posted 04-18- 01:02 AM               

------------------

posted 04-18- 02:07 AM               

The prob is all the planes should be at there documented weight. So adding to them would bring them above that wieght and make them kinda a huge hack.

which alot of people includeing me don't want.

Maybe there is a way for MH to adjust the Gravity slightly? like they did with the air thickness? maybe its off a bit?

posted 04-18- 04:14 PM               

Even the "stately" Jug, if you kick a little too much rudder on takeoff or landing, will start gyrating all over the place. Not sure how to approach the problem, but IMO we need a standard rudder setup which decreases its effectiveness.

posted 04-18- 08:01 PM               

I'm trying to think of a sim that does this well, but right now I can't think of any that would be the best example. Well, I do always mention A-10 Cuba, and that felt good to me, so that's my suggestion. Mighty once told me that there is a trade off with getting the physics just right, the planes had a little bouncyness in them. And that also explains having some things fall through the terrain. If the terrain were made "harder" it'd effect the physics modeling too much for the planes in a negative way.

posted 04-18- 09:06 PM               

------------------

posted 04-19- 01:06 AM               

Certainly, it would be great to have this fixed within the sim, but until then CTFJ helps a ton.

------------------

-< -< -< -<
Esox=FC=

posted 04-19- 09:10 AM               

Each "part" of an aircraft can either be asigned a "weight" or a "density". We tend to use the density as an aproximation simply because for most planes we have no data as far as specific piece weights (All the Spits I believe have "some" weight entries)

Problem is adding additional "weight" or "density" to any given object is that it also affects the "center-of-gravity" which directly affects the flight-models in one respect or another.

So in essence ... what you propose "could" be done ... it would however adversly affect the flight-models, that quite frankly are only "now" truly coming up to speed ...

BTW ... Tail and myself have developed a way to position and locate the fuel-tank in their correct positions (previously the fuel-tanks occupied entire aircraft pieces) This has lowered the CofG and has corrected many of the ground-handling problems/issues. I however don't think you'll be seeing these untill the next planepack.

posted 04-19- 09:34 AM               

Is your fuel tank info posted anywhere, like the OPP forum? I'm getting ready to build one into the Corsair, and the only way I can standardize is by reverse-engineering the P-47 or the I-16. If there's an "approved" method out there, I'll use it and save myself having to re-do it for the plane pack.

Whiskey Bravo has an interesting idea with the wheelbase question. Seems to me that the wheels touch the ground where we TELL them to using the collision points. Can you simply move the collision vertex points for the wheels outboard on the wings and improve ground handling? I'll have to try it on the Corsair--she still tips over way too easily.

Also, pretty sure I have some old college texts that have equations for approximating the weights of the various aircraft components. I'll dig em up if anyone is interested...

posted 04-19- 10:03 AM               

I don't "think" it's posted ...

However, it's a simple "comment" line with an inertia-box of roughly the appropriate size positioned where the tank(s) "should" be.

Then so long as you have the propper fuel load and a reasonably-close positioning of the tank(s) ... All should be well.

posted 04-19- 10:12 AM               

I will also probably steal Laika's fire animation for tank damage--those little flaming Ratas look pretty cool! Of course the Hawg had a self-sealing tank so it won't be EASY to flame her, but possible nontheless.

I also saw in a post that the 109E will leak oil onto the windscreen with engine damage!!?? No way!

So many ideas to steal, so little time...

posted 04-19- 10:44 AM               

Well... YEAH... That's cuz "I" put it there!

posted 04-19- 08:21 PM               

The rudder feels FAR too sensitive. I have used CTFJ III with some success to improve this (from Sticky's Stickworks www.stickworks.com as above)

However, it still appears that some planes bounce back from the use of the rudder as if they were on a rubber band, overshooting the centre-line, and wobbling back the other way - in the true sense of the term the system appears underdamped. Having never actually flown a plane myself ( ) I can only imagine that this is not what happens in the real world. What is the truth of this? I also know that this has been brought up even with Michael Harrison back in the days of Pete Hawk's forum, and he said he "would look into it".

Any other thoughts?

Regards,
MW

posted 04-19- 09:13 PM               

I can handle most of the planes on the ground. you just have to take it easy. Its alot harder when your not in the plane. theres lots of stuff we arn't feeling that the pilot coudl feel.

The fuel tanks could really help. i think more then people think they could. Lets at least weight till they are in before we start fudgeing all the specs till stuff "feels right" which of course no one will agree on.

posted 04-19- 11:00 PM               

Well people already think all of SDOEs planes are hacks so this sure wouldn't help. At least right now you can open them up and show people that you are using REAL #s

What we need is for MH or some programers to fix it. Not fudge the planes to do it.

Also like Zur said this woudl throw all the FMs off and then he would have to go back and fix them at which point I think he would just quit. Cause its alot of work. And he might not be to keen on the whole fudging stuff, although I won't speak for him.

Not to mention that IF you got some of the FM guys to do it you would end up arguing with them that it still didn't feel right.

One of the problems with the rudders is we arn't in a plane and we don't feel it move. also we don't feel the air resistance on the rudder. a force feedback rudder MIGHT help combat this.

I know i'm personally too hard on my rudder. since i just have a twist stick. When i consentrat and be light with it then its all cool.

posted 04-19- 11:14 PM               

That's not to say futher FM tweakage is not necessary ... THe entire FM process is a thing of progressive steps. In reality the FMs are mear shadow of what they orignially were (I speak of fighters here)..

Each revision is getting better and usually adress new-found data, fix previous problems or simply refine what's already there.

IMHO ... ground handling will eventually "fall into place" ... This is a "flight" simulation ... So ideally the FM work SHOULD address "flight" first and the rest second ...

posted 04-20- 03:56 AM               

------------------

posted 04-20- 05:34 AM               

K but the real data is all we have to go on. As Zur said. We can't just start fudging stuff now.

What if a RB guru comes in here and wants to start making planes? What do we tell him?

"oh the real specs don't work right with this sim, just fudge them till they work"

Like I said at least right now we can say the aircraft are based on real stats.

He would then proceed right back to RB saying what a joke this whole openplane thing is since it doesn't even work.

I say if there is somthing to fix its the physics engine. Can they not just tune the gravity and friction a tad?

Also why is it that the AI doesn't seem to have too much trouble keeping planes straight on the runway?

I really think if you treat the plane like its a $50000, 2000hp, death trap on every take off you will have better luck.

You say

"Data means squat if everything else is out of whack."

Well i say leave the data alone and fix whats out of whack.

Someone also said that if feels more like radio controlled airplanes. Why do you think that is?

Maybe cause your not in a 5000lb metal death coffin feeling the rumble of the engine barly able to hear your radio, having to put all your weight in to the rudder to push it out into a 200mph slip stream?

I'm not saying this is the best there is or will be but we have to realize the limits of computer sims.

posted 04-20- 06:40 AM               

But when you do fudge something, you can't just say, "hmmm, it's too squirelly on the ground," and add weight to it, because now you just porked the climb rate, and to fix that now you have to add more lift to the fuselage, and that adds more drag, so I have to make the prop bigger, etc, etc, and pretty soon your model doesn't have a single "real" number left in it, even if it DOES match the real performance. Then when somebody else shows up and wants to BUILD a realistic flight model for a new plane, what do you do? Hand him the "OP documentation" and tell him good luck?

That said, most of our planes spend more time in the air than on the ground. If you COULD get "better" ground handling by, say, decreasing the rudder travel (and that does work, BTW) without adversely affecting flight handling, that wouldn't be a problem the way, say, changing the HP of the engine would be.

But I think it's a gross oversimplification to say that these planes were "easy" to get off the ground. I've almost been run down by a P-51 that got away from its pilot on takeoff at an airshow, and the Stang was not really noted as being that touchy on the ground. I've read where you had to use almost full rudder AND full aileron to counteract the torque of the Spitfire on takeoff, and the trickiness of the Corsair is almost legendary. If we build a model and it DOES require constant attention to get it off the ground and back on again, as opposed to just pushing up the power and letting it take off by itself, isn't that a MORE realistic (and thus "better") way to go than simply building in a "heavy feel" even on aircraft that weren't heavy?

Conversely, if you can't do the same things a real pilot would do and have the airplane react properly, what good is it to be able to show how realistic the modeling is?

The two things I've noticed that made a big difference as I've been tweaking the Corsair for ground handling (and the version I'm working on now is not too bad at all, but still challenging) is that the location of the Center of Gravity and the rudder throw are very important. The rudder throw can be very small and still work fine in flight, but a large throw will put you in the weeds in a heartbeat on the ground. A bad CG will just make this worse. I haven't looked at the 5.3 Mustang, but the 5.2 Stang, which the Corsair was based on, had it's "engine" located pretty far aft of the correct spot, and of course the old fuel distribution model doesn't help things. Putting in the fuel tank model like on the Jug and I-16 (and now the Corsair) and moving the engine object and inertia box to the right place on each model would be pretty easy mod that would make a lot of difference IMO. From that point you can tweak the rudder and get a pretty reasonable "feel" without "fudging" any of the important performance-affecting numbers.

Just my $1.02

posted 04-20- 07:24 AM               

------------------

posted 04-20- 07:39 AM               

Exactly jedi.

Spyder you are obviosly set in your argument. I'm not going to try and change it as it pointless.

Let me say this. In "MY" opinion we shouldn't change any numbers that we know are true. and play with the ones we don't and go over every plane with the fine tooth comb to make sure we have done everthing we can do.

Like jedi said there is still alot to do to each plane to make it handle better. I totally got your view and I don't like it. The average user of a sim might not care what #s the planes are based on. BUT i sure as hell do as do. And I would be suprised if alot of the other so called HARDCORE flyers don't care.

Learn how to control the plane and treat it like the beast it is.

posted 04-20- 08:09 AM               

But... this is assuming that the physics modeling in SDOE is perfect and that your frame rate is in the throusands and that the plane is made up of hundreds of pieces...

Wouldn't it be a miracle if OpenPlane worked perfectly?

Take the prop issue for example, the main reason that the props are fudged is becuase we are not using the correct prop airfoils, right? By its very nature the airfoil data we use is a hack. CHRIST! Anything that is a "coeffeciant" is a hack, no? What is drag coeffeciant, a hack! Yes, they can be measured, but they are subjective. In other words, any simulation is a simplification of a VERY complex model. Simplification requires assuming certain things... don't look so close at the means, look towards the end!

Also engine modeling is WAY off, no?

Until it is 100% exactly perfect I can not imagine that slight tweekes won't be needed to achieve any FM goal.

I don't think of the stats as sacred, but rather as the over riding guide. I bet no two WW2 planes flew exactly the same anyway... is anyone modeling pilot weight?

I say to the "purists" out there, get a grip! Nothing is ever going to be 100% perfect. Let's just be happy that OpenPlane gets us hundreds of miles closer to perfect

------------------
-Sv =FC=

WWI in SDOE!

posted 04-20- 08:16 AM               

SV you are over simplifing our argument. I'm not asking for 100% perfect FM. No one is. I'm just asking for people to not start going crazy.

Let me ask you this SV? your planes don't handle right on the ground. You realize this or people start bitching about it just when you get the FM to where you like it.

What do you do? Add a couple hundred pounds and start the FM tuning all over?

Brings up one good thing though. Do the pilots weigh anything? If not we should fix that.

posted 04-20- 09:20 AM               

NO... Openplane is "NOT" perfect and there are "fudges" where they are appropriate. However, I am completely against purposfully fudging something in FS to make it "feel" like another simulation.

I've both flown and flown in light aircraft ... and with only a few exceptions ... there "IS" a certain "twitchyness" that is exhibited. I'll say it again for the record ... "Your joystick setup has more to do with twitchiness than you think". Even if you have to manually adjust you sensitivitly in the .ini ... Your joystick-to-control surface input should be as close to a ratio of 1-to-1 as you can possibly obtain.

Why doesn't anyone complain about the bomber hacks? ... Well, hell ... We did at one time make them correct and we nearly got banned from the forum!

Bare in mind ... what we are effectively discussing are the 5.3b plane-set ... let's not throw the "baby out with the bathwater" untill we've all had a chance to try the "next/improved" batch of planes ....

posted 04-20- 09:37 AM               

ArgonV- have you flown in a real plane? Who is to say all those sims are right? I'm not saying they don't bounce and i'm sure they do need work. BUT we don't want to just start adding wieght till they "FEEL RIGHT" cause then the flight FM is all messed. Probly way worse then the originals that everyone hated so much.

Yes zur I'm going to try and tone down my rudder a bit cause I know its too sensitive. I have just lived with it.

And I also think we should wait till a revision of the PP that shows what a difference the fuel tanks and such can make.

Argon and company. Get OPS. then add wieght to any of the planes until it FEEL RIGHT its easy to do. then get back to me with how much you had to add and how it flys now.

Also has anyone played with the dampers on the spings in the landing gear? Could we not turn that up a bit and see if it reduces the pogo effect? And that wouldn't effect ANYTHING else.

posted 04-20- 09:44 AM               

Hmm... Just looked at the damper command

Dampening force (AKA dashpot or shock absorber). Force applied opposite and proportional to my velocity

Well that IMO is part of the problem. Any mountain bikers here? You should be able to set the compression damping seperatly from the rebound damping. I can't understand why that isn't in there.

you coudl set the compression to keep the spring from bottoming out. and then set the rebound to keep it from pogoing back up. or toping out.

You would also want a bottom out and top out spring.

That maybe going a little overboard but it may not be.

posted 04-20- 09:59 AM               

To answer you, I have found that most problems can be traced to real mistakes, or at least things that you "guessed" at. My Albatros for example had very bad ground handling, but the FM was not all there yet either. When Pang did an FM update, the ground handling got way better!

I am not suggesting that anyone go nuts making stuff up, but just what are you basing the weight of the landing gear strut on?

My point? My point is that in any of these planes right now, MUCH is left as a guess or approximation, therefore there is allot that can be changed WITHOUT altering the "real" or "known" specs.

You could, for example, model the wing in three pieces a side instead of two. How does this relate to the real stats? IT DOESN'T! I am saying that there are many aspects to a flight model that do not directly relate to real stats... IT IS STILL AN ART, not a science.

BTW, I do agree with the R/C analogy, I fly R/C and these planes do tend to feel that way to me as well. I am unpopular because I am most sensitive to inertia and the "weight" feeling that started this thread - as opposd to flying by the specs. So many people ignore the accellerations and focus on the velocities! Who cares if your top speed is correct if your 0-100 time is 1.2 seconds?

That is why airfoil data is so important to me for my WWI planes... any atttempt to get real stats always resulted with a light feeling plane - too light. I bet many people think I didn't care about the FM on my planes... this is untrue, I just couldn't accomplish what I wanted to yet, so I errored on the side of keeping the real stats. I also did this bacause IMO it makes the handling more believable, try my Albatros - it feels heavy to me.. it lumbers off the ground like the one at Rhinebeck... BUT the flight specs are off - too fast and bad climb rates, etc. I need to edit the airfoil... I need a higher lift, higher drag airfoil! How would an Albatros fly with a nice smooth FW190 airfoil? I bet it would fly allot like my Albatros

-Sv

posted 04-20- 11:18 AM               

I've been working on this for almost a year and the only way I can tell things are getting better is that people are freaking out over less and less important things each time around.

All the planes are in a constant state of improvement. Rather than fudging in a quick kludge that will undoubtably cause problems in other areas of plane handling I would rather do the work and figure out why things arent acting right and fix them. We haven't gotten to concentrate much on ground handling as we've been trying to get the planes to handle correctly compared to each other. Theres a lot of work on the planes left that will affect ground handling a lot like fuel tanks, calibrating level stall speeds, and removing the 'unstallable' airfoils from the tail surfaces.

If you want to hang 500lb weights off the bottom of the plane I'm sure this will make it 'feel' more 'heavy' just don't ask me to dogfight in it : )

TS

posted 04-20- 11:30 AM               

... SV,

Tail's 1000% correct ...

As far as FM-tweakage goes ... this is a marathon and we gust passed the half-way mark!

There quite frankly is so much more to do (no-shit-sherlock) .. I'm hoping if we can get more people involved the FMs will steamroll no unlike how everyones work in the WWI planes really pushed the WWII stuff further along ...

LET'S GO TEAM!!!!

Damn ... I hate it when i do that.

posted 04-20- 08:16 PM               

------------------

posted 04-20- 09:25 PM               

So I'm the only one who brings an ego to the table? Calm down man. Its just our regular bi monthly argument. Remember?

All I ment was I'm not going to argue with you cause you don't care if the stats are fudged or if 1000lbs are added to each plane in order to have better ground handleing. And I do.

BTW has ANYONE thought of examaning the spring and dampers at all? If we could work out a less pogo effect by just playing with those it would be alot easier then any suggestion of adding wieght.

AND what about the pilot issue? I think adding the weight of a pilot is an idea that should be explored.