[ACE-OF-ACES]

This whole fm talk is pointless...because none of us is qualified to say "this fm is realistic/it should be like this"...

Disagree 100%

Read on to see why I say that..

firstly because there is not enough data,

That is true for alot of the planes in IL2, but not all.

That is to say real world performance data is hard to come by for allot of the planes in IL-2, but not all

Thus Oleg surly had to make engineering estimates for the planes that he didn't have real world performance data on

secondly none of us even had a ride in a warbird (I won't even mention piloted a warbird).

The myth that you have to have flown the plane in question to say how well it is simulated performance wise is just that

A myth

Thousands of aerospace engineers have done thousands of studies on the performance of a plane without ever flying any plane (read not pilots) let alone the plane in question

What confuses most people is they mix plane performance with flying qualities

How fast a plane is at 20kft falls into the performance category and does not require a pilots license to see if the game speed matches the real world speed

Anyone that can add and subtract can do that

Where as describing the tingle and or vibration you feel in the stick just before the stall is a flying quality that typically comes from pilot's experiences

Which is not to say the plane could not be instrumented to measure such tingles or vibrations

Only that aerospace engineers are not interested in such things because it does not fall into the performance description of a plane

That and the aerospace engineers know the test pilots will get the word out on such things

So this whole argument is about speed and climb rate....which is a small portion of an fm.

It is actually an output of the FM

An output that is dependent on alot of values in the FM

So some might consider that small

But the speed and climb rate are the two most telling parts of a planes performance

That is why those two things were part of the standard testing

The next thing they tested the most of to the point that it was almost standard was the time to climb (TTC)

As in how long does it take this plane to get to such and such altitude?

As a mater of fact it was one of the most important things they needed to know during BoB

What about roll rate (how much degrees/sec is "insane roll rate"?),turn rate (how much degrees/sec is "I could out turn him with ease"),

Testing the planes turn rate and roll rate was not part of the standard performance testing

That is to say it was not as important as the speed and climb rate

Thus it is very hard to find real world data on such tests

But the good news is it is pretty easy to estimate these values!

[acceleration (how fast is "I was rapidly closing in on him/it felt like accelerating in a car"),

As with roll rate and turn rate acc testing was not standard

But again knowing the horse power and drag it is something that can be estimated pretty accurately

control responsiveness ("it only needs a light push on the stick" to do how much exactly?),

The design spec typically stated the max control forces a plane could have

Which would have been verified during the acceptance testing of the plane

But typically a pilot would just give a thumbs up or down on it, that is to say no instrumenting was installed to measure it

unless there was a big problem with it exceeding the max spec

energy ("it bleeds a lot of energy" how much?).

That kind of testing didn't really come around until the 1950s

I include the Ps curves in my FM ANALYSIS documents for those that know how to read them

But sadly they didn