Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:50 pm
I don't think there can ever be full agreement about FMs. The only one I know personally who has flown the real thing and some of the sims (Monroe Williams) thinks that the sim with the most "authentic" FM is ,believe it or not, Jane's WWII Fighters!
He said that in over 22 years of flying US aircraft, including combat in the P47 and P51, he's never heard of anyone putting one in a flat spin! He was a consultant to Oleg on AEP and told Oleg that he thought the P47 was too sluggish and underpowered and that the spin and stall characteristics of all the aircraft were greatly exaggerated. Oleg chose to go with his "super secret inside information, be sure" on it. As it happens, there was a bug in the P47's FM; the programmers had set the airspeed to reflect Kph rather than Mph. It was fixed eventually, but I say this in order to point out how much even the "experts" can disagree.
I think the tendancy of a lot of sim (as opposed to real life) pilots is to assume that "harder= more authentic".
Having said all of the above, however, I do think there are issues with the way P factors are done in the game. Some of these are probably not getting fixed because they are "hard-coded" (such as takeoff torque on twins). Another factor to consider is how much time the average gamer wants to spend just learning how to takeoff and land. If they make it too difficult, most potential new simmers will just give up and go play Warcraft or something similar.
He said that in over 22 years of flying US aircraft, including combat in the P47 and P51, he's never heard of anyone putting one in a flat spin! He was a consultant to Oleg on AEP and told Oleg that he thought the P47 was too sluggish and underpowered and that the spin and stall characteristics of all the aircraft were greatly exaggerated. Oleg chose to go with his "super secret inside information, be sure" on it. As it happens, there was a bug in the P47's FM; the programmers had set the airspeed to reflect Kph rather than Mph. It was fixed eventually, but I say this in order to point out how much even the "experts" can disagree.
I think the tendancy of a lot of sim (as opposed to real life) pilots is to assume that "harder= more authentic".
Having said all of the above, however, I do think there are issues with the way P factors are done in the game. Some of these are probably not getting fixed because they are "hard-coded" (such as takeoff torque on twins). Another factor to consider is how much time the average gamer wants to spend just learning how to takeoff and land. If they make it too difficult, most potential new simmers will just give up and go play Warcraft or something similar.
