Quote:
Originally Posted by cheesehawk
That and the fact there aren't many viable airframes out there and the owners willing/able to test the real performances in the name of science. Some things are simply now passed to legend...
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It is true that most of the warbirds around today are not in their original WWII configurations..
The good news is most WWII planes were tested and a lot of those test results still exist.. The bad news is not every field mod and or variant of a particular plane was re-tested..
The sim makers use these test results (outputs) as a sanity check of their FM.. That is to say the data from these test reports are not used as inputs to create the FM (unless your talking about a simple table based FM) just used as a check of the FM
Pretty simple, the FM results match the test data results or they don't.. So one would think that would be the end of the discussion, right?
Well sadly no
As noted you will be hard pressed to find test data for every variant of every plane in the game.. And even when you do find data for a particular variant in the game there will be people standing by to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down.. For example, some will toss out the 'theory' that the Russian data was 'tweaked' to show the planes performed better than they actually did. The theory being they did that to keep uncle Joe from cutting off their heads.. Same argument is made with regards to some of the late war German data.. A similar argument is applied to US planes.. Especially with regards to test results from the manufacture.. The idea that the manufacture has tweak the results to show the plane performed better than they actually did to sell their plane.. Problem with that argument is USAAF also did acceptant testing that shows there was typically no tweaks made.. At least I have yet to see anyone post the results done by the manufacture that far exceeded what the USAAF was able to obtain.
Personally I tend to ignore all those who float those 'theories' especially the ones that will float the 'theory' for the planes they don't like and not even consider the possibility of the 'theory' for the planes they like (read hypocrites)
The only area of real world test data that I would consider to be suspect is that of the calculated/estimated type. That is to say data that was not from an actual flight test, just desk top calculated results based on what they expected to see if they actually did the test.. For example say they have a plane that they have already tested.. Than later figured out a way to increase the horse power.. Instead of re-doing the actually flight test, they would start with the flight test results from the previous test and simply increase the top speed and climb rate by an amount they 'calculated' it would increase by due to the increase in horse power. This is the kind of data that should be taken with a grain of salt imho, and on that note this is the kind of data the Germans did a lot of near the end of the war.
Long story short, even if you could find a WWII war plane with a WWII configuration and an owner willing to put it threw the paces of a test.. You will find someone who will try to find something wrong with the data.