4.006 DM Discussion

[emely]

23 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

 

2) It is true but it is due mostly, or entirely, to people's bad flying habits built up by previous DMs. (Also IMHO, partly true).

If I perform a turn with a 3G load on an intact airplane, is that a bad habit?  And during the execution of this turn, three bullets that hit the wing tear it off ... Do you think that a good habit is the presence of no more than 1.5 G during the whole flight?

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

2 hours ago, unreasonable said:

Read @ZachariasX's and @Holtzauge's posts - they are saying that, since there is roughly the same amount of lumber in the spars, they should be broken by about the same number of hits. 

Sorry Mate, must have missed those comments or didn't pay attention and I personally don't agree with them, then I'm not an engineer and I'm sure we all agree the D7 was a much more sturdy fighter than most. 

 

What I'm wondering is if there's a hit box that when hit causes more damage than we know or should be. When a plane that falls apart with just a few hits is there a common area that is hit say in the camel? Do all the camels fall apart when hit in the same spot when hit a certain G. Would be nice to know incase we see we're hit there we can avoid over G'ing. But then again that would be the target to aim for, So do we want to know.

 

Don't know if anyone has collected the data on where most of the catastrophic hits are located. 

[SeaW0lf]

2 hours ago, US93_Larner said:

Re: more correspondence with AnP...looks like that ship has sailed. I think 4.006 will be a "Take what you're given" type deal - making all 19(!!!) pages of this a rather entertaining and enjoyable waste of time

 

I told you guys. Thank the Lord I did not wasted any time with this. Make no sense to build a case to fix something that wasn’t broken before.

 

Anyways.

[ST_Catchov]

Well it was fun while it lasted. I feel a bit lightheaded after all that.

 

Jesus, how do you get outta here! 

 

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

9 minutes ago, catchov said:

Jesus, how do you get outta here! 

You can't.?

[ZachariasX]

14 minutes ago, NO.20_W_M_Thomson said:

What I'm wondering is if there's a hit box that when hit causes more damage than we know or should be.

Welcome on my boat, mate! You understood me where it matters.

 

Some last comments, TL;DR bold letters.

 

Thanks @unreasonable for summing up these points from the somewhat extended discussion.

 

Yes, DM assumes the Camel/Dolphin/Alb spars to be markedly more sensible to the "lucky bullets", meaning that in the Camel if you hear one *clang*, chances are high that the next 4 g maneuver is the second last you're doing as the last is your terminal dive, wheres in the Fokker, it's usually no issue, although it can be.

 

Regardless of the ultimate load tolerances of the Fokkers, it is not correct as an assumption that Camel wing spars in general are weakened that much more by bullets and are much more suceptible to the "lucky bullet" and nothing so far has emerged proving otherwise within the possibilites of our DM. (It is clearly the case in our DM, the hit vs. failure probability chart shows that). Apart from that said vast difference in bullet tolerance being not correct in terms of how static forces on those design work, it is also is extremely detrimental to gameplay. The IL2 series go great length to cater playability (for good reason), but here they are actively shooting themselves in the foot. It is not just wrong, it is bad as well. There is just one DM box where damage should be occurring sooner than other parts, the center top section, but not the outer wings, as we have it now. Cables don't exist in DM world, so we don't consider them. But you know, in Fokker world, there is a small wood beam in the top center part (about a third of the wingspan) of the box spar that deals with very high compressive loads. Some bullets in there and that was it. The Fokker is less different from the Camel in that regard than some might care to think.

 

It is of note that this specific location does have an own DM box and it *can* show you the state of your whole aircraft as this would be the point of failure. Players should be able to look up and get an idea  of whether to continue the fight or RTB.

 

It is not, and has never been, an argument that some Fokkers do indeed have an extremely high break up point. (If good glue was at hand.) Neither are break up points of all aircraft in the game.

 

Above in this thread I detailed load distributions on braced wing designs. @Chill31 said that wires were good for 20 to 30 g's hence the spars would go. I disagreed on the technical minutia, but assuming he is right, what would happen if the bracing (that is more than cables) does hold that 20+ g?

 

Answer is, that the most likely upper center section spar elements would collapse, as they are put under load by both wing boxes. The center section spars are of equal dimensions (and lightened in the same way to H-shape) as outer wing spars. It is very much likely that the whole wing design has his point of failure in that location.

 

Btw. anyone asking themselves why someone like Tomas Sopwith, maker of flimsy designs, would use wires that are good for 20+ g's when the wings do come off like the front of a boat? Well, steel wires are a bit like rubber bands. Anyone that has ever tuned a guitar or a piano knows that. The easier you get to their breaking point, the more the wire stretches. This means if you had wires that could absorb only 7 g's, they would be rather elastic around 5 g. Your bracing to become elastic when under significant loads is absolutely the last thing you want. Conversely, this means that you do not have to dimension the attachment points for 30 g, as they do not flex in such a manner, and the center section will collapse at maybe around 8 g or so anyway. The wires are about the last thing to go unless you damage them by other means.

 

Having such sensible outer wing sections as we have them now in the game is just not consistent with analysis and neither with anectotal evidence. (A 13 g Fokker is anectotal evidence too. Minions sandbagging wings of a single sample is not exact science.)

 

This is enough to skew the whole issue. But in the end it does not matter as the Pfalz is exteremely sturdy, both in break up point AND bullet tolerance. You really think it has a whole tree in between the wingtips?

 

Ironically, the DM treats the Fokker wing as very resilient to bullet damage, when in fact it has not much more wood inside than the Camel spar.  On top of that with box spars, you are hitting the bracing of the box spar, the sides, as well when hitting the spar.  While in case of the Camel, bracing doesn't exist in DM world! If logics would be followed through the braced design should be more damage tolerant, not less.

 

What we have now doesn't match "actual numbers" (we have little of those and LOTS of assumptions) and it produces a flawed bottom line in terms of relative damage tolerance.

 

The upside is, whatever is fed into the DM, for the Fokkers and the Bristols and the Pfalz, it works well for the game. I don't mind if the DM is counting rice in China for internal mechanics, as long as in the game it gives us something plausible in return. It shouldn't be too hard getting a bit more realistic with the aircraft that are most degraded now.

 

 

[slug_yuugen]

BTW there is this contemporary doc from 1920 that looks at exactly these questions around the structural analysis and design of aircraft including a look at the SPAD truss.

 

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092006139&view=1up&seq=13 <--- should take you to a browsable on the web version

[Zooropa_Fly]

That'll keep a few people busy for a while lmao.

[AndyJWest]

48 minutes ago, slug_yuugen said:

BTW there is this contemporary doc from 1920 that looks at exactly these questions around the structural analysis and design of aircraft including a look at the SPAD truss.

 

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092006139&view=1up&seq=13 <--- should take you to a browsable on the web version

 

Yeah, that's the same book I linked in an earlier thread - downloadable version here:

https://archive.org/details/ost-design-structuralanalys00unit/page/n3/mode/2up

 

I don't think it is going to make much difference here, though. Too many entrenched positions, and anyone trying to advance the thread anywhere gets shot down in a hail of machine-gun bullets... ?

[No.23_Triggers]

All I can say is I hope we eventually see something closer to the original DM. I think a ton of MP enjoyment is gone from FC with the new DM...used to get into some really fantastic scraps that you just can't anymore without losing your wings ?

[JGr2/J5_Klugermann]

17 hours ago, emely said:

 

 

I believe that two rotten pizzas cost no more than one.  Why do I need two pieces, if the first one just needs to be thrown away?

 

Because you might still be hungry.

[DakkaDakkaDakka]

13 hours ago, unreasonable said:

5) The developers have just forgotten about the wires.  Proponents of this idea have yet to give a coherent explanation of why the game's maximum G limits of the braced aeroplanes are consistent with the sources.

 

It's quite possible (and even probable) that these overstress values are simple variables referenced as part of the game's core loop. When the variable is exceeded during gameplay, the wings fold. Those variables themselves are based on the extant sources. And, as abstractions - the kind of abstractions that are necessary for a flight simulator in 2020 - those variables for maximum allowable G limit can and likely are wholly independent of whatever the hitbox for these spars is defined as, and whatever hypothetical real-world G resistance it might have. Since, if this theory is correct, the hitbox for the spar is not the thing that's being used to determine the maximum G force - instead, a simple variable in a table or database is being used, instead. In all likelihood.

 

Of course, spar integrity is a factor in this, but there's absolutely no reason to assume it's the main or even exclusive factor. For example:

• If the spar's integrity is 100%, then overstress occurs at whenever the plane's maximum G-force rating is met or exceeded.
• If the spar's integrity is < 100%, then the overstress occurs at the maximum G-force minus some coefficient based on the spar's percentage of damage.

Spar integrity itself would be calculated based on the number of bullets that've hit the spar, a figure accounting for how much damage each hit inflicts on a spar, and then some calculation to determine when the number of hits has exceeded the width (or whatever) of the spar and thus has compromised its integrity.

 

Spar integrity could also be calculated based on previous overstress (but not critical overstress) inflicted on the plane. Meaning it would be < 100% even if the plane hadn't been struck by bullets.

 

The above is an entirely reasonable and (IMHO) cogent explanation by which to achieve the objectives of A) having a maximum G limit consistent with historical records and B) having a damage model that accounts for bullet strikes of the defined spar hitboxes (which are themselves created in accordance with known spar dimensions - but which DO NOT necessarily include the influence of bracing wires, etc).

 

If this theory is correct, and spar hitboxes (which are based on real-world spar dimensions) are decoupled from maximum G rating (which exists in a table or database or similar), then it would help to explain why planes with smaller sparring (and more external bracing wires) would suffer a greater number wing failures due to bullet damage, while still respecting known G limits when undamaged.

 

 

On 6/8/2020 at 3:06 AM, Holtzauge said:

We can continue to discuss this until hell freezes over but without a detailed understanding of how the DM actually works we are fumbling in the dark. However, we CAN see the results and the only thing that counts is if the Entente wings are falling off more often than the Central wings due to battle damage in general and in a large sample.

 

And that's really the bottom line. As endusers, we will never really know how "the sausage is made" with respect to creating the illusion of realistic flight in this or any other sim (at least, not unless we are coders and given access to the code). But the bottom line is simple - there's a problem demonstrated, and it would be nice if the devs would fix it, using whatever tools they have available.

 

9 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

The upside is, whatever is fed into the DM, for the Fokkers and the Bristols and the Pfalz, it works well for the game. I don't mind if the DM is counting rice in China for internal mechanics, as long as in the game it gives us something plausible in return. It shouldn't be too hard getting a bit more realistic with the aircraft that are most degraded now.

 

And again, really, this is the main point. It's not for us to reverse engineer the game for the devs; it's for us to point out when it's gone off course, and let them know. As we have.

Edited June 9, 2020 by DakkaDakkaDakka

[No.23_Triggers]

2. Aircraft control systems DM has been upgraded. The probability of losing control in a certain control axis depends on the control wires or rods configuration of a particular aircraft and existence of a reserve control channel (or its lack thereof);

interested to see if this changes anything for us...

[No.23_Starling]

18 minutes ago, US93_Larner said:

2. Aircraft control systems DM has been upgraded. The probability of losing control in a certain control axis depends on the control wires or rods configuration of a particular aircraft and existence of a reserve control channel (or its lack thereof);

interested to see if this changes anything for us...

I’m just happy I’ll be able to see my wings as the rip off behind me.

[ZachariasX]

Yes, the DM just has been altered. So much for "the last change".

 

I made a short test. In QMB I can now kill 8 ace Fokkers in a single Camel with the wings remaining on. After the fights with light to moderate visual damage, I could pull between ~4.5 g and ~6.5 g to make the wings go after the fights. The control cables ("rods" in tech chat) can be shot now and they fail. Upon damage, you can also have restricted stick movements. Just a couple of flights and it may or may not mean anything. But is sure liked it. The control failures are really a nice feature.

 

But for completenes sake @AnPetrovich, whatever you did in this update, out of sheer principle, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

And yes, we still expect even more. Always. We woulnd't if it wasn't you from you guys.

[No.23_Triggers]

Stoked. About to test in a minute! Really keen to see what control failures are all about - because that was a massive part that was missing I think! I've read a lot of accounts of pilots saying their "Controls were shot away"...really nice surprise! 

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by US93_Larner

[HagarTheHorrible]

 

How relevant, I don't know, but it was fun watching.

 

Fokker - Nachbauten / Fokker D.VII fuselage, undercarriage, engine bearers Load test.

 

Aircraft Spruce Testing for DeHavilland Mosquito

 

Building Spruce Bi-Planes WW1..1918

 

Fokker - Nachbauten / Fokker D.VII

 

British SE.5a build

 

Aircraft being manufactured at an Albatros Factory in Germany during World War I

 

Watching various videos, it did make me wonder whether Antony Fokkers use of thick aerofoils was inspiration or desperation.  Maybe the use of thick aerofoils was actually more to do with problems being able to get hold of aircraft grade timber, it all being snaffled by Albatros, the box spars being a result of trying to build their way out of supply problems rather than re-inventing the wheel.  A bit like the swept wing on the 262.

Edited June 9, 2020 by HagarTheHorrible

[BMA_Hellbender]

Bristol bomb racks were fixed! ❤️

 

Control rods DM is a game changer.

 

I love how it directly affects force feedback as well: lose one control rod and your stick goes half limp, lose both and it all suddenly feels a bit too familiar.

[J2_Bidu]

1 hour ago, ZachariasX said:

The control cables ("rods" in tech chat) can be shot now and they fail. Upon damage, you can also have restricted stick movements.

 

So now there is one other way to die in a D7F...! (or a DR1 for that matter).

[No.23_Triggers]

9 minutes ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

So now there is one other way to die in a D7F...! (or a DR1 for that matter).

 

One more reason to bail, more like

 

but yes, this, apparently, has made the D.VII less “indestructible”...

 

did some very brief SPAD testing...AI Alb and Halb wings were still flying off like nobody’s business...the SPAD did. feel a little tougher, but won’t stand up to aggressive manoeuvres....although I did manage a 7G manoeuvre at one point with wing damage. Possible now, or sheer luck? 
 

also had rudder shot out twice and left aileron shot out...very cool! Going to add a really interesting new dynamic to dogfights 
 

keen to give this a proper test tomorrow 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by US93_Larner

[ST_Catchov]

1 hour ago, ZachariasX said:

I made a short test. In QMB I can now kill 8 ace Fokkers in a single Camel with the wings remaining on. After the fights with light to moderate visual damage, I could pull between ~4.5 g and ~6.5 g to make the wings go after the fights. The control cables ("rods" in tech chat) can be shot now and they fail. Upon damage, you can also have restricted stick movements. Just a couple of flights and it may or may not mean anything. But is sure liked it. The control failures are really a nice feature.

 

Very cool. 

 

4 hours ago, US93_Larner said:

2. Aircraft control systems DM has been upgraded. The probability of losing control in a certain control axis depends on the control wires or rods configuration of a particular aircraft and existence of a reserve control channel (or its lack thereof);

interested to see if this changes anything for us...

 

Well don't keep me in suspenders man. Where's the report? AND the 4007 discussion thread? 

[No.23_Gaylion]

28 minutes ago, J5_Hellbender said:

Bristol bomb racks were fixed! ❤️

 

Control rods DM is a game changer.

 

I love how it directly affects force feedback as well: lose one control rod and your stick goes half limp, lose both and it all suddenly feels a bit too familiar.

 

No way! My FFB is currently on the way and I can't wait!

[J2_Bidu]

6 minutes ago, US93_Larner said:

One more reason to bail, more like

 

I only bail when I think I would have bailed for real. That is considering the trust the parachutes deserved at the time.  ?

 

Let me tell you: it's not often.

[No.23_Gaylion]

18 minutes ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

So now there is one other way to die in a D7F...! (or a DR1 for that matter).

 

There's a third way but I can't talk about it.

[J2_Bidu]

Just now, US93_Talbot said:

 

There's a third way but I can't talk about it.

 

It's crashing into ANOTHER invisible D7.

 

It's not a secret anymore!

[emely]

If the situation with glass wings has not changed, then this means that the deceased just received new shiny tooth crowns.  Need a test in MP.  There is no mention of wings in the official text

.

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

Bristols still not ridged enough.

[Zooropa_Fly]

Try putting some of your viagra in the tank. 

?

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

8 minutes ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

Try putting some of your viagra in the tank. 

?

How did you know?

[emely]

Guys, I'm sorry if someone upset this my message in a closed topic

Of course it was sarcasm and a little sadness ...

[Zooropa_Fly]

I wouldn't worry eme, a break from DM threads is maybe a good thing for a while.

 

S!

[ST_Catchov]

@emely Don't sweat it man. Sure we all get a bit emotional and frustrated at times. Look at @US103_Baer, he got a lucky shot that jammed his elevator and went down in an uncontrollable vertical dive that killed him and thus destroyed his v-life streak that he had taken months to attain. And it was all captured on video. Did he vent on the forum? Shit yeah. Was he angry? Apoplectic. Will he get over it? A few months maybe. But the thing is, he's still here.

 

We're all in this together and none of us are going anywhere despite the flawed DM and emotional outbursts. We all know that. 

[Zooropa_Fly]

Why do I twitch every time I hear the words 'we're all in it together'..

[unreasonable]

4 hours ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

I wouldn't worry eme, a break from DM threads is maybe a good thing for a while.

 

S!

 

I agree. People getting emotional, far too dogmatic: just repeating themselves. Until we either have some more RL data, word from the developers or a DM tweak there is nothing much more to be said. 

[unreasonable]

4 hours ago, catchov said:

@emely Don't sweat it man. Sure we all get a bit emotional and frustrated at times. Look at @US103_Baer, he got a lucky shot that jammed his elevator and went down in an uncontrollable vertical dive that killed him and thus destroyed his v-life streak that he had taken months to attain. And it was all captured on video. Did he vent on the forum? Shit yeah. Was he angry? Apoplectic. Will he get over it? A few months maybe. But the thing is, he's still here.

 

We're all in this together and none of us are going anywhere despite the flawed DM and emotional outbursts. We all know that. 

 

My study on the prevalence and effectiveness of flying cars will take a few months,  but since you like my graphs so much ....

 

[SeaW0lf]

Did we get any fixes in the damage model with the 4.008 update?

Edited July 8, 2020 by SeaW0lf

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

3 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

Did we get any fixes in the damage model with the 4.008 update?

LOL.

[SeaW0lf]

Honestly, I'm curious ? I dedicated too much time to this game. I'm still hopeful.

[J2_Bidu]

At least we have a possible fix for the invisibility problem. Let's hope it's final, or a dramatic improvement. I'm quite curious to what people's experience will be like in the next few days. Some people complained it happened to them on almost every sortie.

[LukeFF]

59 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

Did we get any fixes in the damage model with the 4.008 update?

 

No