Jet FMs: maintaining AoA (or rather IL2's tendency for involuntary pitch movements).
I type from a position of ignorance of just how much work goes into 'tweaking' the FM for aircraft in IL2 and I suspect the answer lies in the fact that the game was originally aimed at prop driven a/c in the range 100 - 300 KIAS. Whilst I understand the maths that speed = more lift, surely aircraft are designed with a "known" centre of lift/gravity etc. Therefore it would appear that the basic IL2 FM is flawed in that whilst trying to maintain a jets angle-of-attack (AoA) any change in speed seems to result in a change in pitch (AoA) rather than the rate of decent/climb that is wanted (no 'pilot' input to stick). With some excellent new jets being added to the game, trying to 'land' (especially at sea) using a WWII "dive & flop" is clumsy and guesswork, landing the jets works better if able to keep the nose slightly high and rate of decent adjusted by throttle - but not when the 'game' randomly adjusts your pitch.
Question: Ignoring the "if you wanted a flight sim you should have bought....." [this game is just the best!] am I asking the impossible?
note: With experience & knowing the 'numbers' (that deliver a perfect approach) it is achievable - but does not allow for any corrections & almost a perfect set up from miles before touch down.
post added to "Jet fighters FM" to trigger discussion, not in any way a criticism of this excellent game.
I don't understand you here - as long as trim position is constant and there's no input on the stick the aircraft will mantain a constant AoA, but that means change in pitch whenever there is change in applied ammount of thrust. Unless the jet has FBW and auto-trim - which 50's jets didn't have. The change in thrust results in change in vertical speed, not hotizontal speed, and changing pitch results in change in AoA and a change in speed - but to mentain that speed aircraft has to be trimmed, to mantain the constant input corresponding to that speed - otherwise aircraft will pitch up after centering stick trying to get back to its source speed. And that's how it works for jets currently - any change in thrust requires change in trim to mentain constant pitch.
If you're talking about flaws that F-9 and AFAIK F-84 have, that's a bug I believe, and it's here since years, and indeed is pretty anoing - at low speeds applying thrust not only doesn't increase climb rate, but even pushes you towards the ground, while lowering power results in slower descend - that's completely inverted and nowhere near correct for ANY plane. Sabres don't have this problem, I had countless carrier landings with FJ-3 and whenever I went too low, appilying more thrust saved me instead of blowing me into stern, like it does in Panther.
Another annoying thing is spike at leveled elevator in some planes, which got somewhere extreme in recently released Cougar - when centering input back from e.g. pitch up position, the center point moves towards pitch down and pitching down results in center point instantly shifting into somewhere up, and violent bump down of the nose, and vice versa - like if trimer was broken and flopping in the wind. If it happens during final approach - you're dead. That was considered a minor bug and noone fixed it, even though, in ammount of it Cougar comes with, it ruins gameplay with this plane, and got my excitement about it from before release into zero-interest. Too bad, it was and interesting plane and it would be a beast of sea if it didn't behave like that.
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Topic: jet fighters (Read 14709 times)
