And so at times I am starting to get bored with Air Realistic Battle, not all the time, but the boredom is coming. But Im not getting bored with War thunder in general, does that make sense, it has a lot of avenues to get interested in.
Out of all the vehicles, since Beta, Ive only flown planes. When I was a kid, now an adult (hopefully), who would buy 100 sheets of paper, fold them into 3 different types of planes, and then my bed would be the aircraft carrier LOL. I had 2 WWII grandpas. One a Navy pilot, one a Marine.
Luckily I had parents who allowed me to also shoot my BB gun in my room, as long as the door was closed, yeah pretty cool. Im 82nd Airborne, because I loved early James Bond.
Ok, so my question is…when you go to Sim from Realistic, do the planes still carry the same GENERAL flight characteristics?
Say for instance, the First Bearcat, is it still going to bleed speed and overheat pretty quickly? Is a Corsair, while capable of 700 km/hr, compress at 610 km/hr? Will a British Griffon Spit still be a Beast? Will a US F16C retain its general characteristics? Will a Mig29 still have that great radar for its BR?..and so you get the gist of my questions.
A integral part of success in this game, because lets admit it, War Thunder physics are different than the real world, is learning those physics, knowing what youre planes can do, and the planes you are facing can do, you know how to treat them…
If you are in a Sim battle, as opposed to a Realistic Battle, are those flight characteristics going to carry over to SIM?
If one of you chaps could post your controls in a screenshot, I would appreciate it, I hate to lose LOL, but I know the control setup is different, Ive looked at it a million times. I am playing with a mouse, will be able to chunk the money over for a joystick if I need to, in about another month, have other things going on. But right now, lol, its mouse control.
Thank You Community, I would appreciate your comments and advice.
But that is the General question, do those same flight characteristics carry over, thats what has held me back from Sim, having to re-learn what every enemy plane does, thats important for success, …as you well know, thats how you know how to attack and WIN and get those silvers LOL.
To start, always have variety where you can. Play what you love.
Separate BRs, game modes, and even vehicles and burn out should be relatively easy to avoid.
Now, to address your points.
1- To an extent.
Most of what you learned in air RB is applicable, however the instructor won’t actuate your rudder for you.
You will have to learn the inherent flaws of every aircraft you decide to use.
Flight models between realistic and simulator are however identical. Turn rate, compression speeds, etc will remain identical.*
*Refer to the fact instructor’s not there to augment rudder.
1a- Instead of spacebar being bombs, have spacebar be mouse look activation. This will serve you well in simulator regardless of input methods you use.
1b- In jets with modern-ish flight control systems there are SAS modes. Dampening is one I particularly use often as it makes flying easier.
2- I won’t show you everything, but I will show you things I deem important:
The only difference between air realistic battles and air simulator battles are the flying behaviour of the planes, is much easier to stall in simulator battles,
Other characteristics such like radar performance, guns and suspended weapons still the same, in one side you fight in a massive map, in the other in a very small space.
According to Squishface, RB mode has some flight model changes compared to sim. If you go to “Realistic” mode (joystick but instructor), propeller torque and other effects are disabled. This leads to increased control at low speeds compared to sim:
This also has the potential consequence that in RB, rolling left vs rolling right makes no difference. In sim, due to prop torque rolling in direction of your turning tendency is faster than rolling against it. Furthermore, maintaining coordinated flight requires different amounts of rudder input going right/left (to the point of not needing rudder in certain cases due to left-turning tendencies offsetting your slip).
Another difference is that in RB, the instructor limits your peak performance to ensure you never stall and depart controlled flight. This has the consequence in reduced maximum AoA and thus worse turn performance. This is very visible with Bf109s. However, on the flipside the lack of “foolproofing” means it’s very easy to kill yourself by over-pulling and G-LOCs are also much easier to get while harder to avoid using neg-G to offset them (you need to shake the stick back and forth rather than just tap W).
Yet another difference is, in my experience, the instructor does not use rudder equally well for all aircraft. Often, it over-inputs rudder leading to serious slip and thus energy bleed in turns that you can avoid in sim. This feels very blatant with the british mustang for me - I have much better energy retention flying stick & rudder to mouse aim as mouse aim wobbles all over the place. Whereas for yaks and japanese props this is not as significant.
Engine performance & thermodynamics is same in RB and SB. A key thing to note in SB is due to map size and lack of predictable engagement, it is not a good idea to camp WEP if your plane has anti-detonation iwater njection or MW50. You’ll never run out on the F4U-4 in ARB (15 minute anti-det, match 25 minutes) while in sim climbing with WEP can leave you dry when it actually matters.
A big thing you’ll notice is damage is far more brutal in sim over RB. Losing flaps in a turn can kill you due to the sudden assymetry causing you to spin out if you don’t respond fast enough. Getting wing root damage can cripple your roll rate and in a high-performance turn lead to assymetric stall and thus spin. A mere blackened vertical stabilizer (not cut off, just blackened) not realizing the loss of yaw stability and executing a near-stall maneuver can put you into a permanent irrecoverable spin (I tried to hammerhead in my Bf109G14 and died because of this.)
On the flipside, direct control of your aircraft and fast reaction means damage that’d be lethal in RB CAN be compensated and recovered provided you have enough rudder authority left. Rudder is seriously OP if you can use it well for survival. It’s a lot of fun to nurse a dead plane back to base and land against all odds.
Oh, more differences of prop torque being present in sim:
Gyroscopic Precession (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3smLuTr0Fk)
Pitching up/down causes your nose to shoot off to the side, and you can potentially use it for near-stall fancy schmancy reversals.
I’m yet to successfully do anything like that outside of messing around with acrobatics in test flight tho.
Are you familiar with how to back up and import controls?
Make a backup of your controls and take care to remember where the backups are saved.
These are my controls. I fly mousejoy. I feel I have a decent baseline success with these against random pubs in 1vs1. This takes practice to get used to tho. Copy the whole paste and create a .blk file where your backed up controls are saved (usually my documents/my games/warthunder/saves) and paste its contents.
Then import the new .blk file as if restoring a backup.
WARNING: OPTIMIZED FOR PROPS. ZERO MISSILE/RADAR CONTROLS.
WARNING: UNPLAYABLE IN RB, BACKUP YOUR NORMAL CONTROLS. WASD IS OVERRIDEN. RUDDER CONTROLS FLAT OUT DONT WORK WITH MOUSE AIM.
What my controls do:
I use IL-2 style rudder controls. What this means when you press Q, your rudder pedal stays depressed and thus the rudder stays deflected. This is very important, without this you need to rapidly tap Q/E to stay coordinated. With this, you press Q and let go and your rudder stays put.
You want to adjust the “Relative control step” on a plane-by-plane basis to whatever feels most comfortable.
Rule of thumb for me is I want no less than 3 rapid Q/E presses to get relatively coordinated in a high-performance turn and I rather slip than skid. However, I also want a single Q/E to not throw my nose around too much.
I wouldn’t go higher than 5% or lower than 2%.
This is achieved with “Relative Axis.”
Also mousejoy has 0% rudder mixing
All “Movement” sensitivities are 100%, anything less makes your nose wobble because this is not sensitivity but rather filtering if you’re familiar. If not - it means it makes your inputs have a delay to avoid noise causing erratic outcomes. 100% is no filtering. The wobble on yaw makes taking off almost impossible in german fighters.
Actual sensitivities are set in the specific axis controls (non-linearity setting is what you want to mess with, leave relative step at 0% for anything but rudder.) I went for 2 nonlinearity for pitch due to spitfires. IIRC roll has 1.5?
I have replaced WASD with camera controls that rotate your head on a left/right (AD) and down/up (W/S - inverted basically). You only control roll by moving mouse left/right, pitch by up/down.
I have replaced 1 and 3 with “Lean left/lean right”, self-explanatory.
Doing 1a and 3d allows you to lean around and look behind you in planes without a bubble canopy.
I have replaced RMB with “raise head”, TAB+RMB with “Lower head”
I have added Tab+W/S to lean forward/back
Pressing X resets camera to gunsight, but not zoom.
C turns your mousejoy into freelook. Useful for quick glances, but means you lose roll/pitch control. I mainly look around with WASD, 1/3, and RMB/Tab+rmb.
Z is zoom to max/default, mouse wheel is gradual zoom
Tab NO LONGER shows scoreboard. Press N for scoreboard. This is so Tab can be used as a modifier key
Ctrl/Shift are exclusively throttle
/ * - are MEC controls to enable MEC and enable ppitch and rads
Oil & Water rads are controlled together with numpad 4 6
PP is numpad 7 and 9
Gear switch is numpad +
Oil rads can be also controlled with numpad 1 3 (basically adjust water & oil together, then adjust oil.)
ALT+Home is trimmer fixation
Cursor left/right is roll trim, Cursor up/down is pitch trim, ALT+left/right is rudder trim. Some planes can only be trimmed in test flight and trimmer fixation carries over to real battles. This represents ground crews adjusting trim tabs for planes like the Bf109s before Bf109G14.
F3 and F4 act as weapon selectors for guns and ordnance respectively
LMB fires currently selected gun(s)
Space fires currently selected ordnance
IIRC tab+f4 selects ripple quantity for ordnance (may have forgot to set tho)
F6 pings your location. VERY IMPORTANT. If you hear “Follow me!” and chat shows someone is in your gridsquare or nearby, press F6! This is your main way to communicate and provide IFF
F7 pings your location AND says “Confirmed hostiles on me, please help.” Watch WingalingDragon’s tutorial for how to use it but commonsense is sufficient: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNFqnchp0xk)
F8 is a response to someone pinging F7(“Cover me!”) within your vicinity. It says “I’m leading for landing, and I am at altitude X in gridsquare Y”. You use this to say “Sorry, I am unable to assists as I am in need of repairs/rearming/refueling”, you want to follow it with K+report+repair/reload to clarify if you are not overwhelmed with keeping your plane alive. Reason we use “Leading for landing” rather than “Returning to base” is because LFL announces your location, RTB does NOT.
You should also use this if there’s a protacted battle for air superiority and you’re ditching to let your fellow pilots know they’re -1.
R and T are flap controls
ALT G is gear control
Q and E also act as differential braking to improve low-speed control before rudder gains authority.
Pressing MMB “Lets go” of the stick and resets it to the center. If you’re trimmed for level flight, you’ll fly level. If you have a rolling tendency, you’ll roll and so forth.
hmmm. a stall speed is an important part of a close battle,…say when you are in a Zero, which I use, to, maybe not get an airkill, but yet to stall them out and make them crash, and so in Sim, this is some characteristic I will have to learn the flight performance…thank you for that tip mate, I will take that into consideration.
I sometimes play for fun, but, other times when I want to relax and fight, I am getting a “little older” and so I get my competitive on in this game…
Thank You Mate and Good Luck, I appreciate that
Just off the top, I thank you.
I wondered if might chime in with Sim Controls, because I had asked you for them a few months ago, but yet, wasnt quite serious about them.
Well I am so grateful that you have shared your knowledge of the game with me. Yes, I will take a screenshot of your reply as I have seen time and time again, you always have a cognizant answer to a lot of questions on the Forum.
I thank you so much for your advice, and I will save a screenshot of your reply.
You know how it is,…youre getting ready to move from Realistic to Sim…but dang it I hate to lose in the meantime… I dont want to go through that aaraam notching learning phase again.
I used to have a positive K/D ratio, then aaraams came out a year and a half ago, and I spent 1,000 flights learning all the ways to notch them…but it turned me off.
OK, so thank you. You, I have seen, are a active and very valuable member of our community, thank you for your info RunaDacino…took a screenshot of that, lol, will look at it Sunday afternoon or so and think about it,
You know this is a “cheap hobby”. I have friends who have boats and cars…but they cant think like we do and spends thousands of dollars, while I might spend $80 every few months and buy a prem LOL,
I like that, Im about ready to move to Sim and have some fun.
Stall speed itself will be the same (disregarding difficulty to control). What’s usually meant by stalling is AoA stalls - you pull too hard and suddenly your wings lose lift despite being at high speed. This itself is dangerous, but not lethal. What’s lethal is the spin that follows such. The trick is more in that you must maintain coordinated flight to ensure your 2 wings stall in a symmetric manner.
When flying a conventional aircraft, turning causes your plane’s nose to drift off-center to disrupt airflow over your “outside” wing, causing your outside wing to stall before your inner wing does and thus cause you to flip upside down. These stalls will be more violent than what you see in general aviation instructional vides due to how warbirds are designed (stuff like cessnas self-stabilize more or less). You compensate by inputting rudder opposite to your nose’s drift to get it centered, but if you overdo it you disrupt airflow over your inside wing instead and stall the inside wing first. Stalling inside wing first is very violent and dangerous, so you need to be careful.
Zeros are very, very forgiving planes so you should be fine though.
Spitfires are very hard to learn and require practice to get down, I’d stay away from them until you got the basics down to second nature to avoid overwhelming yourself.
Zeros into italian planes like C202/5s1 into corsairs/yaks into bf109 into fw190 into spitfires is imo a decent way to ease into harder and harder to control aircraft.
(Reason behind italian planes is they got a fancy design characteristics where one wing is longer than the other to compensate for propeller effects and slip)
I’m just very selfish and want more people to play sim is all :p.
It looks scary, but not that hard to pick up so I’ll take whatever chances I can get to encourage folk to try prop sim.
Yes, Im good Im backing up and saving and all that…computer wise, Im cool, Im possibly not the greatest at WT, Im pretty darn good on my PC, its fascination to me, I think its pretty powerful to me.
Im the Post historion at my VFW post…and so my PC always reminds me, in a modern way of, The Library of Alexadria, which you may look up, established by Alexander the Great in the Greek days of Egypt.
Its like you have all the information of your present world at your fingertips, but yet here we are with videos, and everything else, I have a minor degree in phyisics and chemistry, and so I I think its all quite amazing. But I know how to ask questions from people who know what they are talking about.…thank you for your answer
I will def screenshot answer that…looking forward to playing Sim./
Getting bored of RB, its getting to be the same old Pattern.
Another possible FM change thtat’s not really an FM change, just in RB you’ll never take more than min fuel for most planes.
In Warthunder, the location of fuel tanks matter for flight stability. If added weight due to taking more fuel shifts your plane’s center of gravity towards the tail, expect the plane to fly in a more unstable manner that leads to the nose refusing to stabilize after you let go of the stick as quickly and instead keep pitching up.
This is very visible in P51D which was infamous for this in real life, at 31 minute fuel is not an issue but at max it is.
Fw190s also behave very differently at max vs lower fuel levels.
I will throw you a song I listen to on Youubek its // “The Metro” live by Berlin, the group … but its the live song, , song and live is what you have to enter…thank you for your help, I Ihave to imagine,thaT IF i SEE
