Ground handling in CloD
 

Is it just me or is it fubar?

1) the acceleration of planes on grass is ridiculous

You have to taxi with the throttle wide open. Geoffrey Wellum mentioned that you started a Spit then you had to throttle back for warming up, otherwise the machine would roll through the next hangar in a blink of an eye - although obviously an exageration, it shows that opening the throttle just a little bit (1 inch for startup) would be enough to move the machine. I've seen Hurricanes taking of from grass airfields. I've also taken off from a grass field in a Tiger Moth - it was nothing like in Clod, not like a freight train.

2) brakes

You had to be very crareful with them, or the aeroplane would turn on its nose. In CloD it wont, unless you're rolling at 60 mph. Differetial brakes have hardly any effect, which brings me to the next point:

3) turning - the rudder and differential brakes have no authority. How come?

I mean the FM is rather convincing, these planes fly much like real planes do - a lot better than the old il2 - but on the ground...well it's very far off, I'm afraid.

I don't find this to be the case at all.

Disagree again. I use differential braking all the time when taxiing 109s.

+1

The nose tipping tendancy of most aeroplanes under brakes in CLOD is overdone imo. There are many statements in the various test reports that discuss this.

Differential braking works quite ok I think, but for the Spit and Hurri you have to set your brake axis/key to the "all wheels" (don't know the command name in the english version) breaks command in order to have differential braking combined with the rudder.

On other planes (109, 110,..) you can set different axis/keys for left/right wheel brakes.

It shocks me that you don't find it off.
You have to taxi with 25% throttle or more- that's insane.

Also, you can't even turn on the ground properly - yest I've set up my controls properly, the gauges show that - not to mention acceleration on takeoff.

Seriously, doesn't it all feel totally wrong? (PS, the problem is a lot more pronunced on RAF planes)

Also, how can you seriously say that the nose tipping is overdone? Double the effect and even then it would be overdone. In clod you can pull the brakes brainlessly without any effect (in RAF planes).

Negative here - I need to throttle way back if I want to stand still. Better than % it would be great to see Boost and RPM values. I see your A2A sig - You know why they had 2 ack-acks hanging on the tail when doing engine run up (I prefer WAAFs actually :D) at 2000RPM. I agree this tendency is not present in CoD (simplification perhaps...), but as for the taxiing and acceleration, it's not too bad.

Yeah - braking in RAF is a bit off, should be more responsive imho, but it's not all that bad. You need to slow down, turn your nose and accelerate.

Negative, I have to be very careful with brakes in RAF planes, otherwise I would nose over. In fact, these tail draggers were quite infamous. Can't tell if it's overdone or not.

As for what IvanK says - we never taxied in a Spitfire but this gentleman is a professional pilot and he happens to fly warbirds, too. I would not argue wit him dude ;)

Earlier you said that "wide open throttle" was necessary to taxi.

What exactly are the gauges showing you that tells you turning on the ground is not proper? AFAIK there is no "ground turning" gauge.

No, it really doesn't all feel totally wrong.

Interesting post, I'm currently flying (few hours by the moment) a real taildragger (Mudry CAP10B) and I feel that COD has no propwash effect modelled, that in reality makes unnecessary to use so much the brakes.

About not flipping nose down in CoD, it depends on the plane. It is reported that real 109 could full brake without flipping, just with stick pulled back. Since there's no porpwash in CoD, it's useless to pull back the stick anyway...

So... we want a realistic propwash!

I the Spit at least (don't know for other planes) you have a gauge showing you brake pressure, you see it going up when braking.