Quote:
Originally Posted by Bewolf
6DOF?
It's been years since the debate was raging, but the consensus back then was that Mass in IL2 was not taken propperly into account (Means, if you switched of engine, most airplanes, coming from the same speed, climbed to roughly the same altitude), which kinda nerfed planes like the P47
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Given the results of RL comparative tests I've seen, I do not believe its just a matter of mass. More like its a complex interaction between drag, mass and thrust, as it should be. Mass by nature pulls the plane down, not up.
What does help however that energy is a function of mass and velocity, so a high speed heavy aircraft stores a lot of energy. However, as it travels up,
The zoom performance is thus essentially the relation of mass and starting velocity, and drag & stall characteristics of the aircraft; drag will define how quickly the aircraft will loose that velocity (and thus energy, since mass is constant), and stall speed when this velocity loss will become critical, and when the aircraft will stop ascending.
Power to weight (thrust pulling the aircraft up, mass pulling it down) ratio will also gain important fuction at the top of the zoom, and here mass is actually detrimental.
Bottomline, while mass is important, drag characteristics are equally important, put two and two together, and the deciding airframe related factor is equivalent flat plate / mass ratio. Ideally, you want a relatively heavy plane (for its size) with a low absolute drag and powerful thrust.
Dunno, I may have got the whole thing wrong, just wondering about the factors. Thing is however, that analouges to empirical knowledge such as that heavier gun shots, ball shaped objects ie. fired by the same force etc. fly further do not apply here, since different aircraft have additional properties: a) ever present thrust (engine, they do not work with a given, identical starting force) b) different shapes and drag.