7 1/2 Hour War Emergency Test of Pratt&Whitney R-2800 26 April 1944

[Rattlesnake]

Interesting stuff here .

[II./JG77_Manu*]

I guess they kinda tested every aircrafts WEP in this way

[Rattlesnake]

5 minutes ago, II./JG77_Manu* said:

I guess they kinda tested every aircrafts WEP in this way

Did they do this with every aircraft engine?
" Technicians at the Republic Aircraft Corporation ran the engine at extreme boost pressures at 3,600 hp (2,685 kW) for 250 hours without any failure using common 100 octane avgas, but in general, the R-2800 was a rather fully developed powerplant right from the beginning."

http://www.aviation-history.com/engines/pr-2800.htm
 

[II./JG77_Manu*]

Probably not exactly like this, but those kind of tests weren't that unusual when testing the boundaries of engines

[Rattlesnake]

Here is a 7 1/2 hour test of the P-47D at 70" in June 1944.
"True airspeed at 21,500 feet with 70 In. Hg. manifold pressure and water injection was 445 miles per hour."
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/p-47/17june44-progress-report.pdf

And here's the official clearance to run 70" in P-47D with 150 octane in '44.
P-47D released for 70 In. Hg MAP using 100/150 fuel with water injection, 24 June 1944

[Legioneod]

I wouldn't mind the limited 5min WEP times if there wasn't such a large disparity between aircraft and time between uses.

 

The 20 min wait time between full WEP uses is absurd and I've found no evidence that this was real in the slightest, as far as I'm concerned it's a made up number. No idea where the devs came up with it.

 

Also, the fact that American aircraft have to revert back to nominal settings after WEP in order to reset it while the Axis can just revert back to combat is also strange.

 

Another thing is that WEP decreases combat time as well, nothing in any test reports or manuals state that this was something that occurred or was necessary. 

 

The limiting factor for the WEP times was (and should be) the amount of water the P-47 carried, it allowed for 15min WEP, after it runs out there is no more WEP. simple

[II./JG77_Manu*]

@Legioneod, nothing like in game engine durability was anything like that in real life. It's an artificial game mechanic. That's not a P47 Problem, it has been here since day one.

Any cooldown timer is absurd, because engines don't work like that (unless it's a temperature issue of course)

[Legioneod]

3 minutes ago, II./JG77_Manu* said:

@Legioneod, nothing like in game engine durability was anything like that in real life. It's an artificial game mechanic. That's not a P47 Problem, it has been here since day one.

Any cooldown timer is absurd, because engines don't work like that (unless it's a temperature issue of course)

I agree but why such a large disparity between types? Some aircraft only need 5 min to col down while others need 20 min. The artificial cool down wouldn't bother me if there wasn't such a large gap for no real reason.

 

The engine model is what has plagued this game from the very beginning, it needs a serious overhaul.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Legioneod

[danielprates]

That being a radial engine, I wonder how they cooled it for 7+ hours in an extreme regime like that. Regardless of how it was done,  it must have been something more efficient of what the actual plane can do when flying - probably explaining how you can do a 7 hours WEP run in a lab, but not during flight.

[Legioneod]

Here's an idea for the engine model. It's still a very very simplification but it'd be much better than the current time limit/ cooldown we currently have.

 

Why not have temperature be the overall limiting factor for time at power? Use the current temperature model for each aircraft and use it to determine engine life. The hotter you run the engine the more likely it is to cause detonation and the more likely it is to fail. 

This would practically eliminate the timers and cause heat to be the concern, players would be forced to reduce power once engine overheats or risk failure.

 

Water/WEP could work in a similar way, if you run out of water there is no more WEP and the same heating mechanics would apply though the overall temps may be different due to the use of water.

3 minutes ago, danielprates said:

That being a radial engine, I wonder how they cooled it for 7+ hours in an extreme regime like that. Regardless of how it was done,  it must have been something more efficient of what the actual plane can do when flying - probably explaining how you can do a 7 hours WEP run in a lab, but not during flight.

At the Pratt & Whitney plant they ran WEP test for 100 hours (probably not always though), the 7 1/2 hour test were the military requirements.

 

From what I've read they had an air vent at the top of the test chamber that would feed air to the engine to meet it's needs. Not 100% sure though.

[Rattlesnake]

10 minutes ago, danielprates said:

That being a radial engine, I wonder how they cooled it for 7+ hours in an extreme regime like that. Regardless of how it was done,  it must have been something more efficient of what the actual plane can do when flying - probably explaining how you can do a 7 hours WEP run in a lab, but not during flight.

A 300mph wind at high altitude can be rather brisk. Anyway, since time and not temperature is the current limitation these tests still offer perspective.

Edited November 27, 2018 by CMBailey

[Legioneod]

1 minute ago, CMBailey said:

A 300mph wind at chilly high altitudes can be rather brisk. Anyway since time not temperature is the current limitation these tests still offer perspective.

This, above certain altitudes the temps are in the negative so I doubt keeping the engine cool was a large problem.

[Ehret]

Just now, Legioneod said:

Here's an idea for the engine model. It's still a very very simplification but it'd be much better than the current time limit/ cooldown we currently have.

 

The reason for not WEP-ing all the time was range and long term engine wear. IMHO, the best way to handle that would be add something similar but in semi-artificial accelerated manner. Basically, making logistics a concern in a single match or in a single sortie, even. So, if needed there would be extra time without the risk of engine blowing-up but at the same time the strong incentive to avoid such situation.

[Legioneod]

1 minute ago, Ehret said:

 

The reason for not WEP-ing all the time was range and long term engine wear. IMHO, the best way to handle that would be add something similar but in semi-artificial accelerated manner. Basically, making logistics a concern in a single match or in a single sortie, even. So, if needed there would be extra time without the risk of engine blowing-up but at the same time the strong incentive to avoid such situation.

 

Agreed but a heating system at the very least would be much better than the time limits we currently have.

[Kurfurst]

13 minutes ago, danielprates said:

That being a radial engine, I wonder how they cooled it for 7+ hours in an extreme regime like that. 

 

Hint - 7 1/2 hours of WEP bench testing, performed in 3 days (or 72 hours).

 

They simply did not run the engine for 7+ hours straight for the tests (nobody did), but with intervals between bursts at high power. 

[Rattlesnake]

29 minutes ago, Ehret said:

 

The reason for not WEP-ing all the time was range and long term engine wear. IMHO, the best way to handle that would be add something similar but in semi-artificial accelerated manner. Basically, making logistics a concern in a single match or in a single sortie, even. So, if needed there would be extra time without the risk of engine blowing-up but at the same time the strong incentive to avoid such situation.

I see no reason for such complexity. I'm just asking for a little common sense, such as engines with water injection probably being able to run at WEP until the water is gone. As I said in another thread I'd truly be okay with every plane being able to run at WEP till it ran out of gas. It would be equally realistic as 5 minutes then BOOM, the relative strengths of the planes wouldn't change, and virpils could concentrate on ACM instead of engine milking.

I'm wondering if allowing servers to set fuel in all aircraft to burn at a rate of 1.5-2 times the actual rate might not be an elegant solution to the problem. It would incentivize both reducing power when not needed and carrying realistic fuel fractions.

Edited November 27, 2018 by CMBailey

[danielprates]

24 minutes ago, VO101Kurfurst said:

 

Hint - 7 1/2 hours of WEP bench testing, performed in 3 days (or 72 hours).

 

They simply did not run the engine for 7+ hours straight for the tests (nobody did), but with intervals between bursts at high power. 

 

Oh yeah, the document says the testing went through 26 april to 2 may, so it figures it was not a straight 7 + hours run. That makes more sense.

 

STILL...... even if the test was done in fifteen 30mins increments, it would still like to know how they cooled a radial engine like that in a lab. A wind tunnel maybe?

[Legioneod]

32 minutes ago, VO101Kurfurst said:

 

Hint - 7 1/2 hours of WEP bench testing, performed in 3 days (or 72 hours).

 

They simply did not run the engine for 7+ hours straight for the tests (nobody did), but with intervals between bursts at high power. 

Seem they ran it based off of the amount of water that would have been available on the aircraft. At the time this was around 10-11 min of water at WEP. Seems this is the intervals that they ran it at, 10min WEP at a time over the course of 72 hours. (If my math is correct, I suck at math)

Edited November 27, 2018 by Legioneod

[danielprates]

34 minutes ago, CMBailey said:

A 300mph wind at high altitude can be rather brisk. Anyway, since time and not temperature is the current limitation these tests still offer perspective.

 

My point only made sense if you consider the test a 7 hours straight run, something I am now sure is not the case, as pointed out by @Legioneod.

[II./JG77_Manu*]

26 minutes ago, CMBailey said:

As I said in another thread I'd truly be okay with every plane being able to run at WEP till it ran out of gas. It would be equally realistic as 5 minutes then BOOM, the relative strengths of the planes wouldn't change, and virpils could concentrate on ACM instead of engine milking.

 

Actually it would be more realistic in combat then the current system, because at combat the aircraft usually would use every power they need.

 

Relative strengths of aircraft would change however - Yak 1 which can already run at full power all day would suffer in comparison, La 5 to a lesser extent. Aircraft with tiny WEP time like most earlier 109s and 190s would benefit. US aircraft with their very moderate manuals would benefit even more. All in all, it would resemble real aircraft performance from WW2 a lot closer then it is now.

 

[Rattlesnake]

10 minutes ago, II./JG77_Manu* said:

 

- Yak 1 which can already run at full power all day would suffer in comparison, La 5 to a lesser extent. Aircraft with tiny WEP time like most earlier 109s and 190s would benefit. US aircraft with their very moderate manuals would benefit even more. 

 

These engines are basically all the same tech and subject to the same physics. Therefore either 1. The Yak controls max out at a much lower power setting then the engine could actually be made to produce. or 2. The Yak manual writers said  fuck it, run it till it won’t, and thus the Yak has been handed an unrealistic advantage. Which is it?

In many cases would not the manuals have been written for testosterone-charged young men and the writers woukd have been concerned to discourage the use of high power settings in situations where it was completely unnecessary? Rather like limiting the speed to 65 and knowing that actual effect will be to get most people going 75.

[HR_Zunzun]

7 minutes ago, II./JG77_Manu* said:

 

Actually it would be more realistic in combat then the current system, because at combat the aircraft usually would use every power they need.

 

Relative strengths of aircraft would change however - Yak 1 which can already run at full power all day would suffer in comparison, La 5 to a lesser extent. Aircraft with tiny WEP time like most earlier 109s and 190s would benefit. US aircraft with their very moderate manuals would benefit even more. All in all, it would resemble real aircraft performance from WW2 a lot closer then it is now.

 

 

I would still prefer some sort of limitation. Someone pointed out to accelerated wearing. That sounds good to me. You "abuse" your engine then you start suffering from some degradation in the engine performance over time. Depending on the manual limits the degradation would be different. That would limit tactically your abuse of the engine but it would give you all you needed at least for one combat (then maybe time to go home).

Another option I thought was if, somehow, your abuse of your engine could be recorded and linked to your account. This way, in the next few missions, whichever plane you choose would come with a degraded engine reflecting your previous abuse. After a few missions, if you treated it right then you would be "liberated" to get a factory fresh one again. Number of penalty missions depending of the degree of abuse you inflicted to your plane.

 

I think there are many options out there that can be tried and possibly better than the current one.

[Legioneod]

9 minutes ago, HR_Zunzun said:

Another option I thought was if, somehow, your abuse of your engine could be recorded and linked to your account. This way, in the next few missions, whichever plane you choose would come with a degraded engine reflecting your previous abuse. After a few missions, if you treated it right then you would be "liberated" to get a factory fresh one again. Number of penalty missions depending of the degree of abuse you inflicted to your plane.

 

I think there are many options out there that can be tried and possibly better than the current one.

 

I thought of this very same thing, though I'm not sure how well or difficult it would be to implement.

 

They could even implement a time between overhaul which would basically make it to where you have to use your current engine for a certain amount of time before you can get a new one.

 

So maybe 5 hour time between engines? So if you treat your engine real rough your faced with the consequences of it until the 5 hours is up.

[Rattlesnake]

59 minutes ago, Legioneod said:

 

I thought of this very same thing, though I'm not sure how well or difficult it would be to implement.

 

They could even implement a time between overhaul which would basically make it to where you have to use your current engine for a certain amount of time before you can get a new one.

 

So maybe 5 hour time between engines? So if you treat your engine real rough your faced with the consequences of it until the 5 hours is up.

This would literally give an enormous advantage to people who don’t play very addictively. Run the engine into the ground, wait five hours, do it again. People would actually win dogfights just because they happened to catch their opponents at 5:55:00 engine time or something. You could game it just by jumping in other airplanes and running them like hell, and probably all sorts of other ways I’d have to think about. How about something nice, simple,  and reasonable like 10-15 minutes WEP/however long the water lasts and probably just unlimited combat time for everything?

Edited November 27, 2018 by CMBailey

[Talon_]

12 minutes ago, CMBailey said:

10-15 minutes WEP/however long the water lasts and probably just unlimited combat time for everything?

 

That's my suggestion too. The only thing is it opens up the 109F-4 to utterly crushing Russian planes, so it won't happen.

[Legioneod]

1 minute ago, Talon_ said:

 

That's my suggestion too. The only thing is it opens up the 109F-4 to utterly crushing Russian planes, so it won't happen.

I'm afraid that the only reason for them not doing it because it would give some aircraft even more of an advantage. Still, the 20 min time limit between uses is ridiculous, that at the very least needs to be changed.

[HR_Zunzun]

25 minutes ago, CMBailey said:

This would literally give an enormous advantage to people who don’t play very addictively. Run the engine into the ground, wait five hours, do it again. People would actually win dogfights just because they happened to catch their opponents at 5:55:00 engine time or something. You could game it just by jumping in other airplanes and running them like hell, and probably all sorts of other ways I’d have to think about. How about something nice, simple,  and reasonable like 10-15 minutes WEP/however long the water lasts and probably just unlimited combat time for everything?

 

What I thought was based on per mission and regardless of the plane chosen. Obviously this only relevant to an especific server. For instance, you play say at WoL and start choosing and F4. You fly well beyond the 1min wep. The engine doesn´t die. It start losing power to some degree (that variying depending on the specific manufacter limits and the time you exceeced such limits). You land safely/ditch/crash doesn´t matter. The status of the engine is recorder and linked to your account in this server. Next time you fly again here (in the next three minutes or in a month time) your new plane  has and engine with a certain degree of degradation in its performance. After certai number of missions or probably better certain amount of time (could be as Legioned mentioned some sort of TBO) you get a new engine. This TBO could be limited to the specific plane model or shared acrross the planeset; in the first case and in our example you change from the f4 to f2 then you get a fresh engine but if you come back to the f4 again it will have the same degration as before. In the second case it will have the degration regardless of the plane until you fullfill a certain amount of missions or flying time.

 

Flying without any kind of limit seems wrong to me. Pilot manual and restrictions were there for a reason. Sometimes very conservatively and other becasuse there were real concerns. The current model, we all agree, has many limitations and caveats but free for all doesn´t sound right either (to me).

[Ehret]

Just now, Talon_ said:

That's my suggestion too. The only thing is it opens up the 109F-4 to utterly crushing Russian planes, so it won't happen.

 

Not nearly as it opens the P-40 and to a lesser degree the P-39.

You can check in the QMB with the "unbreakable" option set - Kittyhawk exceeds 580km/h at the deck. If you over-rev a little you can approach 600km/h...

The P-39 is more tame - but still - at constant 1550hp you could cruise at 570km/h.

[Legioneod]

14 minutes ago, Ehret said:

 

Not nearly as it opens the P-40 and to a lesser degree the P-39.

You can check in the QMB with the "unbreakable" option set - Kittyhawk exceeds 580km/h at the deck. If you over-rev a little you can approach 600km/h...

The P-39 is more tame - but still - at constant 1550hp you could cruise at 570km/h.

 

One thing to consider is that do they really need to change it for every aircraft? The P-47 can and did exceed the 5min "limit". It also does have a limit even without the gamey limitations, it can't go WEP without water irl so that could be the engine limit represented in-game.

[II./JG77_Manu*]

26 minutes ago, Legioneod said:

 

One thing to consider is that do they really need to change it for every aircraft? The P-47 can and did exceed the 5min "limit". It also does have a limit even without the gamey limitations, it can't go WEP without water irl so that could be the engine limit represented in-game.

 

It would be the case for every aircraft apart from the P40. P40s max powersetting in the game wasn't cleared in real life and not possible to use. Check the WEP in game settings for the P40 (not nearly full throttle). Those would be pretty ok, putting the aircraft slightly worse then the Yak1 overall, which seems about right.

[=RvE=Windmills]

Double times across the board, maybe make some exceptions for stuff like Spitfire/109/190 combat timers so we don't get 60 min plus durations.

 

So emergency times would be quite a bit more usable for actual combat on nearly all planes. Mostly P40/39 would not be the timer management nightmare they are now. Seriously, I don't even care about them being poor planes, but having to do mental gymnastics with their 2/3/5 minute timers is a total pain in combat.

Edited November 27, 2018 by =RvE=Windmills

[-=PHX=-SuperEtendard]

4 hours ago, Legioneod said:

Why not have temperature be the overall limiting factor for time at power? Use the current temperature model for each aircraft and use it to determine engine life. The hotter you run the engine the more likely it is to cause detonation and the more likely it is to fail. 

This would practically eliminate the timers and cause heat to be the concern, players would be forced to reduce power once engine overheats or risk failure.

 

Most planes can handle their WEP thermally if they go in a straight line. The only one that can't do it is the Yak-7B, which at full power at sea level makes you open the rads so much that it can't reach it's listed top speed sustained. So that would mean unlimited WEP unless you force the engines to overheat like IL-2 1946 did and I find that system even worse than what we have now.
 

[Sgt_Joch]

1 hour ago, Legioneod said:

 

One thing to consider is that do they really need to change it for every aircraft? 

 

yes, it has to be consistent and across the board. A flight sim is only a sim if every aircraft is modeled based on the same standards. Once you start cherry picking which ACs get exceptions, you quickly run into accusations of bias or worse, you ruin a sim like what happened to ROF in 2014 with the "balance patch".

 

Players are unhappy that Spits and P47 can only run for 5 mins at WEP while 190 A8/109 G14&K4s can run it for 10 minutes? Well welcome to what German AC players have been dealing with for the past 4 years. They managed to survive, so can Allied AC players. And yes, I fly P47s on KOTA….even though I am not very good.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Sgt_Joch

[Talon_]

3 minutes ago, Sgt_Joch said:

Spits and P47 can only run for 5 mins at WEP while 190 A8/109 G14&K4s can run it for 10 minutes?

 

It's more that the 109s can recharge WEP while at Combat while the P-47 actually reduces Combat by flying WEP.

 

You can fly a 45 minute 109 sortie without ever using Continuous power if you like:

 

WEP 10m

Combat 10m

WEP 10m

Combat 10m

WEP 5m

 

After this time your water will run out and you'll only have a few liters of fuel left in a full tank.

 

In contrast the P-47 can fly like this:

 

WEP 5m

Combat 4m

Engine death after those 4m

Edited November 27, 2018 by Talon_

[II./JG77_Manu*]

6 minutes ago, -=PHX=-SuperEtendard said:

 

Most planes can handle their WEP thermally if they go in a straight line. The only one that can't do it is the Yak-7B, which at full power at sea level makes you open the rads so much that it can't reach it's listed top speed sustained. So that would mean unlimited WEP unless you force the engines to overheat like IL-2 1946 did and I find that system even worse than what we have now.
 

 

While the 1946 overheat system surely wasn't properly simulated, the actual combat performance of the aircraft seems to resemble their real life counterparts a lot better then BoX - biggest discrepancies the P-40 and the P-39. 

 

P-40E is a match against mediocre 109 pilots, especially at low alt which pretty much resembles historical accounts. - in BoX not so much.

 

P-39 L and later are the best Russian birds until 1944 and only slightly worse then the La5-FN..a joy to fight against G2/G4 in 1v1. Pretty much resembles real life accounts - in BoX not so much, people even prefer the Yak 7 which is a joke tbh

[Rattlesnake]

2 hours ago, Talon_ said:

 

That's my suggestion too. The only thing is it opens up the 109F-4 to utterly crushing Russian planes, so it won't happen.

Look, is game balance a concern to be weighed against realism or is it not? Because I’m getting mixed messages on that. If it is not a concern then this is no problem. If is a concern then surely there are better ways of giving both sides an even break.

[=RvE=Windmills]

17 minutes ago, Sgt_Joch said:

Well welcome to what German AC players have been dealing with for the past 4 years.

 

It's important to consider the performance without going into limited time. Yeah they might have only 1 min or 3 mins of top end, but that's forgetting 30 mins of combat power at which they still dominate most opponents in climb/speed. And emergency is only a relatively small peak in their performance curve. Also, 30 minutes for ingame terms is practically infinite. I don't think its realistically possible to kill your engine on a 30 minute timer.

 

Allied planes with 'technically' longer emergency timers struggle way more due to their combat timers being much shorter, but also much more needed to coax any acceptable performance from them.

 

When it comes to the P40 this is debatable how bad it should be due to engine restrictions, but look at the P39. Despite being the iconic allied Kuban plane barely anyone flies it, and for good reason. It had such a great rep as a combat aircraft, but ingame roundly beaten out by any domestic Soviet fighter in effectiveness. Primarily due to its engine restrictions.

 

[Rattlesnake]

29 minutes ago, -=PHX=-SuperEtendard said:

 

Most planes can handle their WEP thermally if they go in a straight line.
 

This means that unlimited WEP is the most realistic option for most planes then, since detonation is the first hard barrier. Of course it can also be pointed out that dogfighting compels one to deviate from straight lines.

17 minutes ago, II./JG77_Manu* said:

 

While the 1946 overheat system surely wasn't properly simulated, the actual combat performance of the aircraft seems to resemble their real life counterparts a lot better then BoX - biggest discrepancies the P-40 and the P-39. 

 

P-40E is a match against mediocre 109 pilots, especially at low alt which pretty much resembles historical accounts. - in BoX not so much.

 

P-39 L and later are the best Russian birds until 1944 and only slightly worse then the La5-FN..a joy to fight against G2/G4 in 1v1. Pretty much resembles real life accounts - in BoX not so much, people even prefer the Yak 7 which is a joke tbh

The advantage of a heat metric is that it is monitorable and comprehensible, yes.

[-=PHX=-SuperEtendard]

22 minutes ago, II./JG77_Manu* said:

 

While the 1946 overheat system surely wasn't properly simulated, the actual combat performance of the aircraft seems to resemble their real life counterparts a lot better then BoX - biggest discrepancies the P-40 and the P-39. 

 

P-40E is a match against mediocre 109 pilots, especially at low alt which pretty much resembles historical accounts. - in BoX not so much.

 

P-39 L and later are the best Russian birds until 1944 and only slightly worse then the La5-FN..a joy to fight against G2/G4 in 1v1. Pretty much resembles real life accounts - in BoX not so much, people even prefer the Yak 7 which is a joke tbh

I don't think the power made the P-40E good in 1946... afterall it only has 42" as max iirc. The plane turned significantly better and didn't lose energy that much, same for the P-39s. Also the late P-39s have a bit more power for longer than our P-39L (with the -85 engine, they can make 57" for 5 minutes ,1420 HP, which would be a good improvement over our current 1325 HP in the -63 engine). In 1946 we jump straight from the D to the N, here we have the intermediate K/L.

The same happened to the La-5s, they turned much better in 1946, looks like weight in itself has a bigger penalty in this FM than in 46's and I trust this FM tech more. This doesn't mean the P-40 and P-39 turn as they should, maybe they use a bit too low max CL as it happened to the Fw 190, but I don't know how to determine it. It could be a nice topic for FM discussion, hunting for documents and making in game tests, JtD would be your guy for testing turn times as I suck for those

Edited November 27, 2018 by -=PHX=-SuperEtendard

[Rattlesnake]

10 minutes ago, -=PHX=-SuperEtendard said:

I don't think the power made the P-40E good in 1946... afterall it only has 42" as max iirc. The plane turned significantly better and didn't lose energy that much, same for the P-39s. Also the late P-39s have a bit more power for longer than our P-39L (with the -85 engine, they can make 57" for 5 minutes ,1420 HP, which would be a good improvement over our current 1325 HP in the -63 engine). In 1946 we jump straight from the D to the N, here we have the intermediate K/L.

The same happened to the La-5s, they turned much better in 1946, looks like weight in itself has a bigger penalty in this FM than in 46's and I trust this FM tech more. This doesn't mean the P-40 and P-39 turn as they should, maybe they use a bit too low max CL as it happened to the Fw 190, but I don't know how to determine it. It could be a nice topic for FM discussion, hunting for documents and making in game tests, JtD would be your guy for testing turn times as I suck for those

A man who has played several different sim versions of the same plane could easily become an atheist as regards any of these games’ “realism”.