Re: Eurofly Version 2.0 now available
When using uparrow or downarrow, the nose does not change its angle when I check the status with the T key, making a successful takeoff impossible. This is with the plane engines turned on and moving, and occurs whether or not I have JAWS loaded in the background. Are there other steps necessary to turn on before the nose will work correctly? In the old version of Eurofly, you could modify the nose angle for takeoff before accelerating the plane.
I know this has been answered, but let me give you some in depth information. I actually like how it was in the previous version for one reason, you don't pull up on the nose of an aircraft, you pull back on the yoke or stick which engages a system of pulleys and cables that move the elevator on the tail. Thus, in the previous version, it would not have been unrealistic for you to pull back on the yoke, even though, in a real plane, you would not do so until you reached rotational velocity because you would create aerodynamic drag and lengthen your takeoff role. However, the plane would not stop you from doing it. In this version, you must be going takeoff speed as previously stated, I actually think its somewhere over a hundred km/h will let you start moving the nose regardless of what your current takeoff speed is in the aircraft properties menu.
As we would be simulating using a yoke, it wouldn't be unreasonable to allow you to turn, push, or pull the yoke at any time, so I don't know what the reason is for disallowing that, that isn't actually realism, its a step away from realism. You also don't maneuver on the ground with the yoke either, you use the rudder pedals, but that would be a lot to manage, especially if you had to do coordinated turns.
Let's go over the forces involved in flight, we have thrust, lift, weight, and drag. All of these forces need to balance out before stable flight can be achieved. Thrust is obvious, propellers or jet engines moving your plane in a forward direction. Lift also is self-evident, in that it is what keeps your plane aloft. Air flows over the wing which is curved on the top and flat on the bottom so that it provides a constant force as you gain speed. Weight is easy, the empty weight of the plane, then you start adding people, baggage, fuel and other stuff. You'll have a red line, a max takeoff weight, your max gross weight cannot exceed this or you cannot fly. If you do manage to take off, you will be in a very very dangerous situation, it could be possible if you account for low density altitude and things of that nature. Drag is the force that pulls you backward and down towards earth. So you need thrust and lift to counter it. Weight also comes into play when you use terms like center of gravity and center of mass. In a perfect world, a plane would have a center of gravity such that if you discount things like wind and turbulence, the plane would fly straight and level. Some planes are nose heavy, i.e. they have a natural tendency to point their noses at the ground. And others, like fighter jets, are intentionally tail heavy, and actually require constant computer adjustment to maintain flight due to their inherently unstable design. That design though is what makes them so maneuverable. In short, thrust and lift help you keep flying, and weight and drag want to pull you back to the ground.
Larger and more technical planes use a system called fly by wire. In this system, the yoke or stick is not physically linked to the control surfaces, instead, it sends inputs to the computer which then actuates the control surfaces. By doing this, you allow the computer to make adjustments as needed e.g. the F16 will not allow the pilot to stall the aircraft because it is very easy to get the jet into a flat spin which might prove irrecoverable. It is for this reason I imagine the developers made the change. So, in reality, by you pulling the yoke, the computer is accepting the inputs, but is not relaying signals to actuate the elevator, thus, you don't raise the nose until around rotational velocity.
The control surfaces of a plane are as follows: elevator, ailerons, rudder, flaps and trim tabs. The ailerons are located on the trailing edge of the wing, i.e. the edge you would touch if you walked towards the wing from the rear of the plane with your hand outstretched. They move opposite each other, meaning that to bank the plane left, the aileron on the left wing will drop and the one on the right wing will rise, the reverse is true for banking right. The rudder helps in turning too because banking the plane doesn't do much to turn it. It will turn if you bank sharply, and pull back on the yoke, but if not, you will most likely lose altitude and turn slowly. The rudder helps with this because it diverts the flow of air to push the tail in a direction, pressing on the right rudder pedal would make the rudder swing left, thus, pushing the tail left and the nose right. By its own, the rudder isn't effective in turning the plane either. You can use it to get the plane into a slip though, in which case you will drop a lot of altitude in a hurry, some planes are not designed to do this though. So, we have these two control surfaces that don't do a lot on their own, but when we combine them, they cause the plane to turn. When done correctly, you will not feel pressure on your butt when you make a turn, because the forces will be in balance, you will be banking, but also pushing your tail at the same time. A lot of piston powered planes like smaller Cessnas have a gauge, I forget the proper name, in the instrument panel. The lower part of it has a ball in a tube with marks on it, when you bank, the ball will go to the opposite end of the tube from the direction you're banking. When you start to apply rudder, the ball will start to move closer to the center. When the ball is inside the two marks on the instrument, you're making a coordinated turn. This is the most efficient way to turn. The elevator is a horizontal surface on the tail of the wing. I believe it is two surfaces working as one, though some planes probably do have it as one surface. Either way, the job is to control the nose by either pulling the tail down, or pushing it up. Flaps are also located on the trailing edge of the wing nearer the root, i.e. the part of the wing closest to the fuselage or body, and furthest from the tip. Flaps in most planes actually extend and retract in stages. Your flap lever will have detents, which are like catches, almost like when you open a car door, and it stops, but you can open it a little further. Each detent is a notch of flaps, and the notches are represented in degrees of deflection, so you might have 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 45. So, in total, six notches. Some planes have less, others probably more. The flaps help you to slow down, but they also cannot be extended at any speed because you risk causing damage to the motors and mechanisms that actuate them, and in extreme cases, you could rip the flaps off the plane entirely. They provide a drag that helps to slow you down, and keep your nose up at the same time as you land. They also help you take off, but you never use full flaps at take off as far as I know. I do believe that in eurofly, flaps are required to take off, this is not correct, having no flaps in means your take off roll will be longer, but still possible. Flaps also help you to make shorter take offs, and combined with other techniques, you can significantly shorten your take off roll, thereby taking off at smaller airports with smaller strips. This would allow you to do bush flying, landing and taking off from small airstrips, often grass, not paved. Finally, trim tabs are located on the elevator, and in larger planes, the ailerons and rudders have trim tabs as well. What these do is deflect away from the control surface, making a certain portion of the air flow push or pull your plane in a direction.
Since trim is a topic all its own, I'll discuss this here. You always take off with your trim set to a certain configuration appropriate to the plane you're using, this is calculated by the FMC(flight management computer) in larger jets because of weight of passengers and the like, but in smaller planes, its marked out, it is usually around the neutral mark though in smaller craft. If you were flying a real plane, you would soon feel that pressure in your arms as you have to continually hold the yoke back in order to climb to cruising altitude. Trim tabs will allow you to center the yoke, thus, not having to keep it pulled back, and unnecessarily straining yourself. In Cessna's, you have a trim wheel. Its a wheel that runs vertically inside its housing on the center console. It has grippy teeth, and when you move it, you will move the trim indicator, and you're moving the trim tabs on the elevator. You would continue to turn the wheel until the pressure was neutral and you could then let go of the stick. All this given the fact you're not messing with the throttle as you do so. When you add power, the nose will want to rise, you then re-trim. You want to add power, then use the yoke or stick to achieve the right vertical speed you're after, then trim it out. When you are flying like this, and not having to maintain a constant pressure, only making minor adjustments, you are said to be flying in trim, anything else is out of trim. The same principal applies to trim tabs on the other control surfaces. On the ailerons, trimming would help you maintain a certain bank angle, and trimming your rudder would help you coordinate a large turn more easily. Trim is an important part of flight, and it can even be used to break out of stalls, but its not covered in Eurofly.
A stall occurs when there is insufficient airflow over the wings to maintain lift. Essentially, you stop flying and start falling like a rock. This can happen when your AOA(angle of attack) is too great. Your angle of attack is your nose angle, when its higher, the wings are steeper against the flow of air. A stall can happen at any speed, when it happens at faster speeds, its called an accelerated stall. Different planes handle stalls differently. Some less gracefully than others, but generally it works like this. You will feel a buffeting that gets stronger and stronger, your stall warning will be going off as well, if your plane is equipped with one, which most are. If you don't correct the problem, you'll enter a stall. Some planes will sort of go flat and just fall, others will dip a wing, in which case either the left or right wing will quickly drop. When in the stall, it's actually easy in some craft to enter a spin simply by feeding in cross control. This is where you turn the yoke one way, and press the opposite rudder pedal. You can even just hold the yoke back and press the rudder sometimes. In this instant, you enter a spin. You'll spin faster and faster, and if you don't recover by 4 or so rotations, you'll likely crash and burn. A stall is relatively easy to recover from, sometimes all that's needed is to relax any pressure on the stick and the plane will naturally dip the nose and pick up airspeed. sometimes, a little bit of forward pressure is needed. You would then add power to speed up again as you'd likely be going very slow at that point.
That ought to be enough to get you started, anyway, this did get a bit long winded, I suppose.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
