Most of this is pure speculation on my part, not even educated guessing, so please go ahead and flame me..
I have a ‘feeling’ that the modeling of the wing and lift is a bit off. I may be way off here, but might the current lift and angle of attack calculations be something that this sim has in part inherited from brand W?
I know Pyro said that some tweaking was planed for the FM, so it might be in the pipe, or it is correct as it is now. However, to me it feels like the modeling of the wings now is done in three parts per wing-half, the center wing section, the aileron section and the wingtip (the wingtip might not be calculated as a separate part, but IMHO should be). This makes sense, since the washout and change in the wing profile over the span is done so that the wing doesn’t stall all at the same time but first at the root and then progressively out to the tip. The AoA is effectively less at the tip. The point of this is to avoid that the plane snaps out of a turn or falls off sharply in a gentle stall. In a hard, accelerated stall the whole wing, including the tip, would still stall with a violent dropping of a wing as a result.
On brand W the wing AFAIK was done as the aileron section only, that is the entire wing would change its AoA with aileron input and flaps. To make this work the wing had to be able to handle a grater AoA then the average wing profile really could. And the loss of lift in a stalled state would not be as complete as it would be in the real world to make up for the lack of washout.
On the AH wing the center-section would change AoA and profile with flap deployment, the aileron-section with ailerons and the tip-section would never change AoA in relation to the airframe and with a lower angle of attack still generate lift when the rest of the wing sections was stalled.
In AH it feels to me, very subjectively, as if the wing can still generate lift at a too high AoA, but that the planes (all of them I think) still have a slightly high stall speed. So I speculate that the wing should generate a bit more lift at a lower AoA and stop generate lift (stall) at a lower AoA. AH is MUCH better the brand W (which was still the best before AH came online) but I would really like to hear HTCs view on this.
If I am right (and again that is a very big ‘if’) changing this could mean less rubber band feel and less bounce, a slightly lower AoA when landing and a slightly lower stall speed but a sharper loss of lift at the stall.
Another thing that I’m not sure if its modeled now, but that would have to be included is a lifting profile on the horizontal stab, or the effects on trim would probably be way to big at higher speeds.
Also, the different profiles used for the wings have very different characteristics, from the high lift wings on a N1K1, the spits elliptic wings, to the (semi) laminar flow wing of the P51. I don’t think that is prominent enough in the modeling as it flies now, the planes just feels too much alike. But all this is VERY marginal and I shouldn’t post this because I don’t know what I’m talking about..
-Jinx
