Beyond the tone of this thread, I think all contributors have a point...

While I see a challenge in flying full real, I tend to agree on one technical issue mentioned by Bomath: there seems to be very little information on how manage the various types of engines (variable pitch, constant speed, or airscrew).

My research led me to: http://mplayer.ethz.ch/~chapman/il2g...uide/intro.htm . However great this site is, it fails to provide practical information of how to best take-off, cruise, combat, land with for instance a P-38 or a IL2 (for instance in performance tables).

In the spirit of the initial contribution of Dreizehn, I would be greatly interested if anyone could (constructively) point out where such information can be found on the net.

Sincerely,
Profiler

I think that the IL-2 engine is not exactly correct in the CEM department. I think it's not possible to dive in a real plane with full throttle and low prop pitch without causing some kind of damage. I remember an old game, B17 The mighty 8th (the sequel, not the "ancient" original) where you had to be very careful with your engines, especially during the climb out.

That game didn't use a logic of % throttle positions. Since it focused on a single (and well documented) aircraft, the manual stated exactly what kind of manifold pressure and RPM you should aim for in climbs, level flight, cruise speed and descends and you had to monitor the instruments to get this right.

If i'm not mistaken ,there was also a rule about how to increase or decrease engine power. If you wanted to climb for example, you had to increase throttle first and RPM second (pitch), so that the engines would be producing enough power to support the increased RPM. On the other hand, if you wanted to dive you had to lower your RPM first and then decrease throttle to prevent over-revving the engines.

There was all sorts of different other options as well, for example you needed to mess with heating equipment. At low alts it should be shut down, but higher up the engines needed to be heated. Oil needs to be in a certain temperature range and not simply in low temp. In fact, if your oil temperature was getting too low it couldn't dissipate heat effectively and your engines would overheat, you actually had to make sure your engines were warmed up before take off. Of course that was a strictly offline game with time compression and varying autopilot levels, the engines would be warmed up by the time you had taxied from your parking spot to the runway.

I don't know if something like this would be desirable in a dogfight server, maybe the engines could be set to "pre-warmed" for some online modes. However, i believe it would be nice to have realism options that would force us to run the engine according to instruments and official parameters instead of experimenting with throttle positions and overtheat in QMB before going online.

I think you have that wrong. Oil not warmed did not flow freely and the engine components requiring oil would not be lubed properly.

Ah yes, i think that was the case. Anyway, it was very interesting to take these things into consideration while flying a bomber. Imagine what kind of a workload it would be to do something like this (even for a single engine) while fighting in a fighter.

I think it would discourage furballs and require that we think and plan a little bit before attacking.