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On that I do beg to differ. You dont see it because you stay here. Go over to any FB forum either at UBI, Sim HQ or Sim Outhouse.... you will find tons of converts... in fact lets face it... before IL2 came on the scene CFS, Janes and EAW were pretty much it as far as WW2 sims of any relative quality went. Sure we had Warbirds... FA... and AH..... but I refuse to pay to play.... Most of the FB fans you see and some of your partners turn their noses up at came straight from here...in fact I would go so far as to say that CFS 3 was one of the best things to happen to the IL2 franchise since the invention of trim on a slider. The bottom line is.. to each his own.. but you rarely find someone going to CFS X from IL2/FB... the other way around? Like immagrants coming to the promised land........


Give me your tired, your poor,
Your flight simming masses, yearning to fly  free,
The frustarted refuse of your arcadish sim,
Send these, the clueless, unknowing, simulator challenged,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door of Forgotten Battles 3.0.

Oh.... and one more thing.. whatever I may think of CFS 3 or MS I HAVE TO give the AV boys their props. They took a piece of absolute garbage and made it into something that is actually workable..depending on which features are important to you..... and that is something that will ALWAYS hold them in high esteem in my book...even if I STILL think CFS 3 is not a good product. Another thing that keeps me from doing CFS is that my stick setup wont work. I use a MSFFB2/X45/CHPedals/TIR setup and I cant get CFS to recognize both sticks.

BTW.....Nice skins......very nice work indeed!!

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Sorry to disappoint, but I have seen anti-FB/pro-CFS3 posts at the PF/UBI sites.  Not saying they are you or anyone in this particular thread, but I have seen these things.  Just buttresses my point that fanbases are all about the same. You guys are not particularly nobler or better than what I've seen elsewhere.  I'd love you to prove me wrong, but I don't really expect it.  It would be more honest, then, to admit it and stop bashing those sites and the folks that hang out there for the same sins committed here.

But enough with the lectures.  I offered an outsiders perspective and what I hoped were some friendly suggestions (a few posts back). 

Regarding spin and stall behavior in IL2:  are you saying you think stalls turn too quickly into spins in that game?  That definately can happen, but I can say they rarely do for me.  I get stalls without spins, but even stalling takes some effort to induce, especially with PF.  With IL2 1.0, I think you would be correct, but things are not nearly that bad in the present game.

Assuming I read you correctly, is the too quick to spin behavior a deal breaker for you for that game?  Just curious.

At the start of this thread, the comments being made created the strong impression that in IL2 planes stall/spin way too easily -- as if all you had to do was move the joystick a little and it would spin.  That is what I take exception to.  It is simply not true (post 1.0).  If that were true, you'd have to conclude that the large community that enjoys that sim are just a bunch of masochists for being willing to put up with such aggravation.  Either that or they are all ill-informed.  I think that is selling your fellow simmers way too short.

I don't mind folks bashing IL2 (or CFS3) for real, legitimate faults.  But I always hope some sense of objectivity will be maintained, rather than the typical preaching-to-the-choir style bashing that apparently goes on here and over "there".   

Actually I listed a number of things early on.  But anyway try this as a base.

Do some1G power on/power off stalls @ about 5,000ft with the P-39 with & without ammo then tell us what happens in each case & the same with the Bf-109E

Edit: you might also try a P-51D as we are working on ours right now.

BEAR

Your results are what was expected.

NACA found the P-39 to generally have "normal" stall spin characteristics that could be recovered from. The trouble most P-39 pilots got into was the aft CoG shift when the 50's and 37mm were fired removing the ammos weight from the nose.

The thing you need to remember about CoG is as it moves forward it makes the aircraft more stable & less maneuverable.  As it moves aft it provides full maneuverability
but this increased capability makes easier to stall/spin the aircraft.

Unfortunately your results suggest that PF does not appear to model a dynamic CoG.

This issue is also common in the P-38 where depending on fuel requirements the amount of ammo was actually adjusted to keep CoG within acceptable limits.

The 109E should be very difficult to spin as it was very benign in its post stall behavior.  The wing slats will give the outer panels a very high max AoA. The center stalling far in advance of the outer panels, it will pitch down with the minor wing drop as mentioned in the RAF test reports.  

The FB version is no where near this with it's canned spin algorithm.  Most reports of these planes spinning occur when one of the slats hangs up & does not deploy.

Fun thing to try with the P-51D.

http://www.avhistory.org/movies/fl1.avi

AvHistory P-51D-30 Falling Leaf  "warning its 3mb" will shorten it up if I can figure out how.

This video shows a falling leaf maneuver.  It's a training maneuver used to teach student pilots the power the rudder has past max AoA.  Notice in the upper right red readout that the wing is fully stalled. I'm holding full stick back and using rudder to alternately pick a wing up and preventing spin entry.

We called this a falling leaf but it might be called something else in other places. The plane is falling more like a stone then a leaf but is still under control, no spin & recovers easily on command at the end of the vid.

BTW this is the exact same P-51D  in the AVI further back in this thread that was spinning out of control on a yank & bank maneuver that CV8_Dudeness said it can't do.

Maybe y'all can have CV8_Dudeness the ace who so graciously taught all us noobies that planes do stall in real life run a PF "falling leaf" track for you & see how it compares to CFS3's arcade mode.  8)

Edit: Here is what a falling leaf looks like in real life. Y'all cant see the rudder movement because of the camera angle but you can here the pilots talking about the rudder.

http://www.fcitraining.com/vid_clip5_falling_leaf_exercise.htm

BEAR - AvHistory

Chuck, first let's clean up with the myth of the ever cheating and modding CFS crowd.
CFS3's validation system doesn't allow for any cheating at all, each online player needs the exactly same set of files as the host or missmatch will take care that any potential cheater can't join a game.
Ok, as for flight-modelling, the 1% AvHistory tools are pretty much standard amongst FS/CFS freeware and payware developers alike with a few exceptions such as the Firepower developers who use their own tools.
Within the CFS3 community basically every FM comes straight from the 1% guys themselfes (again, except Firepower) what should grant continuety and a high standard.
Some may have figured by now that the guys certainly know their bussiness
If you want to check it out go to their site
http://www.avhistory.org/ and get yourself some of their creations.
Our own planes (Groundcrew Design Group) also make gratefull use of the work of the Avhistory team
You can get our stuff here:
http://www.groundcrewdesign.com/

BTW, most of the CFS3 developers, inclusive 1% and Groundcrew and many others, are currently working on the Mediterranean Air War addon, a standalone freeware addon based on the CFS3 engine (with some help of evil Bill's Aces Team)
http://www.medairwar.com/

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Mathias, does this mean that there could be two sets of files, each with noticably different performance characteristics that are playable on different servers?  In other words, I fly a P-51D on server A, which uses file set A, then go to server B, which uses file set B, I get file set B and fly the P-51D there and it now behaves very differently (or could)?

>>>but when I had no ammo, I found the aircraft more stable.  It was hard to enter a spin.  With ammo, spins were more likely.<<<

I think you miss-understood what I was saying, its exactly the reverse which is correct.

The point is the plane will should become unstable as the ammo is used because the CoG is shifting back as the nose gets lighter by 240-250lbs.

A fully loaded plane should be more stable as the CoG is shifted forward when compared with the no ammo condition.

More to the point on a 1G stall you should not have spun the P-39 at all neither should the Bf-109E.

This is a WWII pilot training film of the P-39

http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com/P-39.html

Skip ahead to the 25-26 minute mark where the guy goes through some stall practice both gear up & gear down.  He will do the same as I asked you to do.  Note his speeds, the planes attitude & the comments about the stalls he is doing compared to your experience with the PF P-39.

>>>What do you consider to be the weaknesses of the CFS3 flight model?<<<

My biggest gripe is we lost control of the fuel tanks when CFS2 was replaced by CFS3.  We used to use the fuel tank selector switch to draw fuel from specific tanks as the missions progressed to keep the plane balanced out.  We could also dump fuel if we had emergencies.

Example in real life the P-51D was deadly in hard aerobatics when the 85gal ferry tank was full.  SOP to Berlin was takeoff switch to ferry run it down switch to drops run them down or drop as necessary the go to the mains.  We could duplicate this in CFS2 but cant in CFS3 as all tanks are drawn down equally.  we have to put in a workaround of "dropping" the 85 gal ferry tank when dropping the regular drop tanks


BEAR - AvHstory