Not to some extent..

Actually in most cases we will have to rely on a calculated (what you call hypothesizes) value.

Because truth be told, they did NOT test every variant of every plane in WWII.. Add to that the fact that most tests in WWII were limited to '2' (ROC, TOP SPEED per Altitude) sometimes '3' (ROC, TOP SPEED per Altitude, Time to Climb) performance tests. And a lot of those were lost during or since the war.

As noted here, out of the hundreds upon thousands of plane types used during WWII we only have about '6' turn rate tests, and only at one altitude.

Now consider 'other' factors people love to whine about.. say roll rates.. There was very little testing done on that during WWII..

So with that said MOST of the data used in WWII flight sims is of the 'calculated' type (what you call hypothesizes)

Yes all six or so turn rate test should be used along with the half dozen or so roll rate tests

I would call it more of a sanity check than a calibration

All in all the turn rate and roll rate data is very limited, because they just didn't bother or think those values were worth testing. Where 'they' did find ROC and Top Speed per Altitude worth testing.. So that data is much easier to find, but, they didn't always re-test a plane when a variant of said plane came out.

So, there is almost always going to be a calculation done, if not from scratch or to tweak existing data for a variant of the plane

That is true!

Engineers like myself do it all the time in all fields of engineering! ;)

I don't understand if it's sarcasm. I don't know your field but I got 3 friends who happen to be aeronautical engineers, using the right software they have the tools to do it with a good approximation.

I think that a developer of a flight sim should be in contact with experts in this field.

No sarcasm (you agree with what I have been saying)

The point is, most of the data needed is 'calculated' using aeronautical engineering techniques

The real world performance data is not used in the FM as much as it is used as a sanity check of the results of the FM

Who says they are not?

Like my sig says.. put another way.. most of the 'issues' with the FM are 'issues' with the users, not the FM

Albeit I agree that some too easily blame the fm for their misfortune in a dogfight. However you cannot just deny that there is a general problem with the fm of most planes.

It is also too easy to just blame each player here to be bad pilots when they find that plane xy is too slow or porked in another way.

:o Not sure what you're on about here with the bicycle and stuff, but that little 'fight' of ours on ATAG was rather interesting, wasn't it? ;)

Honestly, I hope the devs will keep improving the sim FM-wise - I believe the main FM problems are well known and documented and I am looking forward for the upcoming patches.

It sure was (I really mean it). Hopefully this is a computer game and I live to fight another day. :mrgreen:
Regards.

so why couldn't they just let the physical model do it? give different parts of the plane weight, give the air weight, then let the physics engine do the work instead of giving the planes flying attributes absolute values... so there's no flight model at all...

since this game is really graphically intensive and hardly uses any CPU at all really... but i guess we still have a ways to go for that?

i was just thinking that because it doesn't matter weather its a machine gun or a sack of potatos if they weigh the same, they'll effect the characteristics of the airplane very similarly... so that way you wouldn't need to know the flying characteristics of the plane, just the thrust, shape and weight distribution

A 6DOF flight model is a physics model!! Calculated on the fly (pun intended) in real time

Nope! 6DOF flight models have been in use on PCs for some years now.. First I know of was PACIFIC AIR WAR 1942 by Microprose.. Back than it used fixed point math, but it was a 6DOF FM. As you noted, the modern CPUs have no problem what so ever running a floating point 6DOF FM. Prior to that PC flight models were, what was commonly known as TABLE BASED (read lookup) flight models that had very little physics to them (SWOTL, RB, AOTP, AOE, etc)

Bingo!

Sure I can.. Or should I say.. Thus far NO ONE has provided anything that would be considered proof there is an error in the FM! Which is not to be confused with me saying there is no problems, only that no one (on the user side, i.e. not someone from 1C) has provided anything that would be considered proof! Look at most if not all of the threads in this forum, for every person that says the PLANE A is too slow, there is another that says PLANE A it is too fast! So what does that say about the users?

Which is why my first question to anyone making a claim of any sort is Got Track?©®. Because most of these so called claims can be put to rest by simply watching the track file, in that most of the time it is clear that it is pilot error! At least that is what I have found after years of viewing IL2 track files people provided as 'proof' of this or that