Possi, I must ask this question.
"What is
REAL[/i]?"
"How do you define
REAL[/i]?"
"How can you compare which one is
[/I]MORE real[/I]?"
.....
I've been watching quite many debates concerning certain Airplanes and its performance. To make it more specific, what I was especially interested in was the debate on the performance of the
Hispano 20mm cannons.
There were two sides, one side was stating that the power and accuracy of the Hispano Cannons depicted in Aces High was an over-model. The other was arguing nothing was wrong. The former statement was based on pilot testimonies and records of certain happenings, such as gun jam or gun failure, and the latter had theirs based on numbers from factory tests. Though the debate was hot and gruesome, the AH community generally had to admit(if not pleasingly) the testaments and memories of individual pilots were subjective, while numbers and statistics were objective.
Just as it was in that case, what is "REALLY REAL" cannot be simply judged or implemented by a certain single person, since memory itself is objective. Therefore, the efforts taken into realistic modeling of aircraft performance will certainly have to rely on something more objective than just one pilot's opinion.
There are many cases of experienced pilots(even some expert mechanics, too)who have testified something in a biography or historic article which turned out to be either wrong or impossible, because the person who had that certain experience simply remembered it wrong(either they remembered it as they WISHED the certain thing to happen, or according to whatever logic their personal ego find satisfying).
What 'feels' wrong that cannot be proven, no matter how it lurks within one's brain, has no objective value whatsoever in historic re-creation. It can go as far as a "useful bit of reference info", but nothing more, nothing less. This does not mean testament of first-hand experience should be pushed away, but only that many articles and truths have to be cross-examined carefully to figure something out and judge it as "REAL ENOUGH".
AH flight modeling of most aircraft has done that - Careful cross examination of many(some even contradictory) facts and figures that float around the historical context of aircombat. And this community(I believe) certainly will not yield to claims on a certain aircraft modeling tested by a certain beta-tester and experienced pilot.
If you, Possi, want to claim that the modeling of the Messerschmitt-109 is more correct than that of AH, you'll have to:
1) Notify us where the modeling is wrong in AH 109
2) how it is different in IL-2
3) and how that difference in Il-2 matches historical data(both pilot testimonies
AND statistical figures) more than AH does.
...
We don't mean to say that AH is never wrong. Just that we have good reason to believe that it is pretty much damn close to how it really was, than any other flight sims around.
We don't mean to insult you Possi, at least not yet
ps) But rest assured we might, if this sort of blind 'claiming' gets out of hand.
