Accuracy of new P-40 external models

[Krusty]

Because level is relative. Flying at 120mph you may need nose up. Maybe the wings have a sweet spot around 220mph where they are "level" to the horizon. What if at 375 you are nose down to maintain your altitude? Speed changes the AoA. Across a flight envelope your "level" changes. All that really matters is the view out the front.

[Stoney]

Wing incidence (the angle of the wing chord versus the reference line that extends from the fuselage tail through the "center" of the fuselage) is almost always positive (i.e. a + angle) so that when the aircraft is at its design cruise speed, the fuselage presents a minimum drag profile to the relative wind.  I don't know if this impact the gun installation or not.

Rough picture of the wing incidence:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aircraft_Angle_of_Incidence_%28improved%29--1080x660--25Mar2009.jpg

[bustr]

All of the aircraft I tested (9 of them, 10 later with the 262) had three common things in relation to the offline target.

1.) Set the target at 10-20 yards while at level flight and the center of the target lines up with the CL of the aircraft. Use F3 to verify this. Try 5 yards so the aircrafts nose is poking into the targets center. Even at 1000 yards the graticule center is below the target's center. It's a computer game after all and I wonder if the aircraft's center line is the primary reference point for many factors in it's data processes.

2.) As your aircraft picks up speed on auto level to it's cruise steady state, while on full zoom you can watch the center of the gunsight steadly move lower on the target until it is at some point below the target center. Your impact pattern will move up towards the graticule center as you move the target out to your convergence setting. But, your primary guns never patteren above the GC and fall away as you set the target past the ConvP.

If it was like the 190, 51, and 47 in real life the GLOS was set level to infinity with guns set to pattern per formulas at given distances. Then you would see rounds at two points hit on center. One near at the begining of the firing arch and one far as they dropped back in from the top of the arch. You would see rounds tracking above the target center in between the two points as you moved the target between those two distances. Then dropping below the target center as you moved past the second point. All engine HUB mounted cannon would emediatly drop towards the earth patterning consistantly lower on the target the farther it was set.

In the game we can set our HUB cannon to hit gunsight center at all convergence ranges...I almost have myself convinced the gunsight center is being auto tilted for those ranges so we dont have to really know how to use elevation marks in our gunsights and not the actual bolted down barrel inside of the engine block is really being tiled when we move the convergence slider.

3.) When you fire the guns the recoil is modeled such that you see a dispersion cloud at impact and your aircraft's nose is moved off the point it was at when level.

I take it no one has tried this and Krusty just wants to shut me up. Krusty have you performed this test with the aircraft I did yet?

Here is a copy of my data collection tool. Remember to include a (.mil) file with it in the sights folder or it won't show correctly.

[Krusty]

Your test is flawed and not a valid reference point for aiming. The .gunsight helps you determine only bullet impact relative to gunsight, NOT aiming points vs forward flight paths vs noses up or down.

Like I already said.


EDIT: Everything you describe is contrary to many other topics on the subject where HTC staff has commented on how the gunsight works.

[bustr]

Krusty,

I only gave you guys 200, 400 and 600 because of the smallest chance anyone would even try what I did including yourself due to the time involved.

I tested at every 50 yards from 50 to 1000 trying to initialy understand the MK108 motorkanon and it's trajectory relative to the convergence applet in the hanger. Due to the availability of german armerors documents and impact pattern figures from Rechlin E6 the results in the game bothered me. This was  due to you only being able to change the graticule center point up and down as an elevation adjustment for impact point with the real Revi16b and not the cannon barrel in the engine. The hanger applet shows the initial angle of the gun being changed.

The 30mm drops off the target past 750 so I kept it's max distance to 650 in testing. The center of the gunsight angled down and below the target center all the way out to 1000 whatever convergence I set. The 109 manuals show that the Revi line of sight will angle down below CL so that was expected during testing. What was not, is aircraft with wing mounted guns were setup this way instead of seeing two points of crossing on the gunsight LOS. One at about 150 and one at about 350-400.

Hisspano 20mm drop of the target at 950 while .30 and .50 stay on the target dropping 12mil and 16mil respectivly. ShVAK 20mm drop off past 800. But, I suspect I was just reverse engineering the contents of some lookup tables.

You can up any aricraft offline and pull up the target at 10 yards and see the target center is centered on the aircraft center line. I'm inclinded after all my testing to beleive the target center out to 1000 yards is aligned to the center line of the aircarft when you put it on auto level and test your guns. 1000 was my maximum testing distance.

Krusty prove it isn't. And not by anecdotally remembering something from past conversations in these forums. That was kind of out of character for you. You have been willing in the past to do the work and bring data to the dance so to speak.

All 9 aircraft took me about 8 hours to view round impact relative to G/C and T/C at 50 yard incraments at 150, 400 and 600 convergence, then graph them. In all cases the G/C line from 0-1000 angled down below the T/C and round impact patterns raised up to the ConvP then dropped back below at distance. And yes I calculated Angular Mil for all of this. The different types of rounds drop at average text book values at all distances while dispersion looks about right from anything I can find on the internet.

Or someone from manegment can kindly step on me now since I'm acting so foolishly in public. Got Milk?

[Krusty]

BUMP

The models have been tweaked, so I presume.

How do they stack up to the previous screenshots with the upturned nose?

[streakeagle]

At a glance, it looks perfect now. Big spinner, little conformal chin scoop.   
This is what I expected the release to look like 

Release notes also indicate that there will be more variants, at least a B vs C.
Can't wait.

[Widewing]

Kudos to HTC staff for their quick response to the P-40B 3D model issues. Vast improvement... Nice work.

Moreover, the promise of the P-40B and P-40C is a great surprise. Inasmuch as the P-40C is already flight modeled, I'm really looking ahead to the P-40B flight/performance model.

Thanks guys... Much appreciated by your customers. <S>

[BaDkaRmA158Th]

Big  to the HTC staff.


"psst, could we also get a new plane for japan?" 

[SmokinLoon]

Big  to the HTC staff.


"psst, could we also get a new plane for japan?" 

D520 first!   

[BaDkaRmA158Th]

You know, i take that last part back ,i would love to have the D.520 .  It reminds me of a mini yak.




More early war birds would be fantastic tho.  

[oboe]

P-40K!  The ugliest WarHawk!

[PJ_Godzilla]

You know, i take that last part back ,i would love to have the D.520 .  It reminds me of a mini yak.




More early war birds would be fantastic tho.  

I think part of the reason for the lack of vitality in the Early War arena is the dearth of interesting EW equipment. Let's face it, our equipment set is biased late-war. Imagine how kewl early war would be if you had all the major, for example, types present in France 1940. Of course, the alpha birds would still be 109/Spit/Hurri but you'd also have the MS, Dewoitine, Bloch, etc. On the strike side you'd have Battles, Blenheims, Whitleys, Hudsons, etc. Nobody's fly those late war, but they might entice a foray in EW. That's without even getting into China and the PTO. There re so many kewl EW birds - Defiant, Roc/Skua, Swordfish, Gladiator, Do-17, He-111, TBD Devastator, Vought Vindicator, blar, blar, balr...

The whole arena issue is one of bandwagon effect. People go where people are.

[Citabria]

wouldn't matter.

all arenas suffer from herd mentality.

you could... we did actually... have 2 late war arenas and the only reason one wasnt maxed and the other empty is people were forced to fly in the arena with 150 players instead of the one they wanted to fly in with 300 players.




oh and nice p40 tweak p40b looks amazing now...

p40E lower chin scoop looks excellent now but top of cowling p40E has a dent in it and there is debate about how high the top scoop should stick up? dunno about that but the actual cowling does dip in the middle then tilt up towards the spinner on each side of the scoop. someone must have dropped a p40b on it by accident.