Slips are commonly used in the soaring community (gliders/sailplanes) especially by those ships that don't have flaps. All of them have airbrakes/spoilers though. So in situations where a steep landing approach is needed, flapless planes (power and gliders) will almost always use a slip.
Slips are fun to do, but a bit spooky at first since the wind hiting the side of the plane causes more noise and a bumpier ride sometimes and the pilots viewpoint facing down the runway is skewed to the side which can cause some discomfort at first.
The thing to remember is that the wing facing in the direction you are going should always be the lower wing. If one gets confused and does the opposite, that will lead to a stall and spin, very dangerous mistake, but can happen in the virtual world. And besides, ya won't be able to see where yur going, at least until you stall/spin, then you'll see, only everytihng will be a spinning blur for a few moments untill you slam into the ground.
Another thing to think about is that one should always bank into the wind and not away from it when sliping (if there is a crosswind). Otherwise you will have more trouble staying lined up with the runway and may get blown downwind and into the rough or worse.
Getting out of a slip is easy, first neurtralise the rudder and level the wings so you are facing into the crosswind ( a situation known as crabbing) or facing dow the runway (if no crosswind).
Just before touching down if you are crabbing, just apply some rudder to point the noise down the runway just before touch down.
Easy, once one has done it a couple times.
What I described is primarily for gliders (no engine). Slips are also used to counter crosswinds in powered aircraft since they help one fly straight along the landing path and since you have an engine, you can power up to keep from loosing too much altitude too fast (flaten the glider slope).
Try sliping in IL2 both with and without power, it's a hoot.
MicVic
