Damage Model...?

[LG1.Klein]

This all looks really good. Can't wait till my new computer shows up and I get this installed. Gonna give it the Old College Try for sure.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Klein

[Crump]

GET BENT!!

 

The speed and power of aircraft grew faster than out knowledge of stability and control engineering by the late 1930's and early 40's.  Even today with stability and control standards in place for certified designs,  aircraft being bent is common. 

 

WWII aircraft bent as any other airplane if you exceeded the limits. 

 

Keep in mind, those limits are under ideal conditions too.  It assumes a new airframe and proper rigging.  As an airplane flies, the airframe flexes and with enough flexing, weakens.  Control cables stretch, bearings, bushings wear, and control surfaces bend/flex which all leads to rigging issues.

[NZTyphoon]

B-25 kisses the ground in homage after its 200th successful mission.

 

 

 

JG52Krupi, on 15 Dec 2012 - 06:09, said:

I would like to see that but it wont be the same.

 

A ww2 aircraft are mainly metal and they don't bend so much as shear or snap, you will see a bit of bending but nothing like you get on a ww1 aircraft.

 

I do look forward to what they do graphically, i have no concern there the effects in rof are great but they dont have anywhere near the same number of systems in ww1.

 

 

Some important Russian aircraft (LaGG 3, Yak 1) had either all wooden structures, or important components, such as the wings (eg: IL2), were wood, although the construction techniques were very different to most WW1 aircraft.

[Bearcat]

Wow.. based on those videos it looks like the physics engine is universal .. so I can see that only getting better with faster, heavier AC..

[AndyJWest]

You like the RoF damage model, Bearcat? Wait 'till you see what I've just done with a Fokker D.VIII. Clipped a wing on a tree while shooting up a train in Reims, tried to fly back to the front minus a wingtip, but crashed into the rooftops. Which left me stranded up there...  :o

 

I'll post screenshots on the RoF forum later - but meanwhile, what is French for "Fetch a stepladder..."

[peregrine7]

You like the RoF damage model, Bearcat? Wait 'till you see what I've just done with a Fokker D.VIII. Clipped a wing on a tree while shooting up a train in Reims, tried to fly back to the front minus a wingtip, but crashed into the rooftops. Which left me stranded up there...  :o

 

I'll post screenshots on the RoF forum later - but meanwhile, what is French for "Fetch a stepladder..."

And in CloD the trees aren't even physically "there". I'm excited about the FM/DM in BoS.

[AndyJWest]

And in CloD the trees aren't even physically "there". I'm excited about the FM/DM in BoS.

 

I can assure you they are 'there' in RoF. I've probably collided with every one... 

 

Which reminds me - screenshots. If I can come up with any good ones I'll post a few here too. One thing I didn't mention was the effect of trying to fly minus a wingtip. Full aileron, full rudder to keep her straight, and I still couldn't persuade her to climb - as soon as I pulled the nose up, she started to roll - hence ending up on the rooftop. I'll not claim that is accurate, never having flown a D.VIII into a tree in real life, but it seemed convincing.

 

Edit: as promised, screenshots:

 

It all began well enough, with a bit of train-straffing. But the error of my ways should already be apparent. Tree, meet idiot. Idiot, meet tree.

 

Initially, the wing stayed on...

 

...but not for long.

 

Hamburg, we have a problem...

 

At this point, it was still controllable enough for me to cunningly crash onto a Reims rooftop, where I found myself stuck. More screenshots (and no doubt complements on my superb flying skills  ) on the thread in the RoF forum - http://riseofflight.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=34774

Edited December 31, 2012 by AndyJWest

[Freycinet]

If that Fokker was still in the least controllsble then that indicates a physical modelling problem to me. The assymetric lift should have generated a corkscrew that would immediately spin you into the ground.

[AndyJWest]

 

Seriously though, you may well be right - but it may not be quite as simple as you suggest. There are plenty of real-life examples of aircraft with substantial asymmetric damage remaining flyable, and controllable, and it seems to me that even if this example was implausible (which it probably was) it was at least credible in the sense that with lesser damage of a similar kind, it would have needed to be flown in a similar manner to have stayed airborne at all. If RoF gets it wrong by exaggerating things, it maybe at least indicates that the 'flight physics' is heading in the right direction.

Edited December 31, 2012 by AndyJWest

[Doogerie]

 

 

 ww2 aircraft are mainly metal and they don't bend so much as shear or snap, you will see a bit of bending but nothing like you get on a ww1 aircraft.

 

 

not always look at the Hurricane that was a wood an canvas there are possible others too but I can't think at the moment

[vistvan83]

Yup, that is actually a great feature. You'll notice it specially when the bomber is climbing and using full throttle.

 

Here the effect is demonstrated:

 

Here is also an old video showing damage model as well:

 

Awesomw vids, i really like this kind of dmg modelling! 

[79_vRAF_Friendly_flyer]

The bent wings and fuselages in RoF seems spot on to me. In WWII, planes flew a lot faster and were consequently much heavier and stiffer in construction, it stand to reason they would largely break rather than bend. The wing on Andy's Fokker D.VIII would tear right off had it been flying at the combat speed of an e.g. a FW 190, and a heavier, faster and stiffer aeroplane would shatter as it hit the ground, much like it does in IL2 1946 . Planes on the ground being strafed and bombed would likely occasionally bend like the B25 though.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Friendly_flyer

[DD_bongodriver]

Wood and fabric aircraft don't bend and retain a new shape, this should be obvious, they never used green wood to build aircraft, what may appear like a bent wood structure is simply a case of the outer fabric containing some of the damage but the underlying wooden structure will be shattered and snapped and loose it's integrity completely as it would be little more than a canvas bag containing match wood, if the aircraft uses a wooden monocoque construction then you see some integrity remain but there would be no bending but rather a complete separation, it's just the nature of wood, ROF does not seem to have this correct, if you look at the above videos you will see the damaged aircraft wings retain some stiffness despite the obvious damage to spars, they should become completely flaccid....fnar fnar.

 

This picture illustrates the damage on a wood/canvas structure as I describe, notice the canvas is keeping the tail attached but the structure is useless.

 

 

I'm surprise to see some people who I believe would know better, describe metal aircraft as unlikely to bend, again this should be obvious, go find 2 spoons one wood and one metal and see which one bends to a new shape rather than snap, granted aluminium has an inherrent brittleness which leads to shearing fairly easily but you can bend a metal aircraft to a new shape.

 

This link show a KingAir that got overstressed and 'bent'

 

http://www.pirep.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4095&sid=50ede042af08f7c411636ea91eca9bfe

Edited December 31, 2012 by bongodriver

[BRIGGBOY81]

I think that the best DM for WWII planes would be a unique hybrid of ROF's and CLOD's.  We should see things like wings shearing off and snapping rigidly, but we could also see flexibility in the wings and tail.  I think the metal bodies of our WWII birds are more flexible and bendable than one may think.  

 

well said and i totally agree. there are aspects of both sims DM that coulod be combined together to make one hell of a DM.

[Freycinet]

I never saw WWII aircraft that were substantially bent in the air and still flew on for even just a short while. The bomber in the picture seems to have collapsed on landing when there wouldn't be any more aerodynamical forces on it. I am pretty sure that any substantial (i.e. visible) bending at the speeds flown in WWII would have rapidly ripped the structure apart from the aerodynamic pressures exerted on it. I'd be happy to see examples that prove me wrong, but I don't recall any. The worst damage I have seen on a still-flying WWII aircraft was the B-17 that had its tail half-way cut through in a mid-air collision. No bending in that case though.

 

The B17 in question:

http://www.eaa.org/warbirdsbriefing/articles/1110_midair.asp

-obviously a very extreme example.

[Freycinet]

In conclusion, I think both RoF and CoD have got their damage models substantially right (within the constraints of the approximations necessary with home pc computing power). And I think the different damage models are mainly reflections of the varying amounts of stresses put on airframes in WWI and WWII. Those stresses are of course mainly dependent on the speeds at which planes were flying in the two wars. So, in WWI the stresses were so limited that bending could occur without the structures necesssarily ripping themselves apart (also due to all the bracing and box structures employed). In WWII, mainly due to the higher speeds, structures would just be ripped apart if they were subjected to any substantial degree of bending.

[79_vRAF_Friendly_flyer]

Wood and fabric aircraft don't bend and retain a new shape, this should be obvious, they never used green wood to build aircraft, what may appear like a bent wood structure is simply a case of the outer fabric containing some of the damage but the underlying wooden structure will be shattered and snapped and loose it's integrity completely as it would be little more than a canvas bag containing match wood,

 

I think what we saw in Andy's case was one of the wing spars having broken, the other holding the wing on for a few seconds before the second one broke from the stress (I may be off, I'm not that familiar with WWI plane construction) and tore off. With the low speed of WWI planes, I expect this to be possible. Not so much with a WWII fighter though. It's more a matter of weight and speed than of construction.

[AndyJWest]

I think that between us, we may have arrived at a fairly fundamental point here - aircraft don't just disintegrate due to damage, they do it in fairly specific ways, according to the stresses they are under - which need not necessarily include damage from external sources There were several well-documented examples of repeated structural failure in WWI aircraft designs for example, due to a lack of understanding of aeroelasticic loadings. By WW2 the problem was moving into other unexplored areas - compressibility etc - and the sort of 'sudden confetti for no obvious reason' failures were (generally) rarer, or at least explicable in terms of aircraft exceeding design limitations. As for what this implies for BoS damage modelling, I'm not sure, but I'm reasonably confident that the 1C/RoF team has the groundwork done to take the RoF model a couple of decades ahead historically. They are starting from a good place....

[Skoshi_Tiger]

The following image comes from the wreakage of B-25 Happy Legend (41-12907 lost with all crew  5th December1942) near Myloa on the Kokoda Track New Guinea.

 

The aircraft flew into clouds in mountainous terain and never made it back out. The wreakage was dug from the ground by the US servicemen who recovered the mortal remains of the crew (in 1961) and piled it as shown.  Apparently there was little of the plane left above ground after the accident though interestingly enough several of the 500lb bombs that were onboard bounced during the impact and ended up about 200 metres from the crash site.

 

From what our guide told us, the natives at the time had pointed out where the plane had clipped the tree tops some distance away, indicating that it had been flying in a level attitude at the time of impact.

 

 

Obviously this is at one end of the damage spectrum and to be realistic there should be a wide range of damage states being modeled.

Edited January 1, 2013 by Skoshi_Tiger

[FlatSpinMan]

 

From what our guide told us, the natives at the time had pointed out where the plane had clipped the tree tops some distance away, indicating that it had been flying in a level attitude at the time of impact.

Jeez Skoshi - did you actually walk in there? 

 

 the sort of 'sudden confetti for no obvious reason' failures 

Yes. This was my, and probably most, RoFers' early experiences in a very pleasingly phrased nutshell.

[Skoshi_Tiger]

Jeez Skoshi - did you actually walk in there? 

 

 

Yes,  back in July 2010, Myself, two bro's, a sister and two of my nieces went on a bit of a pilgrimage. My Dad fought on the track in ???

Edited January 1, 2013 by Skoshi_Tiger

[Jetlagg]

Furthermore, I have flown ROF for going on three years and have never seen a crashed plane bounce off of the ground.  What are you talking about?

But I'm not sure what I'd like to see least...a plane that nose dives and doesn't break up much, or a neat smoking crater.  Neither really fit reality.

[Jetlagg]

Here is an account of a FW190's wings being bent BUT NOT SHEARED OFF.  While it is a History Channel TV show, I trust the pilot's firsthand account.

 

Watch 1:17 to 2:03

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LryvsoDEl7w

 

Here is actual footage of a B-24's wing being folded BUT NOT SHEARED OFF.  

 

Watch 0:52 to 1:04

 

Edited January 4, 2013 by Jetlagg

[machoo]

A damage model like this but the equivalent for aircraft would be very good

 

[Freycinet]

Here is an account of a FW190's wings being bent BUT NOT SHEARED OFF. While it is a History Channel TV show, I trust the pilot's firsthand account.

 

Here is actual footage of a B-24's wing being folded BUT NOT SHEARED OFF.

 

Watch 0:52 to 1:04

Got to say that I don't trust that account by the US pilot... It just sounds really weird, imho. And him flying next to the 190 and looking over at the pilot while the 190 would be plummeting to the ground with both wings folded up really beggars belief.

 

The bomber's wing did indeed shear off very quickly, you can see it drop to the ground detached from the fuselage.

[Skoshi_Tiger]

If pushed beyond the limit planes should bend. One case in point where FC John Haslople  (DFC) added several degrees of dihedral to the wings of his Mustang in combat over Leipzig (10 April '45).  

 

The question of whether the sim should includes that sort of damage and if it is reflected as a chage of handling characteristics or graphically is up to the developers and the scope of what they are modeling.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Skoshi_Tiger

[Jetlagg]

Got to say that I don't trust that account by the US pilot... It just sounds really weird, imho. And him flying next to the 190 and looking over at the pilot while the 190 would be plummeting to the ground with both wings folded up really beggars belief.

 

The bomber's wing did indeed shear off very quickly, you can see it drop to the ground detached from the fuselage.

 

Eh, arguing the pilot's story is neither here nor there.  I just take it for what he says.  And the B-24 wing did exactly what you could see with the Rise of Flight damage model.  It certainly did eventually tear away namely because the aircraft isn't made of giant pieces of rubber.  Once the forces acting on the damaged wing finally ripped it off, it did in fact fall much like in Il-2.  However, the entire scene looked more RoF-ish to me.  The wing folded (just like you'd see in-game) and then finally tore away (much like you'd see in-game).  Aluminum is rigid, but so is the wood used in bi-planes, admittedly to a lesser extent.  What this means is exactly what many in this thread are suggesting, a blending of damage models.  More rigid than Rise of Flight, but less rigid than Cliffs of Dover.  

 

[Jetlagg]

A damage model like this but the equivalent for aircraft would be very good

 

 

One day, my friend. B)

[Freycinet]

Nope, not "one day", unfortunately. Hi-fi flight siming is a niche genre and after all the hate that went CoDs way no developer will ever again go to that level of detail. With the rather small earnings potential this genre has I am quite sure nobody will push the technology like that again. That is pretty much the gist of the Developer Diary and it sounds true to me.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Freycinet

[Zmaj76]

ROF (and CLOD tbh) has, ofcourse, very advanced DM and FM (compared to other sims)...what I dont like is the way wings are falling apart in ROF. It looks like we are fighting in RC planes.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Tvrdi

[wiseblood]

I thought the perspective was more that it is one thing to write the words that you are going to deliver a feature and another one to actually deliver it.  The stuff Loft and crew have said they will deliver at a very high fidelity in ROF - let's say, the new gunnery system that came out last year, or the water/seaplane interaction system - that stuff is just awesomely finely detailed and amazingly well done.  But they don't like making general, non-specific promises about doing everything well instantly and being all things to all people from day 1.

Edited January 6, 2013 by wiseblood

[Bearcat]

Nope, not "one day", unfortunately. Hi-fi flight siming is a niche genre and after all the hate that went CoDs way no developer will ever again go to that level of detail. With the rather small earnings potential this genre has I am quite sure nobody will push the technology like that again. That is pretty much the gist of the Developer Diary and it sounds true to me.

That is a debate that is not for this forum.. CoD was what it was .. a masterpiece for some .. a POS for others.. is what it is.. but as far as attributing hate to it or any such notion or going into detail on that debate ..  that is a can of worms that will .. I repeat WILL stay closed here.

[MiloMorai]

not always look at the Hurricane that was a wood an canvas there are possible others too but I can't think at the moment

 

The Hurricane had a metal sub structure with wood formers covered by linen, NOT canvas.

 

[Skoshi_Tiger]

The Hurricane had a metal sub structure with wood formers covered by linen, NOT canvas.

 

 

Sorry to be pedantic but "Canvas" is the weave of the cloth not the material that it is made out of. Canvas can be made out of cotton, linen and even hemp! So it is possible to be covered in canvas and linen at the same time. (linen being a textile made from the Flax plant) What weave of cloth they used  I do not know. Canvas would be  a reasonable choice.

 

Cheers!

Edited January 7, 2013 by Skoshi_Tiger

[DD_bongodriver]

Irish linen is actually the favoured media for authentic fabric covering, AFAIK nobody would use the modern ceconite synthetic fabrics on a warbirds.

[76SQN-FatherTed]

I agree that Andy's misadventures in a DVIII do look unrealistic, but I believe that this is because the DM in RoF is more subtle than its graphical counterpart.  This means that whilst the DM has determined that an eighth of his wingtip has gone, the graphics model has only "undamaged" and "quarter damaged" to choose from, so we get this dramatic scene.

 

I may be wrong in this, but I read it somewhere as an explanation for seemingly unrealistic behaviour in damaged aircraft in RoF.  

Edited January 7, 2013 by FatherTed

[76SQN-FatherTed]

not always look at the Hurricane that was a wood an canvas there are possible others too but I can't think at the moment

 

The most famous, at least on the Allied side, would be the Mosquito - known as the "Wooden Wonder"

[DD_bongodriver]

DeHavilland really liked that construction technique, they even continued it on to their early jets with the Vampire having a wooden fuselage.....a wooden jet....crazy.

[Crump]

Wood is an excellent material to build airplanes.  It has unlimited fatigue life unlike metal or some modern composites.

 

Nitrocellulose based dope over fabric was the most common covering until recently.  The fabric is most commonly cotton. 

 

Look at some of the Piper Cubs with header tanks.  That is a two gallon tank behind the panel above the pilots knees that holds fuel fed from the wing tanks to ensure constant fuel flow to the engine.

 

It is about 8 inches from the stock ashtray so you could put out your cigarette.

 

Not uncommon in the early days to fly around in your smokeless powder coated airplane, sitting next to gallons of fuel, and taking a castor oil shower while enjoying a nice relaxing cigarette.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Crump

[AndyJWest]

Not uncommon in the early days to fly around in your smokeless powder coated airplane, sitting next to gallons of fuel, and taking a castor oil shower while enjoying a nice relaxing cigarette.

 

Are you seriously suggesting that it was possible to smoke a cigarette while flying an open-cockpit aircraft?