Flying Circus: Dolphin & D7 review video

[J5_Hotlead]

A week ago, the dev team released the 2 latest aircraft for Il-2 Flying Circus early access: The Sopwith Dolphin and Fokker D.VII! Come join me for an in-depth ride in these new crates in this review video!  

 

 

[Kliegmann]

Good vid Hotlead.  I enjoyed it

[IRFC Hawkeye]

Very nice!  By way of comparisons between the same planes RoF vs. FC, it might be better to look at actual speeds reached in dives than the number of seconds it takes for them to break up.  One that took less time to break up might just be an indication that it reached a higher speed more quickly.  The actual breakup speed might be the same, but if in one sim it reaches the higher speed more quickly, that would actually be a performance advantage.

 

As far as engine damageability, it's good to know if the plane can be dived by simply throttling back.  One of the irritating features of RoF is that there are certain planes in which the engine will be destroyed, even if you turn the engine off completely.  This doesn't seem very likely IMHO.

 

One other thing that I don't know is part of the new game, is being able to restart a stopped engine in the air.  I've read many, many times of pilots who restarted them just by switching to the gravity tank, and then diving to windmill the prop enough to start it back up.  In RoF, it seems like if the engines stops, even if it's only due to something benign like leaving your engine blip on too long, it won't start again no matter what; and the speed you have to dive at to make the propeller revolve even slightly is pretty excessive.  It's like you have to dive straight down to even get it to turn at all, and that's not in agreement with things that I've read.

[Ludwig]

Luft +1 on the speeds and vibration, a little vibration over a period of time is more damaging than a single incident of exceedance. Also something I have disliked in RoF and CLOD is that if you push a motor that hard... YOU KNOW It because you can HEAR it and FEEL it....and the phrase... "it sounded like the engine was going to come apart" is not without reason. Typically, this is said by someone that had an engine in the process of failing. Typically when they fail, they go BANG and that is the end of that... but when you abuse one, and run it hard and long It will complain. I have seen guys flying freight that would run over the redline (and not pay attention to it) and the engine ran and ran and ran... because they set the Redline low so that if you exceeded it, you were still in the safe range, and if you exceeded THAT... you were damaging the engine, but it might go for weeks or months that way before finally complaining enough that someone does pay attention to it... but again... it just didn't QUIT. Were the engine manufacturers of the early 20th century so well inclined and specific in their designs? No of course not... they were grateful to make the thing run. The Wright brothers engine was a "1-off" that was made by a dude... he sand cast the block and made his own pistons and rings to fit each cylinder. Why? Because there were no engine manufacturers that could produce the HP/weight ratio the brothers needed.. I think the engine weighed 200 lbs and produced 8 HP.    WOW !  Think what they could have done with a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower.

 

 

 it won't start again no matter what; and the speed you have to dive at to make the propeller revolve even slightly is pretty excessive.

There is the paradox...   you can windmill the engine fast enough in a dive with the engine shut down to destroy it due to high vibration experienced in excessive RPM, but you can't dive it fast enough to restart.  Those engines were started by someone "flipping" them over. I have done it... most guys that worked on the line for a period of time have "propped off" small GA planes. I flipped a C-310, one of the old ones with a 2-blade and was over 200 horse and it had a kick like a mule... but it started. I could not possibly achieve the rotation speed that you would have in a dive. Any time the engine turns through the firing stroke the engine can fire, and one cough is enough to keep it going while the pilot tried to adjust the mixture to make it happy. RoF had NO CLUE about drag modelling... and probably with good reason... it is in a constant state of flux until you reach "hull speed" as we called it and it just stopped. If you push a shape through a fluid you eventually create a "bow wave" and it is the path of least resistance that the fluid will take and if the compression wave in front of the object is large enough the fluid is reacting to this rather than the shape of surface of the object. It just won't go any more. Period.  They never modelled this and it is why the R.e 8 could accelerate in a descent. That thing (string bag) had so much drag a jet engine could not make it go any faster. Period. Drag increases with the square of the speed, the worse it gets... the worse it gets.  This applies to the drag on the prop and engine as well.

 

The failure of the aircraft structurally is total smoke and mirrors, and in my honest opinion is just another one of those factors to balance (or IMbalance) game play which is so critical in a commercial game. If the game is not balanced, most people will not play it, and those that do will prefer to take the easy way or the hard way and stick with it. Some like easy kills, some like the challenge. A historical game is not always a lot of fun,  that is why you don't see any games about the Alamo... easy to figure that one out. The Fokker D.VII *should* absolutely RULE the sky... because it DID, but that would not go well with play balance.

 

When ailerons and other structural failures occurred, it was not without warning... they didn't just suddenly fly off, they would flutter, vibrate and give the pilot an indication of imminent failure... THEN they would suddenly depart the airplane. The Albatross was a BEAUTIFUL airplane in a dive...and was very successful in attack and escape doing so, the problem with the lower wing existed but you had to push the hell out of it before that was going to happen, but happen it would. If you nosed over and exceeded the V_ne you would recognize this and either gamble it or not, it was not a random event.

 

Secondly... the concept that you spin an engine fast enough and it will be destroyed is fundamentally flawed.  The "red line" does not indicate the failure point of the engine.... exceed it and the engine will fail.... it indicates the maximum SAFE rpm at which continuous operation will NOT damage the engine. You can operate at MAX THRUST (or RPM)  INDEFINITELY, when you exceed that point you increase the WEAR on the engine and this is a LONG LONG way off from structural failure.   Indy car engines are good for 1-2 qualifying sessions, different engine 1 race hopefully...  NHRA engines are good for about 5-6 seconds... do they explode and quit?  Sometimes... other times they survive but are always so badly worn that they are no longer competitive and replaced (OUCH!)  1 pass...1 engine...... but they STILL RUN and that after having been HORRIBLY abused from a manufacturers viewpoint. Then too, another "play balance" issue is the amount of time a damaged engine continues to produce thrust and the amount of that thrust.... this is a value that is totally arbitrary.

 

We still restart engines inflight either with starter assist or "windmilling"  I teach it on Day 4 in the sim, the client shuts down the engine (or I do heh heh… from the back) and then restarts it. No big deal, and you have to spin a jet a lot faster and longer than you would one of these lawnmowers with wings.

[IRFC Hawkeye]

Also, the compression was very low on those WWI engines due to low-octane fuel.  Few people realize that low octane fuel is actually more volatile than high octane fuel.  It just burns less smoothly....more abruptly....hence the greater tendency toward pre-ignition or detonation.  In any case, the engine would be easier to turn over than a modern one.

 

What you said about hearing and feeling things in R/L is one reason I hate the crowd who always seem to complain that "you shouldn't be able to hear this or that".  I don't care whether the relative sound level is correct.  That is not the only purpose of sound in a flight sim.  There is so much sensory input that you lack in a flight sim, including everything G-forces (yes, especially those you would feel far in advance of blacking out), and all kinds of vibrations, both engine and airframe, that we NEED some sort of indication to take the place of that; and that is one of the most important things that sound does for us.  To have NO idea at all what's happening, or about to happen, is NOT realistic.  So, regardless of whether you'd actually hear bullets hitting your plane, or certain engine noises, or whatnot, we NEED to hear those things in sims, in order to make up for the lack of other indications.  One funny one that comes to mind was in RB3D, if you pulled too many g's for the airframe, by way of warning, you'd hear this "creak" from the structure.  It was a way of telling what the limits were, which you would surely have been aware of via other sensory inputs, in R/L.  Anyway that's just an example, but one of the ones that bugs me the most is when you receive airframe damage through bullets or flak in RoF, and you have absolutely no idea until after it's too late.  It works better in SP, but in MMP it's terrible.  There's got to be a way to improve that.