I guess I still prefer to have some idea where one fighter can outperform the other, but I guess that's why I'll never get over the charts. Off course, nothing beats experience :) .

Having that knowledge gets you started I feel. It's good to know your opponents potential... but if that potential is exploited is another story altogether, isn't it?

Back when I first started getting online plus about a year this new game came out, Red Baron 2. I got it in Feb 1998 and while searching for info I found the Flight Sim Forum at Delphi and so began my entry into the Flight Sim Community that had been going on for years already.

One of the old terms in the community was "Spit Dweeb". I think it originated in either the Air Warrior or Aces High, or both, community.

A Spit Dweeb is a player that grabs the "best plane" and expects to always have the upper hand. Then when they get out-flown or out-anything especially if they get shot down, they go up on a forum and say the game is wrong.

Charts are great. I love them. But I don't have steady enough hands or the 'flying skills' to make them so that leaves me knowing that plane X under my control is not going to do as well as a better flier in plane X.

Hey Horseback,

Thanks for your work on this. As a crap plane enthusiast, your exercise for me is academic at best - I'm always going to end up in the slower, lower airplane. ;-) But I do appreciate your work on actual in game data.

Cloyd

But wait--there's more!!!
 

Okay, here's the final installment in the 100m series: late war USAAF, Mid war Spitfires and the Mid war Bf 109 series.

I added the Mustang III and the P-47D (Late)to the USAAF fighters out of curiosity; I normally avoid the 'pumped up' stuff unless I feel that the original offering was less than accurate. I must say that the rankings of the US fighters seems a bit off; the P-38 should be the champion at all altitudes, at least from start (170mph) to about 350 mph indicated, so the L (Late) sort of restores the natural order. Every resource I have says that this was the case, and that the P-47 and the Mustang were neck-and-neck once the Jug finally got a propeller worthy of the R-2800. The P-47M was supposed to be faster to accelerate than the D/K Mustangs (when it worked). Bear in mind that both the Lightning and the Jug used turbosuperchargers, which allowed them to use every bit of the engines' horsepower from the ground right up to around 30,000 ft, so their performance in terms of IAS was fairly consistent.

Note also that the D model Mustangs are significantly superior to the razorback versions (less the Mustang III) at low levels; this is consistent with the fact that the earlier models were optimized for high altitude, so if you're going to take it down in the weeds, a bubbletop is the better choice.

As for the Bf 109s, I should point out that for the G-2 I experimented with closing the rads once I reached about 400 kph indicated but left them in Auto for the G-6. The G-6 rarely overheated, but the G-2 would overheat pretty quickly once the rads were closed--the payoff is that you will get faster sooner. Note that in every case, the automatic transmission of the LW fighters makes them initially slower to accelerate than their Allied counterparts, but once the transition is made, the speed can pick up quickly.

One of the things this project has helped me with is to identify not only which aircraft have the better response in terms of power (and where), but which ones handle better, i.e., which ones require less trim or have the more reliable instrument displays (critical for flying level or in proper trim). Being aware that the 'ball' has to be offset a bit to one side or the other in some aircraft in order to be properly trimmed is a handy thing to know. I'm probably a much more effective pilot as a result.

Next stop: 5000 feet or around 1500m.

cheers

horseback

Please... Check the ACCELERATION chart made by HORSEBACK. (page 6, post # 44) It clearly shows the insane advantage of the FN over the F. For example, 270 to 500 km/h takes 56 seconds for F, and 36 seconds for FN. Thats 55.5% better performance.

JtD already pointed at something important in post #100 of this thread,I'll repeat it again.

Keep in mind that the last ratio is between La5 being near to zero climb at 2 m/s and La5FN at 7 m/s. The absolute differences all down the curves run La5FN as from 4/ms to 5 m/s more even though the ratios change so greatly.

Besides, the real shock is when the La5FN can still climb while the La5 has to fly a shallow dive to keep the same speed.

Compare a FW190A-3 to a contemporary Spit VB. Tactic for the 190 is to force the Spit to higher speeds. Tactic for the Spit is to force the FW to turn.

Does someone have to walk through how acceleration, distance and time relate?

I can't promise you'll get it. If you're lost at ratios then squares and roots will look like tricks.

Sorry but I stuck with math for years to understand how I do, what I do. It's not an insane advantage that you're seeing. It's to be expected and understood and have tactics made on.

Last time I felt like this the 'issue' was over dive accelerations and the inability to dive beyond guns range from 100 m or less in a few seconds.

You are making the mistake of assuming acceleration to be constant, but it changes with speed, and changes differently with each plane.
Use the ROC vs speed diagram in Il2compare and I bet it will fit the data okay.
Very rough comparison: La5FN flies 420kph at half time(18s), so lets compare acceleration at 420 to La-5F, ~15m/s to ~10m/s, so 50% better is okay.

I'd say that it's more like 55.5% better time. The lead one develops through each 10kph interval is added to the next one, and the next, sort of like compounded interest. If you have a power advantage of 20%, it is applied in each interval, and that advantage increases with every subsequent interval.

Acceleration is usually expressed in terms of both time and distance: some many meters per second per second (or per second squared). It is an ongoing process, and the primary limitation is air resistance, or drag, which increases as a cube of the velocity, if I remember correctly. In any case, you need exponentially more power to overcome drag as speed increases, which is why my charts depict curves instead of straight lines.

cheers

horseback

There's 2 main kinds of drag operating here. A total drag graph is U shaped.

At lower speed **for the plane with wing loading a big factor** is induced drag. This is a real killer for the FW's until maybe 340-360 kph.

From middle speed on up, parasite drag goes up by squares, twice the speed is 4x the parasite drag even as induced drag falls due to lift squaring with increased speed allowing the nose to drop while keeping level flight. (trim)

Ps is excess thrust, total thrust minus drag. The faster a prop plane goes, the less thrust it has which is where the steepness of Ps curve at high speed sets in. It's not a constant minus the drag U but a downward slanted line minus the drag U.

I just had a look at La5F vs La5FN (IL2C 4.07m) and the La5F Ps curve looks the same as the La5 Ps curve when switching back and forth.

What's the difference between a Spit VB and a Spit LFVB besides supercharger?

At 240 kph, Spit VB = 13.5 -- Spit LFVB = 17.3 --- 128%
At 320 kph, Spit VB = 10.5 -- Spit LFVB = 15.5 --- 148%
At 400 kph, Spit VB = 3.8 -- Spit LFVB = 9.9 ------ 260%
At 430 kph, Spit VB = 0 -- Spit LFVB = 7 ----------- PWNED! :wink:
What % longer will the Spit VB take to reach 440 kph in level flight? If 50% longer is insane then what is forever?

Depends on the flavor of Mk Vb we're talking about; the early ('41) version has a bit less 'oomph' over all, the late ('42) version is essentially the same as the '43 clipped wing version with slightly less wing loading, and the Merlin 46 type has a different engine which is (I assume) optimized for high-medium alts.

Minor variations may be ascribed to my faults as a test pilot, or arbitrary decisions about averaging out the results of the four runs for a given type.

cheers

horseback

Those are the ones in IL2Compare 4.07m, the last IL2C I have.

There's a 4.11 IL2 Compare kicking around. Haven't seen a 4.12 yet...

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=29744

Scroll down for 4.11

I've had IL2C 4.11 and 4.07m for a while it turns out, just only a shortcut to 4.07m on the desktop. 4.07m version is off now, 4.11 link in place and holy cow now I see the confusion! I forgot about the rabbit Spitfire versions and now I have to wonder why is there no P-51D with empty fuselage tank and CoG to match? Then we could hear a new verse or chorus to 'stang-whining based upon stick forces too high.

It's quite interesting to see post-510kph, 2700rpm actually accelerates faster than 3000rpm for p51c. Btw, do you have similar data on P51Ds? 5nt and 20na. I would expect slightly worse performance. Also, it's surprising to see 109G series has slower acceleration than mustangs given 109 has higher power to mass ratio.

Consider how CSP's work in the case of the P-51.

But doesn't everybody else have CSP, too? Spit, 109, 190? Or P51's CSP is somewhat special? For spit and 109, it seems from the charts that 3000rpm always accelerates faster than 2700rpm

At what speed and altitude? Compare the whole Ps graphs.

Consider the drag as size and coefficient, P-51 is bigger.

Where is the supercharger working best compared to the alt?

The speed of the plane has much to do with the optimal blade angle but mostly...

When you command more prop rpm than the plane has power to support, the prop will flatten a bit and you'll lose some thrust.

Most IL2 planes have some form of pilot-controlled CSP and some are even more automated though there are pre and early war models that don't have CSP all the way down to fixed props.

Mustang's throttle is supposed to control manifold pressure directly, rather than just the amount of fuel going to the engine,as in other types. During the 10k tests, I ran the Spit IX LF at 2700 and 3000 rpm to see if there was a difference, and 3000 rpm was always superior at all speeds.

The Mustang is a bit different. If you look at the 10k charts, there is a point at which the Mustang at 2700 rpm will accelerate more quickly than at 3000rpm, and it reaches top speed much sooner after the three or so earlier 10 kph intervals. In the thicker air at 100 meters, this doesn't seem to happen, or at least it isn't as obvious.

Currently building my 5k database, which will probably show a transitional difference somewhat less than the 10k tests for the Mustang at 2700 vs 3000rpm; it will probably be more pronounced at 15k and 25k.

cheers

horseback

Would you need to do as much trim change in a constant TAS climb as you do in a constant height drag race? You'd probably use trim just to adjust IAS as needed every few 100 to 1000 ft.
Climb rate = Ps analog at 1 speed and many alts.

P-51 can climb at speeds the SpitIX can only be losing alt to maintain. Throw that in with the percentage statistics, performance has scale as well as percentages.

First of all, it is always appreciated and respected when somebody "do the walk".

Now the bad part.

1. This kind of tests is best done with the utility written for such purpose.
You can find it here.
http://lesnihu.wz.cz/autopilot/autopilot.html
It is easy to set it up and it will execute script which will control the plane instead of you. It is much easier to test planes that way and what is even more important this is way more precise and repeatable test method.

2. Flying the plane is just half of the job, second part is logging the flight parameters. You can do it your way but there is a better and easier way. Use UDPGraph, you can get various parameters on the screen and in the file.
Download it here:
http://avcpage.achilikin.com/il2dl/graph_en.htm

Once you get these two utilities working you will be able to watch TV while your PC is doing the work for you and as a bonus you will get much better results.

There's still merit in doing it "by hand" though, Horseback made a lot of useful observations about the difficulty of trimming some planes as they accelerate. I am curious about how much difference trim makes though, maybe someone familiar with that tool could set up a similar test for a couple of the planes that Horseback thought were hard to trim to see how much better the results are.

The whole point of this exercise is to do it by hand; if the average player cannot duplicate the results of the tests without a ton of specialized controllers, or be able to overcome some of the problems inherent in flying a given aircraft without many, many hours of practice, meeting the 'book' numbers is meaningless.

This highlights some of the reasons that the ai so consistently outperform human players in certain aircraft and why some aircraft that should have many more users based on their historical records are less successful with occasional users.

cheers

horseback

It's not about better results ( good pilot will do as good as AP), it's about consistency and ease of testing. And trimming issues are highly exaggerated, you can make good runs without messing with trim much, even in "hard to trim" planes. Just make a plane nose heavy before you start your run and you will not have any problem in making smooth run with minimal altitude deviation.

"Book" numbers are not what average pilots could do, they are what highly trained test pilots could do.

The trimming issues are generally pretty specific to a given aircraft and seem to be not just a matter of adding nose down trim; certain aircraft will consistently raise or drop their noses abruptly at certain speeds after an extended period of acceleration in level flight, even when you try it flying in the Wonder Woman view (which is the only view option that actually provides consistently accurate and timely climb/altitude and trim data). If you do your runs 'in the cockpit' as I do, shifts in AOA as speed changes make using outside reference points (like the horizon) impractical, and dishonest, inconsistent, illegible or slow Turn & Bank indicators, variometers, altitude indicators and artificial horizons make certain specific aircraft extremely difficult to keep level, when added to their trimming problems. Certain other aircraft of similar performance seem to need much less adjustment and have either consistent or particularly accurate in-cockpit instrument displays, some of them in direct contradiction to reports of the period.

In my opinion, many of the 'hard to trim' class seem to be hypersensitive to minor stick inputs as speed increases; I use the same low stick sensitivities for all aircraft testing, as well as 50% filtering, and attempting to maintain level flight in the 'hard to trim' group with the stick and pedals is just as difficult as trying to add or subtract elevator and rudder trim with button or axis inputs, and sometimes worse.
Test pilots of the 1930s and WWII era were largely self-taught; actual 'training' and schools for test piloting came much later. Military training required a higher standard of precision than general aviation because the military required a level of teamwork and predictability between aircraft un-needed in civilian aviation. Generally, military testing showed much less optimistic results than the manufacturers' in-house tests in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Regardless, the "Book" numbers are a basis of comparison for the average pilots; if plane a can accelerate from 270 to 450 kph in under 40 seconds and plane b takes almost a minute with the same pilot, their "book" numbers should be at least proportional. When other factors intrude or are artificially injected, the proportional differences can get a little lopsided.

cheers

horseback

And when you don't understand what's going on you can believe any conclusion you might come up with.

Now it's time for me to watch the new UFO's from Niburu video.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you -- horseback and woke up dead on the one side, and FC99 and MaxGunz on the other -- grind in two mills. One issue is the performance of aircrafts optimally exploited by the AI, and another is the ability/inability of the human pilot to achieve that optimum using standard game controllers (i.e. a short stick), watching a monitor less than 90 cm in diameter, and relying on flight data as displayed on the cockpit gauges. These limitations on the human player's side vary from user to user, but still there they are, and should be addressed properly when we discuss 'realism' (whatever it means for us). 'Correct' flight performance is one issue, it's actual 'feasibility' is another. Simply because we don't use the same peripherals as the AI does or r/l pilots did.

You don't represent me at all there.

As far as test pilots, historically less than 1% of all pilots make the cut mostly because of the discipline needed. Read up, a lot of WWII Aces tried for the job and didn't make it. And yeah yeah not all test pilots made good combat pilots if that's what it takes to stop the crying, but it takes the quality of a test pilot to fly the necessary tests. Chuck Yeager made it and was noted as a natural, the two jobs are not exclusive but talent and discipline are.

If during a run the plane goes up and down even 1 or 2 meters that will change the acceleration and trim state. By the time the plane has come back down it's going to look like a sudden change. Sound familiar? Guess why I quit trying to make test runs? I'm not good enough!

From what I have read of the pro books, it takes several flights to get one segment of a test done right and many segments to make a total run. They don't just firewall it from stall and burn till top end a few times then land for beer and number crunching.

Well, what Horseback is doing is still way better than steep dive yanked into climb and then however long it takes to get down to just over 109 steady climb speed is where you call it done - check the height - claim FM bias as suspected not like the "test" wasn't set up to do just that.

Nope, TD only tries to use a common reference for everybody, and they need to use a criteria and stick to it, even if some other resources says something is different.

Whenever you attack a particular set of aircrafts from a different resources, if they agree to changeit, you are opening the door for someone else to claim another resource for another particular set of aircrafts.

Let them stick to what they decided as a normal path, just try to give support on bizarre things, and improving some effects implementations.

You're not good enough, OK. I'm not good enough, OK. My point is different: under the given circumstances mentioned in my post, is there any living human (could there be any living human) who could be good enough to make the trick? Don't misunderstand me, I don't have problems with aircraft performances, and I don't complain for this or that plane being 'porked'. I simply try to draw attention to an important factor of the game beyond maths: there's a gap between 'objective' values (which I don't dispute) and how far they are practically relevant for the player. They are 'reference values', that's OK. But we can move one step further and ask why the player (you and me) is not good enough to achieve them. My problem relates to the way we communicate with the game engine and not to the parameters it is programmed to work with. :)

So get a Volvo universal joint, about 5 meters of square steel tubing, a seat, various other hardware bits and some electronics and wire then do the cutting, bending and welding and you can join the elites who have.

IRL test pilots did and do fly the tests.You and I are not test pilots and probably never could have been. We're not theoretical physicists either, or gold medal downhill skiers or heavyweight boxing champions. I for one am totally unsuited to be a playboy bunny for at matters.

It's more important for online combat to have good SA than to be able to squeeze the most from your plane. It's more important to have a good wingmate that you act in unison with. It's even more important to be a hotshot marksman than to close the last few percent in pilot skills.

IL-2 is not a test pilot game, it's a fighter pilot game.

I basically agree, but I put the emphasis elsewhere. Our personal performance and 'feel of flight' is affected by three factors: 1) the potential flight performance of our plane as best exploited by the AI and represented in test charts; 2) our personal skills as listed by you; and 3) the ways and means we apply our skills to the game via various peripherals. This latter is very much compromised and gives a huge 'deadband' as to personal performances: no wonder that some people build custom cockpits to narrow this deadband (exactly what you suggested ironically), and remember how much advantage 6DoF gives over the hat switch. My point is that this No. 3 affects our experience much more than a few kph's change in No. 1, so that it would make much more sense to discuss the 'realism' of peripherals and displays than the 'realism' of the charts.

If the potential flight performance is best exploited by AI, how come I can beat them 9 out of 10? They don't even know how to properly use radiator and pitch.

Let me start with the end which is:
I'm not complaining but I am pointing out why some of the conclusions I've seen in this thread are wrong.

As far as the game goes that is true. But when we try and determine the performance of the game's models and start interpreting results of flaws in our procedures as flaws in the model then it's something else.

IMO this stems from fantasies about Ace pilots and becoming one in-game. At the heart of most FM-whining posts I've seen there is the assumption that the player is test-pilot good and has an absolute understanding of everything that happened in whatever event set them off, point of view and what they didn't see having no effect on their omniscience. It must have happened as, how and why they think it did.
Accounts from WWII pilots are taken as absolute truth to the tiniest detail. If the pilot said it was a Tiger tank then it was regardless of the times when USAAF pilots strafed and bombed Shermans, all the data that says NO is ignored while data that says YES or even MAYBE is taken as absolute support.

Especially in more arcade flight sims ( pretty much all sims I had before 1998 ) it was -easy- to be a top pilot and shooter too. Table driven sims got you there almost automatically. Even IL-2 which is *not* perfect now added whole not-before-included factors as of 4.0 that didn't get complimented by a different control interface method until 4.07.

I consider it a benchmark when a sim includes factors that players have to learn and get used to to even begin to get near top performance.

IRL I spent hours trying to hold a plane +/- 50 ft in steady level flight. I did manage that and note that speed changed more than a couple knots the whole time. A real pilot with more time would hold the porpoising down closer to zero and might get there or really damned close for a short time but how many can stay within 1 meter long enough to pull reliable data out while changing speed?

Now imagine anyone trying to get it exact for a whole full power run from stall to top speed and being so confident in their flying that they use data derived from that to point out flaws in the plane? The difference in gear or whether the pilot is sitting in a moving plane or a chair behind a desk goes not cover the similarity of trying to do that IRL or in game, the only difference is in chutzpah.

We've seen much worse. We've had G... and T... and The Joke who went beyond honest I-didn't-know mistakes to full blown BS creation so:

I'm not complaining but I am pointing out why some of the conclusions I've seen in this thread are wrong.

I, too, can beat the AI thank to my superior intelligence. ;)
What I can't do is to fly and land my fav plane as smoothly as the AI does. :)

As you might have seen, I'm not really interested in minor performance issues, which I regard secondary in importance. What I'm interested in are the reasons behind the 'flaws in our procedures' -- yours and mines. Many of our flaws, I believe, have something to do with the game interface being 'realistic' in a questionable way. E.g. the 'realistic' image of a cockpit, as we have it on our monitor, is rather unrealistic and mutilated if compared to the full visual perception one might have in that cockpit. Imagine you have to drive your car relying on the image of a single board camera. The image you get is 'realistic', but the visual experience is not. Discussing and debating such issues would be probably more useful than adjusting the charts IMHO.

I think we agree though I do feel that for really good reasons like there have been in the past, adjustments are warranted. I'd love to see a P-51D or two with empty or mostly empty fuselage tank!

The other issues I am used to seeing since I first got into the flight sim community back in 1998. They are definitely good topics and the discussions got lively at times even before the wow kind of stuff available now was ever known.

Yes, we as players are quite hampered, even with head tracking. That's one reason why I always stood for search keys, not everyone has head tracking (I never did).

There is the monocular view issue with canopy spars blocking view that would not be blocked with stereo vision. When IL-2 came out and during development average players didn't have enough video power to ghost the spars which while not perfect would help simulate stereo vision. This is something that IL-2 will probably never get.

We don't get any feel sitting in stationary chairs. IRL you can feel slip or skid as a pull to the side kind of thing. IRL you know when you're pulling G's, rising or descending, tilt, G-forces and turbulence.
In sims you have only visual cues and instruments. One major sim skill is integrating those into 'feel' where changes in speed or VSI or The Ball mean something just through practice.
And yes, this is also something that used to come up for discussion. What you brought up is kind of a minefield of topics that it's probably good to bring up now and again.

I can suggest some help with the regular joystick (I have an X52) which is to add a lot of FILTER to the pitch axis in the stick sensitivity screen. I mean like 40% or more. It doesn't add much delay to stick moves, a fraction of a second, but it will really smooth your flying out.

Another thing, and this takes loads of practice, is to not let yourself rest the weight of your hand or arm on the joystick. It's something you really have to work hard at catching yourself doing, especially when things get exciting. But when you do keep a light touch it pays off well in performance. Try flying no combat with just thumb and 1 or 2 fingers on the stick for a few minutes and see. What's worse than resting arm weight is the stick ham hand death grip that we all do at some time.
With a full length stick that doesn't matter as much but still a light touch is better just as IRL.

AI takeoffs and landings are scripted. The AI can't fly the models down near stall without rolling over and spinning. What I find amazing is how well the AI does fly the models at all. More than once I had urged that the AI's should fly table-driven models as IMO that would make the AI code simpler not just flying but for AI tactical planning and would nail down what the AI could do. It wouldn't take much to have a different table for each level AI.

USN-USMC fighters At 5000 Ft
 

Notes on USN/USMC Fighters tested @ 5K ft.

1. The early Wildcats seem to compare with what I know of their performance, not spectacular but stable; however, the FM-2, which was 500 lbs lighter & somewhat aerodynamically cleaner than the F4F-4, as well as enjoying a 160 hp power advantage at altitudes up to nearly 20,000 ft, is portrayed in-game as even more sluggish than its predecessors. I was so surprised by this, I ended up re-running the FM-2 to ensure that I hadn't left the landing gear hanging down or something, but it was just as sluggish and 'meh' as the first time. Historically, this was simply not the case. The FM-2 was widely acknowledged as the 'wilder' Wildcat; being lighter, cleaner and more powerful at low and medium altitudes, it had superior climb and acceleration, and a somewhat better top speed at low and medium altitudes. It was a much better match for the Zero, even the later models. Someone's got some 'splaining to do.

2. There is very little if any difference between the F4U-1/Corsair Mk I and the F4U-1A, which makes little sense, given the -1A's water injection and the fact that the runs made in the -1A were all much more level overall. The Dash 1A is ultimately faster once you reach 480 kph, but it should be no contest from the start. This just doesn't seem right. I also added the Dash 1D, and it has a noticeably better jump, but the same general top end.

3. Both models of Hellcat continue to be a huge letdown. With or without water injection, it is portrayed as a slug, and much slower than the official numbers I have found. A standard F6F-3 should be capable of 290 kts/330 mph true airspeed, or about 530 kph at this altitude. If the Wonder Woman 'speedometer' is correct, that would mean an IAS of about 470/480 kph in-game. The best level TAS I got from the F6F-3 was just over 510 kph, and the best level TAS on the F6F-5 was around 515 kph, or about 460 kph indicated for both. Again, there was very little difference in acceleration between the two, in spite of the extra 200 hp or so that the water injection of the Dash 5 is supposed to have. Again, I re-ran the Dash 5 to make sure that I hadn't done something wrong. The main difference is in top speed, but from 270 to 380 IAS indicated, there is no difference.

cheers

horseback

The problem with the F4F is twofold, first, the FM-2 appears to be indeed slightly undermodelled, and second, the F4F-3 and F4F-4 are modelled very generously, climb rates exceeding documented data in the region of 20%. This turn historical relations upside down.

Which charger gears were you using for the F6F and F4U?

I think it's clear that G-forces and the rest you mentioned are simply outside the scope of a sim, at least under armchair conditions. Still, they too can be transformed or translated into visual cues, something like as Wonder Woman View does (surely a bit too generously). WWV is a constructed image which makes a wide range of sensual information available in visual form, and in this sense it's more realistic than a faithful camera image which filters out all non-visual sensual input.

Now turning to the purely visual cues one might have in a RL cockpit, I feel that they too are rather compromised in the 'faithful' camera image we have. Even with a TIR you need several huge monitors to have everything relevant appear in a meaningful distance and a meaningful size (and with the use of huge monitors we have already left the realm of 'airmchair conditions', btw -- ask the wife ;)). The instruments are too close and the skies are too far, and the camera view with its zoom function can hardly replicate the ease the human eye and mind adjusts itself to the task IRL. My solution would be a third type of view with a split screen with fixed FOV for both the static lower instrument part and the dynamic upper combat part (with some zoom allowed when using gunsight view). Just an idea, don't kill me :)

Horseback, you should check the 109g6 if it's an ingame porked fm you're looking for. Real life figures according to Kurfurst's 109 site of 1.3 ata and 2600 rpm at 480m should give 530kph. At emergency power (110%) a g6 should do 590kph at sea level. Kurfurst believes that the 530kph @ 1.3ata on the deck (480m if we're nitpicking!) was the defacto acceptance test for the Luftwaffe of this aircraft, if it couldn't do it, it went back to the factory. The only performformance plot I seen, again on K's site, that comes near the ingame performance is of a g6 carring a full 300litre droptank. I live in hope that someday it's performance ingame will be "historical", but nobody seems all that bothered about fixing it.

There's a gazillion of tests showing 520-530 kph on the deck for G model 109's at combat power. Now if you were to use the emergency power (1 minute time limit) to increase that speed, you'd end up at around 540-550. Not that you'd get there within a minute. 590 is totally out of question, unless you're using MW50. You'd need about 1800-1900 hp to achieve that speed.

Again: Just because an an engine model does more hp at some alt, it does not mean it does more hp at any alt. 5kft is near FTH of first stage of F4F -good alt for it. Try at 5km alt - FM-2 will be better than F4F.

At http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f6f/f6f.html I can find only 315mph at 5kft for an F6F-3 without water injection. Other tests are either with water injection, do not cover that alt or are not fully loaded fighters.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.o...6f-3-02982.pdf
is interesting because it states that early F6Fs were problematic to rudder trim in a power climb.

Water injection in game is with WEP?

"There's a gazillion of tests showing 520-530 kph on the deck for G model 109's at combat power."
JtD, lol. Try it ingame and let us know how fast you can get it, 480? if that? At 110% I get sometimes 520ish...
A minute of climb at 110% in a fight can be an awfully long time and would be even better if ingame matched RL "historical" peformance. If it did there'd also be more grunt throughout the power curve ingame. Takeoffs would start to get very interesting with correctly modelled torque. Forget to lock the tail wheel in RL and the rudder couldn't stop it making a left turn, with usually fatal results... Ingame?
Gunz I believe that WEP is water injection, it may be in the manual, been a while though since I read it.

I was confirming what you said right there, but if you think you need to laugh about it, so be it.

I used the first stage (which should be analogous to 'Neutral' on the real things) blower for all the USN-USMC fighters; as I recall, the second stage shouldn't be engaged until about 8000 ft. Mixture was the standard 100%. While I have read that the superchargers had two gears for each stage, this doesn't seem to be modeled.

All of these aircraft seem to fall well short of generally accepted performance figures for speed at sea level and 5000 ft for military power (much less War Emergency Power), including the Wildcats, and the relationships seem a bit skewed. I would think that the Hellcat should initially be a good deal closer to the Corsair; the weight difference is not that great (with full internal fuel, some sources show the Corsair as the heavier of the two), they're using the same engines and drag shouldn't exert that great an influence until later in the speed range.

Interestingly, the top speed results I got for the F6F-5 are very close to numbers I have seen quoted for it carrying a drop tank and two 1000 lb bombs. Since the Corsair didn't 'officially' become equipped for bombs until the -1C/D models, I have no figures for a 'bombed up' Corsair until the we get to the -1C/D versions (and TBH, I haven't been looking).

Both models of the Hellcat and the later (-1A and later) Corsairs are recorded to have retained their drop tanks during combat on several occasions; their performance was sufficiently superior to the mid-war Japanese fighters that keeping the tanks was sometimes both possible and practical. I have to wonder if at least some of their numbers may be off because someone didn't notice the sets of numbers they were using included the belly tanks.

cheers

horseback

You'll need to engage low gear (2nd stage in game) in order to get any benefit from water injection. Both with and without water injection you're operating above full throttle altitude, where the benefit of water injection is nearly zero.

I would like to know what your "generally accepted" speed performance figures for the Wildcats are. I can tell you right now that they match or exceed the figures given in Americas 100000 as well as the figures quoted on ww2aircraftperformance.com.

F6F and F4U performance is modelled for clean aircraft.

Every source I have shows the FM-2 superior to the F4F-3/4 up to around 18-20,000 ft. The same site you link has tests for both which indicates that the FM-2 at 5K will do a bit over 310mph, or within an eyelash of 500kph; the F4F-4 at 4500 ft is listed at 283 mph or 455 kph, a difference I consider significant.

I can't find much mention whether the engine was a plain vanilla -8 or -10, or a -8W or -10W, which indicates water injection, but it was not always noted back then. That still leaves the questionable performance of the F6F-5, which should do at least 330 mph at that altitude, or about 15-20 kph more than I could get in seven test runs.

I don't know if you're a native English speaker, major, but we refer to this sort of thing as "cherry picking." I'm sure you'll find it a useful term;).

Like many high performance fighters, the rudder corrections for extreme changes in speed (as experienced in a sudden climb or dive) could not be rolled in quickly enough on the Hellcat, sometimes requiring the pilot to exert pressure on the rudder pedals; the same phenomenon was noted for the P-40, P-47, P-51 and the Corsair to some degree, much greater in the case of the P-40 (meaning that the Warhawk was a couple of orders of magnitude worse than the Hellcat), about the same as in the P-47 and less in the other types. If the rudder issues you refer to consist of the notation on page 8, it was a minor issue and quite acceptable (and clearly superior to the rudder input demands placed on a pilot flying a Bf 109 or FW 190). AFAIK, it was common to all models of the Hellcat, and considered a fairly mild vice.

Edit: The reason it was mentioned is that the original contract probably specified that rudder forces would be trimmable throughout the aircraft's performance (I'd have to re-read Tillman's book to be sure); this turned out to be impossible with the engine and propeller changes from the original R-2600 and Curtiss Electric combination envisioned for the Hellcat, so it was just noted and signed off on every acceptance test rather than go to the massively complicated task of revising all the contract documents in the possession of Grumman and the Navy Department (this was the age of hand-typed documents and carbon copies, remember; they hired thousands of young women to type and file and keep track of all the hard copies, and had warehouses full of the original documents) and getting them re-signed. I can tell you from personal experience that some government contracts still get this sort of standard waiver treatment for minor issues and that if the government rep who had to inspect the paperwork was transferred, you'd better be able to produce the original paper trail for his or her replacement.

cheers

horseback

The 'HUD' message telling you that water injection is engaged goes up even so. Who knew that the game would lie to me like that?:shock:

As mentioned in an earlier post, ww2aircraftperformance.com shows a test for the FM-2 with a level speed at 5000 ft of 312 mph true (502 kph); an F4F test for 4600 ft shows a true airspeed of 283 mph (455 kph).

Attached is a blowup of the chart from America's Hundred-Thousand for the Wildcats' various models' Speed and Climb performance, scanned from the book and then printed on graph paper in the forlorn hope that it would be made a bit clearer (Murphy made his usual appearance, alas). The FM-2's speed graph line is highlighted in pink, the F4F-4 is in blue and the F4F-3 is in green. As you can see, the FM-2's line at 5000 ft is clearly east of the 300 mph line, while the F4F-3/-4's lines are well to the west of it, around 285 mph.

I used the same references you claim you used.

cheers

horseback

Try closing your radiators at about the time you hit 450 kph indicated; it will bump up your top speed and final stages of acceleration a bit, as long as you count to about 30 seconds or so after the overheat message pops up and then open them up and slow down.

I can't imagine adding RL levels of torque in the game at this point in its life; the 109 and P-40 would become almost impossible, never mind 'interesting', to land or take off for the vast majority of players.

Personally, I already have a full 'whine' cellar.:cool:

cheers

horseback

The HUD tells you the water injection is active because it is. It works above full throttle altitude. It did in real life. There's just no increased boost any more, and therefore there's no meaningful extra power. As it is in real life.

In game, the F4F manage around 295 mph at 5000ft. So clearly, the Wildcats do not "fall well short of generally accepted performance figures". Two of them are clearly overmodelled, and one of them falls "somewhat" short of generally accepted performance figures, and that not even at all altitudes. Unfortunately though, at the important ones.

That's low speed nose high propwash. Use rudder, not side stick. Keep the prop revs high and power low in case you have to go around.

Funny thing how I read from guys allowed to try out a 109 because they qualify and still going off the strip just trying to take off the first time.

I think IL2 Compare helps you figure out at what altitude boost no longer makes a difference. There are two lines on each maximum speed graph: the speed at 100% throttle, and the speed at 110%/boost. In some planes, like the Hurricane and Spitfire, the two lines meet at 4-5000m.

Most test documents state the engine the plane was equipped, if not usually it can be deduced from loadout given, there is some amount (16gallons?) of anti-detonant mentioned when water injection was used.

The document above states: "Rudder trim effectiveness was not sufficient to trim in the high power climb." If I get this correctly it means though FULL rudder trim was applied in a high power climb the plane still deviated from flying straight. So at least early F6F-3s were trim hogs in rudder when climbing with full power - and I doubt that later model F6F behaved much different - even if a larger trim tab or different rudder were added, changing from clevel flight to climb would still require lots of trim change in rudder.

Water injection does "move" the power curve towards more power AND towards lower alt. So while the F6F-3 will be faster with first stage of the charger at 5kft (FTH~1000m), the F6F-5 will be faster when water injection is engaged in the second stage at that alt.
Same for the Corsairs: F4U-1 in first stage and F4U-1A in second stage when using WI above~1000m.
Water injection will work and will use water/methanol mix in first stage though, BUT will not have much of an effect.

Just compare the two power curves of the F6F-3(without WI) and and the F6F-5 in IL2compare. (Or F4U-1//F4U-1a)

Horseback, thanks for the effort you've put into this thread and my apologies for hijacking it somewhat. Your suggestion regarding 109 radiators is noted and I'll give it a go. In RL according to Finnish 109 pilots. the effect on speed was pretty minimal to the point of not being noticed, whether rads were open or closed. If 109G6's ever get an fm makeover perhaps this'll get fixed as well.
There was a very early mod from the AAA days which did up the torque effects for the 109, how accurate it was I couldn't say, but slamming the throttle to the wall at take off wasn't wise as it did have a gap where the rudder was non resposive and if the tail was lifted too early it got a bit tense!

I used the term 'well short of accepted figures' for the Navy fighters as a group, which was a bit sloppy of me. The Wildcats are, however, shockingly sssllllloooooowwww by any measure; over 10 seconds to gain a bit over 6 miles an hour can seem like hours after testing the Corsair at sea level. When you're struggling to maintain level flight by detecting whether the altimeter needle is moving (the variometer is at least a second behind the curve), the intervals take forever to go by, and when you finally reach the point where there just ain't no more, you glance at the speedbar and think "WTF?"

Even if they are about 20 kph faster than they should be, that impression is hard to shake.

In any case, the FM-2 is poorly represented, and if former pilots' direct testimony to me is to be believed, the tall-tail Wildcat could accelerate with the Zeros and Oscars they encountered in the Marianas and the Philippines (the old guys picked out all of the Japanese fighters from my then-extensive collection of 1/72nd scale models and named each one --and corrected some of the color choices I made). Even accounting for the usual hypercompetitive BS factor present any time Navy veterans of any age meet, that means that like its climb, the FM-2's acceleration should be pretty good as well, even if measured against beat-up, poorly maintained A6M5s of the later war period. My former landlord said (realizing for the first time that my wife was present) that the FM-2 was "a he-heck of a lot uh, peppier than the Dash Fours or even the Threes."

If it was anything like the one we have in Il-2 '46, there wouldn't have been three 70-something year old men in my living room that day in 1985.

cheers

horseback

If you read my post containing the trim sections from America's Hundred Thousand, you'll recognize the passage below:

"There were nose up trim changes with gear and flap retraction, though they were minimal, and the same was true of initial acceleration into climb. In general, there were substantial both directionally and laterally with speed and power changes, but tab action allowed trimming out control forces to zero except for the rudder. At low speed and high power rudder pedal force could not be trimmed out fully. Most pilots thought trimmability was generally good, though some made the following comments ‘Lack of trimmability”, Excess rudder trim change”, and “Aircraft requires excessive trim” (three pilots). It was noted that in a dive control forces could not be trimmed out quickly enough."

Trim adjustment was a relatively new practice in military aviation in the early 1940s, and most American fighters appear to have had some points in their performance where full trim input did not completely wash out the need for a bit of rudder input, or where it couldn't be input as quickly as the demand increased. The extra amount of right rudder needed didn't result in the unbalanced muscular deformities claimed by long-time P-40 or Bf 109 drivers, so it wasn't a severe problem, but it was something that wasn't supposed to be there, according to either the original request for proposal or the resulting contract language for the F6F-1.

The phraseology used sounds like a standardized bullet point in the test documentation to my long time government contracting ears; I would expect that that phrase, or some minor variation of it is found in almost every Hellcat acceptance test document. Without it in there, a battalion of government bureaucrats would have had a near fatal case of the vapors, and the US war effort might have ground to a complete halt.

As I pointed out, the FW 190A and Bf 109 lacked any in-flight trimming capability for their rudders, even though rudder had to be added or subtracted as attitudes and speeds changed; does that mean that they were 'trim-hogs' in the rudder department too? I know that US pilots doing comparison tests of German aircraft were quick to criticize that particular feature of those aircraft, but that it didn't seem to limit their combat effectiveness.

So it was with the Hellcat.

I'll try using the second stage of supercharger with the Hellcats and Corsairs as you suggested; if the results are significantly better with the initial test runs, I'll revise the charts.

cheers

horseback