Weird plane glitch?

[i fight by 1]

I did a solo mig cap on "Fighter Bowl", played on normal realism (with the exception of blackout and fuel). Doin' fine, nothing weird, when this mig flew straight at me, full military power. When he was getting kinda close, I went down and then pulled straight up, and I guess hit em, but he keep going straight leaving a loooong, I mean hella long trail of black smoke as he went. I flew around shooting other for a few minutes and then decided to follow this looong trail of smoke, after flying for about 10 minutes still following the trail, I remembered if I pressed F6 I could see his plane and how fast he was going and his altitude and stuff. His afterburners had stop but he was flying at a constant 500 something in a straight line, losing very little altitude. I saw there was no pilot too. I eventually caught up to him, flew above it, below it, around it. I eventually got creeped out by it and shot it down with my guns. Has this ever happened to somebody, this weird ghost plane thing?

Edited May 23, 2009 by i fight by 1

[zmatt]

One I was in a MiG-21 and ran into an F-4. Somehow I survived and he exploded. Anyways both of my wings were gone, but my engine still worked and my rudder and elevators worked. I could change my climb, but if I turned I would end up in a football spin. I was able to fly in a straight line, more or less, like this for long enough to alt+n out of there. I left a really long black smoke trail as my engine was damaged. I couldn't land so I bailed out close to the AB. Does that sound anything like what you saw?

[i fight by 1]

Kinda, There was no pilot in the one I saw, and it just moved in a straight line. Right before I zoomed by :D

Edited May 24, 2009 by i fight by 1

[zmatt]

I've seen that before. But its more common in the WW2 install for some reason, probably because it's all gun kills. Its possible to kill the pilot without wiping out the plane. If you do that then the plane will tend to go where it was going. It's a thing call positive static stability. Where left on its own an aircraft will fall back into a straight path of flight. Some planes are designed not to have this to be more maneuverable, the F-16 comes to mind. Anyways, what this means is, if you shoot the pilot or he bails out and the plane isn't in the middle of a weird maneuver then it will probably keep going straight. That's assuming yo don't blow the plane up or shoot off control surfaces or a wing.

 

In my WW2 install Zeros and BF-109s do it a lot.

[i fight by 1]

Ok thanks man