The Flight Model Thread

[RSphil]

Originally Posted by Juryrig

He'd have been at the back end of his career just as I started mine, then. Was he at Warton? I did 2 years on Tornado (the GR4/mid life update programme), 2 years on EFA (Eurofighter Typhoon as it became) and three years in R&D.

It was a lot less exciting than it sounds, mind you.

The 'wings' on an Apache are just there to hang weapons on, IIRC - they make them wing shaped just 'cos it reduces drag. *waits to be corrected by a helicopter geek - I admit to knowing bugger all about rotary wing aircraft*

ye he was at Warton. he was a floor manager in one of the hangers. he was there for 30 odd years.

you are correct that the wings on the apache are for weapon pods ect but are aerodynamic to reduce drag. all rotor blades though if you look at them are thin long wings. instead of needing forward momentum to get air flow over them like a plane they spin to produce lift.

Bac aint the same these days. even when my dad left it was not as fun as back in the day lol.

[bht]

I just wanted to ask- are these characteristic numbers based on stock planes or are they including upgrades? The lack of quantification of what the cert upgrades do make me wary of putting certs into them. I mean is my top speed going to go up 4 kph or is it going to go up 10? You have to grind so much just to unlock them so it just feels slightly ridiculous. I mean after all the increases could be exponential with cert level so the end result may be more of what i am looking for.

I think that's my biggest complaint with planetside right now is just saying 'is better than the last one' isn't exactly helpful.

[Bravix]

Originally Posted by RSphil

ok ok. though the apache dose not use fixed wings it uses lots of little wings. i understand fully how aircraft work as i have been round them all my life. my dad worked for British aerospace and helped build things like the concord, tornado, jaguar and the first EAP which was the prototype for the Eurofighter today. i also have done stuff at collage for aerodynamics ect. and the odd job when i was an engineer.

the wings on most of the aircraft in game are id say ok. bar the Gal. with no Winglets it has no aid for lift. Winglets make shorter wings viable. i noticed the lib has them so thats ok. the smaller aircraft with the stub wings will act like the starfighter.
so the Gal and scythe are the 2 id say would not be able to fly. but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Starfighters wings might not be super long, but they are larger than the Reaver/Mosquito wings. Have more surface area to create more lift. The mosquito's wings are teeny, hardly any area.

I'm surprised by your comment on the gal. If anything, I'd so it's the only airplane that's semi-realistic. It's also the only aircraft in game that has ailerons. They don't work like ailerons should, you kinda strafe to one side instead of actually turning, but at least they look cool and move around.

Assuming the metal that they use in the future is more light weight, I'd say the Galaxy is the most realistic. Quite a bit of wing on that thing. With its design, it'd definitely have a high stall speed, though that's okay since it VTOL to manage that.

Obviously, the Scythe wouldn't fly under normal circumstances, but it uses space magic (somehow uses the planets magnetic field) so it makes sense that it can. The other two, however, are supposedly normal.

Since we're bringing up our backgrounds now, I'm a pilot of fixed-wing aircraft.

Bleh I'm done for now. Forgive any spelling/grammar I messed up on, I'm full of Percocet

Edit: Don't know if I mentioned but you seem focussed on wingtips. They're cool, they give a nice little bonus to lift, but that bonus is relatively small compared to all the lift which is going to be created by the wings themselves. Wingtips would definitely by optional in my opinion.

Edit edit: Oh and regading the heli's rotor, I realize they're all basically tiny wings. That's why I made the (fixed) distinction in my previous post

[Juryrig]

Can we continue the discussion under the clear understanding that we're just plane nerds chatting shit about the viability of imaginary aircraft in a game as if it's a friendly discussion round a pub table over a few beers? Cos that'll be fun and interesting.

This being the internet it's all too easy to end up in arguments about right and wrong, which is less fun. Especially when talking about the realism of stuff in video games I'm very much in the first paragraph, here.

Besides, I want to post a link to the mother of all small-winged aircraft, but I'm not going to do so if it's just going to make me look like an asshat

[Rolfski]

I cannot wait for this discussion to go through the roof the moment aircraft carriers make it into the game.