Full Realism
Here we have an article written by "Sensei" Rapier for the Fighter Ace Combat Manual, on making the transition from relaxed realism air combat- such as Fighter Ace’s Arcade arena- to fully realistic play.
In Fighter Ace this arena was known simply as the Realistic arena. In Air Warrior, three types of play arenas existed: New Users’, Relaxed Realism, and Full Realism. In addition, certain realistic attributes of flight may not be modeled exactly in the same manner, or even at all by each simulation. For example, Air Warrior does not model the inverted spin. Fighter Ace does model this phenomenon. Aside from minor differences, realistic flight characteristics are modeled in all simulations. Thus, while this article specifically refers to Fighter Ace, the basic concepts are inter-changeable with Warbirds, World War II Online and that feature realistic flight dynamics in the game. However, the player is still advised to make the necessary mental adjustments, depending on which game is or will be played. Reprinted by permission of the author (Rapier) and Microsoft Corporation, publishers.
Realistic Flight, or… How to Play with the Big Dogs!
By Rapier, Fighter Ace Content Manager–
So you’ve been around the Arcade block and you find that the kills are coming much easier. While it’s still a lot of fun, the keen-edged challenge that used to be there has lost a little of its edge. What do you do to bring it back?
Or perhaps you are new to Fighter Ace, and from the get go you want the ultimate challenge in multiplayer air combat? Where do you go?
The High Ground
Go Realistic, young flyer; go Realistic. Realistic flight is the ultimate high ground of Fighter Ace combat. A top ace in Realistic not only can think in three dimensions and shoot accurately but also can pilot his plane on the ragged edge of the flight envelope. This requires skills and talents that Arcade just doesn’t call for.
Additionally, more maneuvers from real combat pilots work in Realistic, as they depend on real plane behaviors and actual pilot physiology. For instance, you may have found it difficult to evade a pilot once he has latched onto your six in Arcade, because he basically has no limitations. Both he and his plane can pull maximum Gs at any time. But in Realistic, you can pull right to 5.5 Gs on the edge of the blackout; if he wants to shoot, he has to pull more than 5.5 Gs to pull lead to hit you. Once he does, you change direction, and he won’t be able to see it, because he has blacked out. Voila! You’re free!
Realistic flight is about discipline and control at a level that Arcade cannot approach. The Arcade flight model is forgiving of exuberant control styles. Get sloppy in Realistic and you’ll find yourself spiraling into the ground without a shot even being fired. Realistic physics gives no quarter and no allowance for good behavior. You either fly your plane within the limits or find your plane departing from controlled flight at the drop of your virtual hat.
Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? Well, it can be if you enter the Realistic arenas expecting that "Realistic is like Arcade, only different." By adjusting your expectations toward the reality of Realistic, you can eliminate the unpleasantness associated with making the switch. Instead, you can become a rompin’, stompin’, keen-and-mean Realistic killing machine.
So What’s Different?
Realistic flight introduces several flight phenomena that Arcade flyers don’t encounter. The key to staying alive in Realistic is to recognize what these phenomena are, and what conditions induce them. If you have blundered over the line, understanding what they are and what you’ve done can help you to recover in a minimum of time.
Low-Speed Stalls
Stalls come in two basic flavors: low-speed stalls and accelerated stalls. Both are the result of airflow being discontinued over the wing of your airplane. In Arcade you are familiar with a form of the low-speed stall, which occurs when you go nose up for prolonged periods or in some other way slow your plane down to the point where it stalls, and the nose gently drops through. This type of stall characteristic has much more in common with a Cessna 172 than it does with high-performance WWII aircraft. World War II fighter aircraft represented the ultimate development of piston-engine aircraft, and as such, they are fire-breathers!
Accelerated Stalls
The accelerated stall occurs when your plane is in an accelerated state, that is, hauling patootie! The cause of it is over-enthusiastic yanking on the stick. When you haul back on the stick hard, it yanks the aircraft into a nose-high (to the relative wind) position until the air can no longer follow the wing’s surface.
Then it starts to burble, and as the burble increases, your lift decreases. Finally, the plane stalls in a nose-high attitude and at a high rate of speed. This is bad.
With this type of Arcade stall, recovery is simple. In any simple stall, just push the stick forward until you regain flying speed, and you’re back in business. Realistic physics more truly models the behavior of high-performance piston-engine fighters. These fighters were, compared to the Cessna, highly unstable airplanes with huge, 1000-2000-horsepower, engines. The torque of one of these engines alone at full throttle would attempt to leverage the plane’s tail off of the ground. This can have disastrous effects in low-speed flight. Added to this is an additional fact. It is very rare that all the control surfaces of an airplane stall evenly, that is, the wings stall before the tail plane, the tail plane before the rudder, which means that usually your wings don’t stall together. Usually one stalls before the other. This sets you up for the next phenomena of Realistic flight.
The Spin or, Why Is the Ground Going in Circles?
When one wing stalls before the other one, it means that one wing is still flying while the other is dropping. This is a bad thing. This is also true of accelerated stalls, so the results are pretty much the same. When one wing drops, it snaps downward, rotating the airplane. The other wing stalls and the whole plane falls, still rotating. (This is a simplified explanation but will work for purposes of our discussion.) It is not spinning around the nose as it would in an aileron roll, but rotating about a point just forward of your wings. You will discover, as did early aviators, that if you pull back on the stick to get the nose up, the spin will just accelerate. Keep pulling on the stick, and eventually you will smack into the ground. So how do we get out of this?
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