Hey TD can you look again at the Corsair..

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by sniperton

The delay thingy seems to me unlikely. These planes had manual trim wheels, the effect of which should be immediate. (They are not like flaps.) And if you assign e.g. the elevator trim to an axis, you'll see that its effect is immediate indeed.

No they are not. It was "fixed" because some nice people abused instant trim by placing it on a slider and using it to make their planes react faster//turn tighter. Now trim is not applied immediately but after a few seconds.

Originally Posted by sniperton

As to the oscillation thing, I find that many planes are impossible to trim perfectly, what sometimes makes me mad. But I can't say whether it's realistic or not (and to what extent). I simply don't know what 'perfect trimming' means in real life in these planes. Only an r/l pilot who has flown them could give us an idea of that.

For a real life fighter pilot I'd think trim would mainly serve the purpose of having an (nearly) unloaded stick and pedals.

Edit:
The problem with those reports is mainly that there is no hard data. "slightly superior" in horizontal acceleration could very well mean "After one minute the Corsair is 20 kph faster than the Fw190" or "After one minute the Corsair is 2 kph faster than the Fw190"

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

No they are not. It was "fixed" because some nice people abused instant trim by placing it on a slider and using it to make their planes react faster//turn tighter. Now trim is not applied immediately but after a few seconds.

I thought that this was an actual historical tactic used by some Finnish pilots flying the Bf-109G.

It seems to me that there should be some compromise between the "instant trimming" you get from the "trim on a slider" cheat and historical rates of response for using trim to improve turn performance.

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

No they are not. It was "fixed" because some nice people abused instant trim by placing it on a slider and using it to make their planes react faster//turn tighter. Now trim is not applied immediately but after a few seconds.

You're right, but the delay is really small and it plays a role only when you make major trim adjustements like neutral to max tail heavy with one sudden slider movement (corresponding to 20 to 40 clicks or so). It works like a value 8 filtering on the throttle: it smooths the change and, therefore, delays its full effect a bit, but it is applied immediately. My point was that in a normal flight situation, where you slowly adjust your trim in small increments, trim changes are effective practically immediately.

Originally Posted by majorfailure

For a real life fighter pilot I'd think trim would mainly serve the purpose of having an (nearly) unloaded stick and pedals.

Right, but my question is how much constant stick and pedal correction was needed to keep a 'perfectly trimmed' plane straight and level (horseback's original problem). In Il-2, the needed input varies from plane to plane, as it may have varied in r/l, but the question is how these two relate and correspond.

[horseback]

The problem with the trim delay for me is that you don’t see the effects until you have overdone it; logically, you would expect the pressure on the stick needed to keep the nose down to gradually be relieved as you kept pumping that nose down trim button, but that has not been my experience with most of the aircraft we all agree seem twitchy and trim sensitive. When the trim effects do actually arrive, it usually seems as though all of the cumulative trim inputs are applied at once, instead of being felt as they are being input.

Psychologically, while you’re waiting for the trim to take effect, you are wondering if the game sensed that last input, or that maybe that button has finally given up the ghost after 8-10 years of frantic trimming…to say the least, it is very unsatisfying.

A couple of things come to mind: first, that I have no idea whether the trim delay time is exactly the same for every aircraft or if the trim is input in exactly the same degrees, minutes or seconds of the control surface’s arc every time, or how quickly I can input trim button pushes without the game deciding that I’m just holding the button down. Second, I don’t know if some aircraft’s trim inputs are given special treatment according to some arcane formula involving weight, speed attained and the current phase of the moon.

Aircraft modeled like the Mustang require two or three clicks of elevator and/or rudder trim for every change of 10 kph or greater or any significant throttle increase, so if you're entering a dive or trying to speed up, the delay is constantly in play, and therefore unrealistic.

The obvious answer to me is for the trim inputs to be noted on-screen in the same way changes in prop pitch or throttle are noted, and secondly to allow some means of accurately pre-setting your trim to the anticipated levels as you start your high speed run; a RL pilot obviously had a pretty good idea of how much nose down trim he would need if he was going to add 100-150kph to his IAS over the next 30 seconds or so, but in this sim, although some aircraft have the animated trim knobs and wheels, there seems to be little relationship between what you can see on the screen and the amount of trim you have actually applied.

Since most aircraft do not have the animated trim knob and wheels, it seems to be a purely visual effect, and it would be a tremendous amount of work to provide accurate trim control animations for each aircraft in the directory. Being able to see that I have applied 23% nose down elevator trim or better yet, 3.5° right rudder trim after I punch the trim button or twist my trim rotary would be extremely useful. Currently, people have to spend several hours working with a given aircraft model to develop a feel for how much trim is needed for a given speed/situation, and the high-trim aircraft have a much steeper learning curve because it is not currently obvious in any way how much trim has been applied or in what direction, because when you have to apply a lot of trim at once, the stick never 'unloads'.

It would improve everyone's piloting, I believe, and cut down on the "my ride is porked!" complaints if the players could track their trim and see what the effects of 6.8° of nose down trim does to their aircraft at speed X IAS.

cheers

horseback

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by horseback

It would improve everyone's piloting, I believe, and cut down on the "my ride is porked!" complaints if the players could track their trim and see what the effects of 6.8° of nose down trim does to their aircraft at speed X IAS.

+++

[EJGr.Ost_Caspar]

I don't understand your problem here - you just mustn't hold the button pushed. The value, the trim changed with one short push is small enough and happens imidiatly to give you a very easy way to see the planes reaction (if you push repeatly).

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by EJGr.Ost_Caspar

I don't understand your problem here - you just mustn't hold the button pushed. The value, the trim changed with one short push is small enough and happens imidiatly to give you a very easy way to see the planes reaction (if you push repeatly).

Then, maybe just better documentation on how to use trim is needed. I'll confess to being ignorant about exactly how it works for most planes.

Horseback's idea of allowing players to know exactly how many degrees of trim they've applied is a good idea. It might even be historical if trim wheels were actually marked with degrees of trim. If not, it would be a nice option for the "wonder woman" view.

[Luno13]

I'll echo Caspar here:

Tap the trim key to make fine adjustments. Hold it down for coarse adjustments. There is a slight delay from holding it down, but it's useful to get from one end of the trim range to the other very quickly. Just tap it instead, and you'll have all the control you need.

[Notorious M.i.G.]

Originally Posted by Luno13

I'll echo Caspar here:

Tap the trim key to make fine adjustments. Hold it down for coarse adjustments. There is a slight delay from holding it down, but it's useful to get from one end of the trim range to the other very quickly. Just tap it instead, and you'll have all the control you need.

I'll confess I never knew you could just hold it down. I've been rapid-fire mashing it like the manual gear lower/raise (unless you can hold that too...in which case everything I've known is shattered )

[horseback]

Most aircraft of that era did have some kind of demarcation or marking to tell the pilot how much trim was applied; the FW 190 has its elevation trim setting in a readout on the left side panel, the Mustang's elevator, rudder and aileron trim knobs have their degrees of offset marked off (and some of this is incompletely portrayed in the game). However, most of the aircraft in the game are not given the benefit of an animated (and correctly labeled) trim knobs and wheels--and it's hard to glance down and read the ones that do work the way a pilot in the actual aircraft's cockpit could.

The point is that trim has become critically important in this sim with the improved Flight Model and physics that came with the 4.0x series of patches, and the average pilot has no clearly calibrated and marked set of trim pots on his USB controllers, and button trim is only 'felt' as an effect; you have to take it on faith that your push of that key or button was sensed when there is no clear and obvious indication on the instrument panel (okay, sometimes the rudder trim is indicated on the Turn & Bank indicator, but the state of elevator and aileron trims are for all intents and purposes invisible until you apply too much trim.

Now for people who habitually fly one aircraft type, especially those aircraft that are treated as having little or no need for extensive trim adjustment, this is usually just fine; they know from long practice how much trim to apply for their favorite ride (in most circumstances), and it is to their advantage that others flying a variety of technically superior or faster aircraft cannot get the actual performance that should theoretically be available to them. They are happy to chirp "Learn to fly!" and bask in the assurance of their own superior skills and knowledge. They have the upper hand, so they aren't about to question their good fortune.

And they aren't about to try to fly one of the trim hogs if they can possibly avoid it.

As I believe I noted about the Ki-61, it is so easy to get the best performance out of that fighter that someone facing them in the nominally superior F6F-3 Hellcat will be at a serious disadvantage because in the context of this simulation, it is very difficult to keep the Hellcat in trim, and unless it is kept in trim, the Hellcat constantly hemorrhages its energy, and almost always ends up low and slow, an easy target. I haven't spent a few dozen hours in the F6F, but I have spent about three or four hours taking it through its range of speeds and trim settings. As I've pointed out earlier, they are inconsistent--you need to add nose down trim at one speed range, and at a somewhat higher speed range, the nose abruptly tucks down and you need to apply nose up trim. The FW 190A also exhibits this behavior, as well as the P-47 (of the aircraft I've tested so far).

I doubt that the real aircraft did this--but I also doubt that these aircraft needed this much trim adjustment in proportion to aircraft like the Ki-61, the Ki-43, the La-5 series, or literally unknowable fantasy flight models like the Ki-84 and the J2M.

Letting the pilot know if his trim input was sensed and how much trim he has applied with a momentary message is the easiest way to remedy the problem.

cheers

horseback