Some considerations about the FM purists...

[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.

[kimosabi]

I somewhat agree with OP. Anal numbercrunching and comparing to WW2 performance envelopes is one thing, but when this game can't give me the same impression of flight and characteristics as IL-2 1946 does, I'm outta here. It's not about how and why, it's about what you can do and so far this game can not.

[Bryan21cag]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

hehehe the "feel" thing always makes me chuckle, like people who say what's the right and wrong looking tracer without having seen one in real life.

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

[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.

[skouras]

Interesting thread

[Blackdog_kt]

+1 to the OP, this

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

I agree that some people fixate on FM far too much. Yes it is a simulation, but wouldn't you like to switch your gun off of saftey or go to oxygen too? Well worth 2 seconds in the turn or 5km off the top, I reckon.

and this

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 too want accurate FMs, but not only for the sake of FMs. They are important because i enjoy flying the aircraft just as much as i like fighting in them (especially in the new sim with all their control quirks and different systems).

On the other hand, during a combat scenario the FM is not the prime goal but a tool to achieve what's important in a bigger picture sense: accurate tactical considerations, constraints and consequences being forced on the player.

That's why i strongly advocated more complex CEM and systems management during the sim's development, it's just a part of those things that make up the whole picture that we want to achieve.

What kind of plane i'm flying, what kind of ride the enemy is in, what's my mission profile, what's my fuel and loadout (big thumbs up for the 1:1 map, no more loading 25% fuel and enjoying top performance while in gliding distance of home base), what's my objective, is my aircraft the better performer in the match-up, the one that handles easier or the one that is easier to operate (CEM and subsystems) and how do i use that to my advantage?===> a fusion of all that, some decision making and you get an idea of what it might have felt like being in their shoes back then.

The FM is a super important tool in that equation, but it's not the only worthy cause


In summary yes, let's have accurate FMs, it's a must. That doesn't mean we have to leave everything else to the wayside until they are 100% accurate, 98% will do. The rest is in the environment: if we have life-size instead of down-scaled maps to fly over and the damage model is "smart" enough to cause a sequence of failures (which it can, i've seen it in CoD and it's awesome), the rest of the puzzle pieces will fall together nicely.

After all, having accurate FMs still leads to completely inaccurate encounters if we change the environmental setting where they take place: a bunch of fighters with a range of a few hundred miles duking it out at tree top level and bingo fuel on a map which is 150x150km is hardly accurate.

[JG4_Helofly]

Maye it would help if there would be a performance difference of about + or - 3% for every plane every time you fly. So even if the enemy flys a slightly faster plane, you don't know if he has a good production model or not. You might even be equally fast with a very well build slower plane. In fact, that's what happened in RL.
At the moment, you can't run away from a slightly faster plane, because after a 10 min chase at sea level, he will catch you. Even if he is only 2 km/h faster. Same goes for climb and turn. This wouldn't happen in RL since they had to worry about other things then chasing someone for hours.
And that's why pure performance is more important in the game than in RL IMO.

[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.