Friday 2010-12-17 Dev. update and Discussion

[TheGrunch]

Looking niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice. Maybe too bright during the day, but that's tweakable I'm sure.

[Oldschool61]

What amazes me is how excited people are over exhaust flames that they will almost never see when they are in the cockpit. Only time you see these is if there is a plane next to you starting up or if you fly in third person view.

[moilami]

Originally Posted by Oldschool61

What amazes me is how excited people are over exhaust flames that they will almost never see when they are in the cockpit. Only time you see these is if there is a plane next to you starting up or if you fly in third person view.

How about a new doctrine "don't shoot untill ye see the exhaust flames" If not, then recheck Bf 110 engines and cockpit

[Richie]

What great work I never would have guessed you could get two colours in the flames like that. But...I think the day time flames need to be toned down. I've never seen flames coming out of a 109 like that in the day time.

Two 109s take off under full power in the day time with no flames visible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71gYnaGyb8

[The Kraken]

Great attention to detail. And makes reading last week's update thread again an interesting experience Smoke trails caused by certain engine actions is also a nice feature beyond pure eye candy - will be interesting to see to what degree the AI will also abuse the engine from time to time (maybe based on skill level).

And that 110 sure is a beauty - can't wait to get my hands on it...

So thanks for another very nice update!

[Blackdog_kt]

Excellent example of how nicely things are progressing with regards to community interaction. It just goes to show that if we can self-moderate ourselves a little bit, there's a lot of feedback to be provided and it's definitely not going to waste. This is a clear example that the developers LISTEN and do their best to please as many people as possible.

Awesome update

Originally Posted by PeterPanPan

Very nice Oleg. So, the engines smoke if the mixture is too rich, and the flames burn bluer if too lean. Brilliant!!

PPanPan

Exactly. In the first two pics with the Hurricane, if you watch the engine management panel at the bottom left and compare between the two screenshots, it's obvious how the only thing that's changed is the mixture. This models closely what most people had witnessed in real life and what was printed in that period manual from the Allison engines, as it shows the flames going from red to blue when the engine is leaned.

In some of the pics with German aircraft we can see that the prop and/or mixture parameters are blank (only throttle is diplayed for the Ju88, while mixture is not displayed for the 110), since they probably have automatic systems to manage those.
What really got my eye however is the 109 picture which displays the numbers for all three parameters (mixture, prop and throttle), something that probably indicates its one of the early models that didn't have the automatic engine management systems.

The only thing i could say is that it looks a bit too bright. However, these are stills captured with the sole puprose of showing off the flames, so i am inclined to believe that they are either looking brighter on purpose to make the details of each effect easily visible, or that they were snapped with a track running at 1/4 speed, pausing on the frame that the effect is most pronounced and snapping the picture.
In motion it might look totally different, for all i know it would probably be alternating between flame and no flame depending on which cylinder is firing at the time, with time between changes depending on the amount of RPM the engine is running at, just like we saw in last week's videos.

Finally, if abrupt throttle changes produce black smoke from unburnt fuel, it will be awesome to help us judge if we are spotted. Say you are bouncing another aircraft and you suddenly see a brief trail of black smoke, you instantly know that he's going full throttle so he's probably seen you and will take evasive action.

And since the importance of the details we're seeing in this update has been questioned a few posts back, let me say that it's things like that which excite people about the little details. It's not the details per se, but what these details can tell you about the aircraft.
A knowledgeable person will be able to deduce certain things about what an aircraft is doing, just by looking for the right signs. This can be used to get better performance out of your plane, or to judge the potential performance and actions of the enemy one

[Romanator21]

The exhaust flames look perfect to me - if I had to say one thing, they may be too bright/visible during the day-time, but Black-Dog has addressed this too. It's nice to see that on the Bf-109, the flames are not lighting up the side of the fuselage as they were with the Spitfire last week.

I'm sure you guys will sort everything out nicely. Thanks for the update Oleg & Co.

[JVM]

Hello Oleg!

Nice job as always...I still would like to mention something, like in image 7:

one can imagine a mix of blue and yellow in flight, with yellow on the exhaust side but it would be only in a brutal transition in mixture adjustment from OK or poor to over rich...and you really would have to push your throttle very violently to its stop, and even then, on a fuel injected 109, I do not believe it would happen...

So my idea if you would like to keep it simple would be to have three flight exhaust flame states:

1) normal/poor mixture: blue regular sized flame, and - if possible, one day! - whitish exhaust strain on paint (sure sign you are running generally too poor)

2) over rich: blue on exhaust side, with yellow end regular sized flame (the opposite of the 109 image in terms of color order), brown exhaust strain

3) much too rich: yellow flames a bit irregular, occasional misfires, again if possible, blackish exhaust strain on paint (no less sure sign you are running generally too rich)

and at startup, in a random way or on record of overprime if existing, big flames, before normal functioning.

Generally no mix of blue and yellow if yellow is on exhaut side: physically difficult to imgine in a steady state...

I would like to apologize in advance if this comment still resembles nitpicking!

JV

[C_G]

Noticing that most of the pictures seem to have been taken at dusk (or dawn), to make the flames more visible in the screenshots? Perhaps in full daylight it's more difficult to see them? The bf-109 shots are taken in full daylight however, and are equally "bright"...

Just noticed that there seem to be two options to display engine control status: by percentage and by graphical representation of control position (in the three first hurri shots)... interesting.

[Richie]

Hi Oleg.

I just loaded my cd up and I can't see any flames here and listen to Dave Southwood about always flying on maximum power settings. Thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48uziQoniI0