First thing i tested with the new patch was taking off in the Blenheim with its notorious tendency to swing to the right (and by tendency i mean you had to wrestle to keep it on the runway or it would veer off).
It worked much better than before, just a bit of steering with the brakes early on but when it picked up a bit of speed (30-50mph or so) it was easily controllable with rudder alone.
It seem that there is now more static friction to overcome so it doesn't directly swing around to starboard anymore the moment you apply power.
One more thing that would make ground handling perfect is to simulate another friction effect. Static friction is higher than "rolling" friction and it's been modeled this way in other sims too: it takes an initial burst of quite a bit of power to start the aircraft rolling, but once its rolling you have to throttle back to a much lower setting to prevent going too fast during taxi.
It's like dragging a crate across the floor: you need to apply more strength to get it moving, but once it starts moving you need less strength to keep it moving.
Currently, at least in the heavier aircraft, it seems a bit too proportional and linear. For example, to taxi a Blenheim loaded with four 250lb bombs and fuel only in the inboard tanks (55% fuel), you currently need to continuously push +0 to +1 psi boost or more. Don't let the low numbers fool you, boost is measured in relative units and as such 0 boost means full ambient air pressure at sea level, in other words full throttle minus the supercharger.
I would expect it to probably need that much to start rolling, but much less to keep rolling, especially for the slow speeds involved during taxi: for example, giving it a burst of +1 boost to start moving, then throttling back to -3 boost or something like that.
However, things are definitely moving in the right direction and yes, the ground handling physics have been revamped.
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09-09-2011, 12:56 AM
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