Bouncing needles
 

Apologies if this was asked previously, but I did search through about 5 pages of search results and found nothing like this before.

I was curious about the bouncing needles that we've been seeing in all of the gameplay videos. I know that Oleg responded at one point and said the needles have inertia and so vibrations/maneuvering/etc would cause them to move, but it seems that the amount of movement is excessive.

I'm a flight instructor by trade and fly older aircraft with analog gauges (technology that has not particularly evolved over the last 70 years) and from personal experience I've never seen anything as dramatic as what's shown in the videos.

I will agree that the needs to bounce and move and especially the airspeed indicator will oscillate in turbulent/gusty conditions, but particularly the altimeter is not an instrument that moves a lot due to momentum. I believe the mechanics of it are such that it is much more resistant to movement than say the airspeed indicator.

What is the consensus about this now that there are people out there that are actually playing it? Is the needle movement still violent even in level flight as we saw in some of the videos?

Was it a 1939/40 model of a spit/ bf? Coz in IL-2 they bounce and the cockpit shudders like mad.

No bouncing needles here.

I think maybe people are damaging their airframes/flaps/control surfaces etc. and that is causing buffetting of the plane, and hence needle vibration.

Or maybe it's turbulence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnADD...layer_embedded

Not my own video.

I have just over 10,000 hours IRL flying and I too have never seen gauges jump around like they do in the videos. Airspeed, yes, it does move around alot when flying in turbulence, but everything else is pretty still. Maybe some small fluctuations in RPM, but that is about it.

This happens when your engine starts running rough, it is very nice feature. The needle does not bounce when engine running smooth in a stable flight.

Every piston aircraft shudders and shakes at certain combinations of engine RPM and airspeed. I've also endured some extremely heavy turbulence when flying through cold fronts and had my altitude change as much as 30-50ft in a single gust, but I've never seen the altimeter constantly oscillate like I see in the videos.

Good to hear, I'm glad they've refined it.

Granted I've never been in the cockpit of a Hurricane, Bf-109, or Spitfire...

I used to fix airplanes for a living. Some of them were old airplanes. Many many times, I have been in the cockpit of a plane with an engine "running rough" because I was figuring out what was wrong with it. I have never seen a tachometer needle spaz out, twitch and shake like I'm seeing in some of these videos. It doesn't happen like that.

My first post......I am also a professional pilot and flight instructor, I fly a Learjet 45 for my day job but I have about 270 hours in Tiger Moths and another 200 in The Stearman, and I have never seen the needles bounce quite this much on those aircraft.

ATPL holder here on airbus types.

The airspeed can jiggle a bit but the altimeter and vert speed should not.

the alt and v/s are measured by static pressure so less susceptible to gusts whereas speed measured by combo of static and pitot pressure.

RPM obviously the prop is a big flywheel so should not be big fluctuations and the connection from prop to gauge is mechanical

But i never flew spits........sigh

I've been playing with this and have found a few things.

First, I don't have a lot of CoD cockpit time so take this with a grain of salt. I use full real settings as the starting point. and using the German France freeflight quick mission/

I first noticed the shaking on my first flight, which happened to start about 10 seconds before I lubricated my wind screen for a total of 10 seconds flight time. Okay, bad engine management.

Determining the best manner to manage my engine I still noticed the shake, even with oil temp maintaining between 40 and 60 C and water a little above 80C. Tooling around I am setting the engine up @ 1.2 ATA and about 2100-2200 RPM.

I was able to fly to England and back. Over England, I was able to see no shake for about 30 seconds. What I had done was dove to about 800 meters ASL. So a couple things were at play here, lower altitude and faster airspeed. The shaking returned as i climbed and slowed. I thought it was speed at this point.

Starting another quick mission, I tried to tool around at a minimum 450kph. Still, shaking happened. Try this at lower altitude, its shaking.

All manner of tests using full real, I came up empty handed.

Finally giving up and not being able to take the shake, I turn of turbulence in the settings as a last ditch hope of finding what's going on. BINGO! no more shake.

So this shake that I thought was my bad engine management, seems to be caused by turbulence. I am going to test this more tonight.

Well I have only been in the cockpit of an aircraft once, a 60 year old Piper. Every instrument in that thing bounced around constantly, just as I have seen happen in many of the videos.

Sounds like this isn't the case with more modern aircraft?

I've flown aircraft of similar vintage, but never seen the needles shake around like that, not even during aerobatics or heavy turbulence. There are restrictors in the inlet lines to all of these pressure driven (bourdon tube) gauges for precisely this purpose - besides which the accumulated fatigue damage to the bourdon tube would soon result in a broken instrument if it weren't present.

W.

I would say that engines running at the best in CoD, even then, are somewhat broken.:shock:
Mixture don't get sufficient lean ?

Interesting. Well I dunno what was up with this plane I was in then. Doing a brief internet search and finding some images I am confident the plane I went up in (which had very bouncy instruments indeed) was a Piper PA-17, if that helps.

Edit: I initially thought it was a J-3 but i was mistaken

Was out for a pleasure ride in a Hurri the other night and all the guages were bouncing like crazy..to the point of being almost unreadable. I have 100's of hours in light twins (RL) and have never seen anything like it except in the Bermuda Triangle.

This, exactly this. I've been able to reproduce this, albeit more by accident, as I'm still learning...:rolleyes:

I'm really amazed that those "guys who fly real aircraft with thousands of flight hours" don't get that.
But I don't worry there, 1C have their own flight testers. Some of these guys flew or fly the real thing(s), so I definately give more about them than about random internet "flight instructors".

So next bug classified as irrelevant on this forum... If it is caused by shaking or turbulence, why the whole cockpit is not shaking? If you fly in plane and you fly into turbulence it is not just minor shaking, it is like someone is hitting you from different sides, you hear the sounds as different part of plane hit to each other. I don't see anything like that in CoD... I only see that needles are jumping like mad? But what is physically causing these jumps? Turbulence within each instrument, which is not effecting the plane as whole?

Okay, maybe you have turned off the head bounce thingy, where it may be not as obvious, but:

I happen to be a physicist (for real, it's not just a random claim ;) ) and the thing is that the engine has its resonance frequency just like anything else. So, if you have tuned your engine badly, it will be go into resonance, causing it to shake and vibrate. And, because the engine represents a large mass, it will shake up the entire airplane with it. This, in turn, includes cockpit instruments and, since the the instrument needles are allowed to move relative freely, inertia causes them to bounce as well.

Now this is less obvious in more modern cockpits, as advances have been made in mounting the engine(s) with dampening elements. The engines are designed to run more vibration-free, too and cockpit instruments, if not already digital, have also been improved, "decoupling" them from airframe vibrations in better ways. It's shouldn't be like 1940 anymore :)

I'm more and more amazed at the level of detail the developers introduced into CoD and it makes me sad that many of those details are, if not quite convenient, called "bugs" by some users. Don't get me wrong, there are bugs and there are quite a few, but CoD is NOT an arcade game and I really, really hope that Oleg, Luthier & co. stand by their philosophy in striving for realism - as this is the "perk" why the majority of players have fallen in love with the Il-2 line.

In reality, every turbulence has much stronger force effect than any engine and it is affecting whole plane and everything within it. Everything is shaking - pilots or passengers included.... In such cases the needles on instruments would be just "MAD" and completely useless which never ever happened in the whole flying history. Pilots heads is shaking more if going into the wild dive, whole plane is shaking like mad but pilots can still read the instruments. That's what they are trained for, read trembling(but not jumping) needle of instruments when their head is shaking like mad...

If it would only tremble (when starting, turning off, or dives on higher speeds) - OK... But right know it is just one of many little annoying "features" of this sim...

I wonder who that is refering to......unnecessary personal attack

why didn't I think of that......I forgot to say cross my heart

I really don't agree, based purely on my 'claim' to be an actual pilot, not an effect I have heard of (until an eminent internet physicist said so), resonance on an airframe is a high frequency vibration, it doesn't cause needles to bounce as if you are driving a car off road.

It wasn't directed against anyone, personally. I just happen to see more and more people reinforcing their claims with that.
But you're right, I should have left out my own statement about being a physicist, too. If I have to "scare away" people by claiming that I'm a "pro" on the matter (I'm not a 'pro' at all on these specific things, it's just general mechanics), I participate in the discussion in a wrong way.

I just realised that it might not have been me actually, I re read the entire thread....I guess I'm getting jumpy.....my bad.

in actual fact having re read the post I will withdraw my general statement on this, I think I am on a different wavelength...excuse the pun, of course instruments do bounce in turbulence and in severe engine rough running conditions, and to be honest I was concentrating on an exessive bounce with the RPM needle (this I do feel needs a tweaking)

hmm and I have to admit you're right about that. The rpm needle bounces more than, for example, the airspeed indicator, which is, at a first glance, not really obvious to me, too (maybe it's due to different springs in the instruments?!?).

So let's be friends again! ;)

I love how people here are comparing modern light aircraft with a 1940s war time fighter built as quickly as possible to get to the front line I doubt you could even compare a flying spit to what they had back then. I.e. Regulations and limitations surviving ww2 aircraft have to meet.

me personally am basing it on actual experience in the Tiger moth, Stearman and (despite being post war) percival prentice, in terms of instrumentation there are no regulations regarding the instruments for aircraft like the spit, these aircraft fly on 'permit to fly' which is the most basic airworthiness certification, even the tigers and Stearmans on public transport C of A don't have the need for modern instruments because they are certified for day VFR flight only.

So you say that British or German engineers were such morons and the quality was so bad, and pilots didn't care at all, that instruments are not working correctly, and it is just a accident that these types of instruments and technology is still in use even today?

If I can elaborate on your though - if it is so detailed "simulated" - every single rivet in a warplane should just fall off during second flight in this sim...

but is is always easier to say, that these instruments were so bad, and Maddox Games is simulating this "badness" correctly. as always... ;-)

Why has no one picked up on this post? Assuming whipper isn't pulling our legs, he's experienced bouncing instruments for real in a WWII fighter. Maybe Maddox Games are spot on? Just a thought.

Bongodriver, get used to this, in this forum guesswork based on "manuals" coming from questionable sources counts more than our personal experience as REAL pilots apparently, even the ones like us who have experience on vintage planes and warbirds.. :rolleyes:

U should see another thread where someone is trying to explain G-cutouts comparing a Lycoming with a Merlin :rolleyes:

Yes you are right, I do envy people who can keep much calmer than I........Breathe deeeeeeeply :) repeat to myself 'my whole life is a lie....none of this is real, I know nothing because the internet told me so'

How about letting them fix the mixture control first before we jump to any conclusions.

Right now, even the auto-mixture on the 109 is causing problems at altitudes above ~3000 meters. It's only shake-free if you turn CEM off.

In comparison, it's not that bad at low altitudes when everything is set correctly using CEM. If however the problem still persists after the fix, we can start arguing it to death. (And the fanboys throw sh*t at R/L pilots because they point out obvious mistakes ;) )

I trust the developers, having spent years on this game, along with their flight testers, one thousand times more than such statements, yes.
After all, these bouncing needles certainly didn't sneak in as bugs, the way they behave.
<insert statement about having programmed several decades in every conceivable programming language>

That's simply because you don't know how instruments work. And this is not meant to be an offence,it's just a friendly statement. If more than 3 people with experience in aviation tell you it's overmodelled,just take it for good,it's called common sense man..

Oscillation can happen on vacuum instruments (altimeter,anemometer etc..),but the RPM gauge is connected by means of a flex cable like in your car,such oscillations happen only if the gauge is faulty or your engine is actually oscillating in RPM.. you get vibrations,lots of them,but not oscillations..

I think it feels just right how it is. My needles dont jump around like mad. Only when i damage or blow my engine. But i am no real pilot...

Winger

Same here! Flying around in a 109,monitoring the engine,the needles are steady.

yes that is annoying, I'd like to see a key assignment for a quick sync feature....

The RAF compass has tooltips only for the heading selector ring (increase/decrease click-spots) and lacks the actual readout tooltip of the current heading. The Luftwaffe one has both, the increase/decrease functions when you mouse over it close to the center and the current heading when you mouse over the rest of it.

In the Bf-110 or Ju88 for example, i just mouse over the magnetic compass before take-off to see the tooltip, then input that into the gyro-compass.

In the RAF aircraft i have to move the view around a bit which is not a big problem, but i don't know how to read the compass :-P

A small workaround for the RAF compass is to align the heading selector with the compass arms and read-out the selector's value. I then open the map and look which way i'm facing on mission start (this needs map icons to be on though), so i can discard the reciprocal heading of my current one. So, if i align it and it says 270 while i'm facing east, i know it's 90 degrees. I then turn the gyro-compass to read 90 degrees and start my take-off.

It would be much simpler if it had a tooltip or i actually knew how to read it :grin:

What we can't lean past peek EGT ;)