Engines runing full blast

[1Boner]

What fault?  It's fine as it is.
And run it on Deep Blue with a 500 page manual to get off the runway, along with 2 tons of other superfluous micromanagement to take away from dogfighting.  I don't think so.  Only one with a problem here seems to be you.

Well said.

I don't think this guy gets it.

Its a game,NOT a flight sim.

And I don't think many in here would want to see it become one.

And if he's seen it done before and it didn't seem to pose a problem with dogfighting, why isn't he still flying it then?

[moot]

You know, I could see AH getting way ahead in intricate physics modeling.. But making the cockpit and other interface into rube goldberg machines?  I really doubt that.

[dkff49]

Here are 2 quotes on HT's point of view on such things that are based on the argument of realizism.

Much of this quote won't pertain to this thread but let's nip it before someone chimes in with those next.

Ok do not mind me, my credentials are only limited.

I only have about 20 hours total of real ACM.

I only have 1bout 600 total hours flying time.

I only have about 200 hours aerobatic.

The only planes I have done dog fights in, are T-6, P51ds, La7s, Marchietties, and RV8's.

Ok and never mind my credentials of very close to 20 years flight sim design.

So lets talk about your so called realism, that you are completely clueless about.


    * Combat trim
You seem to believe combat trim some how is unrealistic, but obviously since you have spent so little time flying real planes, you are clueless how trim actually is used by a pilot. You  seem to believe that flying a perfectly trimed plane gives some sort of advantage in a fight.l It is not, when flying hard manuvers the only time trim comes into play at all is when doing very large changes in air speed. When going from 160 to 360 the forces will become heavy in pitch, and with out ever thinking about it a pilot roll's in a little trim. Now the deal is, in most planes it is done with out ever moving your head out of the cockpit. Tell me how many players in a fight could find the correct key on a key board with out looking to roll in some trim?

2nd Tell me how they can feel the trim on the stick like you do in a real plane, Computer joy sticks work nothing like the real thing. You have zero feel for the forces acting on the stick, and it is much much harder to fly a sim as precesisly as a real plane. Combat trim is a compromise between how the real planes handle and the hardware that is available. It is an attempt at providing a much more realistic flying experience than what you believe it is.

    * Aileron trim for aircraft that did not have it, e.g. a lot of Spitfire marks, 109, etc.
Aileron trim that exists on real planes is only there so that a pilot can trim his planes hands off for long flights. In my RV8 I do this by balancing fuel between the wing tanks, as I am fairly sure most pilots do who can control fuel from each tank. There is no advantage what so ever to have Aileron trim in a dog fight, it is only there to lower the work load for long cruises. Why do you think the P51 had it when other planes did not? SO can I assume because you wish to change aileron trim, you wish to also want to fly 6 - 8 hours missions. And if you do not have this time available you are not permited to take a sortie?

    * Ammunition counters
We have a game  where it is best for people to be able to fly many planes. In the real world pilots put in many hours learning the speciefices of each plane. They knew before they flew how man secs of ammo there plane had. In the world of AH we do not require pilots to have 10 hours of instructions before put into combat in a new plane. Do you really wish the same amout of instructions before you are allowed to fly any given plane type? Or are you once again only taughting makeing somthing more difficult than it was in the real world in the name of BS realism.

    * No mixture controls
Mixture control has one purpose in life, to conserve fuel. When it is time to engage it is not even thought about to shove 3 levers ahead at the same time. Exactly how many people have 3 levers all  beside each other like most real planes have? How easy is it to tak your right hand and push all head to max performance like most fighters were capable of?
    * No supercharger controls
This one could be debated, but the real fact is do you really want to have to learn each planes critical altitudes just so you can do nothing more complicated than pushing one button? Because that is all you are asking for. Push 1 key when your altitude reaches one point. This sounds great fun to me, I tell you what since you believe it is so necessary to a good flight sim, I will write it, and you can come to my office and do nothing but watch the altitidude and press that so important button at the correct time.
    * No radiator/cowl flap controls for engine cooling
Once again, these really have very little to do with dog fights, they have much more to do with engine life.

    * No engine overheats
See above, exactly how high can you run your engine? Or would you wrather just have a randomize control your destiny.
    * Weak engine torque
Engine torque is 100% accurate. We do take one liberty with how the tail wheel operates, but with out those liberties very very very few people including you could get in the air. Do you know a gentleman name Bob Shaw? You know the guy who wrote books, flew fantoms, did carrier landings and such? Well he was tail wheel endorced. The scariest moment I have had in a plane was the first time he flew mine, and on take off he proceeded to bend my airplane enough that it required 3 months of repair.

    * 360 degree head swivel
In reality you have better than 360 deg field of view do to head and eye movement. Tracking an airplane in real life requires no thought as with a joy stick hat. Even with the 360 degree turning, tracking a plane in a sime is many many times more difficult than real life. So it is an atempt to bring things closer to reality. Not less as you seem to state.

    * Flaps auto retract when airspeed increases
Once again choices on how to implement realism, Putting the book spec with auto retract flaps puts more not less realism into the game. It simply forces you to fly as real pilots did. Show me data where the real flaps broke, how they were bent, what happen to all the different type. This data does not exist in any form I have seen.
So the options are make flaps break at the speed the book sais, or make them retract. If we made them work like landing gear and break, we would just put a loud noise before the would break, once again all you are asking for is another key press that is more difficult than real life.

    * No weather
Tell you what, Ill suspend your account 3 out of 7 days a week, because the simple matter is, with bad weather the planes did not fly.

    * Automatic bomb sight calibration
This is now the way it is simply because of the lack of precision of joy sticks. The point is that a pilot must be in the bomb sight, and must be maintaining constant speed and headings before the drop, just as in real life.

    * GPS clipboard map
Once again you are clueless about real life flying. 40 mile vis is not all that uncommon and 20 mile vis is very common. The detail of maps and compture screen do not even approach what real life is like. The volume of land marks you have in real life vs the sim do not compare. Before any long flight I spend a good 30 mins planing my flight path. Now if you wish to be forced to be on the ground for 30 mins before every flight, we could implement what you want, but I have a feeling you once again only what what YOUR brand of realism is, which really is nothing to do with reality.

The simple fact is in real life, people would not be in any of the planes we fly with out at least 100 hours of training. So tell you what, you send me 6 months of money in advance, and in 6 months I let you fly any of the planes we have. And in another 100 hours I will let you fly your first real sortie.

Because what you believe is realism, is nothing of the sort, you just wish to inflate your own ego on flying something that you perceive is more real when in fact it is much less realistic.

The fact is , AH is meant to simulate air combat.Learning this task alone is a never ending task. It is not meant to simulate all the boring pieces of flying that any one who has spent 20 hours of real life flying wishes they did not have to deal with.

HiTech

And this one:

It never ceases to amaze me how people wish to pick and choose the items they wish to see, but them try use the argument of realism to justify there arguments. The simple fact is , there are many things about flying a plane that are not fun. Such is the fact of life. Simple things like flying for 250 hours and never seeing an enemy plane is very close to realistic. But I do not hear you saying it should be modeled.

Spending 2 hours planing before each flight is realistic, I do not hear you wanting it.

The simple fact of the mater is, You play a game, the game is Air combat. The terms simulation vs game are not in any way in conflict with each other, you wish to try separate the 2 terms, but you really can not.

Some simulators are made for real life training. These simulators are designed for a specific purpose in mind. AH is no different , it is a simulator with a specific purpose in mind, and one of those purposes is fun.

Some here wish to say IL2 is more realistic because it has you push a button to open cowl flaps? I say BS again. They just makes different choices at what it wishes to accomplish. They want you to believe it is realistic, but start looking into real details of how things work and you will see , they just are making you push a button.

Ah is designed to learn air combat. It strives to model planes perfectly in their flight envelopes so that the air combat is real. Please do a side by side of AH against any game on the market when it comes to flight dynamics.

both are from this thread if you wish to look at the entire thing.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,260209.0.html

I think this pretty much sums it up.

Honestly though I would rather have my fights won because I simply was better at ACm and shot him down than have him on my six and suddenly I get the "you killed so-n-so" because he blew up his engine running at too high rpm's or any other micro-managing feature.

[Dantoo]

I like to encourage suggestions that aren't the usual "he shot me/took my base/dropped a bomb and has to be stopped!" posts.  I think you deserve credit for making an attempt to positively enhance the experience of players. 

As you might have divined by now, a large portion of the player base would loudly resist a change to make an already challenging game even more difficult, despite the benefit of an enhanced personal immersion experience.  There are less difficult ways of doing this - skins for example.  Special events tend to remove the less real aspects of arenas where you see Spits chasing P51s and a P47 bouncing a Hurricane to save a N1K.  Immersion is enhanced.

If Moot and I were to battle now in the MA the result would be me shot down handily and quickly.

Under your system, if Moot and I were to battle in the MA the result would be me shot down after a lot more work to get myself into a position where he would do that.  It doesn't have a lot of appeal.

Thanks for your input and a suggestion that you genuinely believe would enhance the game play experience.  I just can't support it as much as I would like to.

[BnZs]

I am not dead-set against modifying the engine management model.

I am simply putting out that if someone wants to make a specific criticism like "You couldn't run your plane around for for 30-60 minutes on the military power settings used in AHII!" or the vague "the engine modeling is wroooong!" then they need to show some evidence.

[Stiglr]

I find that very revealing about Mr. Addink.

Now I see how he can tell me that it's not worth his time to have actual accurate gauges in planes that had them simply because he (and his audience) are Americans and don't like metric.

The key words are "out of touch" and "arrogant" I'd say.

As just one example: why would you want to know your critical alts so that you could click a simple key to change the supercharger setting? Simple: your plane might start gasping at that alt if you don't. The real ones did if the pilot didn't mind that one little lever. Hence it becomes part of the player's challenge in flying that plane to do the same. And a FAN of type might find that kind of minutae interesting.

Another one: in his diatribe against flap damage or auto retraction, he couldn't even figure out that some aircraft DID do that for you. Since that's a FACT, then allowing planes that didn't not to suffer damage (like increased drag, or loss of the flap itself; doesn't take a rocket scientist to be able to model that better than simply pretending the phenomena doesn't exist at all!), gives them an advantage they shouldn't enjoy. The same way that a plane that actually was pretty much fully automatic (the FW190) gets shafted because the Spits and Hurris it is flying against have much easier pilot workload than they should. And you think that allowing a P-51D to tool around at 400mph ALL SORTIE isn't allowing it to enjoy an unrealistic advantage???

One thing does trump this entire discussion: whether you're satisfied with "just a stupid game" or if you're interested at all about WWII history, aviation, and the brave men and women that really flew these things for real. If you're not interested in any of those things, then I can see how you're not interested in anything that gets in the way of your "Nintendo-style fun". But if you DO give a sh*t about those other things, I'd think a greater level of realism would interest you.

Believe me, engine management isn't even close to "hairshirt" realism-just-to-make-it-hard type of simulation...

Oh and then there's this little gem:

Please do a side by side of AH against any game on the market when it comes to flight dynamics.

First off, if he truly means GAME, and not sim, fine. But if he means compare against a SIM, he's got another think coming. For just one example, I point you towards the posts talking about the "ueberplane scourge" of the ... wait for it... BREWSTER BUFFALO.  

If your sim has this spud terrorizing the arena AT ANY POINT in the war timespan, there are some serious issues with your flight modeling. Oh, I also noted in that thread that someone pointed out its climb rate... which was the climb rate for the F2A-1, a non-production variant of which 11 were ever made, BEFORE the Navy went and loaded it up with 300 lbs. or radios and such... seems Dale likes to take the stats he likes for his modeling, rather than accurately model a representative aircraft...

[moot]

Speak for yourself..

[Stiglr]

I believe I am...

[moot]

You're speaking and the only thing you're convincing of is that you're playing the wrong game.  The Brewster isn't terrorizing anything.

If you really want to hit where it hurts, go ahead and call HTC. 

seems Dale likes to take the stats he likes for his modeling, rather than accurately model a representative aircraft...

You're going nowhere just sniping about it on a forum. Give em a call. Walk the walk.

One thing does trump this entire discussion: whether you're satisfied with "just a stupid game" or if you're interested at all about WWII history, aviation, and the brave men and women that really flew these things for real. If you're not interested in any of those things, then I can see how you're not interested in anything that gets in the way of your "Nintendo-style fun". But if you DO give a sh*t about those other things, I'd think a greater level of realism would interest you.

Wrong.

the FW190) gets shafted because the Spits and Hurris it is flying against have much easier pilot workload than they should.

Wrong.

not worth his time to have actual accurate gauges in planes that had them simply because he (and his audience) are Americans and don't like metric.

I doubt that.. It's just better game design to have everyone on the same page.  It makes no difference whatsoever in the actual meat of the subject.. That is, air combat.

[Motherland]

If your sim has this spud terrorizing the arena AT ANY POINT in the war timespan, there are some serious issues with your flight modeling. Oh, I also noted in that thread that someone pointed out its climb rate... which was the climb rate for the F2A-1, a non-production variant of which 11 were ever made, BEFORE the Navy went and loaded it up with 300 lbs. or radios and such... seems Dale likes to take the stats he likes for his modeling, rather than accurately model a representative aircraft...

If you would even bother looking at what aircraft we have in game, it's the Brewster B-239 export version that was sold to Finland and stripped of most of the weight that made it crap, and became a plane with a (IIRC) 16:1 kill ratio, an early mount of some of the highest scoring aces of all time...


If you have trouble against the Brewster except in its contemporaries (like the I-16) then there's a pretty big gap in pilot skill going on.

[Stiglr]

moot wrote, further up:

and there'd be no room left for e.g. acceptable graphics at MMO scale in the resource budget.   The intrigue of whether you should push button A, B, C, D, E, or F, in combination with enough things going on OUTSIDE the airplane to, on their own, already give 90% of players information overload to the point of ruining the actual dogfighting taking place? Flipping a dozen switches and turning knobs to do a single thing that you can do as well with just one or two buttons like the automations in the AH cockpit aren't fun.

First off, there is NO relation between graphics/data/CPU load and engine management; none whatsoever. Everything you do in the cockpit is handled on your front end, and your position, damage state and weapons (dealt and received) are the things that pass through the internet to the server. So throw that out the window right away. No impact on performance or graphics.

Secondly, information overload is a HUGE part of situational awareness, the same way you can get lost among 20 planes, when it's so much easier to just watch and defeat one guy in a duel. It's yet another FACT that some planes were a lot harder to fly in than others simply BECAUSE of differences in pilot workload.

You simply can't say that the process "isn't fun" because clearly you haven't flown it both ways. I have. And I'm here to tell you (yes, IMO...) it ADDS to the fun. And it isn't nearly so hard as you think. It's more memory and routine than it is "effort". And it gives you a lot of appreciation for the real aircraft.

Here's one tidbit for you guys and then, maybe I'll leave it alone... you guys have the I-16, right? How many of you know that the landing gear were hand cranked on a chain/pully system, and it took SIXTY revolutions of the knob... located on the right hand side of the cockpit floor area... to get it retracted or deployed? Now, since most pilots are right handed for the stick... you don't think that might be an interesting little imposition on a Rata pilot?  

[Stiglr]

If you would even bother looking at what aircraft we have in game, it's the Brewster B-239 export version that was sold to Finland and stripped of most of the weight that made it crap, and became a plane with a 16:1 kill ratio, an early mount of some of the highest scoring aces of all time...


If you have trouble against the Brewster except in its contemporaries (like the I-16) then there's a pretty big gap in pilot skill going on.

I do know that. But even that variant didn't have the climb rate of the -1 version.
Also, do keep in mind that the Finns were highly trained, and the Russians they flew against weren't. Yes, they worked wonders with the Brewster... but give credit to the pilots, and the quality difference between them and their foes... not so much the planes.

[Motherland]

Here's one tidbit for you guys and then, maybe I'll leave it alone... you guys have the I-16, right? How many of you know that the landing gear were hand cranked on a chain/pully system, and it took SIXTY revolutions of the knob... located on the right hand side of the cockpit floor area... to get it retracted or deployed? Now, since most pilots are right handed for the stick... you don't think that might be an interesting little imposition on a Rata pilot? 

Wikipedia (I know...) has automatically retracted landing gear being introduced in pre-production versions of the I-16.

I do know that. But even that variant didn't have the climb rate of the -1 version.
Also, do keep in mind that the Finns were highly trained, and the Russians they flew against weren't. Yes, they worked wonders with the Brewster... but give credit to the pilots, and the quality difference between them and their foes... not so much the planes.

Light versions of the Brewster were regarded as superbly maneuvering aircraft, even by the Americans.... they were merely slow.
Pilot skill is pretty subjective. Though many Soviet pilots certainly weren't the best trained, if you assume the Finns had both vastly inferior numbers and vastly inferior aircraft I can't imagine they would have done so well...

[moot]

First off, there is NO relation between graphics/data/CPU load and engine management; none whatsoever. Everything you do in the cockpit is handled on your front end, and your position, damage state and weapons (dealt and received) are the things that pass through the internet to the server. So throw that out the window right away. No impact on performance or graphics.

You're saying the full realism work-over would have "NO" effect on the resource budget?  Are you serious?  And to a more pertinent point - Why would you add any micromanagement superfluities before getting the physics part of the modeling done with?  What's the use of fifteen hundred instrumental permutations if the physics aren't there behind the dashboard? Why would you bother with so much extraneous stuff before e.g. getting a flawlessly realistic damage model? Do you know what superfluous means?

Secondly, information overload is a HUGE part of situational awareness, the same way you can get lost among 20 planes, when it's so much easier to just watch and defeat one guy in a duel. It's yet another FACT that some planes were a lot harder to fly in than others simply BECAUSE of differences in pilot workload.

... And your point is?

You simply can't say that the process "isn't fun" because clearly you haven't flown it both ways. I have. And I'm here to tell you (yes, IMO...) it ADDS to the fun. And it isn't nearly so hard as you think. It's more memory and routine than it is "effort". And it gives you a lot of appreciation for the real aircraft.

I have, and it's not as fun.  There's a big difference in shallow instrument interface like racing a car, and flying a plane in combat.  In the former you can afford to and actually find appeal in having the full blown manual control, whereas in the latter it simply adds to the workload for no fun because it actually substracts from the tactical gameplay.  It would probably work great to some extent in CT, but not in the MA.  The latter which you're using as premise for your whole argument.  Your whole inquisition against the game.

Here's one tidbit for you guys and then, maybe I'll leave it alone... you guys have the I-16, right? How many of you know that the landing gear were hand cranked on a chain/pully system, and it took SIXTY revolutions of the knob... located on the right hand side of the cockpit floor area... to get it retracted or deployed? Now, since most pilots are right handed for the stick... you don't think that might be an interesting little imposition on a Rata pilot?  

We do know that and did talk it over before release... To cut to the chase - why does it matter?  Who cares?  Do you need to crank the gears during combat?  Is there some tactical use in cranking a gear or repeatedly hitting a key or button instead of just pressing once?  Why not do pre-flight checks or argue about the instrument units while we're at it.. Oh, wait.

You might have a some actual leverage and credibility if you made some really pertinent points like.. planes seemingly artificially holding their gear brakes just right so they don't bury their nose into the runways.. Or the ground being perfectly flat out in the country side.. But instead you pick something the game is fundamentally designed to do (remove tactically-extraneous chaff) and pretend it's a "fault" in what the game is supposed to be.  You're just playing the wrong game and want to convince everyone that they're wrong to be playing this one.

[Stiglr]

I'm not making a distinction between arenas. Doesn't matter to me, if the sim's for toejame, it stinks whether the plane matchups are historic or not.

If by resource budget, you mean the actual creation and coding of the aircraft.... then, that's a different matter than whether it's a load on a player's rig, or a load on the server (which it's not). In the former case, well, it all comes down to whether you see value in a realistic, nuanced sim or see it as "just a game"...

My point (which you quoted) is right there in front of you. Some planes were easier to pilot than others from a controls standpoint, but you'll find no evidence of it in AHII. Poor simulation, again.

"Simply adds to the workload?" Answer me this: did the pilots have to manage the controls or didn't they? They DID. Was there a distinct advantage to doing it properly, and an even greater penalty for failing to do so? Yes. So, taken to an extreme, your argument could extend to if the player can "be bothered" to move his joystick, rather than just "type in an immelman command" and have the game do that for him, too.

The Rata anecdote, I admit, has limited utility in a combat situation... but, well if you were being pursued home by a rabid opponent and trying to pancake on the runway and get away with your butt still attached, well, then it'd be a factor, no? (just joshing with ya) Seriously, a little nuance and attention to detail is a wonderful thing, though...