streakeagle

So let me get this straight, the effects of a nuclear bomb are immoral compared to conventional warfare? WW2 covered far more area than any single atom bomb. The effects of fighting a large scale (global) conventional war for just a few years lasted decades, certainly affecting children not even born yet. There were (and still are) minefields and unexploded ordinance all over Europe. Does Japan surrender without dropping the A-bombs? Probably not. Those two bombs saved millions of lives in exchange for the thousands that suffered their effects. It would have been immoral to invade Japan D-Day style when the bombs were available to avoid that blood bath. Japanese women, children, and elderly were supposed to fight to the death. Based on the the island hopping campaigns, I believe a large majority of them would have done so. Jump ahead to the Cold War. The frightening potential of atomic warfare ensured that even big conflicts like Korea were carefully fought to avoid an all-out World War 3 fight between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. I can fully understand why Iran would want nuclear weapons. Once a country has them, they will never be invaded and they get to sit at the big boys table in the United Nations. Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea get a level of respect from their enemies that ensures most conflicts are at best minor skirmishes. Unless some odd situation triggers a major nuclear exchange, nuclear weapons have been the most sane, humane, and moral weapons to ever be created. Unlike all conventional weapons created before or since, they were only used once and dramatically reduced the number of lives lost over the long haul.

My preferred method of testing FMs is simply to have known performance data points, better yet complete charts, and then turn debug mode on and see for myself how the net lift and drag values compared at that those points. My AIDE tool allowed me to convert SFP1 flight models into standard performance charts found in flight manuals. I would simply tweak the values until the output of my program fit the charts. Unfortunately, the last version I made/released to accommodate some changes TK made to the flight models introduced bugs that I could never fix making the program unstable, most likely a memory leak or worse. The program was large and my free time had dwindled. I always dreamed of a day when I could start from scratch and make a newer better version. NASA has CD0 plots for many aircraft of the 1960s/1970s, so it is fairly easy to get that value correct. Many flight manuals for jets have V-n diagrams that let you get Clmax vs speed and altitude. Many have level acceleration times from one mach number to another (i.e. Mach 0.5 to Mach 1.2), which provides T-D/W (specific excess thrust). If the sustained g performance charts are available in standard height vs Mach format, you basically have everything you need to get complete lift, drag, and thrust tables. The difficultly is in proportioning those numbers to various parts of the aircraft. There is a program called DATCOM based on all USAF performance prediction techinques that can be extremely useful for SF flight modeling: http://www.holycows.net/datcom/ Of course WW2 aircraft performance was never documented as well as jets. The pilot manuals are generally devoid of performance tables. Military testing was sometimes very subjective... unclear what fuel was used, weights, and other critical test conditions. The performance of particular engine and prop combinations are hard to determine. Jets are generally easier to model than prop planes... at least at subsonic speeds.

Looks like a great museum! Thanks for the pics.

I pre-ordered as soon as I saw the news this afternoon. This is a jet I see flying around Kissimmee almost every day at work (as well as T-6 Texans and P-51Ds). It will be a pleasure to fly a DCS level version in the sim knowing that one day I could pay to actually get some stick time on one.

At very close ranges, the convergence/divergence is the spacing between the gun barrels ;) Per the above images, even with very exaggerated convergence angles, anything range closer than the convergence point has to be somewhere between the barrel spacing and convergence. At the same time, the apparent size of the target in terms of field of view always increases as you get closer. The problems with close-in shooting are: 1) safely getting into position without a collision or overshoot, 2) avoiding debris upon scoring hits on the target.

Cool beans: 25% more lift! But that means someone didn't spend enough time in the wind tunnel despite decades of development.

I have flown the MiG-15bis a fair amount of time. But I haven't looked into gun convergence. I use the 23mms to sight the target, and usually score a kill using them... but follow up with the 37mm if the target lives long enough. I have a habit of getting fairly close before shooting consistent with advice from Eric Hartmann: fill the windscreen with the target :)

Jump way ahead to Operation Desert Storm. It took a while to admit/confirm the F/A-18 shot down by the MiG-25. No one on the US side even wanted to consider that an old, lone MiG-25 operated by Iraq could slip through AWACS and CAP/escorts to snipe a very modern F/A-18 with state of the art RWR/ECM. I wonder where that Iraqi pilot is now? Did he even know he scored the kill?

I don't know that Russian propaganda was all that much worse than US propaganda. It is true that the Russians credited the MiG-15 with more F-86 kills than were deployed in total throughout the war. But how many times have respectable US sources quoted that F-86 Sabres scored a 10:1 kill ratio compared to Vietnam F-4s pathetic 2:1 ratio? Thanks to Russian documents, we now know that kill ratio was very close to 2:1 in Korea, with Chinese/NK pilots edging the ratio toward 3:1 and USSR pilots aroun 1.4:1. So, I preferred balanced documentation with information from both sides involved rather than assuming one side is mostly correct and the other is mostly lying. It seems that the key to getting history right is the loss records. With rarer exception, the records reflect what aircraft were actually lost/damaged on what days. Correlated with kill claims, this provides the most accurate estimate of combat results. For Vietnam, the records of both sides agree about 70-80% of the time. This is absolutely amazing when you consider the huge amount of overclaiming that occurred in WW2 and Korea. But even in Vietnam, there are days when a pilot was certain of what he had shot down but the other side recorded no loss for that day. So was the pilot mistaken or confused? Or was there an accounting error in the loss records? Or was there a conscious effort by one or both sides to distort their numbers?

Hard FM uses the entire data ini values. It is designed to be as realistic as possible, but requires detailed tables of physics constants. Some flight models have incomplete/incorrect information that make them behave poorly on "Hard". Normal uses a simpler, more linear model that doesn't have as much stability or stall issues. I understand the math and always played with hard FMs. I don't know what equations or math is used by normal. Even the stock FMs thoroughly researched and tweaked over the years by TK can't have entirely accurate data. Some real-world pilots preferred the behavior of normal over hard. In the end, it will never be a true simulation whether you fly with hard or normal, which is why TK used the world "hard" instead of "realistic". So, if you like advanced physics modeling of stability and dynamics, play on hard, if you prefer more stability/smoother control, play normal. It is a game and it is supposed to be fun, so play the way that makes you happiest.

I question the value of his opinion on the Sabre vs MiG: other people didn't have his experience, so they must be wrong! It couldn't possibly be that he personally didn't know how to squeeze optimum performance out of the F-86 or that the initial conditions were such that it created the appearance of exceptional performance on the part of the MiG-15bis. In online multiplayer flight sims, there are guys who accuse others of cheating and/or flight models being bogus because what they saw contradicted their understanding of the situation. For instance, in Aces High, there was an extensive post debating the energy retention of the F2A Brewster Buffalo because some guy in a much faster airplane like a P-51D couldn't pull away from the Brewster. Somehow the Brewster magically kept up and remained within firing range. Of course, the game allows recording tracks and people did all kinds of tests: conclusion, the F2A bleeds energy like a stuck pig, as it should. But, if it started with enough of an energy advantage, it could easily accomplish what was observed by the angry pilot. This is why anecdotal information from pilots is of limited use in determining flight model accuracy in sims. They may accurately recall what they saw and felt, but their perception cannot provide precise physical states of their own aircraft, much less several others flying around them. While it would be useful to suppress enemy superiority to prevent embarrassment in Washington D.C., there would be no logic in the USAF giving inaccurate tactical analysis to its pilots on the front line. Here is an anecdotal fact that contradicts this pilot's belief that the MiG-15bis was overwhelmingly superior and could have controlled the outcome of any and all engagements: Chuck Yeager flew the MiG-15bis versus the Sabre AND flew the Sabre against the MiG-15bis... whatever aircraft he was flying won. As to his questioning of why the NK/China/USSR pilots flew the tactics they did rather than hover at 50,000 feet: could he not understand that their mission wasn't to rack up F-86 kills at 30,000 feet? Their mission was to prevent ground attacks. When you are flying defense/interception, you always have to go to the altitude where the enemy is flying in a guns only environment. The MiG-15bis proved to be an exceptional B-29/B-50 killer, so the bombing missions fell to single engined prop fighters and slow jets at low altitudes. The F-86's were just an obstacle in the way of their real mission to kill F9Fs, F-84s, P-51s, F2Hs, etc. So, other than getting another first person perspective on Korean War air combat, I found little technical information that was of any use. I have far better references that go into much more detail and cover many points of view, including the enemies' viewpoint and experience.

The blog posts have a bitter, condescending tone. Everyone but him must be delusional, a liar, or ignorant. I think his assessment of Americans applies equally well to himself:

SimWorks Studios now has a website: http://simworksstudios.com/ If their F-4B is as good as they are claiming, it will easily equal DCS in flight model and systems accuracy. So, they are inadvertently going to make me a Tac Pack customer. This will finally satisfy my curiosity about Tac Pack and FSX viability as a combat flight sim. There is a limitation: They are using tools that do not support P3D, so they are only officially supporting an FSX version. I don't know if FSX Steam Edition is supported, but they would be completely stupid if they didn't at least support that.

For this to happen, one of two things needs to be true: 1) Third Wire needs to expose the desired variables to programmers to make it easy to port the data to external software/hardware. Games that have applets generally had some sort of documentation/toolkit that would tell you how to exchange information between the game and other software and/or hardware. This is by far the easiest, best solution, but requires a lot of work on the developer's part. Multiple variables need to be gathered and communicated without impacting the speed/flow of the game. In SF2, debug mode exposes a few flight modeling parameters to the display. If there were an ini file that permitted the selection of instrument parameters and sent them to a file that could be shared at a decent frequency, it could work. The control aspects could be handled through DirectX/keyboard emulation as per other dedicated controllers. 2) Someone has to reverse engineer the SF2 exe so that they can make an application that can detect and locate the required variables in memory at run time. The application would have to read from key memory locations without disturbing the game. This could slow and/or crash the game unless the looping cycle and memory management of the game are fully understood. Someone could waste a lot of time trying to do this and still never succeed. So far, no one has publicly acknowledged having attempted this process.

I think the closest you are going to get is this history of Sukhoi. It isn't a very big book and it covers all of their aircraft, so it can't be too detailed: http://www.amazon.com/Sukhoi-Interceptors-Red-Star-Vol/dp/1857801806

On the Third Wire website, TK's twitter feed displays this recent progress for the tablet game --> multiplayer? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBOJwosUMAAAKju.png:large

If you don't already have your own code library to handle a complex programming task, you have to study and/or learn by trial and error to build it or use someone else's. Multiplayer was not TK's specialty, so he went the easy (and at the time, common) route: Microsoft's DirectPlay. Without such a well-documented and easily accessible (free!) library, you can bet SFP1 would have been single player only. However, DirectPlay had its disadvantages. It didn't really handle the latency of the internet so well, data transfer rate wasn't particularly high, not designed to handle network address translation (users hiding behind routers) or DHCP (temporary/random assignment of IP addresses). For reference, Operation Flashpoint started out with DirectPlay, but was quickly retrofitted with an alternate "sockets" method of connection that was both faster and more reliable. TK's solution to the bottleneck caused by DirectPlay and the SFP1 game engine was to limit the objects and view settings in multiplayer. As implemented, SFP1 multiplayer was best in the everyone vs everyone dogfight mode which kept traffic to a minimum and all players happily flying since they could respawn after being shot down. The co-op/team vs team mode exposed the limitations of SFP1 multiplayer. The only ground objects/AAA/SAMs were around the target area with no clouds or aircraft carriers. The massive multiplayer online flight sim, Aces High, has specialized proprietary code to try to minimize warps and lag despite hosting hundreds of players with various internet speed/latency issues. I always felt that both TK and HiTech (founder/lead programmer of Aces High) could have benefited each other by melding TK's content with HiTech's network coding and servers. Microsoft omitted DirectPlay from DirectX10. Multiplayer tech support had always been a thorn in TK's side. It should not have been a surprise that he abandoned multiplayer entirely when SF2 transitioned into DX10. At the same time, TK could see how well multiplayer was working out for other flight sims. The people flying online with even the most popular games like IL-2 and Aces High didn't even begin to total enough income to waste even one more penny trying to develop or purchase new multiplayer code.

Happy Birthday!

Use the settings to customize as you see fit... you don't have to have everything on Hard or Normal or Easy.

In general, he locked down the files he didn't want distributed, i.e. the lods... but then left the new DLC unlocked which leaves them open to easy distribution/piracy if you are trying to make money selling skins. TK's original goal of being as open and moddable as possible conflicted with his later goals of preventing piracy and tech support issues caused by widely distributed user mods. Only TK really knows what he means since he clearly contradicts himself :P But based on the LOD issues, I am pretty sure he doesn't want the exe, dlls, and/or lods being distributed for free. But apparently he wouldn't be against distributing patches that alter legitimately owned copies, per his email response approving local edits and Fast Cargo's logic that doesn't involve distributing the edited files. If someone has the time and energy to try to disassemble TK's code to fix minor bugs or maybe even add new features, more power to you. I have some experience doing down that path when I was younger, single, and more of a machine code/C++ programmer. I have no interest in doing that now and seriously doubt anyone following that path will get very far, especially trying to add features. I remember when the Battle of Britain source code was released and chatting with Osram on SimHQ about progress on successfully compiling, running, and then improving the game. I didn't even try to join the team as I was more focused on Jane's USAF as well as the future promise of SFP1 (both having F-4E Phantoms), but watched the BoB modders become the BDG and work hard to produce what would become BoB2, which is still a great sim and game even compared to DCS level realism. My point being: they had the source code and it took them many years to achieve a stable build with any useful changes/fixes/improvements. From what I have read online posted by others that worked on EA Jane's projects, having TK's source code might not help too much since apparently his organization and documentation skills are less than optimum: i.e. while the code works great, it is very difficult to read and follow if you are not TK.

As far as fuel consumption rates go, TK usually has good numbers for the specific fuel consumption rate of the engines, but historically his flight models were a little low on zero-lift drag... So it doesn't take as much thrust as it should to maintain cruise speeds. Also, the maps are a little smaller due to the maps being imported in English units but use metric measurements in the game: i.e. 1 mile on a real map will be only 1 km in the game, or something like that. One benefit of the "shrunken" maps is that it helps compensate for the lack of in-flight refueling. Without this benefit, flying historical missions from Thailand to Hanoi would be impossible in the game. If you want to test fuel consumption effects (i.e. run out of gas), engage full afterburner at sea level where fuel consumption is at its highest level possible and see how long it takes to empty all your tanks ;)

The key is, you aren't supposed to distribute his files, presumably even hex-edited versions. So he is condoning doing anything you want with your installation, but you don't have the right to post/distribute anything/everything you create from his work.

Hard settings generally mean more realistic, but some players find Normal more realistic, and some aspects of the game don't work as well with everything set to Hard. For example, the flight model is far more detailed reflecting more accurate physics on Hard. But the values used in the flight models are estimates, sometimes even wild guesses, which combined with slightly simplified tables of aerodynamic data can lead to behavior that a given aircraft should not have. The flight physics for Normal are far less detailed/realistic, but can more easily produce text book performance numbers and just "feel" right to some people. Combat aircraft aerodynamics is a hobby of mine, so I appreciate and prefer what the Hard setting brings to the table when it comes to flight modeling. So, I can't stand playing with any lower setting. AI behavior is a case where Hard is actually less realistic. Normally, AI difficulty is determined by preprogrammed stats for each nation. Some nations have better training/experience, so fewer pilots are novices and more are veterans. When Hard is used for AI, the pilot quality percentages/probabilities are skewed toward veterans and aces for the enemy, and dumbed down to green/novices for friendlies. So, to get better flying/more aggressive enemies, you have to tolerate dumb/cowardly wingmen. My work around for that is user created missions with AI set fairly high for both sides to produce the best possible dogfights instead of one-sided slaughters, or player versus everyone else fights while your friends run or do nothing. When playing campaigns, Normal is probably the best bet for AI assuming TK or whoever assigned unit pilot quality stats successfully recreated historical parameters and/or created fun/interesting play balance. Even on Normal, you will encounter some veterans and aces that are as capable as the AI can be. Though you will probably face a lot of cannon fodder, too.

I loved what was done in BoB2 and wish that the planned P-40 Flying Tigers evolution of the sim had been done. DCS P-51/Bf109/Fw190 is great, but BoB2 is easily the equal in aircraft modeling and has fantastic dogfight AI. MiG Alley should have been brought up to the same standard as BoB2. They were also at one point planning on updating B-17, including the addition of multiplayer. Alas, all that is left are minor updates to BoB2.