Hi Folks,

Just tried the P51-D for DCS World. The flight model astonished me. Compared with any other Mustang in FSX or FS9 it feels remarkably 'looser'. That is, the resistance to yaw, pitch, slips and skids around the centre of gravity of the plane is much less than in the A2A version or the WarbirdSim version for FSX.

 

Anyone know which flight model is closer to reality?

 

Flight model aside, the DCS Mustang is excellent, and with the cockpit shadowing and HDR lighting, even better than A2A's version in FSX. And that's saying something!

 

Cheers,

 

Noel.

They do have the advantage of a new platform that they can work on.

 

FSX is dated, the flight models are behind DCS there is no doubt in my mind.

 

FSX has a different set of strengths, ie real scenery over the whole world, better ATC and civilian ops, plus vastly much more 3rd party support. It also can model systems quite well.

 

By the way, an update out for DCS today.

We need someone who has actually flown a Mustang to provide a definitive answer. I'm thinking of someone like Dudley Henriques, but I don't think he frequents these forums.

 

I have heard from others that the inherent limitations of FSX work towards a feeling of 'flying on rails' compared to real-life, and that is the distinction between the flight models that Is evident.

 

Cheers,

 

Noel.

I love DCS Black shark as well, I've never been able to set foot in an FSX helicopter again after that experience.

 

Mustang is still in beta so not everything is finalized yet eg failures aren't occurring yet you can push the engine as hard as you want.

 

I wish Cliffs of Dover had turned out ok, then there's be a war to fly these planes in at least.

Cliffs of Dover is now okay, it has been patched so that it runs okay these days.

 

Some things to bear in mind with the Mustang (and its principal opponents), is that the Mustang was actually not very manueverable at all when it had a large amount of fuel on board. In fact it had to be flown very carefully indeed when it had fuel in the fuselage tank, so much so that the pilot's manual states that flight should be restricted to straight and level and only very gentle turns until at least 48 gallons had been burned off from the fuselage tank. You can use this behaviour to determine flight model accuracy (to at least some degree) where wing loading and CoG is concerned. The A2A P-51 models this well (better than the WarbirdSim one). Try it in the DCS one and see how slow you can get away with landing it at full fuel, if you can go much slower than 130 on finals without a risk of undershooting, then it will be incorrect; the A2A one gets this right, the WarbirdSim one doesn't. So this is one area where you don't have to have flown a real one to check the veracity of at least part of the flight modeling.

 

But that huge fuel capacity is what made the P-51 a great fighter too of course, since it could go all the way to Berlin and back from UK bases, pretty much flying all day if it had too, and when it had burned off a lot of its fuel and was in the target area, and the drop tanks were punched off, it was then that it could show its worth.

 

The P-51 is also one of the few WW2 fighters where the flaps could actually be used in combat very easily; most other fighters were either restricted to using flaps for take off and landing, of if they could use them in combat, it was a bit finicky to do so, thus the Mustang could get a better turn rate by simply dropping a little bit of flaps, and it was easy to deploy them whilst pulling G because of the well designed cockpit layout, with perhaps only the TA-152 and Dora Nine being its match in cockpit ergonomics, thanks to stuff like electric trim and other such (then) innovative features.

 

By comparison for example, the narrow cockpit of the bf109 and the stick forces the Messerschmitt exerted at high speeds and high Gs, meant that there wasn't much elbow room for such antics and it was difficult to get good leverage on the stick with such a cramped space, if you've ever sat in a bf109, you can easily appreciate how that would be the case. Another problem with the 109, was that at low speeds, the handley page automatic slats (which it needed because it had a tiny wing with a high loading) would sometimes snap open on one side before the other when in a tight turning fight where speed was bleeding off and it was trying to match the Mustang's rate of turn, which would induce yaw, often exactly at the wrong moment, i.e. often when the pilot was just about to open fire on an enemy. That high wing loading made the 109 fast, so it was great for boom and zoom tactics, but it was also why stuff like the Hurricane and Spitfire, and the Mustang, could out-turn it in a tight dogfight. Thus the decent turning ability of the Mustang was in some ways as much to do with putting less strain on the pilot in comparison to its main adversary, as it was to do with aerodynamics, but of course in a sim, that part cannot be simulated, so the ease with which you can chuck a simulated P-51 around is a nod to that fact.

 

In addition to the high wing load and the potential for difficulties in the bf109, lots of 109s simply ploughed into the ground when diving in combat at high speed because of the excessive elevator loads and the difficulty of exerting enough pressure on the stick in that cramped cockpit, and it was without a rudder trim as well, at least until the very late models got one, so it often had to be flown with a bootfull of rudder, unlike the Mustang, and in a turning fight against the P-51, that was a major issue with it. Of course the plus point of the 109 though, was that it was in fact rather small, which presents a smaller target.

 

This sort of advantage and disadvantage between different fighters is where one has to use a bit of artistic license in simulating the ease or difficulty of flying them is concerned.

 

Al

That's why I fly civilian aviation in FSX, and steer clear of anything military. I can get great systems simulation in FSX and the full suite of civilian flying, ATC, and everything that goes with it.

 

But if I want to fly pure stick and rudder flight dynamics, with the ability to shoot stuff then I go outside of FSX and go to a sim that specialises in it and doesn't have any limiting factors. I can't fly a Warbird in FSX without wanting to pull the trigger on my warthog :)

As usual an excellent post from Al, which ties in with much of what I've read.

 

The one man who is probably the greatest authority on WW2 fighters is Captain Eric Brown RN. He says the P-51 was the best US fighter of the war, but it wasn't without its vices, of which he says the worst was probably it's nasty stall characteristics. He rated the Spitfire XIV and Fw190D as the best fighters of the war. When asked what fighter he would prefer to go into combat with he says it would be the Spitfire XIV, unless the fight was over Berlin, in which case he would want to be in a P-51 as that would be the only one with enough fuel to get him home!

 

The man had a truly astonishing career - Fleet Air Arm Martlet (Wildcat) pilot, before becoming an instructor. He then moved on to the Captured Enemy Aircraft Flight at Farnborough - by virtue of his excellent pilot skills and speaking fluent German. He is the only pilot to have flown every major combat type of every major protagonist of WW2. He was the first pilot in Britain to fly a helicopter (astonishingly when the first helicopters (Sikorsky Hoverfly) arrived by ship from the States in 1945 they were assembled on the dockside by American ground crew and Brown and a colleague simply read the pilots notes, jumped in and flew them to Farnborough!). He was slated to be the pilot of the Miles M.52, and as such perhaps should have been the first man to officially break the sound barrier. He showed great courage and skill in taking the DH.108 back into the air after the fatal crash of Geoffrey de Havilland Jr and discovered the fatal flaw of that aircraft. He was the only person to fly a captured Me163 Komet under power (and against orders). He was the first pilot to land a jet on an aircraft carrier, and basically wrote the book on jet carrier ops. He made more carrier landings than any other pilot in history, and his logbook has more aircraft types - 487 - than any other pilot in aviation history.

That's why I fly civilian aviation in FSX, and steer clear of anything military. I can get great systems simulation in FSX and the full suite of civilian flying, ATC, and everything that goes with it.

 

But if I want to fly pure stick and rudder flight dynamics, with the ability to shoot stuff then I go outside of FSX and go to a sim that specialises in it and doesn't have any limiting factors. I can't fly a Warbird in FSX without wanting to pull the trigger on my warthog :)

 

With the exception of shooting stuff................I still go with RealAir products as being some of the best stick and rudder, as far as desk top flight simulations go. It was RealAir, that made a slip a slip....... in addition to many other real world actions of yaw, pitch, and roll.

 

L.Adamson

Hi Folks,

Just tried the P51-D for DCS World. The flight model astonished me. Compared with any other Mustang in FSX or FS9 it feels remarkably 'looser'. That is, the resistance to yaw, pitch, slips and skids around the centre of gravity of the plane is much less than in the A2A version or the WarbirdSim version for FSX.

 

Anyone know which flight model is closer to reality?

 

Flight model aside, the DCS Mustang is excellent, and with the cockpit shadowing and HDR lighting, even better than A2A's version in FSX. And that's saying something!

 

 

I've been through manuvers in a real 1944 North American P51-D, which included rolls and loops. However, the back seat, in which I sat (where the fuselage fuel tank, once was) had no controls. In my own experiences from flying a Marchetti SF260, Pitt's S2B, and my own Van's RV6A..............I can say that it's easy for simmers to throw controls right & left, up & down...........that we'd never do in real life. That's because of the air loads we feel on the flight surfaces, as well as what it does to our bodies. Some of the better flight models, actually delay & limit, the stick versus control deflection to permit a sense of "feel", which is gained from just "sight" & the sticks centering spring. I have neither P-51 model, and can't say whether the "looser" flight dynamics is more realistic or not. I always look for a sense of "feel" in flight models, since my brain can fill some of the gaps due to actual flying experiences.

 

P.S......some course reversal manuvers you see in the movie "Red Tails", could never happen. These planes would require much more airspace.

 

L.Adamson

With the exception of shooting stuff................I still go with RealAir products as being some of the best stick and rudder, as far as desk top flight simulations go. It was RealAir, that made a slip a slip....... in addition to many other real world actions of yaw, pitch, and roll.

 

L.Adamson

 

Indeed and you can tell from my signature what I think of RealAir :)

 

I was also surprisingly impressed yesterday flying Ant's Drifter, sideslips and the very dangerous death stall are very well modelled. I was using it to check out scenery and some badly performed slow-flight had me burning in the dirt. For a small developer he's come up with some good stuff.

Noel,

 

99% of FSX's limitations are with the person(s) doing the coding, not the program itself. A few have this false believe it’s a limitation in FSX – it’s not. It’s a human limitation of knowledge, not the simulation’s power.

 

If you want to truly know how a Mustang flies, it's really best to speak to those who know. Ideally, not those who have just flown in the back seat once, but those who are highly experienced Mustang pilots.

 

However, that is just a small piece of it (but a necessary one). The majority is being able to capture and translate that aircraft into a simulation properly.

 

Scott - A2A