Schweiks Sim vs. Real Flying Debate Thread

[bobbysocks]

I have encountered 3 different types of AI. well probably better to say AI in 3 different roles and believe they have either algorithms or different flight envelopes. 1. Single Player...either prescripted missions where you had to complete a specific task to complete that level. 2. Mission editor AI, where you chose the battle field, type and number of enemy planes, experience level of ea, weather, blah, blah. 3 online open combat with AI filling out the ranks to even the sides. the easiest to kill were the online fillers....although one game had zombie sniper tail gunners in the bombers. the hardest to kill were the mission editor games where I gave myself the numeric disadvantage. one v one you can pretty much figure their defensive or offensive maneuvers pretty quick. when you go against 2 or 3 or more you have constantly having to clear your 6 and hone your snap shooting. single player can be challenging depending on the mission and the flight models of the game. the one game I played the dev admitted the flight model for the 51 was with full drop tanks so it flew like a pig and stalled at the drop of a hat. getting any kill in it was a major accomplishment ( another reason the argument goes against sim v real flight ). the dev never fixed that FM for that game but promised to in the sequel....and the sequel after that. I save the mission editor and SP game for when I am at places with no internet or I cant find a good game online. the funniest part of all of this ( gaming/sim ) is you have kids who aces 15 times over in the first couple weeks whereas some pilots flew for an entire 300 hour mission block and never reached ace status. what is it only 5% did. that number is not good if a dev wants to sell a game so something has to be dummied down seriously.

 

[GrauGeist]

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?

Not likely, however, they used to have driving simulators as part of driver's education.

The progression of the class was book time, movie time, more book time, simulator time, more book time, instructor assisted driving time and then finally solo driving.

If you hold a rating, this process may seem familiar...

 

[pbehn]

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?

I saw a use for a driving simulation programme for learners on identification of risks, sort of teaching people in a room the hard lessons you would prefer them not to learn on the road. It seemed quite good and a good idea.

 

[YGBSM]

As has been said previously in this thread, simulators can do certain portions of training as well or even better than actual stick time. Training involving general knowledge, systems knowledge, and procedures can be trained quite well in a simulator. Training for emergencies is in some respects better because scenarios which are too dangerous to be recreated in the sky are perfectly fine in a simulator. The simulator also has the benefit of resetting the scenario immediately so faster repetition can be achieved. If cockpit controls and instruments are faithfully recreated, a simulator can also be useful in building muscle memory and procedural memory for situations which require immediate correct reactions.

In situations where a student is funding their own education, simulators also have the advantage of being much more available and affordable than stick time.

That said, at a certain point simulator experience plateau's a student's progression and can even be harmful to the degree which the simulator differs from actual physics, conditions, etc. A big disadvantage is that simulators for the most part train students in ideal conditions - when a student is rested, comfortable, and at least somewhat expecting a certain set of scenarios. The simulator doesn't give one the sensation of freezing one's gonads off for a couple hours at altitude before reaching the target area, and for more modern fighters it doesn't simulate being G-shredded by an aircraft that can sustain heavy G load much, much longer than any human can hope to remain conscious. Simulators also can't even recreate the disorienting effects of sun blindness or black / red-outs even though they can simulate part of the sensory deprivation.

So simulators can build a nice foundation in certain respects for a student, but at some point the simulator needs to be left behind for actual experience.

 

[GrauGeist]

Keep in mind that "Driving" sims are worlds apart from "Driver's Education" simulators.

Driving sims like NASCAR, Grandtheft Auto and such, are aimed at entertainment and really have little educational value.

 

[bobbysocks]

better off starting with driving a go-kart ...

 

[MIflyer]

Keep in mind that "Driving" sims are worlds apart from "Driver's Education" simulators.

Driving sims like NASCAR, Grandtheft Auto and such, are aimed at entertainment and really have little educational value.

Yes! Exactly! In the Air Force we had some driver's ed as part of our initial orientation, and it included some movies where you pushed one of 5 buttons as to when you should brake or whatever. I suppose it may help people recognize risks. But as for actually learning to drive, no way.

I think that simulators can be very useful for teaching systems operation, including reading instruments for IFR, but actual flying, no.

 

[Tieleader]

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

I was just a "hostage" along for the ride

Having fun on your job? Blasphemy!

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Having fun on your job? Blasphemy!

Can you imagine getting paid to work every day with the Mavericks, the Icemen, the Vipers and the Jesters of this world? Not only work with them, but help train them? That was me. My radar trainer was how they learned and practiced radar intercepts before carrying them out in flight. I frequently participated in the training exercises, "flying" the target aircraft(s) and operating their ECM, while the instructor flew the interceptor and the student ran the intercept from the scope. At one point the scopes in the planes were upgraded, while the Navy, in its infinite wisdom, elected not to upgrade the trainer. This resulted in pressure on me to "tweak" the trainer's scope to make it behave like the upgraded scopes in the planes. This is how I happened to be in the back seat of a Phantom running intercepts (riding through the inevitable dogfight after each run), so I could get a picture of what the desired scope display behaved like. You can't expect a Maverick and a Viper to run an intercept and not carry it to its logical conclusion. They're all G addicted.
The "work" was interesting and exciting, but the lifestyle was not what I wanted to make a career of. They offered me a commission to stay in, but I didn't want to get into Intelligence. If I could have been a RIO, a BN, a TACCO, or an AvMaint Officer, I might have stayed.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[Schweik]

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



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.

The AI in Il2 is an order of magnitude better than in any Microsoft Simulators I ever played. I'm sure it's absolutely no comparison to the real thing (a real dogfight with real aircraft) but set at the highest level, it is certainly comparable to the best human opponents I played against in the game in the ten years or so that I played online.

The AI in Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator was basically worthless to my experience, and the flight models were so far off the mark as to be unrecognizable - and far too easy. You couldn't really go into a spin. In Il2, you will experience snap rolls, you do have to fight the torque on high-powered engines, you can ride the edge of a stall etc.

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.

Actually in Il2, energy fighting and specifically energy fighting in groups is what the AI excels at. When flying the German planes it uses 'by the book' German WW2 tactics, at least up to a point. You will recognize tactics that you have read about I'll put it that way. It's in group combat that the AI is really better than against human opponents. In an extended one-on-one dogfight a good human pilot can indeed be more unpredictable. But you get a few pairs of Fw 190s or Bf 109s flown by the top rated AI, you are in trouble because they are excellent at blind-siding you, especially right when you are about to line up your shot on their wingman.

The biggest problem I had with the AI is that the 'friendly' AI seems to be pretty bad - the planes run into each other (especially in large formations) and you have to constantly nag your Wingman to stay with you and so on.

Fighting AI tends to be a "Lather, Rinse, repeat" kind of thing because once you figure things out, it gets quite boring.
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.

I think that is overstating the case a bit (good Allied pilots were not quite that rare, and even the top experten were getting shot down even in the early war years). But yes, you can set novices on either side. My point is that if you want to set it to what you think is realistic, you can very easily put the novices on the Allied side for an early war scenario.

So my point is that with Il2 you could easily setup a realistic war-time scenario in terms of pilot training. And you could even set one up that was exaggerated if you wanted to.

You can also of course control how many planes there are on both sides, the relative starting altitudes and which side starts with an advantage etc, in a matter of 1 or 2 minutes using the Quick Mission Builder. If you use the Full Mission Builder you can get much more elaborate. For the AI, pilot quality actually matters more than sheer numbers though.

S

 

[Schweik]

I've been away for a while and somebody upthread several pages (I'm sorry I don't have time to find it now it seems to be several pages back) told a story about people trying to fly real planes just based on Sim time. I certainly would never advocate that! That seems completely insane to me. I mean I heard that barefoot bandit kid flew based on Simulators but he was running from the Law. Unless you were under that kind of emergency pressure I think you'd have to be out of your gourd to try to make real flight training just from a simulator.

But once again, this seems to somehow turn into an argument about whether the Sim or Sim game can replace actual flying or flight training - something I have never advocated and I don't think I ever will no matter how advanced Sims get.

My point was that that Sims could in fact be a somewhat helpful tool to help you understand things you have read about air combat and flying certain types of aircraft. I have experienced (a very limited, virtual shadow of) the combination of marvelous agility with nasty stall and snap roll / spin characteristics of the I-16, and can understand what Soviet pilots mean (in some very limited way) when they refer to that. Until I played the Sims I didn't really get how an aircraft could be highly maneuverable and also have trecherous handling at the same time.

Similarly, from playing the Il2 desktop game that (in it's current incarnation on my computer) I bought from Steam for $10, I can experience and also demonstrate to my WW2 nerd friends what a ground loop is and why F4Us were called 'ensign eliminators' due to (among other things) the torque from the motor twisting you into a crash so easily on takeoff. I never understood what pilots were talking about in the books and interviews I'd read until playing with the Sim.

I think the Sim can give you a kind of placeholder which shows you some kind of model of what a particular situation or circumstance looks like. At the very least it is an adjunct to books, interviews, books and films for those of us who will never fly a WW2 aircraft in combat... which is to say everybody who posts here I think. People who are pilots in real life have an advantage in understanding flight, and people who are military pilots (or radar operators or crew chiefs or what have you) doubly so.

Lets just say this:

Real military Sim > Sim Game
Real stick time in any aircraft > any Sim and
Real stick time in a fighter > way, way better than any Sim
but
Lowly Sim Game*> nothing

S

* I would only make this argument for Il2 so far in my experience. No other game I ever played came close to feeling even remotely realistic. Microsoft Flight Sim was ok for practicing navigation and so on, which probably matters more for flying actual planes today. But for acrobatics or anything like combat, with the WW2 era type planes, Il2 is the only one that was even in the ballpark.

 

[Schweik]

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

In the mid 1970s, when my dad went to go interview some guys in what was then called the Confederate Air Force (today the "Commemorative Air Force") one of them buzzed us in a very loud Bearcat at very low altitude - close enough that we got showered by dirt and bits of gravel when he flew by and felt heat from the plane (or maybe that was just Texas summer), over a very decrepit more or less abandoned airfield somewhere in Texas. I was 7 years old and was scared, excited and extremely confused because i looked up just as he was almost on us, only to notice the pilot had on a gorilla mask.

This was especially weird to me because my dad had been taking me to see all the planet of the apes movies around that same time and I wasn't certain that stuff wasn't actually real. I got real quiet and looked closely at that mask and the guy several times. He ate a banana after he landed which I found suspicious.

S

 

[CORSNING]

Its a simple little thing, flying slow on take off and hitting an air
pocket (I like calling it that). Your stomach rises up into your
chest because you are not wearing a g-suite. A smile crosses
your face because you realize that no roller coaster in the world
will give you that feeling of drifting back up on a motorized cloud
afterwards like that. Sims have their purpose but.....Its a simple little thing,
one of so very, very many that you just can't get on the ground.

 

[Tieleader]

They offered me a commission to stay in, but I didn't want to get into Intelligence. If I could have been a RIO, a BN, a TACCO, or an AvMaint Officer, I might have stayed.

Sounds like you would have traded a jet for a desk. Good Choice.

The "work" was interesting and exciting, but the lifestyle was not what I wanted to make a career of.

Care to elaborate?

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Your stomach rises up into your
chest because you are not wearing a g-suit

All the G suits in the world aren't going to help you with that problem, only a strong diaphragm and peak physical condition! G suits are an antidote for positive Gs, but not much help with negative.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

G-suits do not prevent or stop that stomach dropping/rising feeling you get. To put it simply they prevent blood from pulling to your lower extremeties so you do not pass out.

 

[Schweik]

I always wear a G-suit and helmet when playing Il2.

No I don't I'm just kidding.

But I probably would if I had one and my wife wouldn't make fun of me...

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Sounds like you would have traded a jet for a desk. Good Choice.


Care to elaborate?

I wanted to stay in aviation, but I was right at the upper limit of physical size for aircrew, (very tight fit in an A-4) and my vision was marginal, so was denied a waver. If I'd gone into Intelligence as offered, I would have stood a good chance of being banished to the black shoe Navy, and back then your first assignment out of school would determine which branch you would spend your career in. I was too physically large to be a Sub Sailor, and surface Navy held zero attraction for me. Besides, black shoe Intelligence Officers tended to spend a lot of their careers in various rank-heavy command headquarters full of Captains and Admirals and various political civilians. Not my cup of tea.
I was at the end of my tour in Key West, and if I was to stay in as enlisted, my next tour would most likely be in some non-aviation training device billet. TDs served the entire Navy, and to a lesser extent, the other armed services, not just naval aviation. We were responsible for Escape, Evasion, and Survival School, submarine escape tank, submarine handling simulators, surface ship maneuvering simulators, surface and sub sonar training devices, torpedo and artillery fire control simulators, etc, etc.
By that time, I had my Commercial Pilot License, my multi-engine rating, and most of the work for my flight instructor ticket, and I was tired of living in a barracks.
Elaborate enough? Wasn't an easy choice.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I always wear a G-suit and helmet when playing Il2.

No I don't I'm just kidding.

But I probably would if I had one and my wife wouldn't make fun of me...

I bet you could get one surplus, hook it up to your workshop compressor with a solenoid valve controlled by an RS232 connection to your computer. Give your nether regions a squeeze every time you pull back on the stick! Not my idea of fun, but to each their own.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[CORSNING]

G-suits do not prevent or stop that stomach dropping/rising feeling you get. To put it simply they prevent blood from pulling to your lower extremeties so you do not pass out.

Sir, I absolutely agree. I was simply adding a little dramatization to a flight in a Piper.
And I do not know where you are going with this, but the most dramatic sim in
the world can not give you the feel I described before or the true feeling you get
in enemy territory where you better have a good handle on your 1 through 12.