Testing the n1k

[Yeager]

Pyro,

Are there going to be any modifications to any existing FMs in this upcoming 1.05 release?

If so, which FMs and why?

I think the changes in the FM that took place between 1.03 and 1.04 have, to varying degrees, shaken many peoples shared belief in the quality and accuracy of the flight models in AH.

Those of us without aeronautical engineering degrees or lacking the confidence to run established mathmatical formulas, rely soley on our quantitative knowledge based on years of amatuer study of this subject and as a result have a hard time reconciling perceived inequities between the various aircraft types.

This is why faith in the product is so  important to me and I am sure, many of us.

Also having faith that the devlopers (you) will be fourthright when errors are found and explain, in as much detail as is possible, what is goin on behind the scenes so that we may continue to feel "in the loop".

Sorry if this doesnt make sense.....

Yeager

[flakbait]

Torque is reduced. Want proof? I figured you did. Grab an F4U [either model] and take off. Sure there's a little torque at the start of your roll, but once the tail comes up you'll notice it torques to the RIGHT. Torque from the engine is so screwed up on the F4U that it actually reverses the torque direction once the tail comes up. If you use rudder trim it makes it worse.

Torque from the engine is there, but horribly reduced. I was under the impression that auto-takeoff was put in the game so you wouldn't have to fight the engine torque. If that is indeed the case, why reduce engine torque?

Pyro, I'm not sure if you still test using a "test" version. If you do, then stop. A bug in the release version may not crop up in the test version you use. I remember you saying something about a bug a while back. It didn't show up in the test version, only in the release.


-----------------------
Flakbait
Delta 6's Flight School
"During the Battle of Britain the question 'fighter or fighter-bomber?'
had been decided once and for all: The fighter can only be used as a bomb carrier
with lasting effect when sufficient air superiority has been won." Adolph Galland
 

[Jekyll]

 

then you can pull as hard as stall allows it- or let's better say: you can force your wing into any AoA in a flat turn below maximum AoA , and you ll accelerate with full engine power.

"as hard as stall allows it ....."

Agreed Niklas.  Shame Wells didn't say that in the first place.  He simply seemed to be saying that you could pull as hard as you liked and would still accelerate to sustained turn speed.  No mention of 'as hard as you like, so long as you don't stall'

Regards...

[Animal]

It is currently impossible to simulate a PERFECT enviroment based on physical laws where you just put in the specifications of an object and the world around it will react as it should. Even if someday we are able to simulate this enviroment on a computer, and make a simulation of WWII, there will still be complaining.

Hoever, Pyro you have to admit that the current plane-set is not balanced. But I have faith in your perk plane idea or whatever you will use; and planes like the niki, wich are exceedingly good, and you have faith is modelled correctly, can be controlled for the sake of balance. Right now I log in and take off in my favorite plane, the P-38, but guess what, i'm not having much fun because I will face a niki teamed up with an f4u who have no fear of losing since they can get a new plane of their choice.

[Lephturn]

Ok, I got home tonight and grabbed that loops.ahf film.  I also tried some of my own testing.

First, let me point out that this test was done from an ELEVATED field.  After about the third loop if you look at it with trails on from external looking back at the plane, it is clear that he goes BELOW the starting elevation at the bottom of each loop as he works off of the hill.  Try this again from a 0 elevation field.  So much for the "gaining E" theory.

Second, I did my own tests.  Yeah, if you are really careful with the stick at the top, and let the N1k2 accelerate on the down side of the loops and zoom a bit on the up side, you can indeed loop pretty much indefinitely.  However, ride the edge of the stall horn all the way around and you won't make 3 loops.  I even tried it from a 300 Mph start and I STILL augered after a few loops.

The fact that no "real pilots" even tried to do infinite loops at ground level is simply due to the fact that they would have DIED if they did't make it.  Nobody ever tried it, I guarantee it.  Maybe the real plane could do exactly what we see.  The overall accuracy of this simulation makes me think it probably could with pilots of equal skill and bravery.  If they couldn't, I'd bet it was because of things like engine conditions, fuel flow, and torque effects.

Also, those are not perfect loops that were performed.  They are decidedly oblique.  The N1k2 has a tendancy to roll during high AoA maneuvers it seems.  I'm guessing that's torque effects.

In short, the FM looks exactly right to me.  I can't beleive this entire thread was generated from that film.  Am I the only one who actually looked at it?  Did anybody else actually try to duplicated it and watch your G meter?

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[RAM]

Lephturn, letting aside the E-keeping thing, you think the torque is correctly modelled after your test?.

Its an honest question.

[Karnak]

Lephturn,
Thanks.  Thats what I saw as well.

RAM,
I agree with you that torque seems to be much to weak in AH 1.04

Sisu
-Karnak

[bloom25]

Maybe I'm splitting hairs a little here Leph, but if you watch the altitude meter you will see that the runway level is 500ft.  Until my WEP runs out, the bottoms of my loops are at no lower than 535 ft.  After that, agreed, I am lower than runway level.

I'm now thinking that *maybe* this was possible for the real thing theoretically.  I do think that if torque was the way it was in 1.03 this would be completely impossible though.  I've also seen some good evidence that the flaps on the n1k are kind of messed up.  (They are automatic for one thing, so dropping flaps in the n1k shouldn't be possible.  Also, they don't seem to be generating extra drag from what I've read.)

I think if you factor in the lack of torque, and the drag-less flaps, this explains the endless looping.

The fact that the typhoon can also loop like this tells me that this problem (if it is one) isn't confined to the n1k alone.  I'm thinking torque, rather the lack of it, is the main problem here.  Sure, there is a little bit of roll at the tops of some of the loops, but that's actually because I was stalling the aircraft at the tops of a few of them.  The fact that you can stand just about any fighter on it's tail in this version until you are at almost 0 airspeed tells me torque is much weaker now.

I've heard stories of planes flipping over on takeoff if you throttled them up too quickly.  Tell me, can you flip ANY plane over in 1.04 by punching full power and wep right after the engine starts?  When landing a F4u, n1k, typhoon, p51, 109, 190, etc there should also be large torque effects when suddenly throttling up, yet they don't seem that bad anymore.  I remember when it used to be possible to flip the f4u-d when landing it by simply throttling up.



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Vermillion]

Animal wrote:
 

Hoever, Pyro you have to admit that the current plane-set is not balanced

How is it not balanced?

There isn't a plane in the planeset that doesn't have weakness's that can't be exploited by a decent pilot.

The N1K2 is slow, and the F4U-1c is a pig in acceleration, and E retention. And those are the two "uber" planes that everyone complains about.

Hell... I have been flying the lowly A6M5b some lately and I'm at something like 6-7 kills with no deaths. And I hadn't flown this plane since the 1.04 FM rework. Not to mention that my flying skills suck.

Fly to your strengths, exploit your enemy's weakness's, and there isn't a plane in the current planeset that is "unbalancing".

Give me a F4U-4 or a F2G, and I will show you "untouchable"  

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure

[Lephturn]

Now we are getting somewhere.

From an energy perspective, no, I didn't see anything that struck me as wrong.  Bloom25, yeah it was the perspective thing that got me thinking you went below ground level.  Doing it from a flat field would have made it easier to tell.  Still, the point is that you CAN do endless loops, but only if you fly them in such a manner that you let the plane build E whenever possible.  If you pull maximum turn all the time you'll lose E quickly and you won't make 3 loops.

From a torque perspective... yeah torque seems pretty gentle.  In the N1k2 I really noticed it when doing loops.  It is REALLY tough to do perfect loops in the N1k2 without seeing them become oblique.

One thing I always forget about is combat trim.  Combat trim would automatically trim out that torque effect to a certain degree wouldn't it?  Could this be why torque seems to have decreased so much?  I don't know, it would be interesting to test it without combat trim.  I suspect combat trim is a large part of the reason that we can do near-0 airspeed maneuvers easier than we could before.

RAM.  I guess now that your point about E has been de-bunked, you have to switch to torque huh?  To answer your question, I honestly don't know.  I'd have to go back and run the tests with combat trim turned off.  I feel like torque effects are too gentle, but I have nothing to compare it with.  You also have to bear in mind that torque effects may be lower for <gasp> playability reasons.    (Try not to let your head explode when you read that Ram.)  

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[RAM]

 

Originally posted by Lephturn:
RAM.  I guess now that your point about E has been de-bunked, you have to switch to torque huh?

No, lephturn. Lack of torque was an argument of mine since 1.04 went out. Check it if you dont believe it.

In the current posts about the FM and the N1K2's loops I have mentioned a lot of time the lack of torque as one of the wrong points in the FM.

When pyro came here and gave his explanation, I gave up the thing about FM. IMO Pyro has never lied to the customer base, and I dont think he will start doing it now. SO, althought I feel there is something weird in those 27 loops, I believe him.

And as I believe him, I dont insist in the E_keeping, but in my other arguments, torque and laminar flow wings in the N1K2. The second tihng was answered by CJ, the first is still to be answered.

Lephturn, For sure I wont like to know that torque is tuned down for "playability" reasons. We have an autopilot and a combat autotrim for just that and I see the torque tuning down as a redundant measure for playability, if its done for that purpose.

Lack of torque means more than better gameplay, means that some planes can do unrealistic moves that their counterparts in real life didnt. Typhoons looping at low speeds are an example. N1K2s looping 27 times in a row at 170mph entry are another (e-keeping aside, the torque should be nasty at the top, its a 2000hp engine)...etc

If it is turned down for playability, I want to know it. If it is screwed and needs a fix I want to know it.

But what I dont want is to Know that the torque is NOT there, and not knowing why. I WANT To know why.

Hope you get my point here.

[Lephturn]

RAM, at over 2600 posts I know all of your opinions far better than I want to.  Luckily it means I can skip most of your posts without wasting time reading them.

You are "the little boy who cried wolf" at this point.  Explain it however you want.  You've talked enough that most of us don't bother listening to you anymore.

If you really want some answers you'll spend your time testing the flight model in AH to provide some data instead of posting a "wall of text" every day.  Try providing some content instead of just muck-raking in your next post and maybe we'll have something to discuss.

And the beat goes on....

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 12-07-2000).]

[RAM]

Typical.


To do some tests? ok. I will do a low speed loop in a tiffie later, film it and post it.


Better yet I will take off on a straight line, manually. That will be enough test about the lack of torque, if you dont believe me, go and read some WWII stories about typhoons, ok?.

Or do what flakbait said...try to trim your F4U manually on take off and see how you crash, ok?

 

[This message has been edited by RAM (edited 12-07-2000).]

[hitech]

To make it VERY Clear. So called torque what RAM is reffering to, Realy he's talking about vortex effects,We have NOT tuned down any prop effect for playablity.

Just so everyone knows the effects from the prop. They are 5
1. Vortex / slipstream
2. Gyroscopic
3. Torque.
4. PFactor.
5. Thrust

We model all 5.

HiTech

[Vermillion]

Remember when your Teachers in school told you that some day all that math and science would pay off?

Well, it pays off right here!

OH.... you didn't listen to them and got a PolySci or liberal arts degree, instead of that Engineering degree?

Too Bad isn't it  

< I'm kidding, I'm kidding hehehee >

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure