Why I Love Combat Flight Sims

[artao]

So I just picked up IL-2 BoS and Flying Circus on the recent sale. Really been itchin to do some WW1 combat. DECADES of combat flight sims, but never really any WW1. Mostly WW2 and modern jets.

Well, yesterday, playing one of the  Flying Circus campaigns, flying an SE5 ... Wow, I had an incredible experience!!

So I was going after another plane when out of nowhere I got hit. Pretty bad. My pilot moreso than the plane. The vision went narrow and monotone. The plane was hit such that the elevators no longer really functioned. The ailerons weren't all that great either, but at least they mostly worked. As did the rudder.

So I fled for base, of course. The attacker didn't really pursue (True to life in the early war. Not so kind in the late war tho)

I had to use throttle to control altitude. Anything less than full throttle and I'd lose altitude. Like 20min (real time) flight back to base.

Well ........ I managed to make it all the way back

However, due to having to keep the throttle wide open to maintain altitude, most of that flight was around 5000ft. I had to cut throttle to come down to landing altitude. But, between full throttle and rapidly descending, my airspeed was like 120mph. WAY too fast for a safe landing.

I brought it in nice and shallow and gentle, but didn't touch down as soon as I expected, and wanted to lift back up to come around again but saw that trying to do that would simply result in a crash. So I tried to just go with it and hold the plane down as best I could.

Well .......... SO close!! ...... I was fine until I hit that gorram tree and flipped over and my pilot got killed.

Such heroic effort to get back to base, only to be killed on landing. D'OH

AWESOME gaming experience, even tho I died. Very gripping. Not the sort of thing I really ever get in any other video games.

At least I've (mostly) stopped ripping the wings off the planes. Now to stop kicking the plane into unrecoverable spins (which WW1 biplanes are very susceptible to, I've discovered) ... These things ain't fly-by-wire high-g-load planes LOL

 

In retrospect I should have spent more effort to maintain a lower altitude so I'd have had a better chance of cutting speed for landing. Perhaps bail out immediately after touchdown even.

[taffy2jeffmorgan]

Don't we all

[Raptorattacker]

11 hours ago, artao said:

Now to stop kicking the plane into unrecoverable spins

Have you tried the Camel yet? Now there's an interesting experience!!

[Irishratticus72]

5 hours ago, Raptorattacker said:

Have you tried the Camel yet? Now there's an interesting experience!!

 

[artao]

On 3/16/2022 at 6:14 AM, Raptorattacker said:

Have you tried the Camel yet? Now there's an interesting experience!!

Yes. It was the first one I tried. Cuz it's Snoopy's plane.

HUGE mistake.

I thought I'd totally lost my abilities in flying LOL

THEN I looked up stuff on the Camel only to learn it's one of the most difficult to fly WW1 planes. .... So there's that.

[SYN_Vander]

The SE5a is what we call a 'gentleman's' plane in our squad. Flies really nice, quite stable; ability to trim and good instruments. But also quite a bit of speed and as a bonus you can elevate your Lewis gun and shoot a 2-seater from below. It's definitely one of my favorites!

Edited March 17, 2022 by SYN_Vander