Some considerations about the FM purists...

[csThor]

Well, my reading of this "FM mania" is simple:

Many players are out for competition, they want to test their skills vs other players. But at the same time human ego is seeking ways to lay the blame at something else than one's own lacking skills. Here the FM comes into play. It's the easiest to blame since it cannot be really accurately proven that it is indeed right or wrong. It can also be seen from different POVs, depending on the data and therefor the underlying intention one presents. You can seek neutral data and try to gain a realistic picture of a type, you can try to present advantageous data because you want a type to shine or you can list disadvantages, faults and vices because you want to see a type taken down a notch or two. We've all seen such attempts ad nauseum, haven't we?

Bottom line is: People like to misuse the FM as smokescreen when they got their backside handed to them in a fight or they strive for a perceived "accuracy" based on reading books on certain types (while ignoring that real life combat performance and achievements are based on a lot more factors than simple performance information). IMO it's always an attempt at self-delusion ... Sorta.

[jg27_mc]

Originally Posted by cheesehawk

... I'm partial to the 109 of course, and it "feels" like a more realistic sim, but when it gets down to the dirty of fighting, something just isn't "right". It doesn't behave like I'd expect a nimble, front-line fighter that's the pinnacle of technology (which it and the Spitfire arguably shared in 1940)...

Same feelings here!

First of all let me say that you guys all have valid points, now, to answer in detail:

Originally Posted by JG4_Helofly

IMO performance is very important in the game because we don't have some other important variables like fear, fatigue, performance drop due to wear etc. So it makes a huge difference if a plane is 5km/h to fast because the other player will push his plane to the limit and not let you go away until he catches you. No worry about fuel limitations or possible death or physical body limitations.

That's why 5 km/h can make the difference

I can agree to a certain extent, first of all because it's not all about speed or turn rate, second thing because it's hard to find a reliable source of information. We have seen before how even pilot reports can be biased or having gross mistakes inside, often to please the readers of the upsaid reports.. in the meantime we cant use the data from today's warbirds because the setups, operation modes and weights are not the same (not to mention the lack of many planes from the era in flyable conditions).

Originally Posted by Sven

Totally disagree with the OP.

If you want historical inaccuracy there's those thousands of other games for you to play, this specific genre of flight sims is aiming to make you able to get as close as possible to a state that you can relive what actually happened in WWII. Technology is however limiting us, but whatever we can get correct, must be correct. There are very reliable sources all over the web, actual prints from factories, numerous flight reports, with that material you can make Flight Models. However sometimes mistakes are made ( Like back in school, no matter how hard you studied you never got all test 100 %, at least I didn't. ) and regular forum folk is trying to make an effort to correct it, or shed some light on issues. They often get addressed as whiners, or waffles or whatnot, usually by folks who do not know all to much about the subject or simply do not care, which highly annoyes me and makes the progress of such efforts very tiresome.

So in short, the never ending discussion about the FM/DM has in fact use, and developpers do listen, I've seen it many times and it's up to them what they do with the presented information.

I haven't said I don't want accuracy, my point is that it's hard to find the threshold of what's accurate and what's inaccurate. A little example: Macchi pilots had most of their radios removed cos they never worked properly, and a radio + battery would be in excess of 100kg, now that wasn't mentioned in the original manuals, but it would surely, even if almost marginally, affect performance.

Originally Posted by Bryan21cag

Just curious??

do you put the people who have also had the experience I.E. seen tracers and flown war birds of the time E.T.C. in the same category as those that have not? Or is it just your experience that you consider to be the valid experience?

just wondering
Cheers

P.S. I completely agree with your OP just fyi

I enter in the first category, and I believe that it can be put to the service of the community.

Originally Posted by cheesehawk

Your best post to date... +1

Another point to consider, even from the factories in the 1940s, differences between individual planes was sometimes pretty great. At the end of the war, when Germany was facing certain defeat, and the need for high numbers of planes (and pilots, but we can't emulate that here) was great, differences of 5% of rated power and speeds were still accepted. On a plane rated at 500kmh, that gives us a plus or minus of 50kmh! (475 to 525) And that's all else being equal.

To me, the handling characteristics (which are much harder to define in pure numbers) are just as important as the performance charts. While I am no real pilot, and haven't flown inside any of the legendary warbirds we love so much, if the sim has that factor that makes us think "ok, this feels like I think a Spitfire should" and allows us to competitively (I'm thinking online here) suspend belief, then the sim's doing a great job!


As related to CoD, to me, its much more fun to just fly around than to fly combat missions. I'm partial to the 109 of course, and it "feels" like a more realistic sim, but when it gets down to the dirty of fighting, something just isn't "right". It doesn't behave like I'd expect a nimble, front-line fighter that's the pinnacle of technology (which it and the Spitfire arguably shared in 1940).





Homuth,
I think one of the OP's points was that all the information that's readily available are from somewhat questionable sources (Brit vs American vs German engineers when original data is presented) and varying in content. Out of all the stuff, how do you pick the one and say "This is what we'll apply as the limits of this plane?"

completely agree man.

[ktodack]

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..

I assume when the developers modeled each aircraft in the sim that they used the most accurate specifications for the type aircraft as published by the manufacturer. Each original aircraft was test flown back in the '30s and '40s and the performance results have been published. I think the only way to develop a state of the Art WW2 combat sim is to flight test each aircraft in the sim and work with the weighting variables until the aircraft accurately duplicates the original aircraft test performance. It's impossible over the gulf of time to match perfectly, but I think the developers can get pretty damn close-- enough to meet the original aim of the sim.

[addman]

It's all a pissing contest as far as I'm concerned. "I've got the most accurate book/charts/pilot accounts therefore I win" or "I've flown a Cessna for a few hundred hours, it's basically the same as a 1500 HP warbird". I could never tell if a FM was "porked" or not, how could I? how could anyone? Only the combined knowledge of the real aircraft's engineer, ground crew and pilot could tell such a thing. Every time someone calls out a "porked" FM I'm totally stunned, how could they know?

FM are important in a sim yes and should be somewhat accurate (not that I would tell if they weren't) but not that it consumes half of the production budget of a game. I would think it's easier to tweak FM's than to try to fix a whole game-engine.

[carguy_]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

I was playing an IL-2 1946 mission last night:
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..

The Spit example is way too funny. I don`t really know the FM of CoD so I don`t know what to complain about. One thing I know, some things should be in the game, period. Going back to IL21946 there are many examples : Russian fighters could get past 700km/h without falling apart - that`s a big mistake. If the Me109G6 1943 has MK103 in the nose, that`s a big mistake. If a P51 can outturn a Me109 under 400km/h under 5000m, that`s a big mistake.
What do I mean? I mean that some of the biggest flaws of the real planes must be pronounced as they were in real life. Another example - the sheer fact that the Russian fighters had manual CEM and German had automatic, meant FAR better situation for the LW, but the IL2 game didn`t underline it.

I don`t see how complaining about 5mph is good, but I can see the other problems which should be resolved. The main aspects of flying a certain aeroplane must be in the game, because without them, we have no simulation.

At a certain point in the IL2 life, there was a time when the Bf109 was a really twitchy plane, easy to stall and unstable. You can`t say that wasn`t something to complain about.

[ZaltysZ]

Small errors are such little nasty things, whose like to accumulate. If you allow few kph off here, few m/s off there and so on, in the end you may get something very off.

[bw_wolverine]

I really like the idea of the % modifier based on 'production run' or whatever you want to call it. That's a neat idea that, while perhaps not making hard-core simulation people happy, would certainly make the game more FUN. At the end of the day, if I'm not having fun with the title, I don't want to run it.

What would be cool to add to that idea is persistance. Say you do get one of these great production run planes to fly. As long as you don't get shot down, you continue to have that 3% advantage. Then, when you're shot down, you roll the dice again and see what you get.

[kimosabi]

Originally Posted by ZaltysZ

Small errors are such little nasty things, whose like to accumulate. If you allow few kph off here, few m/s off there and so on, in the end you may get something very off.

Yeah you may end up in a Tiger tank. Let's just hope they haven't implemented Mustangs and .50cal then.

[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...