Ahem, lets not lie.
M2.5 Rafale (Faster than F15E with 229’s).
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Where’s the lie though? The acceleration and topspeed did get reduced, previously the engine’s topspeed was somewhere around Mach 2.8 or something in that neighborhood.
Now with the nerf, it does seem like the Rafale is slower than the F-15E and EFT at getting to Mach 2, feel free to correct me though.
Also, is this not a disingenuous way of looking at things? If the Rafale’s performance this patch was modeled so that it dramatically fell off after Mach 2.1, which reduces its topspeed compared to the F-15E and EFT, would that impact its ingame performance at all?
The only feasible way to fix the performance would result in reduced performance across the entire supersonic envelope, specifically at higher mach numbers like 1.5+.
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No it isn’t, is it?
Gaijin devs could easily make it so that the thrust curve dramatically dropped off after Mach 2, or the Rafale’s vne, and the ingame performance would still remain the same while the Rafale would then have a much lower engine topspeed?
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Well they could do that yes, but is there any indication that the engines just crap out above a certain speed? In fact pretty sure engine documents were supplied to the devs which showed the engines scale very well at higher speeds.
It’s likely a combination of drag and thrust adjustments (accounting for supersonic intake dynamics) that would be needed.
Dassault themselves said the Rafale’s intake operated up to Mach 2, the developers rejected the report saying they modeled the current engine thrust curve using uninstalled thrust values (I don’t recall the engine thrust values going past Mach 2.3).
But to go back to the topic, just because the developers allowed for the thrust curve to go even up to Mach 3, doesn’t mean the thrust curve up to Mach 2 is incorrect when you could be inching and inching slowly all the way from Mach 2 to Mach 3 over eternity.
I’ve been seeing people point to the engine topspeed as proof of the Rafale overperforming despite the Rafale being worse now up to Mach 2 compared to F-15E and EFT* , but their only evidence which is a nothingburger is the engine thrust curve going up to Mach 2.5, which isn’t an argument as dropping the thrust dramatically after Mach 2 would still not affect the Rafale’s gameplay performance.
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Rafale is very similar to typhoon and trades blows in terms of acceleration, which is probably a hint that its overperforming imo.
Yeah its certainly not creeping towards higher mach numbers. The complaints are valid tbh.
Realistically, clean it should be approaching MM1.9/2 and tending to 0, with missiles the top speed should be circa M1.7-M1.8.
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Is the Eurofighter’s acceleration to Mach 2 correct?
It may be overperforming i havent personally checked it, but its certainly an aircraft known for its high acceleration across the envelope, and it clearly loses its speed above M2. Rafale just doesnt see that fall off in acceleration.
If you can find someone who can edit the Rafale’s vne to Mach 2.6, and recorded a video of it reaching Mach 2.4-2.5, then we could probably do something about it by attaching engine thrust curves and the video to a report.
I should be able to if i can get a copy of the rafale blk.
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this is the flight model blk for the rafale
Can’t you just do a test flight on a custom difficulty with VNE turned off?
At least I thought that was one of the options?
not really
you could do a testflight in arcade but idk how that influences the FM
Note: that is in JSON format, so it is not readable by the game.
Also I think you would have to apply the modified FM to a custom aircraft, which the devs might start getting a bit iffy with regarding validity.
Ideally, Rafale should likely suffer a larger increase in drag at supersonic speeds than the EFT. The engine thrust curve having already been provided means that aspect of the aircraft shouldn’t be touched imo, but known design aspects of the Rafale, such as its less swept wings (48deg) compared to the EFT’s 53deg sweep should incur larger drag penalties at supersonic speeds.
The time at which the increased supersonic penalties occurs from wing sweep is, to my understanding (so take with grain of salt), related to when the mach cone begins crossing over the wing, which is why wings are swept (more sweep = more delay in mach cone overlap with wings).
Mach angle can be determined pretty easily with this handy NASA provided equation:
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/machang.html
While wing sweep angle for both planes is known (as posted above). This means the Rafale should begin incurring increased drag penalties from its wing design around M1.49 (M = 1/sin(42)), while EFT should be incurring drag penalties from wing sweep around M1.66 (M = 1/sin(37)).
Of note: angle used is 42 for Rafale and 37 for EFT because wing sweep is referenced via a straight wing, while mach angle is defined via airframe, to put both within the same reference frame, you do 90- wing sweep angle
So ideally, Rafale’s drag should probably increase substantially at supersonic speeds in-game, preferably at the above stated ~M1.49, as the wings begin experiencing a sharp increase in wave drag.
Relevant wiki article sections:
Wing control surface efficiency should also likely begin dropping as they begin experiencing supersonic airflow, but I’m less clear on that aspect.
Funny enough, of the 3 similar delta ducks (EFT/Rafale/J-10C) the Rafale is seemingly the least impacted by supersonic flight (flatter “jump” when entering supersonic flight), and has the lowest supersonic drag, despite all 3 aircrafts being relatively similar in size, and the Rafale seemingly being the least optimized for supersonic aerodynamics (likely due to the fact it needs preferential aerodynamics at very low subsonic speeds for carrier landings).
The J-10C even has lower subsonic drag and then converts to higher supersonic drag than the Rafale despite probably being a touch smaller AND having higher swept wings (somewhere around the low 50 degs from what I can tell from a few different sources, none seem to give it an exact number?), so it cant be just down to gaijin thinking the Rafale is the smallest of the 3. They’ve somehow given the worst supersonically designed aircraft of the bunch the best supersonic performance…
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rafale also has the worst intake of the bunch
something like an F-15 can make up for its lower wing sweep angle with moving supersonic intakes, but the Rafale’s are fixed geometry unlike J-10 or Eurofighter
rounded intakes are also worse for high speed just from shape iirc