Eliminating altitude instead of diving steeply

[Olham 164]

If you have ever tried steep dives in an Albatros, you may have lost a wing or at least a wingtip doing so.

Especially pulling out of a dive hard will almost inevitably break your wings.

This problem may also be familiar with the Nieuport 17, which I never fly, but which also has fragile

lower wings.

Now, if you still want to follow an enemy plane down fast, you can do this:

bank your craft fully to one side, and give rudder the opposite direction. I'm not sure if this could still be

called a "side slip", but this maneuver will make your craft "fall down sidewards", without putting much

strain on wings and wires.

I have shot down many a Pup or Camel after doing so - they may have been surprised, that I still was

behind them.

 

 

[carrick58 23]

I use the N-17-N-24 all of the time, I can state with assurance that the wings on the N-17 snap like a chicken wing:rofl:. No power dives, Maybe a loop with very little power on the down slide. Remember the what the wish Bone on a chicken sounds like when you break it making a wish. The N-17 wings sound like that pulling up from a steep dive.

[Bullethead 12]

Wing failures in OFF are rather strange. They do not occur when you think they should, and they do occur when you don't think they should. It's not purely exceeding a certain speed, nor is it exceeding a specific G level. Instead wings fail under pretty gentle circumstances where you don't expect it. I hope this is addressed in P4.

 

For instance, take the Albatros D.III. You can start at 10,000 feet, split-S, and dive vertically at full power. When you reach about 150 knots, you have to start holding down elevator to maintain the vertical dive. The amount of forward stick increases as you continue to accelerate, until you reach about 190 knots. This is the fastest the D.III can go, because at this speed the nose comes up even with full down elevator. And the wings stay on. When you see this happening, yank the stick all the way back as fast as you can. You'll do an do a loop, without even a trace of blacking out (which means despite your high speed, you're not pulling more than about 3 Gs). And the wings stay on. Now to me, this is the most extreme loading you can put on the wings, and they don't care. You can do this multiple times with no problem, even though you'll see OVERSPEED and/or OVERSTRESS warnings, and hear ominous creaking and snapping effects.

 

Now do a different experiment. Climb to about 13,000 feet, which is as high as a D.III can get in the game although this is considerably lower than it could really fly. Now start doing gentle Cuban 8s. Your speed will never get above about 90-100 knots, and you'll still never pull more than about 3 Gs. Keep doing Cuban 8s, letting yourself get lower and lower. After about 4 or 5 such moves, without any visual or audible warnings at all, one or both of your lower wings will come off.

 

IMHO, this is wrong. If the plane can withstand the full-speed dive followed by the hardest possible pull-out, it should not fail doing much less-stressful aerobatics. But it does in OFF. I'm not happy.

 

 

[Olham 164]

Didn't know that about the vertical dive, Bullethead - lots of good points there.

Hope the devs will take at look at this.

[zoomzoom 2]

Yeah, Bullets' right. Had that happen a few times and at first thought it was supposed to represent extended stress fracturing the spar....but now, me-thinks its a bit too frequent. It could use a visitation from the Dev's it seems.

 

Your tactics are sound Olham, I have used the cross controlled side slip for many a chase down maneuver, and it is a fine solution to overspeed stress and wing shedding. Its also great for mis-judged landings where you came in too hot....just watch the snap at ground level, cause there aint not recovery from that one. You'll either come away wearing the robe of luck.....or a body bag. most likely the latter.

 

ZZ.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Wing failures in OFF are rather strange. They do not occur when you think they should, and they do occur when you don't think they should. It's not purely exceeding a certain speed, nor is it exceeding a specific G level. Instead wings fail under pretty gentle circumstances where you don't expect it. I hope this is addressed in P4.

 

For instance, take the Albatros D.III. You can start at 10,000 feet, split-S, and dive vertically at full power. When you reach about 150 knots, you have to start holding down elevator to maintain the vertical dive. The amount of forward stick increases as you continue to accelerate, until you reach about 190 knots. This is the fastest the D.III can go, because at this speed the nose comes up even with full down elevator. And the wings stay on. When you see this happening, yank the stick all the way back as fast as you can. You'll do an do a loop, without even a trace of blacking out (which means despite your high speed, you're not pulling more than about 3 Gs). And the wings stay on. Now to me, this is the most extreme loading you can put on the wings, and they don't care. You can do this multiple times with no problem, even though you'll see OVERSPEED and/or OVERSTRESS warnings, and hear ominous creaking and snapping effects.

 

Now do a different experiment. Climb to about 13,000 feet, which is as high as a D.III can get in the game although this is considerably lower than it could really fly. Now start doing gentle Cuban 8s. Your speed will never get above about 90-100 knots, and you'll still never pull more than about 3 Gs. Keep doing Cuban 8s, letting yourself get lower and lower. After about 4 or 5 such moves, without any visual or audible warnings at all, one or both of your lower wings will come off.

 

IMHO, this is wrong. If the plane can withstand the full-speed dive followed by the hardest possible pull-out, it should not fail doing much less-stressful aerobatics. But it does in OFF. I'm not happy.

 

I am working on what I believe to be at least a partial solution to this problem. I have found that there are at least two situations which govern wing failures in OFF. The first situation is damage from overspeeding in a dive and is controlled by the max_mach variable in the .cfg file (technically, wings did not shed their fabric from overspeed, but from pulling up too quickly during a fast dive, but OFF does not currently model this well so we are left with overspeed damage). Multiply the value you find in this variable by 936 and you will get the speed in mph that the plane must exceed to eventually get overspeed damage. How fast a plane can dive is governed by several factors, but primarily by its drag factor, with lower drag meaning generally faster overall speed as well as dive speed. Drag, in turn, is controlled by a variable found in the .air file. Note that the .air file can only be read by a program developed for CFS2 called AirEdit. You can find this program on the web. I have been able to succesfully get an Alb DIII (in addition to other aircraft) to shed its bottom wing tip in a steep dive by altering these values.

 

The second situation is damage caused by pulling excess g's in a turn or manuever. This is also controlled by a variable in the .air file. There is a setting for positive and negative g limits in the .cfg file, but I have found that changing the .cfg file has no effect on the ability of the aircraft to take high g turns. You have to change the g setting in the .air file to do this. IMO, the g settings that allow planes to make tight turns in OFF is set too low for several aircraft, primarily the Albs. Again, I have been able to increase the g settings on the Albs so they do not crack up from excessive g's in a turn, so there is at least a partial remedy for BH's complaint. Furthermore, I did not have to increase this value very much in order to get the desired effect, so the plane will not necessarily become a "turn-demon" if you alter this value.

 

I am still working on tweaking the FM's of the Alb DIII and Nieuport series to reflect these and other changes, but if anyone is interested in sampling what I have come up with so far, just send me a PM.

[Olham 164]

That sounds good, Herr Prop-Wasche, you're on the right track I think.

 

I'll try your new settings. If not over the weekend (social duties: "Why can't you be spontaneus?" etc.),

then I'll do so in the week.

 

I think you seriously try to improve some wrong aspects without making the aircraft perform better

than the actually did in real life. As you are a pilot yourself, I believe you know quite a bit about

aerodynamics and aircraft midair behaviour. I'm looking forward to your results!

[Hasse Wind 46]

Good points, gentlemen. Devs, please take a look at this for P4.

 

HPW, your modifications to OFF are much appreciated.