Originally posted by MrRiplEy[H]
Brooke you or nobody else answered my question about the film. It was: Do you think anyone could repeat that manouver with a real aeroplane? As far as I see it a real aeroplane would not have enough stick authority in that situation to be able to turn anywhere. Also note I never went into an uncontrollable spin, my speed and altitude just finally droped enough for the wing to clip ground.
I turned in 360 degree circles at near stall speed yanking the stick hard at 50 or so feet while doing it. I can't believe a real plane would give that sharp stick response at that speed and/or angle let alone stay in controlled flight. Remember there were several factors speaking towards this: Near or stall speed. Violent stick movements at stall speed. Full throttle at stall speed. 90 degree to the ground while turning at stall speed. Hard rudder input in order to remain level while doing full throttle, 90 degree towards to the ground, stall speed 360 degree turn.
I'll have to disagree with you here. It seems like most of your arguments are based on how you 'feel' the actual airplane should behave in those regimes.
To summarize:
-you feel that the actual airplane at low speeds and high power settings will not be able to handle as well as it does in AH.
-you feel that things like stall/spin recoveries are too easy in AH.
-you feel the the asymmetric forces of flight due to the prop (slipstream, torque, P-factor, and gyroscopic precession) are toned down in AH.
Keep in mind that things like sideslip and angle of attack are not as apparent in simulated environments because most of what you perceive as uncoordinated flight in real life comes from the seat of your pants. So unless you have a close eye on the turn coordinator or angle of attack indicator, it's very unlikely that you'll notice their presence. Also, note that the angle of attack is not the flight path angle. Just because your nose bounces up almost instantaneously when you yank the stick back, it doesn't necessarily mean that the airplane flight path is in the same direction as your nose. What happens isn real life (and in AH too) is first, the nose comes up and the angle of attack spikes; here, your airplane keeps moving in its original direction; second, because of the increase in lift, the airplane gradually starts accelerating upward; as this happens, the airplane flight path gradually 'catches up' to the direction of the nose, and the angle of attack settles back to its original unperturbed state (more or less).
My point is this: in AH, there's really no way of knowing if this is what's really happening because again, you can't feel the g-forces like you can in real life. But considering that this is one of the fundamentals of flight dynamics, I see no reason why they wouldn't model it this way. My bet is that AH models all the forces and moments (due to aerodynamics, gravity, and the engine), assumes very accurate mass and moment characteristics for each planes, and integrates the equations of motions to calculate the trajectory and position. There's no other way you can make it this realistic. How do I know it's realistic? Call it intuition; call it blind faith.
Also, you say that real life pilots wouldn't dare do these kinds of low-alt maneuvers. Damn right! Just because I can do some slow uncoordinated flights at tree-top level in AH, it doesn't mean I'll be willing to risk my life with a real airplane. What we consider to be pretty possible in AH (~95% success rate) is no where close to being good enough in real life. If you had a 5% chance of crashing and dying in a plane tomorrow, would you go flying? I wouln't. The difference isn't in the flight realism; it's in what you as an AH pilot and a real life pilot with a wife and two kids perceive to be acceptable levels of risk.
So there you have it. AH is as real as it gets for all practical purposes -- that is, for 99.999% of the population. The remaining 0.001% are the ones that have flown these things for a living. But it's definitely not you or me.
