Flight Modeling vs. Flight Handling.

[ElAurens]

I'm not intending to open a can of worms with this, but we are having an interesting discussion of this on our forum, and wondered what all of you think about it.

We were discussing RoF actually, with one of the guys that has time in about a dozen or so different bi-planes, including a full scale replica SE5a and a three quarter scale Nieuport 17.

The question was do the planes in the simulation behave or "feel" like the real thing, or are they just generic?

This was his response as a real pilot and sim flyer...

The problem is the missuse of the term “Flight Model” in a game/sim, its nothing more than raw data gathered from books and is fairly accurately represented in IL2, COD and ROF as they are only programming raw data and not flight handling data from pilot interviews (silly Russians).

Aircraft “Flight Handling” is a whole new subject; this is really what we are talking about when we ask questions about the “Flight Model“. I haven’t been flying ROF as of lately, life has been interfering in my gaming activities.

How does “Flight Handling” compare from aircraft to aircraft in Rise of Flight you ask! Let me work on that question.

To put it in a context that I can relate to being someone involved in motorsport of the 4 wheeled variety...

You can have two cars with identical performance numbers across the board, top speed, braking, acceleration, lateral Gs, etc... Yet one will have to be bullied into doing it and the other will behave as if connected directly to your brain.

His assertion is that (or seems to me to be that) just knowing the numbers and having the virtual aircraft meet them is not enough, you need the actual pilot's input on how the aircraft behaves in your hands, how it feels, how easy or hard it is to fly and operate.

This is what, to me, is missing in most simulations that I have experience with.

Discuss.

[ACE-OF-ACES]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

His assertion is that (or seems to me to be that) just knowing the numbers and having the virtual aircraft meet them is not enough, you need the actual pilot's input on how the aircraft behaves in your hands, how it feels, how easy or hard it is to fly and operate.

The 6DOF 'Flight Models' can be very accurate wrt performance values..

Note I said can be..

But to capture the 'quarks' and or 'personality' and or 'characteristics' of a plane.. What you call 'Flight Handling' can be very subjective sometimes..

Because the 'Flight Handling' can be affected by so many variables, one key one being the INPUTS from the pilot. Read different pilot different characteristics

The first PC game I remember making an attempt at simulating the 'Handling' was EAW..

Where the P51 flight manual stated to recover from a stall, you had to put the ailerons into the spin and the rudder opposite of the spin..

There are other types of characteristics.. For example take the Fw190 and P39's tendency to flip over onto its back in an accelerated stall.. Where some 190s pilots actually started to use it as an evation manuver.. Another example would be how some planes will buffet or give the pilot some sort of clue before it stalls.. Like a vibration in the seat or stick.. Where as other planes gave no warning what so ever.. Or take the classic 109 slats that sometimes opened up un-evenly can caused the plane to jerk around.. The list is endless!

So a lot of those kind of things could be added to the 6DOF flight model.. But they would be a 'wrapper' (think mission trigger like) to the 6DOF not really part of it..

Maybe in the near future when the average PC is capable of running a Fluid Dynamics version of a 'Flight Model' than and maybe only than will you get both 'Flight Modeling' and 'Flight Handling' characteristics

Originally Posted by ElAurens

This is what, to me, is missing in most simulations that I have experience with.

The good news is most of these characteristics have no affect on the performance.. So even though you may be able to recover from a stall in a P51 without following the procedure in the P51 flight manual does not mean the you can not still have a very realistic experience and apply realistic tactics..

To put it another way, most of those 'characteristics' go unnoticed because most of the time your not at that point in the envelope

[BP_Tailspin]

Interesting topic.

[ElAurens]

Originally Posted by BP_Tailspin

Interesting topic.

[Upthair]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

...

You can have two cars with identical performance numbers across the board, top speed, braking, acceleration, lateral Gs, etc... Yet one will have to be bullied into doing it and the other will behave as if connected directly to your brain.

His assertion is that (or seems to me to be that) just knowing the numbers and having the virtual aircraft meet them is not enough, you need the actual pilot's input on how the aircraft behaves in your hands, how it feels, how easy or hard it is to fly and operate.

This is what, to me, is missing in most simulations that I have experience with.

Discuss.

The way I understand it:



There are different paths - an infinite number of them, actually - that connect two or more fixed points (in the graph, points A and B). These fixed points are the performance numbers; those different paths, the distinct handling experiences, or distinct 'feels'.

It would be fortunate if for a certain WWII aircraft modelled the correct 'path' can be picked out by a real-life pilot of it, but in most cases the 100% genuine aircraft does not exist now.

--

[ATAG_Snapper]

Interesting thread.

In a related aspect, I've been flying RED online Hurricane Rotols and Spitfire 1a's. They handle very well for the majority of my flying except for one area: fine aiming. It seemed like I was "chasing the reticle" when attempting to place the gun sight pipper on a specific location of the target aircraft. With a suggestion from fellow pilot Catseye, I adjusted the joystick curve (X and Y axis) in my Warthog's TARGET software to change the linear sensitivity to an S-curve. I still get full deflection at the extreme travel of the joystick, but towards the center of both axis I can now make much finer adjustments -- it makes me feel less "ham-fisted". By the same token, for my CH Pedals I simply turned the sensitivity of the pedals from default "1" (= full sensitivity) down to "0" (= less sensitivity) in the ingame menu Options/Controls/Axis.


A side benefit is that ordinary maneuvring feels noticeably smoother overall, plus I'm now able to pour what feels to be a higher % of rounds on target now.

My apologies if this falls outside this thread topic or has been discussed at length in an earlier thread.

[jimbop]

I don't see what can be done about it short of actually flying RL versions of each modelled aircraft. And even then you are limited to a single instance which could differ markedly from other individuals. Pilot experience and style would also have a strong impact on what is essentially a subjective interpretation anyway.

In short, I don't see where this can go... Interesting topic though.

Fully agree with the gunsight handling comment! I am still struggling with this myself and tinkering with the response to try and get it 'just right'. Problem is that the sweet spot differs for each aircraft for me so I am finding myself changing it quite often. You certainly don't want ultra-responsive controls when flying the Blenheim for instance!

[CaptainDoggles]

Interesting topic indeed!

I don't buy it though, or perhaps just not the car analogy.

To put it in a context that I can relate to being someone involved in motorsport of the 4 wheeled variety...

You can have two cars with identical performance numbers across the board, top speed, braking, acceleration, lateral Gs, etc... Yet one will have to be bullied into doing it and the other will behave as if connected directly to your brain.

If two cars have identical accelerations then they'll hit the same speed at the same time. Period. If the driver of one feels like he has to "bully" the car into doing it then that's his problem. Just a problem with his perception - because we already know the car is doing it just as well as the other car. If it didn't, then the accelerations would not be identical.

As far as this can relate to aircraft, well, I'm not sure what ElAurens is advocating exactly, but it does raise the issue of how to simulate what basically boils down to a pilot's opinion.

Being an engineer, my belief is that the nebulous qualities that we call "handling" or "feel" will show up when we consider things such as the aircraft's stability. For example the Spitfire was widely considered to be a forgiving aircraft but (test) pilots complained that the early versions "did not have enough elevator authority" and that it was difficult to control the aircraft, pitch-wise. When the issue was investigated it was found that the aircraft had a very narrow longitudinal stability margin.

I struggle to imagine a concept that can't be quantified, or related to some measurable quantity in some way.

[BP_Tailspin]

Here we go .....

[Blackdog_kt]

I think everyone that posted so far is correct in some way and touches upon all the main aspects of the topic.

I can certainly feel what ElAurens says, but that's through years of perception under controlled conditions (same control profiles, peripherals, software used, etc): in the previous IL2 series it didn't feel the same doing 500km/h in a 109 and doing the same in a 190, but it took quite some time to notice it.

In a similar fashion, when i first took up a 111 in CoD it felt much heavier and full of inertia than whatever bomber i had ever tried in IL2, but in a way that didn't feel uncanny. To the contrary, it felt just right and i had the feeling that the extra weight and size really showed.

I think the variables are too many and while it's true that i can't think of something that can't be quantified and measured (like Doggle says), maybe we don't have the technology to take advantage of it yet. Of course it's mostly fundamental newtonian mechanics at the speeds and masses we are talking about, but how many consecutive higher order derivatives of a certain function can a current PC compute per second and at how many instances and points across the aircraft's surface before melting?

It's also difficult to quantify objectively because of the same reasons: few or no surviving aircraft, probably different in handling than when they came off the line after all these years (refurbishments, weight changes due to modern avionics installed per ATC rules, removal of guns, etc), a dwindling amount of veterans who all have their subjective opinion (depending on their flying habits) and a multitude of sim fliers with millions of combinations of different controllers and input curves.

It's a nightmare


I think that technology-wise Xplane is probably the closest one can get to having a wind tunnel emulator running on a PC (as long as the individual flyable is also done to a high standard to take advantage of the sim's engine in full), but sadly it will be some time before we see such technology in combat sims: it's so taxing that with full multi-core support in Xplane 10, a current PC can not run more than 4-6 AI aircraft with the same FM accuracy at the same time without noticeable performance loss. In fact, there are people who take Xplane flyables, simplify their FMs and reissue them as AI-only aircraft to populate the game world.

P.S. Very interesting topic