Complex engine management

[Therion_Prime]

What? No (optional) complex / semi complex startup procedure in Cod?
Has this been confirmed?

I thought we'd get clickable cockpits so I'd taken a (semi) complex startup as given?

What a letdown

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by Therion_Prime

What? No (optional) complex / semi complex startup procedure in Cod?
Has this been confirmed?

I thought we'd get clickable cockpits so I'd taken a (semi) complex startup as given?

What a letdown

That's true I'm afraid, Oleg really hates procedures for some reason. He says it's for masochists only. I'm hoping A2A or another 3rd party will come to the rescue at some point.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

I was never one to care for the full start up proceedure, but I've always found the Il-2 series method of "press 'I' to win" in-flight management to be very unrewarding. The current management system in Rise of Flight is very good from a tactical point of view. You can sucker an opponent into over revving or cooling their engine to the point where it seizes on them. I'd like to see something like that in CoD.

I know exactly what you mean.

I didn't care for buttons and clicking stuff until i started flying FSX on a friend's PC whenever i would visit him. After trying a few warbird add-ons and seeing what the real workload was just to keep the aircraft flying, i too started finding the IL2 method a bit unrewarding.
Mind you, i don't have RoF due to certain design decisions they made, but i've tried the demo and there's a variety of things it does manage to do in a way i like, engine management being one of them. RoF has a good compromise there.

The actual engine start is automatic, but it's not guaranteed the engine will start because it's affected by how you set-up the rest of the controls that are manual. This is in contrast to IL2, where you press I and the engine will always come to life.

From what i could glean from past statements by Oleg Maddox about CoD it seems that they will do it in a way similar to ROF, which is a big step forward from IL2 and thus it's good enough for me.

From where i'm standing, i can live with the absence of full start-up procedures as long as the rest works in a complex manner, not for the sake of complexity alone but for conveying to us the workload involved in flying a high performance aircraft in an age before computerized help systems.

It's not only more rewarding, it also gives you something to do during the transit from one waypoint to the next and it will effectively change the way we fight. More real-life complexity means more time looking inside the cockpit, which translates to more successful bounces and less protracted engagements, just like we read in the books and memoirs from the pilots of the day. After a while, people won't stick around to fight with damaged aircraft like they do now in IL2, because even if the engine doesn't quit there's a whole lot of other stuff that can go wrong, oxygen systems, hydraulics, etc, that would severely limit our ability to finish the mission or RTB.

For me, the ideal thing is the way Black Shark does it. There's the ability to do an automatic start, but it's not a magical "press key to start engine" affair: the automatic start goes through all the steps of a manual one, it's just like an invisible co-pilot is doing it. The end result of this is that experienced people can actually do it faster than the PC and this gives an incentive to use the manual mode. Also, it lets people decide on what interface to use, you can map everything to keyboard and HOTAS but you can also click on things.

Since we know that start-up sequences won't be in CoD but Oleg Maddox said everything else is there and operates in a realistic way, the next best thing would be to have a sufficient interaction between the environment and the aircraft systems. For example, in IL2 we press I and the engine starts and by the looks of it, it will be the same way in CoD. However, engines in IL2 start no matter what.

It would be fun if despite the lack of a start-up sequence, the engine was affected by outside conditions in CoD. So, i would be pressing I to start the engine, but if it was a very cold morning it would have trouble doing so. Then the engine start would fail and i would have to press I again. When the engine was finally running after 2-3 attempts, i would have to take care to maintain operating limits: don't advance the throttle before the oil is warm enough, but also make sure that you don't overheat on hotter days while sitting on the tarmac, move the prop pitch lever back and forth to cycle warm oil in the governor when flying in icing conditions and so on.

Stuff like this would tie in extremely well with the dynamic weather feature in the sim, not to mention mission triggers.
Think about this for example, depending on whether your squadron is on alert or incoming targets have been spotted by radar you would start your mission with a pre-warmed engine.

It was a common practice for the ground crew to start the engines every half an hour or so in order to maintain them at the optimum temperature, so that when the order to scramble came the pilots would be able to go full throttle almost immediately and not have to wait for it to warm up (the main reason for the warm-up is that cold oil is hard to compress, so if you advance the throttle with low oil temps you could have a lot of pressure and burst the oil pipes..also, too cold or too hot oil doesn't work as well for engine protection from wear and tear).

However, if your mission was a scramble where its supposed by the campaign engine (or it's custom made this way by the guy who made the mission in FMB) that your squad is about to stand down or you are caught by surprise, then you could be starting with a cold engine and have to carefully monitor your oil pressure while taxing for takeoff.

In any case, these are not modern jets. Even on a Boeing 737 airliner, it takes up to 10 minutes of waiting for the inertial navigation system to align, but we don't have such things in Cod:

Originally Posted by JG4_Helofly

Of course it would have to be an option. Everyone has different ideas of how a combat flight sim should be programmed. It goes from hardcore simulation fans, to fast action arcade flyers.

About lenghty start up procedures: Warbirds aren't modern jetfighters. There aren't 1000 subsytems to worry about. I looked at the procedures for the spit I. If the engine is already warm (ready for scramble) you only have to use about 6 switches and some prime strokes. So, ready to go in under 60 sec.

That's about it, you would be surprised how fast some of those 20-step procedures actually are to do in game. I've tried it in FSX with a few warbirds and generally speaking, when you learn about how an internal combustion engine operates there's not a lot of difference from one aircraft to the next. Maybe one has an electric driven inertia starter while the 109 used one that was hand-cranked by the ground crew, others used a direct drive starter, the b17 used a combination of both and some other aircraft were just as simple as spinning the prop by hand, but for piston engines the sequence is generally the same: open the fuel lines, advance mixture to full (unless you're operating from a mountain air strip), give it a few strokes of prime depending on weather conditions, slightly advance the throttle, give power to the ignition system (turn on the magnetos) and turn the prop/engine.

The differences come from peculiarities in each aircraft's subsystems, like for example two planes might have the same engine but different sequences because they have different starters, or their fuel system could be different: one might have a single tank with a single fuel cock switch, while the other might have multiple fuel tanks with a separate selectors for each. In any case, this is more about getting to know your aircraft and less about science, so it adds to the fun. I mean, i know i have to give fuel to start the engine, i won't get confused if i have to flip an extra switch to select the wing tanks.

In any case, i agree that if they can't find exact sequences then it's better to go with an auto-start instead of giving all aircraft the same sequence. However, i'm very glad they confirmed that despite the lack of a start-up sequence the rest of the systems will have an actual effect in the flying.

I think that's a good compromise and as long as people suffer misfires, failed starts and rough running even with auto-start and have to take care during the fight, i'm going to be highly satisfied.

To sum up, from what's been confirmed it looks like this:
1) We can't use the full start-up sequence
2) However we can operate EVERYTHING else in the cockpit, fuel tank selectors, arming panel switches, everything

which leads me to deduce that the only thing they are not modeling is the actual start-up procedure. It looks like everything else will work as it should.

Finally, i also agree about making these things optional. I'll probably fly it with all difficulty options at maximum but other people want to jump straight to the action, let them do it so it can sell more copies

[ElAurens]

Great post Blackdog_kt.

[CharveL]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

Great post Blackdog_kt.

+1

[Krt_Bong]

I know that you can use the magnetos in IL-2 they are in the controls and at this point are really only good for accidently shutting off your engine, if you have the keys set for them but you really don't need them. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have them in a full real setting with complete systems management, and have to actually use it. I like the idea of having to keep a plane running correctly and not just press a key and fly without worry. The Black Shark Model is a great example even simplified it demonstrates what flying a real aircraft entails. I watched a video on I think the A2A P-47 and it was kinda cool to see the switches thrown the primer pumped and the prop slowly turn and then roar to life, mixture and prop pitch set and then taxi. This is what I would expect to see.

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by Krt_Bong

I know that you can use the magnetos in IL-2 they are in the controls and at this point are really only good for accidently shutting off your engine, if you have the keys set for them but you really don't need them. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have them in a full real setting with complete systems management, and have to actually use it. I like the idea of having to keep a plane running correctly and not just press a key and fly without worry. The Black Shark Model is a great example even simplified it demonstrates what flying a real aircraft entails. I watched a video on I think the A2A P-47 and it was kinda cool to see the switches thrown the primer pumped and the prop slowly turn and then roar to life, mixture and prop pitch set and then taxi. This is what I would expect to see.

I agree that the A2A products are excellent and I really hope they can hook up with 1c and CoD in the future.

The magneto switch in IL2 may seem irrelevant but it allows those who like pre-take off checks to perform a magneto check - and the RPMs do actually drop a little like they should when you switch to individual mags.

Although Oleg keeps stating that startup procedures aren't supported, we should have most of what we need to peform them. It would be nice to be able to have a mode where you climb into a cockpit and all the systems are in shut down mode from the last flight however.

In terms of the items relevant to pre-startup and warmup procedures we should have:

Throttle
Mixture
Prop controls
Fuel cock
Magnetos
Starter button
Trim wheels and gauge
Undercarriage selector
Sliding canopy
Brakes (hopefully parking catch too)
Air pressure gauge (hopefully)
Fuel tank gauge
Oil pressure gauge
Oil temp gauge
Coolant gauge

The items I think we'll be missing are:
Booster button
Wobble pump to pressurise fuel lines
Ki-gas primer
Battery switch (where applicable to model)
Fuel booster pump (where applicable to model)

Of the above, I think the Ki-gas primer will be the most missed as it could be fun to learn to prime according to the state of the engine and it really makes you feel you've got a real, possibly temperamental engine up front.

On the whole though, I think we haven't done badly, as long as the systems behave in a realistic manner.

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

For me, the ideal thing is the way Black Shark does it. There's the ability to do an automatic start, but it's not a magical "press key to start engine" affair: the automatic start goes through all the steps of a manual one, it's just like an invisible co-pilot is doing it. The end result of this is that experienced people can actually do it faster than the PC and this gives an incentive to use the manual mode. Also, it lets people decide on what interface to use, you can map everything to keyboard and HOTAS but you can also click on things.

+1

[ElAurens]

All you A2A fans need to realize that none of their current modeling practices would be accepted by Oleg because they have no damage model, no weapons, and as far as I know, no internal structure.

They are FSX eye candy planes designed for proceedure training, and nothing more.

And yes I have their P40. A nice external and cockpit model to be sure, but really no reason to have it in FSX at all because you cannont use it for what it was designed for.

Mock attacks on the odd Cessna were wholly ungratifying.

[JG4_Helofly]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

All you A2A fans need to realize that none of their current modeling practices would be accepted by Oleg because they have no damage model, no weapons, and as far as I know, no internal structure.

They are FSX eye candy planes designed for proceedure training, and nothing more.

And yes I have their P40. A nice external and cockpit model to be sure, but really no reason to have it in FSX at all because you cannont use it for what it was designed for.

Mock attacks on the odd Cessna were wholly ungratifying.

Why is there no reason to have these warbirds in FSX? IMO planes from this era are more than just dogfight machines. Just having to fly them correctly is an interesting challenge.
If no one would care about the flying non-combat part (95% of a mission) we wouldn't need any improvements in this area.

I mean, it's your choice how you want to fly the simulation, but after all it's still about realism.
Like some people wrote earlier: The most important thing is that complex engines have an impact on the way we fly and fight. To get closer to realistic flying. The rest is a bonus.