. In a fighter, it may be possible depending on the dynamics of the spin - i.e. flat spin. If its a bit more of a dynamic oscillation, the plane might become unloaded at various points where the pilot may get lucky and be able to push out - of course not getting whacked by the tail in the process is a different issue.

I have read several times that a bomber going down was always somebody's coffin.

I crawled into a B-25 once, from the bomb bay, and then through a tunnel up into the nose. I had trouble getting through with the plane sitting on the ground. My impression was that these guys knew they had little chance of getting out of a plane in trouble, and they went anyway. That's courage.

binky9

As was mentioned this has been debated endlessly. The majority of people with military experience describe how surprised they were that tracers looked like "lasers" (real lasers look nothing like Star Wars lasers but I won't get into that.)

Some people did describe them as more like points, or fireballs as you say. But generally the consensus seemed to be that they only look like points when they are being fired out of a barrel you are looking down, so that the round is not moving much laterally to you. When seen from the side (someone else firing, or a gun in your wing or well underneath you in the nose,) they turn more or less into bars, though often with the front of the "bar" being brighter than the tail.

Now I am not speaking from personal experience so please feel free to correct me, I am simply summarizing the conclusions come to in other threads.