Originally posted by Lephturn:
Guys... remember having "half a wing" is just a simplistic representation of the wing being heavily damaged.
The only issue IMHO, is that there should be some extra drag added from all the damaged and dangling bits so that the planes don't end up faster than they were without damage.
Leph, IIRC it really isn't a simplistic representation of damage -- it's actual representation of how the flight model works.
There are certain number of lift points modeled per area of the wing (I believe thats how it works, it was suppose to be a big step up from WB that only has 2 or 4 points for the entire wing, I believe AH has @ 16 and allows for complex, yet accurate modeling of how the plane behaves with X amount of wing missing, otherwise, X number of lift points according to damage.) If a wing tip comes off, several points of lift are lost off that section of the wing. The number of points that are lost however, seems to be a dynamic thing. Which explains why you can lose both elevators and still have some control over pitch.
Apparently (and rightly so depending on wing configuration), some planes have the majority of those lifting points on the inner area of the wing, to the point where losing the outter wing sections results in loss of fewer lift points, while some depend a great deal on lift from the outter wing, in corelation with aileron/rudder authority.
Because those lifting points are what helps with flight model accuracy they are probably the points where drag is calculated for speed, AoA, G pull, etc so when the lift points are gone, so are any negative effects.
- Bessy