OK, small dissertation to follow.
Flying an aircraft is not at all like driving a car or a boat. The biggest
difference is that many of your controls do not directly affect your
position and orientation in three-space, but instead affect the rate of
change of that orientation.
As a somewhat simplified example: moving the stick to the left initiates a
bank to the left, that is, the aircraft rolls along its long axis. The
excursion from the zero-point of the stick controls how rapidly your roll
angle changes, rather than setting your absolute roll. Move the stick only
a little, and your roll rate is slow, but you do continue rolling. The same
sort of rate control works for the elevator (stick forward and back), with
the addition that gravity is still in effect, so that if you "unload" that
is remove all lift from the aircraft, you will eventually describe a
parabolic arc downwards (friction effects ignored.)
These two effects are combined in actual flying, especially high-performance
flying, so that turning is usually accomplished by rolling the aircraft,
then pulling back on the stick for a turn that occupies less horizontal
space. Much dogfighting was done in the vertical, where rolling equates to
turning. Typically you had more control authority for pitch then roll and
finally yaw, so you would use your pitch controls to aid in turning.
Now add engine power into the mix. Goosing the throttle has more effects
than just increasing your speed. Zero Sight has it right that you
accelerate or decelerate when you change throttle settings, but given that
lift is, among other things, a function of speed, if you are in level flight
and goose the throttle without making any other control changes, you will
climb. Chop the power and you descend.
Now finally add in that when you bank, you tend to turn, and when you apply
rudder, it has an effect on bank angle, and both affect your pitch angle,
and you begin to see how complex flying even a WWII aircraft was. Dark is
right that it was possible to turn someone who had never flown into a combat
pilot in relatively short order, though in the U.S. the training time was
more like six months and was every day, hours a day.
Now, we look at modern combat flying. In addition to performing all the
above tasks, you have a complex cockpit layout that requires memorization.
You have radar to monitor in any of several possible modes. You have
weapons packages, both air-to-air and air-to-ground that each have their
separate control characteristics. It isn't like in the movies, just point
and shoot, you have to select targets, select weapon system for each target,
know your weapon's envelope of effectiveness and deploy it correctly.
Now to Dark's point, Lone Wolf does not cover every complexity of conning a
submarine in the WWII era, but it gives you enough to do that in the midst
of a furious combat sequence, firing on one target say, while evading three
incoming destroyers, you have plenty to do. Also, it enforces the sorts of
snap decision-making that a sub commander would have to do. Ok, my
targeting solution is coming into effect, but I have two destroyers bearing
down on me. Do I wait and take the shot? If so, do I then turn and snap
off a shot at a destroyer, or do I crash dive and hope to live through the
bombardment?
>From what I've seen, Zero sight gets some of the feel of the "switchology"
right for modern aircraft, but the flight model is simplified to the point
where it doesn't impose a burden at all on the pilot. The amazing thing
about modern fighter or attack pilots is that if need be, they can do all
this switching while yanking and banking at several gees.
Now, it's probably unrealistic of me to expect anyone to create a detailed
flight model, though I have some excel models that do a pretty good job, at
least for WWII era aircraft. There are a vanishingly small number of blind
people who've actually flown an aircraft, I am one, so the experience isn't
missed by most gamers. I'm unable to comment on other flight sims, as I
haven't tried one since the DOS days, but it's my impression that there are
simulators out there, available to the commercial gamer, that do model
flight more realistically.
So in conclusion, I recognize that my requirements are unreasonable for most
people. Do not take my negative view as representative, and I do recommend
anyone try it. But do not believe that you are doing anything like flying.
And that's ok, I'm the radical simulationist on this forum and I recognize
that.
Chris Bartlett
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