What is Minimum aircraft data set?

[burbank]

There are frequent suggestions/invitations to submit aircraft data to use for flight modelling new types.

But what is the minimum data-set that is useful to model a new type?  It obviously is not avaialable in coffee-table aeroplane books, or every sim could model every type at will.  But it is presumably less complex than the data collected about the F117 before it did its first combat operation!

How about publishing a "standard" minimum (or ideal) list of data items required.

This is not an idle post - I will be doing post-graduate research next year and poking about in the RAAF WW2 archives - and I know others in this comunity do Warbird renovation and such, and probably have access to good historic data.  But I have zero programming clues, and have no idea of the type of data needed.

burbank

[fd ski]

Punt... this is really very good question. I'd love to see the answer myself as well...



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Bartlomiej Rajewski
S/L fd-ski Sq. 303 (Polish) "Kosciuszko" RAF
   www.raf303.org  

[funked]

I'm 99.999% sure that there is a list of parameters for each plane in the program.

If you have the right sort of data, I imagine you can just plug in all the parameters.

But if you don't have extensive flight test data you can look at weights and dimensions and back calculate a lot of the parameters.

In my experience (not games and not WW2 airplanes) the best results come from a combination of the two - compare the measured (flight test) performance (which is HIGHLY variable) to the predicted performance (from physics of weight, thrust, lift, etc.) and find a happy medium.

Not answering your question really I guess, but I love an opportunity to make myself sound smart.  

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 09-01-1999).]