Engine mixture granularity

[HagarTheHorrible]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

 

It really seems to me that fuel mixture, particularly for the rotaries, is a greatly underutalized aspect of gameplay.

 

I set it for engine start, I then adjust it for max rev's soon after take off and if I head up higher then I'll probably fiddle with it once, maybe twice but tbh apart from adjusting it after take off I rarely touch or worry about it to any great extent.  The difference, unless you go V high seems marginal.

 

I just think if it was far more granular and it had a big effect on potential engine performance, depending on altitude, or flooding the engine, it would add a lot to the challenge of air combat, even just plain old furballs.  From a lot of the reading I've done it seems as if rotaries, in particular, were finicky little beasts that required a certain amount of care and attention.  Given that other aspects of sim furballing are less demanding maybe having quite a course, even if overly so,  fuel mixture regime might make the pure flying aspect more involved ?

 

Depending on the aircraft, theres far more going on in a WW2 aircraft, with several things to consider.  In WW1 aircraft it's a lot simpler (which I like) but at the same time it really could do with something more than just turning and burning or booming and zooming ?

[6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann]

But most Aircraft have Auto Mixture. Even the Russians except Klimovs. 

[ZachariasX]

7 hours ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

It really seems to me that fuel mixture, particularly for the rotaries, is a greatly underutalized aspect of gameplay.

Why? You need to change it a lot at different altitudes to get best performance. It‘s almost like 100% to start, then 80% to take off and then -10% for every 1000 meters you climb. 

[unreasonable]

10 hours ago, 6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann said:

But most Aircraft have Auto Mixture. Even the Russians except Klimovs. 

 

Hagar is, I think, talking about the WW1 crates: we are in the FC sub-forum which you might not have noticed if you plucked this out of Unread Content. 

 

But I am not sure I agree with him completely: if we had a WW1 career that required one to do long patrols at up to 20,000 ft not only would we have to use the mixture to lean as we went higher but we might also have to lean it to stop the engine over-cooling. As in RoF.

 

I do think the mixture modeling could be a little more sophisticated, however, since Camels for instance would cut out if you took off with the mixture at full rich and forgot to lean immediately once in the air. (Killing a lot of trainees in the process).  This does not happen at the moment. 

[ZachariasX]

42 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

This does not happen at the moment.  

Well, taking off out of the high grass on Berloga (when it had the FC area) was deadly if you forgot to lean to 80%...

 

But thanks for the clarification.

[Zooropa_Fly]

I've always found mixture settings to be not that sensitive - a tweak either way on most planes doesn't seem to make any difference.

In RoF it's near impossible to see the in-cockpit control position anyway, although in FC we have on-screen read outs for such things giving the exact figure. Not exactly a 'big up' for realism though.

I don't think losing 10% every 1km will give max revs.. but that comment maybe wasn't referring to max revs.

 

I've no reason to think that this is an underutilised aspect of the game, as the OP put it.

Maybe we need someone who flies a real plane (albeit likely not an original) of that era to comment on fuel mix performance and usage ?

 

I think the Throttle is probably something more under used by virtual WW1 pilots, especially on rotaries where blipping is relied on too much.

 

S!

[SeaW0lf]

Mixture does make a difference, especially at lower altitudes. IIRC, from 1 to 3km/h and better rpm depending how did you miss the correct setting. If that translates into a better zoom climb I'm not sure, but it should. And obviously I rather run away from a plane 3km/h faster than not. At higher altitudes you can be more lose because the variation does not matter that much in speed / rpm. But auto mixture certainly will kill your performance, since it is way off all the time.

 

Ingame I adjust roughly at every 1.000m (if I’m in a hurry I can cut the corners a bit) and I know where to set the axis, but it is not precise, just an approximation. But if I had a lever, just like my G940 throttle, I could fly very close to the optimum mixture.

[HagarTheHorrible]

I'll use this as AN example, although by no means definative or overly detailed it does imply some consideration given to rotary engine fuel mixture management.

flight-testing-the-sopwith-pup

 

The one question I have from the test is how much leaning he needs, he only goes to 2500 feet, is it for this flight that leaning is implied or is it just a general, the higher you go the leaner the mix needs to be type of a statement.  In fact I have another question as well.  In the test the pilot puts the engine idle speed at approx 800rpm, to fast to descend, so he leans the mixture till the engine cuts out rather than blipping (less stressfull),  what idle speed should a Camel or DR1 engine be ?  When I chop the throttle the engine drops to less than the minimum marker on the gauge of 600 RPM (Camel), is this correct ?

 

I've just flown a test in the Camel,  I move the mixture from fully fine to full rich to start the engine (maybe slightly less if I start from a higher airfield).  Once I start my take off run (no chocks or pleb to hold the tail down so I can't check before) and open the throttle to full I then lean off a fraction, I suppose I could lean off slightly after engine start but given it's no hassle doing it on the take off and I can visually check max RPM then that seems reasonable rather than guessing.  The next time I have to consider the fuel mixture is 8000 ft, sure it drops approx 50 RPM as you go up but the marginal gains of ten or twenty RPM, as you go,  by adjusting are nothing to right home about. The next leaning of the mixture comes at about 11000 ft, again about a gain of about 50 RPM. 

 

It's hardly taxing engine management, the gains, or loses, while there, are nothing extrodinary while over leaning a few clicks of the button will drop engine RPM significantly.  It would be far more interesting if the significant RPM drop we see from over leaning was the base drop while climbing rather than the cliff edge that it presently is. It would mean that mixture would have to be constantly monitored and checked to prevent significant performance loss, much as the radiator has to be constantly watched and regulated for aircraft with inline engines.

 

The other thing to add is that, because we're playing, rather than living as closely as possible the WW! experience and we don't, regularly climb to 15-20 thousand feet that maybe the game should reflect that and condence the majority of the fuel air miture range to the altitudes that we do generally operate at rather than something that only affects the one or two brave souls who venture into the thinner air.

 

I suppose what I would like to see is the full movement range of the leaning control leaver having an effect on RPM rather than just a small nudge every now and again and the drop, or rise, in RPM as you climb or dive to be as significant and dramatic as that seen when you over lean the mixture a tad too much rather than the small very gradual drop(50 RPM over 8000 ft for example).

 

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by HagarTheHorrible

[unreasonable]

2 hours ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

 

 

The other thing to add is that, because we're playing, rather than living as closely as possible the WW! experience and we don't, regularly climb to 15-20 thousand feet that maybe the game should reflect that and condence the majority of the fuel air miture range to the altitudes that we do generally operate at rather than something that only affects the one or two brave souls who venture into the thinner air.

 

 

I could not agree less. The mixture results should as far as possible model actual results. Fortunately, since I am sure the developers would never implement your idea, we need not worry about it.