Flight Model Wars Round 2

[Jigster]

Hum. If I remember right the AH flight model worked by calculating lift and drag components for so many seperate sections of the wing, which were dubbed "lift points", and one of the advangtage over WB when AH was in beta was multiple lifting points vs 2 (or 4?) in WB, so varying degrees of damage could be taken into the flight model. And also the flight model became much more fluid because the wing could be in multiple states across the entirety of it's length, rather than having a change occur across the whole thing in one instant.


Then again I might of just dreamed it. I don't honestly remember. I think that was accumulative of everything I've heard HT say about the FM.

Oh about the whole losing a wing thing...most of the WWII wings aren't very efficent at high speed. The wing doesn't produce much lift, but a good bit of drag. When a section of wing comes off, there goes alot of drag, and some lift. But because the other wing isn't producing all that much either, the rolling motion isn't substantial.

Soon as the plane starts slowing down, theres alot more lift being created, roll tendency increase, splat. I suppose you could argue that there isn't enough rolling tendency at the air foil's best preformence speed.

woot.

[Gunslayer]

 Lol, the physics of gpl are nice, but far from being realistic.

niklas

Sorry Niki, oops I mean Niklas (Sorry Pyro   ) According to many experts, Grand Prix Legends has the MOST realistics physics engine of any racing game ever. It was the first game ever to simulate real-time four wheel physics. I would like to know what do you think is not realistic about it?

For Swulfe, I don't believe you have to see the source code to judge a game engine. Yes, Deez has to go by his own experience to compare the feel of the game engines. But most poeple that argue about Aces versus WB versus WW2 online have never flown in real planes. He has enough flight experience to convince me he at least has a decent understanding of what real flight feels like. And he by no means is trying to pretend that he knows what is going on behind the scenes. Many poeple have heard Pyro and Hitech say that aces uses a tables based flight model. I have read it in some of thier posts.

To Jigster:
I agree that if a wing was cut off by a laser beam , drag may have been reduced. But we are talking about machine gun and explosive cannon round hits. These would tear up the outter skin of the plane leaving a very rough drag inducing edge. This coupled with the potential structural damage to the wing would slow the plane or the pilot down. This would also put the plane out or trim and possible requiring some extreme rudder or stick positions to keep the plane flying straight, also slowing it down. My main point here was the wings in aces exist in only 3 states, all there, half gone, or all gone.

[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Gunslayer ]

[AKSWulfe]

Originally posted by Gunslayer:
For Swulfe, I don't believe you have to see the source code to judge a game engine. Yes, Deez has to go by his own experience to compare the feel of the game engines. But most poeple that argue about Aces versus WB versus WW2 online have never flown in real planes. He has enough flight experience to convince me he at least has a decent understanding of what real flight feels like. And he by no means is trying to pretend that he knows what is going on behind the scenes. Many poeple have heard Pyro and Hitech say that aces uses a tables based flight model. I have read it in some of thier posts.

Gunslayer, Deez has about as many hours in aircraft as I do... I have more in 152s, but I have about 12 hours in a Cozy.

I also have 6 hours in a Boeing 737, 747 and 777 full motion simulator (not 6 hours in each, 6 hours altogether).

I can guarantee you, there is no "feel" in it. AH uses table based flight models in some aspects, but if it hits the numbers and they perform like real world data says (or within 10%) then that's pretty freakin good for a PC. Fact of the matter is, you put X-Plane data in here and you might have something that does NOT hit the numbers in some areas while it does in others. This is no different than the way AH models it.

Now, there was a game(no where near simulating real aircraft) called Flying Circus. This thing had some of the most fluid flight ever... but the planes were all based on the same sets of data. There was no torque. There were spins (and very beautifully modelled spins at that), and "limits" in the flight model (e-loss, etc)...

Case in point, that thing FELT really good to me at simulating flight. It was far from any numbers on the "planes" it was "simulating", but it had a good FEEL.

I'm just saying, there's no way you can FEEL what is right or wrong, there or missing, modelled or not... it's all in the eye of the beholder.
-SW

[Gunslayer]

I can agree with you that if a plane in the game performs 90% close to the one in real life, it doesn't matter how the engine does it. But it is possible by playing a game to tell if an airplane is behaving wrong if you have flown a real one. The simple physics are just not right at times in aces. Even I have noticed that the planes don't seem to carry momentum very well. Particularly if you try to perform a manouver like a hammerhead.

I have never flown a real airplane, but I have watched deez fly the p51 in both games and do similar manouvers and the one in X-plane seems to perform closer to what i have seen at airshows and in war films.

I am by no means an X-plane cheerleader though. I hate the cockpit, the view system is abysmal. There is nothing to do but fly around. THe first thing i asked deez when he showed me X-plane was, where are the poeple to shoot?  

If I had to choose between all the things that aces does well (view system, gunnery model, carrier ops, etc..) or X-planes FM, i would take the aces stuff. But i do think it would be neet to try to shoot someone down online with a Combat sim with an X-plane style physics engine. Who knows maybe Laminar Research will come out with one    Til then I am playing Aces.

[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: Gunslayer ]

[AKHog]

Originally posted by DeeZCamp:
I have approx 30 hrs of non-logged time within Various 152 aircraft, about 5 hrs of Acro time in Navy T-43 (I may be incorrect on the Idnetifier though )it was a Tri cycle setup, no tail dragger. And a measly 6.5 Hrs logged in a Katana   . For a super short summarization, I have done power on/off stalls, Dutch rolls, barrel rolls, slow flight, pattern work, general flight, x-country prep,I-mans, as well as other aerobatic manovers and general flight.

 

Originally posted by Gunslayer:
Yes, Deez has to go by his own experience to compare the feel of the game engines. But most poeple that argue about Aces versus WB versus WW2 online have never flown in real planes. He has enough flight experience to convince me he at least has a decent understanding of what real flight feels like.

 

-AKHog

[AKHog]

BTW if you cant figure out my last post:

He has ?around? 5 hours in a ww2 trainer. All the other flight time doesnt count, I'm sorry but a 150 hp cessna 152 doesn't even come close to a ~1000 hp ww2 fighter. So the little time that he actualy does have in a plane thats even closly related to our planes was in a training plane that he probably paid for rides in, like at an airshow???. And the only things he has done that come close to acm were rolls and loops. Now you can learn a lot about how a plane handles in that situation BUT to say you know ww2 planes well enough from that situation to say x is better then ah in regard to fm is bs. you just cant get a feel for how a real ww2 plane flys from 5 hours in a ww2 trainer doing loops and rolls.


IMHO if you want to get a better feel for how a ww2 plane feels come up to Maryland with about $200. I'll take you up in my clubs pits 2s and we'll follow my friend in his extra around for a little while. (thats if ya got the balls to climb into a full acro plane w/ chute straped to  yer back and an 18 year old kid at the stick       ).

-AKHog

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: AKHog ]

[AKSWulfe]

 

This is a T-43... I highly doubt you were doing any manuevers in this bad boy.

 http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lab/1594/t-34-1-1.gif  EDIT: You have to cut n paste this into your address bar, since it's a geoshitties site.

That's a T-34.

If you are doing manuevers in either of those, they are far from WWII aircraft performance standards.


Have you ever seen a WWII plane hammerhead?

I can hammerhead in AH, it just takes a little practice. Do it offline, use the F4 view. Use ailerons to keep your plane straight and reduce throttle. Kick full left (or right) rudder and jam the throttle forward.

The AH planes hit the numbers, the FM isn't perfect, but it isn't COMPLETE either.
-SW

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: SWulfe ]

[AcId]

[idiot-mode]
Too move slightly back towards the topic at hand, If AH did use a real-time-Blade-whatcha-majigger versus a Table-based-thinga-mabob It sounds to me that there would be a lot more calculations involved per Aircraft online. If that is true than HTC may not be in a position to re-code everything and upgrade there servers to 32way RISC systems.
[/idiot-mode]

Edit: Who cares how its done now or later, as long as we have fun  

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: AcId ]

[Toad]

Yes, he had to mean the T-34. Basically it's a derivative of the Beech Bonanza.

It's a nice airplane. I haven't flown one yet although there's two or three around here. They are good trainers, easy to fly, reportedly with very few bad habits.

SW, your link is broken. Try these.
 http://www.avsim.com/pages/0401/vip_t-34/vip_t-34_review.html

"The original idea of the T-34 was from the mind of Walter Beech himself, and is based on the original Beech A-35 Bonanza/Debonaire civilian aircraft model. Mr. Beech, due to the lack of defense budgeting for new aircraft—or more specifically budgeting for a new trainer to replace the T-6/NJ (the T-6/NJ was being used by all branches of the military at the end of World War II)—financed the development of the T-34 out of his own pocket with the hopes of selling it to the military.

Of the 3 original prototypes or concept T-34s shown the US Military in 1948, one was equipped with a V tail as was the Bonanza. The conservative nature of the military dictated that any new aircraft was going to be conventional in all respects and there was only one T-34 ever built with the V tail.

The Beech T-34 Mentor finally won out on a years long competition for a new replacement trainer for all branches of the US Military; full production of the T-34 began in 1953 lasting through 1956. Unfortunately, Walter Beech passed away in 1950 and he never got to see his pet project come to realization. All in all, 1,199 examples of the Beech T-34 Mentor were built (all versions including the original prototypes)."

 http://www.limalima.com/mentor.html

"The Mentor was the brainchild of Walter Beech, who saw the need for a less expensive and easier-to-fly trainer than the North American AT-6/SNJ, which both the U.S. Navy and Air Force were using for primary training in the 1940's."

Both pages have some good info.

[hitech]

DeeZCamp: I never contridicted myself, you are complete mixing defintions and I just responed to you as best I could with your exatremly limited understanding of flight dynamics.

Point 1 is blade element theroy has absoblutly nothing to do with inputing a plane or wing shape. It is simply a method of caculating forces on a rotating airfoil by breaking that airfoil down into smaller components, adding the rotational vel. with the spacial vel, and then summing the forces
at all the sample points.

Your using the term Blade Element theroy in multiple ways.

At the begining of this descusion a while back you made a simple statment. That HTC should use B.E.T. because then how could anyone argue with the output of a model. Well that is a totaly incorect assumption. Take a look at XPlane and look at the fudge factor numbers like swaged drag coef's and eng performance. These need to come from some where, why are they not comming out of there B.E.T?

Next comes the way they treat airfoils, you assume they do some type of realtime flow caculations over the airfoil. They don't per there hype, they take a NACA airfoil number, then compute the cm,cl,cd tables. They then interplate these tables between multiple points on the airfoil.

Deezcamp:You lack an even basic understanding of flight physics and the math behind different aproches to plane modeling, let alone being able to judge what XPlane does different that makes you like it's feel better than AH's. In a nut shell you like XPlane, and that's great I have no desire to degrade other peoples modeling efforts, but in the end you picked up 1 buzz word they use and thought it was the greatest thing since purple underware. Have you done any detail testing of there model to find out how well it models climb rates and max speed on one of there WWII prop planes threw it's full altitude range? Or how well they hit roll rates threw various speeds? Or how there planes hit sustained turn numbers? Id be curious to find out how well they do.

The deal is you realy have no idea what XPlane is doing that creates the feel you like. You just know you like it. Therefore you are arguing from a totaly uninformed and invalid basis.

HiTech

[SB]

I've got time in a lot of things, from a hang glider to the TA-4J Skyhawk. I've flown the T-34B and the T-28C. Most of my time logged in in Cessnas and Mooneys. AH feels pretty darn good to me for what it is supposed to be delivering.

There are things that need to be fixed or tweaked in this game. It works like this though, what do you want more, a better selection of aircraft, more terrains, roads and trains, more accurate flight model, better damage model, better artwork, more features? Choose one for the team to work on. The resources are limited and they can't do it all right now. More resources you say? Too many people squeak about the price now, are you willing to pay for it? Heh, I've found that they usually do listen.

[AKHog]

Well said HT.

SW has been saying the exact same thing in different ways for about the last 20 posts, as have others.

Hope its all clear now.

-AKHog

[Gunslayer]

Actually Akhog, Swulfe has just been blasting Deez relentlessly in a rather unpolite and unprofessional manner most of the time.

[AKSWulfe]

Hah! Point that one out to me Gunslayer.

Unpolite and unprofessional because I did not agree with him?

Or because I did not believe him?

Or because I know that you can NOT feel what is modelled and what isn't, yet you insisted he could feel it out?

Gimme a break, I was never unpolite, I was just proving he was wrong.
-SW

[Gunslayer]

Originally posted be Swulfe

 

You must be the most (un)intelligent person in the world.

you are simply talking out of your tail pipe.

And because you've flown a something er other naval trainer makes you more qualified? Heh... bullllllllsssssshhhhhiiiiittt tttt

therefore he is talking out of his bellybutton because he does NOT have any information or data as to WHAT is modelled in AH.

 

These seem like personal attacks to me, not just polite disagreement. Personally I prefer when people act like adults on these boards , but some to prefer to start name calling and the like. That is what it appeared to me that you were doing. Calling deez unintelligent is not proving your point either. We have yet to see any proof to support your statement that deez is wrong other than your opinions. All you have done is repeat it over and over again with no data to back it up, therefore you assumptions must be as foundless as you believe Deezcamp's to be.

It it clear to me that we aren't going to see eye to eye on the feeling of a flight model or not. But there are many game reviewers and the like whose job it is to judge such things. Poeple that write for simHQ or Pc Pilot magazine's job is to do just that. Play a game, make as accurate a judgement as they can about the gameplay, graphics, and yes the feel of the flight physics, and write a review of it. If they can do it I assume it must be possible, else they are being paid for nothing.

If this is true then the real debate is whether Deezcamp has enough flight experience to make these judgement. I guess maybe someone could ask the poeple that write these reviews how much flight experience they have and compare it to Deezcamp's. If that person were trying to find a civil answer for this debate.

Gunslayer

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: Gunslayer ]