Stop guys, before you say something you may regret in the future.
The WB is currently the most authentic prop-fighter simulation with five years of tradition and thousands of addicts. Many of AH people are current/former WB players. HTC are the guys who created WB and they are making AH even more realistic. You would have to take a look at WB and visit the forums of WB to get a feel of the things.
www.cyberus.ca/~argo/agw/ lists.imagiconline.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi
Now about trim. Only to a newbie pilot it seems unimportant and irritating. If you do not fly well, the importance of trim may not be evident. Only after months and months of flying and studying a certain plane, learning how it behaves at different altitudes, speeds and configurations, will you be able to use the plane close to 100%. Then you will notice how important the trim is.
I would say that trim easily adds 10%-25% to the plane performance but that will not be correct because those percentages are the most important - they come from the top. It is like having the longest sword. If you and your enamy have the same level of skill and his sword is one inch longer, that inch makes all the difference.
Any expert in a certain plane will tell you - there are experts in some planes, even those few people want to fly (P47 for instance) that can do miracles with them. Fight them 1 on 1 in the same plane and you will notice that he can pull out of a dive faster with smaller loss of speed. He can pull a tighter turn at the stall speed and not spin out, he will fly faster in level flight, roll faster than you can follow and do lot of things that will make you think his flight model is hacked. All that is actually the signs of mastery of trim.
When you fly, you should constantly tinker with your trim settings. I would say that the workload of trimming the plane is actually more then flying it.
If you are out of trim you have to apply stick/pedals to compensate and since you yse the same stick/pedals to aim your guns, your ability to hit anything is severely impaired.
If your rudder is not trimmed, your plane is flying a bit sideways. The air resistance is increased a lot, you lose a lot of your top speed. Your nose is not pointed where you are byllets/shells and especially with rockets or bombs, you will discover that they are not flying toward the aiming point at all...
Your plane will tend to roll/yaw and toy will have constantly play with stick and rudder to keep it level.
If your elevator is not trimmed, the plane will pull up or down. You will not be able to pull as tight a turn as you want. Your precision goes to hell with the corresponding loss of speed and aiming accuracy.
Pretty much the same goes for roll, especially during a stall-fight (turn-fight at slow speeds).
You have to change your trim constantly because it is different for different speeds and engine powers. You need different trims for cruising, diving, pulling out, reversing and turnfighting. Some experts in B&Z (Boom and Zoom) planes know the speed they shoot att when they are diving. So they set their trim for that speed and have to work their sticks a lot just to keep flying straight. Once they see a victim in a certain position, they dive in such a way, so that when it is time to pull the trigger, their plane is perfectly trimmed without extra work.
You cannot really use autotrim during combat - it takes a couple of seconds of flying straight to stabilize which is not practical.
The reason that the trim is not made automatic for all the planes like in some arcade simulators is that real planes differed a lot in that respect. Add a computerized trim to a plane that was great otherwise, and you get an super-weapon much out of proportions to the real plane's capabilities.
It applies to quite a few features, not just trim. Here are some examples:
- while the Bf109 was very maneuverable airtframe, due to very narrow cockpit and very high stick forces, at high speeds the pilot physically could not apply enough force to the stick to make use of that meneuvrebility.
- while P47 was a lumbering behemoth compared to the other planes, its wide cockpit, extremely low stick forces and great high-speed handling allowed it's pilots to outmaneuver the supposedly superior planes, especially at high speeds and altitude. It was a very stable gun platform and combined with 8 guns it made it a very effective fighter.
- F6F is one of the greatest fighters in WB, but very few people fly it. Due to the extencive pilot's armor it's rear view is nonexistant. Take off without a good wingman and you will die without knowing what hit you.
The point is, guys, that it will take you months or years to master AH or WB. It is not a point and shoot game like Quake. It is actually closer to chess.
Once you become an expert in your selected plane, your knowlege of trim among other things will separate you from the other pilots.
miko--
[This message has been edited by miko2d (edited 12-27-1999).]
[This message has been edited by miko2d (edited 12-27-1999).]
