The feel of flight seems nice, especially the sensation of inertia and resistance to control inputs during dives.
But I don't think the FM is finished in anyway yet.
Try this - I'm sure many of us already know about it:
Deliberately yank the stick back and hold it there - the feeling of impending stall, and the way planes enter it seems nice.. but the problem is, stalls don't develop any further than that. Planes refuse to start to spin, and you will see that in some planes like the P-51D, it just sort of "shakes" around with the nose pitch facing towards the earth. No spin at all.
Let go of the stick, and control is immediately restored.
...
On the other hand, in some other planes, I've felt the effect of AH1 style stalls - the dreaded, inverted flat spin(well, not exactly a spin.. since it doesn't spin at all.. just fall flat on its back).
I've pushed a Spit9 up 90 degrees vertical - yes, the torque is there, and it's definately not so easy to hover upwards straight with guns blazing. But after reaching the stall point, the nose of the plane falls downwards, but, it doesn't do it completely!
Like the exact same phenomenon as seen in AH1, the nose, the heaviest part of a WW2 plane where the engine is mounted, at the point of vertical stall where speed is lost and lift is diminishing, drops down about half way towards the earth, and it then suddenly stops there.
The plane, without spinning in any axis, just rocks back and forth, and falls straight down on its back.
I'm no expert in flight nor an experienced pilot, but I seem to recall that this phenomenon seen in AH1, has been discussed over and over again, with many self described pilots pointing out that this phenomenon is strange, and unrealistic.
Well, a part of me felt a grin, seeing a Spit9 facing the same kind of dangers what all other planes had to face before, but a part of me hoped that this wierd, inverted stall that made ideal hammer heads and immelmann maneuvers almost impossible in AH1, was gone in AH2 - unless the pilot somehowe deliberately forces his plane into weirdest of stalls.
....
The Bf109G-10 is also weird - the increase in torque forces are interesting, and seeing that it rolls faster towards one side, and slower the other, was good. But the torque seems to be incredibly large - at speeds from 200mph and under, right roll input is almost negated by the torque force. Hence, even the control authority of auto trim, cannot compensate for it during take off. When going vertical, it is not just 'difficult' to keep the nose point upwards - it's impossible. It's not impossible because the plane is reaching stall speed, and the nose is dropping down - it's impossible because the plane rolls itself out of the vertical and the pilot cannot stop it even with maximum stick defelction. I can understand that happening when the plane reaches near stall speed, but at 150~200mph??
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Some stalls in AH1 were very good. I've stalled the P-51D and F4U-1, didn't recover from it fast enough, and let it develop into a spin. The resulting spin was incredible - the plane noses down spinning to oneside like crazy, and if you try to stop the spin, it stopped turning one way, and started to turn the other way - it was just like what I've read about fatal stalls that develop into spins, and some planes which are typically prone, to falling in those sort of spins.
I hope they finish with the FM of planes - at least, the ones made available for beta testing - soon. We all hope to get a glimpse of what it might be like.
