The interesting ingredient missing in discussions of FM. So many people have their own ideas of what is a competent FM. Oleg had his idea and he was rebuffed many times by the community. Responding to a community of people, many of whom are pilots can have it's problems.
I mentioned the 1% flight models created by third parties for the MSFT CFS2. The spreadsheets that were created were a very good tool to plug the numbers and stats, then come up with what was called a 1% flight model. The spreadsheets were developed using actual flight model specifications from the aircraft manufacturer, which seemed adequate. Yet, the missing ingredient to all performance specs... Air combat required a new set of rules. Test pilots didn't take the aircraft to untried and unproven thresholds for failure. These failure points were determined by experience, not by test pilots pushing out to reasonable expectations of failure. So... there is that.
Those spreadsheets are still floating around, and probably attainable in many places.
I won't think to argue about their validity. I'll just say they put everyone on the same playing field.
Last edited by nearmiss; 09-13-2011 at 05:27 PM.
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