Friday Update, April 13, 2012

[VO101_MMaister]

Originally Posted by 41Sqn_Stormcrow

Mh. Now the thing with the narrow landing gear I have a problem: The Spit has a narrow landing gear too, and perhaps even narrower (the landing gear of the 109 is slightly bent outward while the legs of the Spits are just straightforward parallel).

You now may reply: yeah, the torque in the 109 was stronger. This may be true - but only during full power (not gradual power increase) take-off. Never during landing as the power during landing was usually cut down to very little or even idle.

Brown's statement says clearly that he was not familiar with the type and expected a different behaviour. Of course this may indicate that rookie pilots may have had problems to handle this crate. But I really would like to recall that many spit pilots reported on a strong tendency of the spit to break away too during take-off.

I just want to add, that what made the 109`s take off and landing characteristic really bad was not only the fact that it had a narrow landing gear setup, but in the same time the struts and the wheels pointed outwards. Because of this the pilot had a very narrow margin to make fails. The slightest out of horizontal plane during take off and landing resulted a violent break out to the sides.

The spit had similar wheel distance but it had parallel landing struts, and that made it much more forgiving.

On the top of it during take off there was the huge torque from the engine, what tried to roll the aircraft at slow speeds (so exactly what had to be avoided considering the pointing outwards wheels). If you put the two problems together then you know why it required such a great attention to handle the 109 during take off.

Of course it was not magic, but it required full attention and no mistakes.

Cheers
MM

[robtek]

If you read the reports from finnish pilots you'll find that they didn't find the 109 difficult at all.
Maybe because they, against their training by the germans, kept the tail on the ground as long as possible, keeping the longitudal stability this way until the airstream on the rudder made it effective.
Same with the landings, as long as you made 3-pointers there was no problem, they said, and of course lock the tail wheel, but this came with the later 109's.

[5./JG27.Farber]

I read the Finnish pilots were horrified when the saw fresh German pilots landing on 2 wheels. The Finns always practised 3 pointers.

[Varrattu]

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

I read the Finnish pilots were horrified when the saw fresh German pilots landing on 2 wheels. The Finns always practised 3 pointers.

Maybe that the Finnish pilots were over-modelled?

Originally Posted by VO101_MMaister

I just want to add, that what made the 109`s take off and landing characteristic really bad was not only the fact that it had a narrow landing gear setup, but in the same time the struts and the wheels pointed outwards. Because of this the pilot had a very narrow margin to make fails. The slightest out of horizontal plane during take off and landing resulted a violent break out to the sides.

The spit had similar wheel distance but it had parallel landing struts, and that made it much more forgiving.

Could you please explain why the slightly outward layout of the landing gear would have caused such a behaviour? This does not correspond to my understanding of mechanics which says that the outward layout would have made it more stable around the roll axis with out of plane movements because it in fact increased the lever with respect to the roll axis. So a 109 landing on one of its front wheels would have fallen easier back on both legs than a plane like the Spit.

[klem]

Originally Posted by 41Sqn_Stormcrow

Could you please explain why the slightly outward layout of the landing gear would have caused such a behaviour? This does not correspond to my understanding of mechanics which says that the outward layout would have made it more stable around the roll axis with out of plane movements because it in fact increased the lever with respect to the roll axis. So a 109 landing on one of its front wheels would have fallen easier back on both legs than a plane like the Spit.

Well it would seem to me that if one wheel touches before the other, its 'toe out' would pull it in that direction before the other wheel touched and bit.

[decay]

<Rant>
I don't mean to use bad language (Wings Of Prey) but I would HAPPILY take some incremental updates.
Until you read the forums you would think that Cliffs of Dover had been abandoned.

At least with (pardon the French) Wings Of Prey, every second time I start the thing "Hey New Update!"

With CoD - 7 MONTHS since the last update. Even the old IL2 is on a faster update schedule.

My rig should run CoD, but it's a slide show.

<repeat> Bang head on wall</repeat>

RELEASE ! RELEASE ! RELEASE !

</Rant>

<sigh> at least the new IL2 4.11 is nice.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by decay

<Rant>
I don't mean to use bad language (Wings Of Prey) but I would HAPPILY take some incremental updates.
Until you read the forums you would think that Cliffs of Dover had been abandoned.

At least with (pardon the French) Wings Of Prey, every second time I start the thing "Hey New Update!"

With CoD - 7 MONTHS since the last update. Even the old IL2 is on a faster update schedule.

Surprisingly I have to agree. My thinking is they could not release frequent patches because they hired a new graphics developer who had to spend several months learning the code and only then rewriting it. It is reasonable that they could not release anything within those months because the game was essentially in a completely disassembled state. Now when the major rewrite is hopefully done I suggest we persuade Luthier to target for monthly official patches with more frequent betas. This is 100% realistic and very efficient for the development team as well because allows to receive quick feedback and avoid wasting time. E.g. BIS which is a small team too issues ARMA2 beta builds sometimes every 3 days (see dates) http://forums.bistudio.com/forumdisp...-PATCH-TESTING (BTW working with the community issue tracker on everyday basis https://dev-heaven.net/projects/cis/wiki/CIT)

decay mentioned another small dev team which does the same, issuing weekly betas, hot-fixes to patches at 23.30 on Friday nights and then posting support forum messages at 04.00 in the morning.

Ilya, now when engine rewrite nightmare is mostly over, your team can do this. There are too many issues community waited to be fixed for too much time. Frankly speaking it took too long already unfortunately. Without priority bugs fixed first in CloD, sales of the sequel will be less than 10% of CloD sales. http://www.il2bugtracker.com/project...ues?query_id=1

On the other hand with weekly betas and monthly patches sequel sales can be high even if 2 publishers push its release too early when it is only 80% finished. This would allow you to keep the team within 1C and work on the next project. CloD sales were not as bad as critics reviews because credibility in community was high. Now credibility can be rebuild only with actual product support, not only Friday pictures unfortunately. We can not expect community to be prepared waiting 14-18 (or more?) months after the sequel release again for priority bugs to be fixed. Not possible any more as community has changed.

CloD is a great, outstanding and unmatched product but unfortunately bugs and missing standard features are also great and outstanding ATM yet.

@ all: When Luthier posts the patch could you please copy this message to the patch thread if I am not around.

[klem]

[QUOTE=Ataros;412638]Surprisingly I have to agree. My thinking is they could not release frequent patches because they hired a new graphics developer who had to spend several months learning the code and only then rewriting it. It is reasonable that they could not release anything within those months because the game was essentially in a completely disassembled state. Now when the major rewrite is hopefully done I suggest we persuade Luthier to target for monthly official patches with more frequent betas. ............QUOTE]

If the Graphics rewrite is still in an unresolved state after a few more days it would be much better for us if unrelated changes like FMs etc, could be released now. I haven't run out of patience but if significant changes that don't affect, or won't be affected by, the graphics changes are able to be released I think they should be.