4.101 RC - List of fixes

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by PE_Tihi

Fighter planes are no airliners to be designed with a stone steady stability. More stable the design, less maneuverable it gets. Moreover, ever bigger engines brought the planes more destabilizing area in front of the CG, as well as more engine torgue to burden their stabillity.
The answer to that, on the example of the yaw stability was an increase of the vertical tail area. Compare the vertical tails of the early and later variants of the WWII fighters. Now if you think this has been unknown to the Supermerine engineers, please compare the tails of the variants beginning with I, then V, VIII and IX, XIV, etc.

It is rather obvious the Spitfire couldn't have been in a quite a different world in matters of stabillity compared to its contemporaries, isn't it?
But in the 4.10 the Spitfire has a third league stabillity compared to all the rest of game planes.

In all probability the game planes behave rather more benign in this sense then their RL counterparts. Until 4.10 that went for all the planes, including the Spitfire. Even the I16. which really has been rather unstable in the RL behaves stone-steady as a gun platform in the game.
Now the 4.10 makes the Spifire the only exception to this general oscillation amnesty, giving it the dubious honor of being the only plane to wallow around in a manner the DT considers a realistic one.

Can it really be the unfairness of such a move never even crosses your mind?

It seems not to, cause you repeat like a gramophone about the Spit FM RL comparison. (apart from repeatedly telling me I whine and express the skepsis at my abilities to control the game planes)

I feel the oscillations on the Spit being overdone in 4.10; the guys who made the FM are probbably going to say it s reallistic, but even if it is so, it is completely beside the point.

It is totally unfair to give only this one single plane the allegedly and possibly more reallistic but certainly much more difficult type of FM.

Or is the fairness a concept you simply do not care care for?

BTW, you are right about the NACA report discussing the dynamical stability of the plane; I only swept over it with my eyes the first time.
Your insulting tone is certainly not right, on the other hand, and having tolerated it on several occasions - don't bother continuing in that manner if you expect an answer.

Since you bring up the fairness of accurately simulating something for one aircraft only, i can't pass this up. I haven't installed 4.10 and i don't know how bad the Spit is, but i'm not going to argue about how well or badly modeled its new FM is. I'm only going to discuss what you described as fairness in modeling each aircraft's relative advantages and drawbacks and to be absolutely fair, let's do it on the basis of 4.09 only. I don't want to comment on things i have no experience on, so let's talk about what happened before 4.10 that we all know about.

What you say has been the hidden reason behind many FM debates over the years. Some planes get a more accurate FM than others and this means not only advantages but disadvantages too.

Well, let's talk engine management for a second. Why is it that most of the German fighters have more accurate engine models while the rest can pretty much cruise at whatever power setting all day long? Not just allied ones, but a variety of other flyables on both the red and the blue planeset. See, there was probably more data available for the German birds and they were modeled closer to life than the rest. By your own definition that's should also be unfair.

Case in point, the stock 190s function better with manual pitch forcing us to not use its main advantage against the high performing allied energy fighters. Let's compare with the undisputed king of the high altitude arena, the P47. It's a well documented fact that the 190 didn't do well at high altitude, while the P47 did, no objections there whatsoever.

It's also a well documented fact that the P47 had FOUR main engine controls and 2-3 secondary ones, that with the exception of throttle, prop pitch and cowl flaps none of the rest are modeled in the game, while the 190 had ONE thanks to the kommandogerat system, with a secondary manual pitch control to be used in emergencies if the automatic system failed and the radiators, which are all modeled in the sim and stay within the real manual's operating ranges (for example, 2700RPM maximum).

In reality that performance came at the cost of increased workload for the P47 pilot, while a 190 pilot although under-performing could rely on his automatic engine management systems to even the tables by counting on the complexity of the P47 to work against the allied pilot.

Well, what happens in the game is that a P47 can cruise at 100%+WEP all day long, as well as set the pitch and cowl flaps ONCE per sortie to a value that minimizes overheat and leave it there for ever.
Not just the P47 mind you, i got nothing against it in particular and in fact i like it a lot, but most of the aircraft in the sim can take advantage of a simplified engine and overheat model to push the envelope in ways that was impossible in real life, including the Spitfire.

But wait, there's more. When 95% of the flyables can use whatever power settings with impunity and the other 5% have automatic systems that actually stick to what the real life manual states, it's obvious that the 5% are fighting at a disadvantage that's not only historically inaccurate, but is totally reversing what actually happened in real life: you either fly as the real thing did at a disadvantage to everyone else who's pushing the envelope to unrealistic values, or you exchange your main historical advantage (automation and ease of use) for the ability to go manual yourself and push the envelope as well.

In other words? In a world with simplified overheat and little else in the way of engine limitations, if you fly with a system that reduces your available power to prevent negative conditions that don't exist in the game then you're effectively shooting yourself in the foot. Either that, or you give up your historical advantage and go manual to exploit the limitations (or lack thereof) of the game engine like everyone else.

This is just one example and the reason i'm bringing it up is neither that i fly 190s a lot, which i do, nor that i expect to kill every 47 i find at 30000ft. Realistically and historically speaking i should have trouble and i do, so i only kill one in ten. The reason i'm bringing it up is just that i have enough experience with this scenario/match-up to make an informed argument and nothing more.

See, this can go both ways, but the reason we're not making a fuss about it is that it was beyond the capabilities of this 10 year old game engine and the PCs we had back then to model accurate engine operating limits. Also, with CoD around the corner we're content to see whatever improvement is possible for the older IL2 series without being too upset about how it redraws the balance.

A few people have had to live with their "by the book" aircraft for ages while everyone else could do things that would fry their engines in seconds in real life and guess what, for some it was a welcome challenge and they learned a couple of things while the rest chose a different aircraft to fly.

It's now your turn to either do the same, fly something else or fly with reduced difficulty settings if you don't want to re-learn certain things. It's not a shame to tailor the game to your taste, it's a lack of sportsmanship however to all of a sudden expect to tailor everyone else's game to what's fair because the tables are now turned on you, when they've had to content with equally unfair issues over the years.

Long story short, get creative or fly something else, it's not a big deal