I know that FM is a terribly sensitive issue, and normally it defies compariosn between two different products in the sense that crap games or excellent games, the producers still worked hard to depict FM as correctly as they see fit.
However, I feel I must speak up about the landings and take-offs, and ditches and belly-landings. I'm pretty much convinced that as a part of checking out rival products even HTC staff have tried out IL-2 extensively.
While many things people attempt to compare between IL-2 and AH, some of them would be valid comparions, and others would be not. However, in the case of the difficulty of take-offs and landings depicted in IL-2, I must say, while I have no experience in actual flying, I'm very convinced even those with experiences in real planes would appreciate that landings and take-offs were much more difficult in real life than AH, and IL-2 provides much more convincing versions of these situations.
There have been many small discussions considering this, one such being the runway/ditch discussion and etc.
....
IL-2 is the first WWII sim game I've tried to take-off half-heartedly, and as a result crashed upon take-off. The precautions one must take, careful taxiing, speed controls, torque compensations, flap use and etc are very much needed, since you can't just ram up the throttle to max, give a bit of rudder and the plane just takes off. This pretty much matches accounts of what I've read about WWII plane take-off procedures.. and in the case of the 109s depicted in that game, it was the first time I could really understand what the textbooks said about 109s when it was commented "twitchy and difficult take-off/landing characteristics, causing many accidents".
The landing procedure, in IL-2, is even more hard. I would not think of trying to land a plane somewhere other than a runway because even just trying to land because of low-fuel requires real concentration, and "stick-to-the-rules" type of slow, lengthy landing procedures to ensure no accidents happen. Trying to put down a damaged plane is even harder.
In AH, if your speed is under 200 you can ditch any plane on almost any surface(even on a hill side!) People just land planes everywhere. Heck, you can even do a "quick-landing" to intensionally break the undercrriages at landings to shorten the time needed for the plane to slow up, without having to face the careful situations needed to control a plane near stall (land at 180~200mph with gears down, and then give full rudder to one side - plane breaks gears and belly lands, stopping within 2~3 seconds).
While the overall characteristics of AH FM is satisfying, quite excellent in fact, it seems the take off/landing procedures are quite simplified.. maybe for gameplay purposes?
However, I cannot really seem to understand what the "easy-mode" take-offs and landings would contribute to AH being a better game.
I am wondering if there is a possibility the take-off/land FM can be revised a bit - which people will surely come to appreciate proper take-off/landing procedures better, with more respect to runways on an airbase.
.. thoguh no answers I might receive, I feel many people would agree with me that this is an area that needs improvement, and maybe HTC should consider it not just light-heartedly.
I'm sure someone from HTC will look at this post, and though it may take many many more versions to finally get to this, I hope HTC gives it a real consideration.
Thx, HTC.
