New cool (and advanced) features

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

Not with the same engines, of course, if the usually reported time between overhaul are correct, often at less than 100 hours.

It depended on the engine type, but you're right that some engines required overhaul after every hundred hours of flight or so. A few types were maintenance nightmares and required repair or replacement after just a few dozen hours of service!

Something I recently learned is that radial engines use up oil as they fly, both due to poor part tolerances and intentional losses. In some cases, the range of a radial engine plane is limited by its oil reserves rather than its fuel (e.g., the AD-1 Skyraider)!

So, in addition to potential engine failures due to lack of maintenance or random chance, pilots of radial engine planes should see their oil levels drop as the plane flies.

Originally Posted by Furio

Bad weather and primitive nav-aids caused more non-combat related losses than mechanical failure. Would it be possible to realistically implement weather-related accident?

Sure.

Currently, its possible by choosing a mountainous map and setting cloud height to less than the elevation of the mountains. Combine with Poor or worse weather and you get conditions for "controlled flight into terrain" due to poor visibility.

Fog effects could easily be created in one of two ways. First, there could be clouds that missions builders could place to fog in a particular runway. Or, it could be possible to give mission builders the option of setting the cloud base at less than 300 meters to create fog over an entire area. Set weather to "Poor" or worse and that gives you fog. Nothing like a fogged in airport to set up a weather-related crash.

Slightly more tricky would be making runways slippery due to rain or ice, which could cause ground loops or skids off the runway. But, that would require some new programming and calculations for the skidding effects.

Really tricky would be icing. That would require several new sets of textures for every plane in the game (light icing, moderate icing, severe icing), or possibly ice "objects" which adhere to leading edges and props (but which would probably destroy frame rates). It would also require animations and commands for de-icing systems in the cockpit, and programming to set up the conditions under which icing can occur, and under which the ice melts.

Originally Posted by Furio

Perhaps, but I think all – or almost all – players would turn off this option. Because we all are players, and we usually dislike to have a difficult and successful mission spoiled by a random and casual flip of a coin.

Exactly. But, the option of deliberate systems failure would be welcome since it allows mission builders to set up "in flight emergency" or "rescue/destroy the damaged plane" scenarios.

Currently, it is possible for instruments, engines and some other systems to be damaged or destroyed due to battle damage. I don't think that it would be too hard to give mission builders the option of creating scenarios where a plane starts damaged or suffers damage after a set amount of time.

The ability to downgrade engine performance or top speed would also be a really good way to simulate "battle weary" aircraft, or tone down flight models that the mission builder considers to be unrealistically good.