Real life pilots?
 

Was reading a thread about aerobatics and it got me wondering if anyone on here is actually a real pilot?

I think there used to be one but I can't remember his name.

i am, but havent flown in years. grew up in the right seat as my father always either had a plane or rented on. that was our sunday afternoon dad/son bonding time. i never did any bigtime acrobatics....was with him when he did some lazy 8s...cubans..chandelles...enough to make my friends puke..haha. but have been toying with the idea of getting back into it or at least getting some glider time...i do miss it. expensive hobby tho.

I flew heticopters in the late 80's and early 90's. I got my private pilots license on a Robby R22, got qualified to fly MD-500D when the Fire Department was considering hiring in-house to fly our rescue bird, but unfortunately that never came to fruitiion. I did get ample flight hours on the 500 though. Sadly I no longer have a current license. I do keep my flight log just for my memories...:grin::grin::grin:

Next question would be..

Do the planes in game react to your movements in the way you'd expect them to? Or do you have to adjust to being a 'flight sim pilot'?



And Branko, that 17 is a beautiful example and you're one lucky lady!

I used to be a pilot.

No, they don't react the way I would expect (even on sim mode) and that has me confused sometimes. Flight simulators have the risk of making you a nervous pilot because you tend to correct for a lot of things that normally you would not. For instance, the p-factor yaw effect on the game is greatly exaggerated and I find myself fiddling around with the trim to adjust constantly. The "ground effect" is also exaggerated. If these things are not exaggerations then it's a "flight sim" thing, because in real life I was not as conscious of them. I mean, you do integrate them to your flying but you are not constantly thinking "ground effect kicked in".

Wake turbulence is not modded in...
The typical shake and shudder before a stall is not there...

Reading my comment I forgot to add about the torque effect on the plane: let's say that you are on a turn, pulling g at corner speed. If you engage the WEP I would expect a roll force on the aircraft large enough to make me compensate during the turn. In BoP I find that this effect is present on some planes and in some it's not.

I am a zoom and boomer mostly and thus I am always thinking in terms of 'how fast can I dive and still be master of my plane'. In BoP compressibility and the Vnc (never exceed speed) are underrated so much that you can approach the speed of sound on a dive and still be able to pull out of the dive.

why did th pilot leave his station?

Wow too cool Branko, you are very lucky. I bet that was a blast! Real loud, cold? What were your impressions?

Yes, that was my job too...
But my aircraft, despite of his reputation, was far different from a warbird :-P

As Dr. Laplace says, no sim game can give you the same sensations as a real plane, as realistic it could be.
Compare to real life, this kind of game induces a very brutal way of piloting. You just have to see the way of piloting of some of the famous "aces" in the top leaderboard, specially when they fly 1v1, to be sure of that :shock:! In real life, no warbird could support such "binary" maneuvers whitout breaking.

But it doesn't change my opinion, BoB is still really good in his category, especially for a "console sim" !The most important thing is to consider it just as its purpose: a game!

Cool, thanks...

I was also wondering if it was a help or a hinderance being a real pilot, I guess from what you're saying it's both!

it is both helpful and frustrating. like the Dr. said...things you would normally feel and would effect you arent there. when i saw i was going well over 600 mph and still had flight controls and no shuttering and shaking i had to smirk. compressibility would have kicked in and made it very difficult if not impossible to recover at that point. not to mention the G forces that would have taken place...especially black outs arent factored in. long time ago ( 90s) i played something on PC...think it was yeagers air combat. when you pulled too many Gs the screen would start to grayscale and fade to black...which was interesting. some of the manuvers these planes could do...in the game you cant...and visa versa...some of the things they couldnt do...in game you can. hmm it would be interesting to hold an aerobatic competition. no combat just pure maneuvers... a time duration of so many minutes and points awarded for different maneuvers...varying for the degree of difficulty. anyways it does help especially landing and having a general knowledge of flight controls and when and why to use them...it does for me anyways..