You know what disappoints me? Almost every time this topic comes up, some joker assigns the desire for "Uberplanes" (their term, not mine) to a base "dweebish" instinct for having the "best", with the implication that it's more macho or more "grognardish" to want to fly the underachieving aircraft. It's a mindset that is passed on from many of the "old" folks, to the "new" folks in a way that makes it part of the online flight sim culture... *hey boy, you're not _vet_ until you rip someone's urge to fly a Ta152, and shout out your desire to fly the Brewster Buffalo, and prove your manhood!*
And it's a complete bunch of ballocks.
Virtual piloting is all about the combination of both history and fantasy. In fact, I personally think that there's nothing more exciting than to be able to recreate the battles that never happened, but that we've *all* imagined at one time or another... the P-51H vs the Ta152, the P-47M vs the Do335, the F8F against the Ki84 or N1K2. Furthermore, for me, very little catches the imagination more than these aircraft... which represent the penultimate achievements of piston-powered aircraft technology. Hell, I'd fly them even if they were armed with only .303s, just for the thrill of it.
Meanwhile, it seems rather uninteresting to recreate the outcomes that we already know regarding a whole slew of aircraft which were obsolescent before the war even got rolling -- the Buffaloes, Swordfish, Gladiators, etc. When these aircraft excel in the virtual environment it is only due to two reasons: 1) The things that aren't/can't be modeled lets us get away with stuff a real pilot couldn't have done; and 2) Because we don't really die when we mess up, so we learn when a real pilot might be dead and gone... and eventually we become good virtual pilots. If you really had to fly some of these dregs, you might come to understand why they were moved off the front lines as quickly as possible. But instead, they become a vehicle for someone's ego... and meanwhile, plenty of us interested in *ahem* uberplanes get shouted down every time we ask for them.
Finally, the idea that they shouldn't be valid targets for modeling simply because they (time for the tired old quote...) "never saw combat" is exactly that -- tired. Let's stop lying to ourselves... neither Aces High nor Warbirds is reality... it is a fantasy world. The fact that certain aircraft saw or didn't see combat is often a matter of luck. Someone did or didn't allocate resources. A general decided to continue equipping with P-51Ds because they had more instructors versed in it. A industrial leader decided it was more efficient to keep building the F6F, rather than switching over to the F8F. Meanwhile, the Germans were so desparate that anything that came off the line went to the *much closer* front.
It's asinine to limit WB, Aces High, or anything else to such a stupid, narrow focus... while the basis of these games might be history, there's a very strong dose of fantasy right underneath the hood.
One final note... I've always found that the *ahem* Uberplanes were actually more competitive with each other (they're all good aircraft) than the many of the early war aircraft that some tout (as if a Defiant is going to be competitive with a 109E or F).
In any case, so far so good... no one has ruled against it, out of hand... maybe there's a first for everything!
------------------
SnakeEyes
o-o-o-
=4th Fighter Group=
[This message has been edited by SnakeEyes (edited 02-15-2000).]
