Some considerations about the FM purists...

[Viper2000]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

I was playing an IL-2 1946 mission last night: an escort to some dive bombers over Crimea with enemy fighters coming up to intercept, and then it came to my mind: why do we need so much FM accuracy to the mph/rpm/roc, and what can actually be considered a reliable info source?

The whole gaming experience is more than outturning, outclimbing, outspeeding our opponents, there's tactical decisions, there's improvisation, there's teamwork.. I don't get why some of us are so anal about the performance charts of our planes, especially now that the game is still not completely finalised. Besides, unless there's some gross mistakes, I think I can well live with a Spit that does 350mph where he should do 355 according to some pilot's notes.. considering all the variables of real life, what's 5mph? Play with your numbers, learn how the plane behaves in the sim and get the best out of it. I remember the good ol' debates on the russian UFO fighters in IL-2, which were made of kryptonite and powered by turbofans, but despite all that I still managed to shoot them down with my 109, and not because I'm a good shot, it's because I learned their quirks, the limits, but above all learning when sometimes it's better avoiding a dogfight, simply because you are in a disadvantageous situation..

I would like to hear you guys' opinion on this, sometimes we get so sidetracked by secondary aspects that we seem to forget we're supposed to have fun playing our sim..

If a job is worth doing, IMO it's worth doing properly.

Personally I take the view that flight test report's by the operator's flight test organisation (ie A&AEE in the case of RAF aeroplanes) constitute a reliable source.

I'm less convinced by test reports concerning captured enemy aeroplanes because they tend not to be operated in a representative way due to lack of detailed intelligence, spare parts & consumables, as well as battle damage, and the need to anticipate future developments (which could lead to deliberate over-boosting of captured engines for example).

It's perfectly reasonable to say that the average fight is more about SA than aircraft kinematic performance, but it doesn't necessarily follow that kinematic performance is unimportant.

For example, given poor SA, the pilot of the faster aeroplane will tend to have a longer life expectancy, because it's much much harder to bounce a faster aeroplane than it is to bounce a slower aeroplane. So it's actually very difficult to separate performance, strategy and tactics in an objective manner - Good pilots tend to be "lucky", and "lucky" pilots are often good.

I think that people tend to pay more attention to things like maximum speed, rate of climb, turn rate etc than other parameters like stability & control simply because it's easy to test and print out a diagram that lots of people can understand and replicate.

Also, I would point out that people who are typing in the forum are by definition not having fun in the sim, because you can't do both things at once unless you have at least 4 hands and 2 keyboards...