Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Kurt on May 11, 2007, 03:36:43 PM
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Here is a flight of fancy to run your brains on for a while...
Excluding the physical conditioning... Purely from a tactical perspective...
Each of us has thousands of kills over the years, thousands of hours of simulated combat airtime..
If you remove physicality, G resistance etc, it seems reasonable to conclude that many of the players of Aces High would be tactically superior dogfighters than the real people who did it 60 years ago.
I'd like to hear your thoughts about it... keeping in mind that this is fantasy land...
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It's possible, but still, many people dont know what a maneuver would 'feel' like, so it would be different in that ways, but i see your point, if we did know what the maneuvers 'feel' like, we would, most likely, be superior.
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Without a doubt most people playing this game have more hours playing it than any WWII vet had combat time.
For example... A B-17 crew had 25 missions to complete in the earlier stages of the war.
Guesstimating that on average, over the course of the tour, a mission took around 8 hours? that is 200 hours...
Some people in game do that in a month here.
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I would think I would have a much more pronounced edge over a WW1 pilot.
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In some ways yes - but in more ways, no.
I believe that those of us that have been doing this for a number of years probably have a better grasp - perhaps a far better grasp - on ACM than the pilots of the time probably did (They had a only few minutes of practice to our days or in some cases, weeks). I also think we are (on average) far better able to judge gunnery than than was probably the norm.
On the other hand, most of us would have to learn a pretty significant amount of minutae just to effectively operate, control and navigate the aircraft to begin with - and most of us have had little or no preparation at all at dealing with the barrage of important details and still flying and fighting the aircraft effectively. And almost as bad, we all tend to have formed bad habits that would be likely to have gotten us killed in a real WWII aircraft. And pehaps worst of all, most of us have never been in a life or death situation, where your opponent plans to kill you if they can.
When Terror rides shotgun, it can be kinda hard to think straight.
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Originally posted by hubsonfire
not necessarily from our uber skills...
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No matter how many thousands of kills I have in this game - If real bullets would start to fly around my cockpit, I would panic and forget all I learned in here...
(Not to mention that I would never fit into a WW2 fighter cockpit at all... :D )
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ok you have 1.000 kills and how many deaths?
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Originally posted by CarlsBee
ok you have 1.000 kills and how many deaths?
Next question please...
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Originally posted by CarlsBee
ok you have 1.000 kills and how many deaths?
If we are better than the original pilots, the deaths would be significantly fewer.
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The physics and world modeling of the game don't matter. It could be AH or it could be the USAF's latest flight simulators. It's been proven that pilots learn how to survive in virtual simulations and can use this to survive in real combat. That is why the USAF devotes a budget to simulators.
Hell, even the US Army has "video game" training simulators (okay, they cost hundreds of thousands of $$, but still!).
It's been proven that giving folks the situations in virtual worlds/realities/simulators and getting those "newbie mistakes" out of the way in safe environments means that the pilot will be more effective when the real aircraft is flown or when real combat takes place.
I believe the USN or the USAF found that after the first 6 missions a pilot was exponentially less likely to damage the aircraft or die during a mission than pilots that learned "in the plane" doing real missions. They started having all pilots do the first 6 missions in simulators (at the time) and losses dropped.
I can't recall when this was, but it was a long time ago.
So, consider that pilots in AH, even though it is a slightly different "flight model" than real life, have hundreds of thousands of cumulative sorties under their belts. Aside from the HO-N-GO newbies, almost every one of us would fare better than the average WW2 pilot.
The average USAAF pilot never saw the enemy his entire deployment.
Oh, and it doesn't matter if real aircraft require minutae, as you'd be trained on the minutae before being allowed to take off. We're not talking "plop them in a seat and watch them die" -- in WW2 they gave pilots training on how to operate the aircraft!!
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Think about the way a "normal" car handles at 100mph. All we have to deal with is the stearing wheel, the gas pedal, and the brake pedal.
Imagine what it was like diving down on an enemy aircraft traveling 400+ mph.
Now add all the easy controls that we take for granted during the game. Flaps, engine management, trims, using hat switches to look around, etc.
Imagine if you sat down at your computer desk, and had like a twilight zone experience, where all of a sudden you were on the runway in your favorite warbird and the sirens were blaring all around you.
I'd say 75% of us wouldn't be able to get off the ground. But if by some chance of luck we did. i'd wager that 90% would probably auger, blow up the engine, puke all over themself, or get shot down within 2 minutes of air combat.
EDIT: WHERE'S THE AUTO TAKEOFF BUTTON! :lol
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Originally posted by WMDnow
If we are better than the original pilots, the deaths would be significantly fewer.
Ehm.. we don't have to care about "death" in here, so almost all of us fly in a very suicidal way in this chaotic environment.
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I dont think you can even compare what we do, to the real thing. A basic understanding of what happens when you do a certain manuever, but thats about it.
Like it was said before..add the terror, and all bets are off. Heck, I dont even like getting up on a high ladder. Say nothing about someone shooting at me while Im up there.
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The REAL question is if you'd HO or not.
(run's away)
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Originally posted by WMLute
The REAL question is if you'd HO or not.
One of the favorite tactics in the Pacific theater.
If you could teach AH pilots with perfect (or better) eyesight and top physical condition to play the piccolo you'd probably have some decent combat pilots.
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You all seem to think we'd be taken as-is from our computer desks and dumped directly into planes.
Wouldn't be like that.
IF we were WW2 pilots (if we knew how to raise the landing gear, where the flaps were, how the mix should be set, etc) and we had our CURRENT skill set, we would be way better off than the average pilots of the time.
I'm not counting the basic stuff that ANY pilot must learn before soloing, I mean the combat manuvering, aiming, getting on a target, breaking off, avoiding an incoming enemy, and getting kills.
We would be much better fighters. It's the basic skills that we've learned, looking around, checking 6 nonstop, gauging E-states, getting angles, knowing how much to lead, all this stuff that the WW2 pilots all had to learn on the job, and most of 'em died learning.
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What if you get air sick easily? :D
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Then nobody wants to fly with you :rofl
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Oh shut up and go work on a skin or something! ;)
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We have one huge difference between us and real pilots back in the day....
When we get killed, the screen goes red....and we end up (alive) in the tower with a bruised ego 10 seconds later.
The REAL guys went home in a box.
My <> to those brave men....on ALL sides.
68ROX
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I think a couple of you missed the point..
As Krusty pointed out, the basic training to operate the actual machine is assumed... I said in the original post to leave that stuff out, I was asking strictly from a tactical point of view.
I mean, I'm sure that 70% of the players (or more) simply lack the physical strength to pull a hellcat through an 8G turn. Thats a given.
The fear and terror aspects were interesting though.
The amount of times we have been killed is not relevent 68Rox, the point is that we have thousands of hours of training that the real pilots didn't get. We have had the ability to experiment with manuvers they may not have thought of, and we have had the chance to learn precisely why somethings work and others don't work. They learned that by getting killed permanently.
Still its been a fun discussion so far.
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You'd get your collective oscares handed to you. As rookies they'd never let you up in anything more than a 30 eny plane.:D
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I agree with krusty.
I also spent quite a bit of time with racing sims. One time when some bonehead ran a stop sign crossing an intercetion in front of me, I ended up spinning backwards and sideways 80 mph down a 2 lane road with telepone poles and embankments on each side. The whole time I was pretty much on "auto pilot" making the car do what I needed...This after having spun 100s of times in simulation. Im sure I would have had no clue what to do, and had serious accident without the sim experience. Guess that puts me in the believer colum.
Oops, I forgot. Today is bag on Krusty day isn't it? My mistake :)
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actually ww2 pilots had a very good understanding of airplane physics so alot of the maneuvers that we pull off over blindly playing for years was picked up by them in alot of hard book studying an hours of stressful flight.
so i believe that (not all) but some of the more experienced pilots prolly knew wut we know. not to mention we use alot of flaps in combat which i dont think was an option most of the time for real pilots
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The fighter pilots must have had really good SA, good vision (the word for good eye-sight?) and good shooting skills. While I might require glasses in RL and not have any skills in 3d-visioning, I might still fare well in a simulation such as AH.
The skills required in AH aren't nearly as demanding as they have been in RL. Gunnery and situational awareness have been the skills to be had.
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is the gunnery in real life going to be exactly the same as the gunnery in the game?
what about high wind conditions?
or consider the fact that the enemy never had red identifier and a distance marker attached.
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i would be curious to know first if there have been any players who played this game for a while first and then went on to learn how to fly. i'd like to know how much the game helped.
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interesting question,
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Good question 88. In the gun camera footage I've seen it looks like the bullets just go everywhere. Only canons seem to go in a relatively straight line.
One of the things that is different as well compared to the game is the emotional cost of going up on a mission for a great length of time.
Good thread Kurt!
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Originally posted by DiabloTX
Good thread Kurt!
Thanks Diablo, Its grown up to be just what I wanted.
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Originally posted by JB88
i would be curious to know first if there have been any players who played this game for a while first and then went on to learn how to fly. i'd like to know how much the game helped.
Before learning to fly I did lots of time in MS flight sim (early versions). My flight instructor felt it helped me a lot, especially with understanding the panel, radio navigation and the basics of flight.
That was in the days before everyone really knew what MSFS was, around version 4. He asked me to bring it over to his house so he could check it out, and became a sim pilot soon after. He had about 9500 hours, about 5000 of that in turbine, primarily a Beech KingAir. He was no schlub.
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OK we may well have an equal understanding off ACM and SA but we just don't know how to ACTUALLY fly.....would we be better ? No chance!
Considering 80 % of guys shot down didn't see the enemy. Considering most engagements lasted less than 1 minute. Considering all was pretty much hit and run I doubt very few of us, under actual fire would do all the game bollocks like flaps, throttle, gear lowered and 2 or 3 on ones.
I've danced with the reaper a couple of times (not under fire) and believe me it's that last place you want to be.
DON'T kid yourselves...we're cartoon pilots.
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If, for the sake of this discussion, we were to clone a WW2 pilot, and the clone were to receive, as an example, my AOE/WW2F/AW/AH sortie time, with that sim time as the only difference, I'd put my money on the clone for sure.
If you're saying how would I fare against a WW2 pilot (which is what most folks seem to be thinking you meant), I'm sure I'd be ****ed.
Just to be clear, is the former, or the latter, your intended point for discussion?
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I think without the red icons the nme planes would be VERY difficult to see & identify. Try flying a few sorties without icons. Might give some perspective.
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you know what i have always wondered...???
lets say i am sitting in the back seat of a small single engine plane when the pilot has a heart attack and dies.
would i be able to land that puppy, given what i know?
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I'd say you'd have a much better shot at it than, say, mr. world of warcraft player.
But then again you'd have no idea how to fly a flying mount now would you?
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as long as i could find everything i think i could maybe swing it. ...a big maybe, but i'd have to try...and i would think i would have a bit of a better shot than joe blow who knows nothing of flight mechanics.
(not asking for this to happen universe so don't even think about it!)
;)
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Originally posted by JB88
you know what i have always wondered...???
lets say i am sitting in the back seat of a small single engine plane when the pilot has a heart attack and dies.
would i be able to land that puppy, given what i know?
I was amazed at how simple the little 172 I went up in was. Throttle setup like my lawnmower, flaps are on the right; push stick forward, trees get bigger, pull stick back, trees get smaller. No matter what happens, you will eventually land, whether you want to or not.
It's not rocket scientology.
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Originally posted by JB88
lets say i am sitting in the back seat of a small single engine plane when the pilot has a heart attack and dies.
would i be able to land that puppy, given what i know?
Based on simming in AH? maybe you could, but probably not. The difference in speed would probably surprise you. Many planes in AH fall out of the sky at Cessna approach speeds. Like it or not, the AH environment is very simplified.. The models are realitively forgiving, there is no wind or serious weather.
Also, AH makes you a bit of a ham fist, jerking the controls around like you do in AH would plaster you to the street pretty fast in a civilian single engine..
If you have a lot of experience flying small planes in MS Flight Sim you would probably have a better chance, but it would still be unwise to try except in a bonafide emergency.
I find the Cessna in FS2004 and in FSX behave very much like the ones I've flown in real life.. The sim ones climb better, and they don't really stall right, but otherwise they behave by the numbers.
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I think I remember hearing a few years back about a teenager who stole a plane & went around joyriding ~ landed (I don't remember how sucessful his landing was... but sucessful enough to tell about it later). He later said he "learned how to fly" by using a sim game.
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German Fighter Ace Hans-Joachim Marseille had 158 victories with no deaths. I've never seen anyone in the game do that.
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Real life:
*Weather, rain, cloud, sleet, bad visibility, ect.
*No in flight radar at all.
*No GPS insta-map to show where you are.
*Cockpits that have very limited 6 views.
*Poor radio comms. No "buffer" to communicate with friendlies.
*No icons AT ALL. NONE.
*REAL BULLETS.
*KNOWING IF YOU DIE YOU REALLY DIE.
...try that and see how long you last in a real combat tour in 1944. ;)
That and the continuing fallacy that real air combat involved 1 vs 1 "duels" where in actuallity, very few contests like that ever happened, and the reason many manuevers are tried in the MA is because you know if you screw up, your life isnt going to end.
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Originally posted by Squire
...try that and see how long you last in a real combat tour in 1944. ;)
That and the continuing fallacy that real air combat involved 1 vs 1 "duels" where in actuallity, very few contests like that ever happened, and the reason many manuevers are tried in the MA is because you know if you screw up, your life isnt going to end.
And for the lamers in the MA, warping is not a real life ACM.
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Originally posted by BaldEagl
German Fighter Ace Hans-Joachim Marseille had 158 victories with no deaths. I've never seen anyone in the game do that.
I'm pretty sure such things have happened alot in AH history. Even my personal "best" was 182 kills in Tempest before running into a superb flown 109K-4. So I guess if any of the real good sticks here would try it, they would beat this easily...
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Originally posted by JB88
you know what i have always wondered...???
lets say i am sitting in the back seat of a small single engine plane when the pilot has a heart attack and dies.
would i be able to land that puppy, given what i know?
Cannot answer that, but can assure you that you would not stay up there for ever.
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were all men ..well mostly...(noted women can fly as well) and given the chance we would do just as well...if we all had the same training as ww2 pilots but with a massive amount of sim time theres no doubt a virtual pilot would have an edge....hell they use to recruit podunk farm boys because they hunted and had a good grasp of lead gunnery
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To compare what we do in AH, to the real world WW2 pilots is absurd, its easy to fire fake guns, and not be scared when someone fires upon you in a cartoon plane. not only that but the fact that every plane in AH has a giant neon sign over it. please
have respect for those who flew these planes.
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Originally posted by ink
To compare what we do in AH, to the real world WW2 pilots is absurd, its easy to fire fake guns, and not be scared when someone fires upon you in a cartoon plane. not only that but the fact that every plane in AH has a giant neon sign over it. please
have respect for those who flew these planes.
:aok
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Originally posted by ink
To compare what we do in AH, to the real world WW2 pilots is absurd, its easy to fire fake guns, and not be scared when someone fires upon you in a cartoon plane. not only that but the fact that every plane in AH has a giant neon sign over it. please
have respect for those who flew these planes.
The intent is not to compare.
And discussing it doesn't disrespect anyone. Jeez.
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Originally posted by JB88
is the gunnery in real life going to be exactly the same as the gunnery in the game?
what about high wind conditions?
or consider the fact that the enemy never had red identifier and a distance marker attached.
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i would be curious to know first if there have been any players who played this game for a while first and then went on to learn how to fly. i'd like to know how much the game helped.
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interesting question,
<----bagrat could pretty much fly a cessna 172 after AH
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Originally posted by Kurt
The intent is not to compare.
And discussing it doesn't disrespect anyone. Jeez.
of course it does, maybe not intentional, but those guys died for US.
and to think because we have more "virtual" hours in a plane we could do what they did? oh wait you said "Each of us has thousands of kills over the years, thousands of hours of simulated combat airtime..
If you remove physicality, G resistance etc,"
not one of those "thousands of killz" involved real ammo and real deaths,so yes i believe it is disrespectful to even talk about such.
sorry if you don't see my point, but check this out if my memory serves me correctly when the "flying tigers" were instated they were a volunteer group, in the first month of training they lost 12 pilots due to air to air crashes, crashes on landing and crashes on takeoffs.
think about that.
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Originally posted by ink
of course it does, maybe not intentional, but those guys died for US.
and to think because we have more "virtual" hours in a plane we could do what they did? oh wait you said "Each of us has thousands of kills over the years, thousands of hours of simulated combat airtime..
<----- sloooooowly steps away from the freak.
;)
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The entire concept of ACM we have is solely dependant on what the game condition brings. Like many have mentioned, in real life flapping the flaps up-down-up-down-up-down, jerking the throttle front-back-front-back-front back, pulling a 5G turn, blackout, lose vision, regain vis., pull another 5G another direction, black out, lose vision again, regain vision again, push -3G, redout, lose vision.. and etc etc.. is frankly all bollocks.
Every maneuver, every tactical decision is geared towards making it possible for the clandestine Elmer Fudd to help catch the two wascalwy wabbits named "survivability" and "mission objectives", and this required strict discipline and teamwork - and this is done solely by sticking to the principles which the pilots rigorously trained upon, and promptly chastisized when ignored.
Get target fixated on one enemy plane for more than a minute, and then you look around the sky. Your wingman cries for help, saying he's got a 109 behind him. Among all those 109s and Spitfires buzzing around over the cliffs of Dover, which one is your wingman? It was your duty to help him - but unfortunately, they don't have the neon signs hanging around to tell you which one is which. By the time you actually locate your friend, he might already be going down in smoke.
Real life ACM is committed to survival as a group. To know which plane is of your group you gotta constantly keep track of your own flight in the air. The point is to stick to the plan - you don't do that throttle zero, flaps dwon, gears sticking out into a 90mph rolling scissors crap in real life.
In real life all the ACM needed is just the basic scissors, and following a preset course in a classic defensive Luftberry, as practiced and promised by all pilots in your flight. The attacker has only a limited time until the target's wingman comes to the rescue, which in that case he'll have to bugger out and go into his own Luftberry, hoping his own wingman will come in time. It's a battle of awareness and teamwork, and its not the guys who got the most flashy maneuvering skills that wins, but the guys who have more tighter teamwork that wins.
So if you're saying how real life WW2 pilots would fare when they play AH2, they'll probably suck for real. None of them is going to be able to all that flapping, throttling, stick mashing, bag of tricks we do on an everyday basis, because in our AH2 world, we are governed by our own law of ACM. The rules are different, and thus the game is different. Even if a real WW2 pilot in his prime, can magically come play AH2 for several months I doubt he'd ever do any better than the average players.
On the other hand, if we change the rules of AH2 to that of real life (perhaps, excluding the death factor), remove every single bit of crutch we have and play it at their game, not ours, I can guarantee we gonna be owned.
In a loose sense, we leave all the awareness levels to the machine which automatically keeps track of your friends and enemies on screen, in the form of dot dar and icons... and we still get people who are target-fixated and gets shot down everytime, with their K/D going below 1.0. The real life pilots had only their eyes and hands to do everything the machine does for us currently, and not a single "death" was acceptable on their score card - and they had to do that almost every day.
Under those rules, even if it is a game, not a whole lot of people would be willing to do that "ACM" thingy.
Therefore, the comparison is itself meaningless. The only thing we've got in common with real life is that we use a roughly simulated version of their planes. Everything else is different. Even if we send the best of our AH pilot to real life, he'll soon be flying like real life, because it is real life.
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Originally posted by ink
of course it does, maybe not intentional, but those guys died for US.
and to think because we have more "virtual" hours in a plane we could do what they did? oh wait you said "Each of us has thousands of kills over the years, thousands of hours of simulated combat airtime..
If you remove physicality, G resistance etc,"
not one of those "thousands of killz" involved real ammo and real deaths,so yes i believe it is disrespectful to even talk about such.
sorry if you don't see my point, but check this out if my memory serves me correctly when the "flying tigers" were instated they were a volunteer group, in the first month of training they lost 12 pilots due to air to air crashes, crashes on landing and crashes on takeoffs.
think about that.
Right, Mental note, if someone dies in an airplane, you can never discuss it again or discuss whether or not simulation software can improve certain skills... Ok, now I get it.
:huh :huh
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I think they're missing the point, but it was an interesting discussion for a bit.
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Originally posted by hubsonfire
I think they're missing the point, but it was an interesting discussion for a bit.
:)
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A few thoughts:
I'm an ex-Navy P-3 pilot. When I was going through flight school, both primary and intermediate, I flew MS Flight Simulator to death. I never flew a plane before I started flight school, and I graduated at the top of my flight school class. This was primarily because, having flown literally thousands of approaches in MSFS, many of the skills I need to know were resident somewhere in my brain, ie. understanding how to execute instrument procedures using only instruments, using approach plates to shoot approaches into missed approach into back localizer, etc, etc.
MSFS certainly didn't teach me to do a loop, fly form, or how to deal with an engine fire, but it did help me to tune my skills in other areas. In short, there's simply no way you could say that flying the TACAN 13 into CRP 200 times on your home computer wouldn't help prepare you for the 'real thing' and I'm living proof of that.
So, to address this to the skills as a fighter pilot- I would say that the average AH'er would have a huge advantage over the typical WW2 pilot enlisting for a tour as a WW2 fighter pilot.
Again, there's a huge advantage to flying a thousand sorties against all sorts of virtual pilots and honing the basic skills of ACM. But even more importantly, I think AH teaches skills like SA, energy management, etc. Sure, there's a big neon sign over the planes in AH, but this is mostly a nod to the restriction of trying to model a 3 dimensional combat simulation on a very small computer screen. Imagine how many rudimentary skills of flying one can learn from AH...simply getting used to the way your environment looks inverted, the monkey skills of stick, rudder, and throttle control, of judging relative motion and simple ACM tactics...the WW2 guy off the street couldn't imagine the things we take for granted.
Having said that, I think all the AH in the world only takes one so far, and by no means can you make the leap that being a great stick in AH means a great stick in real life. However, I do think it's fair to say that, at least initially, the AH virtual pilot would have a huge advantage over his real world buddies starting out.
Just my opinions.
Toonces out.
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So as technology progresses and there are more and more unmanned military aircraft, are the players in this game good candidates for the 'next' air force?
If so, they had better build those planes to withstand multiple HOs. :)
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Aside from the HO-N-GO newbies, almost every one of us would fare better than the average WW2 pilot.
uuummmmm........correct me if i'm wrong, but there's quite a few ""not so noobs"" that use the good ole ho-n-go
:D :D :confused:
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Only this comes to mind. The scene from "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"
When Buddy Hackett takes the controls, while Jim Baccus gets knocked out while making an "Old Fashion"
:rofl
Oz