Schweiks Sim vs. Real Flying Debate Thread

[bobbysocks]

I did the reverse: I learned to fly when I was a teenager back when the only "flight sim" out there, was a Cox gas powered model airplane on a tether and the only arcade games were Pinball. Ok, actually there were other gas powered model airplanes, but I had a Cox P-51, so I used that as an example!

Anyway, I used the experience and lessons given to me over the years to my advantage when the age of computers and flight sims came along. Seriously, knowing how to fly BEFORE running flight sims gives a person one hell of an advantage.

My dad bought be a cox king cobra. it was all shiny silver and hard plastic. that was my first control line ac and didn't last long. I built some balsa trainers and beat the snot out of those til I learned to fly and then built some fancier ones I used to dogfight with... crepe paper streamers on the tail. the other .049 engine cox thing I had ( and still do ) is a dune buggy. the engine had a recoil starter. going to rebuild that for one of the grandchildren one of these days....

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I used to dogfight with... crepe paper streamers on the tail.

Control line combat flying, wasn't it a blast? After rebuilding the tail on my Jumpin Bean for the millionth time, I built a 1/2A version of Riley Wooten's "Voodoo" and was "Ace of the Base" for a whole week! Scored five kills before I was shredded by a Kamikaze. Such fun!
Cheers,
Wes

 

[rochie]

My apologies everyone, but I can only take so much...

surprised he lasted as long as he did to be honest !

 

[Tieleader]

What?! So you can't spend a few hundred hours in AF flight simulator and then fly out to rescue your uncle in a "borrowed" jet fighter in the face of pro pilots? Damn, the "Iron Eagle" movie lied to me !!! And I was looking forward to passing Hartmann's score.
Seriously though, I had the great fortune to take a ride in (and briefly fly) a DeHavilland Vampire trainer five lifetimes ago with the pilot going though his airshow aerobatic routine. Although I'm sure he tamed it down for his rookie Piper passenger I couldn't even lift my helmeted head off my chest @2.5Gs to look up! No sim is ever going to equal that feeling. I suspect the tech is probably going to be developed in the near/far future however.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Iron Eagle...

Not going to lie. I love that movie...

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I suspect the tech is probably going to be developed in the near/far future however.

There's a video on YouTube of a combat simulator that can actually spin the cockpit module like a centrifuge to simulate rapid onset Gs. Must have one hell of a powerful motor to spin it up and slow it down so quickly.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I couldn't even lift my helmeted head off my chest @2.5Gs to look up!

Gotta keep your back and neck straight! I made the mistake of leaning forward to tweak a knob on the radar ICU just as the pilot wracked into a vertical rolling scissors to try and get a tracking solution on our A-4 opponent. I was supposed to be keeping track of him whenever he was in the aft hemisphere, but my chest was on my thighs and my oxygen mask wedged between my knees, and I couldn't look up to save me. I did see his (or somebody's) shadow flash across my field of vision, and discovered my G tolerance in that position was better than upright. Served me right for unlocking my inertia harness to reach forward. Anyway, when I got upright again, I could see we were pulling lead on the other guy, then came "Fox two", the "Bleep" of a simulated missile launch and my pilot got a kill. There was so much rushing in my ears I hardly noticed the Sidewinder simulator's IR growl.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[pbehn]

There's a video on YouTube of a combat simulator that can actually spin the cockpit module like a centrifuge to simulate rapid onset Gs. Must have one hell of a powerful motor to spin it up and slow it down so quickly.
Cheers,
Wes

Or very powerful clutches/ brakes.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Or very powerful clutches/ brakes.

Probably all of the above.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[GrauGeist]

lol - or how about a ride in an F4U with an old Marine VMF-212 pilot - hurdling across orange groves and thundering between stands of Eucalyptus trees?

 

[XBe02Drvr]

lol - or how about a ride in an F4U with an old Marine VMF-212 pilot - hurdling across orange groves and thundering between stands of Eucalyptus trees?

Any of those 2 seaters? Or are we talking about a GoPro ride?

 

[GrauGeist]

We're talking about me sitting in his lap when I was a kid - the early 70's was a much different time...

 

[XBe02Drvr]

We're talking about me sitting in his lap when I was a kid - the early 70's was a much different time...

And how! I got away with a bunch of aerial shenanigans back then that would never happen today.
I was told the other day that enlisted tech school students at NATTC Pensacola aren't allowed to join the NAS flying club or use the NAS recreational facilities and are more or less restricted to the NATTC campus. I remember many an afternoon/evening at the flying club or the hobby shop when I was at NATTC when it was at NAS Memphis in 1970/71. The flying club was a veritable private pilot factory with ten 150s, four 172s, and a slew of other planes. Apparently students today don't have much leisure time, as their non-classroom time is scheduled up with military training activities and supervised study sessions. We weren't expected to maintain marksmanship proficiency, attend daily PT sessions, or practice infantry combat tactics. Uniform of the day in the Memphis heat was tee shirts and dungarees, not the BDUs they wear today. We were technicians, not warriors. I guess it's a different world today.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[bobbysocks]

back in 96 I took the family to Disney/mgm/universal for a week. there was a back to the future ride that was a car/gondola on top of hydraulics. it would rack the car from side to side, to and fro, make it bumpy, etc. when you added in the 360 movie screen you got the sensation to the point people in the back seats were getting motion sickness. fans blew air on you to add to the realism. when the car did a split S and dove straight down you could feel it in your stomach. if they could have figured out a way to simulate G forces THAT would have be an awesome flight sim....but still costing way more than a desktop set up.

I had to laugh at the pic of the link trainer. my dad had to do several sessions in one. he complained they were hot and stinky. that is how they practiced instrument flying. there was a map connected and a pencil would trace the path the pilot flew ( circa 1944 England version ). it would move tilt side to side, etc.....enough to give you vertigo so you had to learn to trust your instruments.

 

[pbehn]

back in 96 I took the family to Disney/mgm/universal for a week. there was a back to the future ride that was a car/gondola on top of hydraulics. it would rack the car from side to side, to and fro, make it bumpy, etc. when you added in the 360 movie screen you got the sensation to the point people in the back seats were getting motion sickness. fans blew air on you to add to the realism. when the car did a split S and dove straight down you could feel it in your stomach. if they could have figured out a way to simulate G forces THAT would have be an awesome flight sim....but still costing way more than a desktop set up.

.

I took my young daughter on one of these, she spent a day in Whitby convinced that she had flown though one of Egypts pyramids.

 

[Tieleader]

There's a video on YouTube of a combat simulator that can actually spin the cockpit module like a centrifuge to simulate rapid onset Gs. Must have one hell of a powerful motor to spin it up and slow it down so quickly.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[Tieleader]

lol - or how about a ride in an F4U with an old Marine VMF-212 pilot - hurdling across orange groves and thundering between stands of Eucalyptus trees?

Soooo envious!

Gotta keep your back and neck straight! I made the mistake of leaning forward to tweak a knob on the radar ICU just as the pilot wracked into a vertical rolling scissors to try and get a tracking solution on our A-4 opponent. I was supposed to be keeping track of him whenever he was in the aft hemisphere, but my chest was on my thighs and my oxygen mask wedged between my knees, and I couldn't look up to save me. I did see his (or somebody's) shadow flash across my field of vision, and discovered my G tolerance in that position was better than upright. Served me right for unlocking my inertia harness to reach forward. Anyway, when I got upright again, I could see we were pulling lead on the other guy, then came "Fox two", the "Bleep" of a simulated missile launch and my pilot got a kill. There was so much rushing in my ears I hardly noticed the Sidewinder simulator's IR growl.
Cheers,
Wes

Thanks for the story! At least you guys got the kill...

 

[Ivan1GFP]

Hello Schweik,
I've been busy for a couple days and there has been an amazing amount of activity here.

Yes, I think we were actually discussing the same thing. What I was saying is that Il2 allows you to set pilot skill at 1-4, 1 being pretty pathetic, 4 being quite dangerous. This, in turn, allows you to play the game offline at least, with equivalent breakdown of pilot training to a specific period. In other words, if you were simulating the Early War on the Russian front, perhaps you have a lot of pilots rated 1 or 2 and maybe a few at 3 on the Soviet side, while you can have a bunch of 2, 3, and 4 level pilots on the German side. That would definitely make it a lot harder for the Russians in their I-16s.

If the AI in IL2 is similar to what I have seen in the Microsoft Simulators, then the variations aren't really as great as what one might encounter in real life.
In head to head play, what I have noticed is that a real human is much less predictable and easy to kill. On the other hand, real humans don't tend to have the same accuracy in aerial gunnery as the game AI does. AI tends to at least be competent in aircraft handling to the point that they don't do the really stupid crashes I have seen people do.
Maybe IL2 AI is smarter, but Microsoft AI tends to only know horizontal turns very well and doesn't fight using energy tactics. At least I haven't seen AI do it competently. I tend to go against AI when testing a new flight model that I have worked on.
Fighting AI tends to be a "Lather, Rinse, repeat" kind of thing because once you figure things out, it gets quite boring.
Another strange thing is that there are some flight models that are quite easy for a human to handle but the AI simply cannot fly. I have a few theories as to the reasons behind this issue but no real way of testing those theories.

Similarly, even playing online, you do also see these same disparities, usually with the people who fly together in groups in online-"Squadrons", most of whom (at least back when I played) happened to be playing the German or Axis side usually.

This is an occasional thing. What I was describing was where Allied pilots were trained so much better AND outnumbered the enemy to such an extent that meeting Axis aircraft in the air was not a common thing and meeting a competent much less an expert enemy was a serious rarity. In your description, the novices could be on either side.

- Ivan.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

At least you guys got the kill...

At least my PILOT got the kill. I was just a "hostage" along for the ride and incapacitated by the Gs. But a blast just the same! And I did get experience working the radar in flight, which was the purpose of the exercise.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[MIflyer]

Here's a question for y'all.

If there was an automobile driving simulator that worked like the PC flight simulators do you think it would be of any value in learning how to drive a car?