I was reading the memoirs of a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who wrote extensively about the training pilots received and the challenges of hauling cargo or troops in a Huey. What stood out to me, was the challenging landing zones, and the effect of speed and air temperature when generating lift for a take off with a helicopter, and how experienced pilots can leverage this knowledge to get the most out of their aircraft. I haven’t read as extensively on planes but I would expect that it’s much the same.
I’m a big fan of Mudrunner (Less of a fan of Snowrunner) and It occured to me that the physics in war thunder are exceptionally well fleshed out and user friendly considering how much of the vehicles functions are being modelled up to and including simulation level. Based on the success of Euro truck, Snowrunner and Flight simulator, I figure the War Thunder devs would be in the perfect position to make a singleplayer/coop game about hauling cargo with planes, helicopters, boats, tanks etc (or some combination of all four) to create a challenging but cosy single player game where you get to enjoy a puzzle solving, route planning cargo game while enjoying the physics of accurately modelled vehicles.
Ehhh, Warthunder’s physics engine is extremely outdated. We have more realiatic flight sims pre-2000. The only thing Warthunder does especially well is damage simulation (and even that was done lazily).
I should clarify that the war thunder engine provides a satisfying impression of a realistic sim. I’ve been playing many different sims in the last 6 months and while there is a lot to be said for accuracy the games themselves were quite miserable and sterile to play.
I think War Thunder does well with the feels, translating a somewhat consistent physics feel to gameplay.
Have you played other flight sims? Have you played air simulator mode to know how things work without instructor?
Because instructor lowkey cheats and turns off a lot of stuff (you can test by enabling autotrim in test flight and comparing maneuvers at low speeds while otherwise using full-real controls)
I have.
Il2: Bf109F2 feels much the same as WT: Bf109F2. Same for Mig-3. I dont have yak-7 in WT but I got yak-9 and they’re supposed to be pretty close and they handle similarly as well.
The only real difference I noticed is the presence of wind and turbulance. This is pretty significant, but it’s an external factor.
Warthunder flight model includes:
Propeller thrust curves, including stalling where the propeller blade is at the wrong prop pitch/RPM for the airflow for a given propeller blade design causing for a sudden drop in thrust despite the general trend being “lower speed = higher thrust.” This is super easily observable with late-war bf109s like bf109G14 and K4 because they have incredibly powerful engines but still very small propeller blades compared to U.S planes. This can be somewhat compensated for by manually adjusting prop pitch.
Propeller dynamics are pretty much all present. RPM and horsepower correspond to torque which has a direct effect on left-turning tendencies. Aircraft AoA has an aeffect on left-turning tendencies (P-factor), spiralling slipstream is not easily pointed at, but if we attribute it to difference of left-turning tendencies at different IAS, then it should too be present because behaviourally that’s pretty much it. I call these left turning tendencies, but in WT they actually depend on whether it’s clockwise or counter-clockwise.
Gyroscopic precession is also a thing. If you are moving your nose up/down too quickly, your nose actually throws off to the side. This is best explained by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3smLuTr0Fk . You can use it as part of your aerobatics, and it can also add to stall conditions.
Speaking of stalling, when you input too little left rudder when pull too much AoA while rolled left and turning, your outer wing (right wing) stalls first and drops. Inversely, left wing. This is affected by aforementioned propeller dynamics though so it’s easier to stall high-performance planes turning one direction over the other due to how their propeller effects excarbarate slip and skid or counter it.
Skidding is very violent, as it should be. Skidding is when you over-compensate for point 4 and instead cause your inner wing to stall, which leads to it dropping and you flipping over and entering a flat spin.
You can perform the “Falling leaf” aerobatic maneuver with stalled wings to compensate for assymetric stall using rudder.
Rolling and pulling causes adverse yaw. For aircraft that were designed to compensate for this, said yaw is of lesser magnitude. C.205 are a good example of such compensation design (their wings are assymetrical).
You can use slip to rapidly lose altitude and speed when landing.
Basically hard left/right rudder, opposite aileron to stay level.
Rudder remains more effective at lower speeds for longer than ailerons when you have the engine on (thus enabling you the hammerhead maneuver). Hammerhead doesn’t seem to work with engine off in sim when I try it.
Fuel location is modelled, and it has an impact on aircraft stability as you add or take away fuel.
Notably, the P-51D varaints were notorious IRL to be ABSOLUTELY horrible to fly at full internal fuel tanks.
This is represented in warthunder where the P51D refuses to settle down when you let go of the stick and demonstrates behaviour you’d expect of Cp and Cg being too close.
This behaviour disappears at low fuel.
This is because of the rear fuel tank behind the pilot.
The same is true with Fw190s where too low fuel reduces your ability to pull out of dives as quickly due to shifting weight too far forward in this case.
Seriously though.
Turn off wind & turbulance for IL2:GB.
Grab someone with already set-up, optimized controls.
Pick Bf109F2 because it has fully automated engine.
Make someone fly it in WT Sim and Il2:GB.
Plane has different magnitudes for certain behaviours (the leading edge slats help with high-AoA better in Il:2) but they otherwise exhibit much the same behaviour in my own experience flying a career campaign with the F2 over the past weekend and behaviour.
If anything, F2/F4 feels easier to fly in Il2 because it takes more effort to actually stall her and she feels generally more stable.
(now add back turbulance and it still feels quite chill to fly compared to Mig-3 but not comparable to WT anymore.)
I’d speak of F4-F4 but I dont have BoS, only BoM and BoK.
On topic
I like the idea. I enjoy landing in stupid places especially. More realistic Dropship: United Peace Force vibes!
KSP + FAR + way too many mods makes for a decent “land plane in stupid place” sim, but it doesn’t really work for props without breaking so WT could offer a prop based options, would maybe slipping to land actually important rather than sth to just do for fun.
You’re not entirely wrong, there are some good / well modeled parts of the flight models.
However, especially with the helicopters and jets I find lots of problems with the fm’s.
The number of helicopters I’ve seen roll upside down to avoid missiles and roll back over upright and fly away without chopping their own tail off is astronomical. Or the incorrect programming of the collective and utter lack of tail rotor issues etc.
It’s not terrible, and it could be fixed but I do think there are better flight sim games to use as a starting point.
I can’t think of another game that approaches the level of WT.
I like DCS:combined arms but it’s virtually dead and as good as it is at some things, it doesn’t have nearly the equipment base. Being in a league of its own kinda makes it the best by default.
Well no, it’s just entirely off the OP and I disagree with either of them being better combined arms games.
GHPC is also virtually dead (I own it but haven’t played in a while) and it’s combined arms play is worlds less than WT unless they’ve recently unlocked aircraft. It does have some things I like but overall I don’t think you can make an argument it’s a better combined arms sim when you are so much more limited.
Arma is much better argument especially the later variants but it lacks severely in terms of scope when compared to WT, and still has plenty of issues with funky flight modeling and physics. If you’re more interested in the infantry/ground fight I can see the appeal but I don’t agree with it as better.
I cannot comment on jets, so I’ll take your word and especially for helicopters.
109s I can compare with Il2 at least, and both games seem to show the same kinds of behaviour with Warthunder being a bit lighter & easier to stall (presumably due to aforementioned slat modelling giving you higher AoA before losing a wing.)
Generally speaking tho, I can do the exact same inputs and get approximately the same outputs in the 2 games.
Landing is different. WT has no ground effect (but IIRC it could have it, just disabled? Or maybe I’m mixing it up with wind). I balloon/float way more in IL2 than in WT if I try to land the same way as in WT. On flipside, I bounce way more often in WT than in IL2. From what I saw of Wingaling’s comparison video, this is due to gear damping/physics.
The ground vehicle physics in WT really ain’t it when compared to the Spintires serie, even Snowrunner that is the weakest on the physics is still leaps and bounds ahead of WT.
While WT isn’t a dedicated genre game like Spintires is, it’s mind boggling to think that we still don’t have working tracked vehicles, bare minimum gearboxes or ground linkage, and no torque.
Tanks do a decent enough illusion due to their slower nature, but it really falls apart as soon as you start going fast, be it wheeled or tracked, with the Type 93 and VT1-2 as notoriously broken in the mobility department. That’s the one thing in common with the Spintires series I guess…
My number one hope so far has been for Gaijin to add the 2CV GHAN1 to have direct point of comparison on how bad Gaijin is at cars, but as of yet no luck.