Update now live

<S> all!
The new update is now live. As always all feedback will be most welcome .

---=== FL2046 UPDATE: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE ===---
By: Robert and Grumpy.

--= Lavochkin series =--
Complete rehaul for the Lavochkin flightmodels. See below for details.

--= Yak series =--
Complete rehaul for the Yakovlev flightmodels. See below for details.

--= Fw 190's =--
Climb rate reduced ~200 ft/min when using the MW50 injection boost (Bst2) for the Fw 190A-8, Fw 190F-8 and Fw 190D-9.

--= P-47's =--
Climb rate reduced for the P-47D's, now set at ~2250 ft/min at bst1 and ~3250 ft/min at bst2 (below 10000 ft). Also similiar climb rate reduction for the P-47C.


---== LAVOCHKIN SERIES REHAUL ==---
The Lavochkins are at their best at altitudes below 7000 ft (2100 m), and as such should be quite competitive for the most common style of play seen in the Warbirds arenas. Their performance then quickly falls off with altitude but the second stage supercharger kicks in around 20000 ft, where the La's are actually effective fighters. It is adviced against fighting above this altitude though. The ammo clip is short so disciplined bursts is recommended. They all have a very high stall speed and usually do best as energy fighters, but the Lavochkins are still very maneuverable with a roll rate second only to the Fw 190. Their high max AoA also means that you initially can keep inside many enemies in a turn for a short period of time. The later La's have great low alt max speed and the climb rate is good. The ability to use WEP for 10 minutes comes in handy for any prolonged fights. Their terminal dive speed is quite low though, but is slightly improved with each version.

-- Lavochkin La5F --
Not the top, nor the worst fighter for it's era. The La5F however finally gave the Russian pilots a fighting chance against the previously far superior German fighters in 1942-1943. It could almost match the speed of the Fw 190 and was able to outturn it. The La5F has a quite decent top speed below 7000 ft and climbs well against contemporary fighters. It rolls great.

-- Lavochkin La5FN --
While the new engine only saw moderate improvement from the La5F, the La5FN was a big jump in development and saw significant aerodynamical improvements regarding drag, greatly enhancing it's top speed. This is a mean and lean fighter able to challenge any opposition of the same era. It has a top speed matching the FW 190A-8 at low altitude, rolls like a ballerina and climbs well.

-- Lavochkin La7 and La7-3 --
The best Lavockin fighter. It uses the same engine as the La5FN, but has even better top speed due to design improvements, easily matching a P-51D at low altitude while also outturning it. The La7's also saw structural improvements that lowered it's total weight and strenghtened the wings, increasing the terminal dive speed, climb rate and turning ability even further. The La7-3 version of the La7's is a marksman's plane, as it has three Berezin cannons instead of the two SHVak cannons. The Berezin cannon has a higher rate of fire, meaning that the La7 3 version packs a much stronger punch than the normal La 7 version, altough it will run out of ammo in 1/3 the time.


---== YAKOVLEV SERIES REHAUL ==---
Just like the Lavochkins, the Yak interceptors also arrived timely to enable the Russian pilots to finally step toe to toe with the Luftwaffe. These Russian birds excel at 13000 ft and below, and should usually not aim to fight above this altitude. They both have decent turn rates and while the stall speed is quite high, they are manueverable fighters, especially the Yak-3.

-- Yak-9D --
The Yak-9D entered service in late 1942, and is a heavier Yak version with additional fueltanks. This makes it the Russian choice for mid-alt escort missions while still being a decent dogfighter. The Yak-9D is a bit underarmed with a single 12.7 mm and a single 20mm cannon, but the top speed is fair for it's era. It cannot hold a sustained turnfight with more nimble planes, but can still outturn a P-51.

-- Yak-3 --
This is the true fighter version of the Yakovlevs. The airframe is smaller and lighter than the Yak-9, and it's a very competitive plane for it's era. The armament is improved by an additional 12.7 mm MG, and while being somewhat slower than the La5FN, the Yak-3 will outturn and outclimb it. It is very maneuverable but the fairly high stall speed means that you should usually avoid low n' slow knife fighting though, and a good tactic is to retain the energy.


Approximate combat entry dates
La5F: Second part of 1942
Yak-9: October 1942
La5FN: Spring/summer 1943
Yak-3: June 1944
La7: October 1944

Other flightmodels completely rehauled by the new FM Team
Fw 190A-1, Fw 190A-2, Fw 190A-4, Fw 190A-8, Fw 190F-8, Fw 190D-9
A-36 (Mustang), Mustang Mk.1, P-51B, P-51D
P-47C, P-47D-22, P-47D-25


Comparative charts from my tests:














Cheers!
/Robert

As a clarification regarding my turn rate tests, they are all done at 50% fuel and at sea level. Real ww2 tests were usually done at a higher fuel load which would worsen the turn rate, but more importantly they were usually done at 8000-12000 ft. This makes quite a big different for the results, as both the turn rate and radius takes a hit the higher you go. The Russians usually carried out their turn tests at 1000 m (3281 ft).

The Yak-3 in my tests has a turn rate of 16.7 sec/lap at sea level and 50% fuel. Official Russian ww2 test data shows the Yak-3 had a turn time of 19 sec/lap at 1000 m. When doing a turn test today at 85% fuel at 1000 m altitude, the result was 19.2 sec/lap. Hopefully this indicates that our new models should be quite close to real life performance .


<S>!
/Robert

Very nice Robert!

Thank you Smiley .
Btw I believe the "Legacy Arena" has been using older flightmodels during the whole summer. It's now corrected to the latest update, so please give the P-51's, P-47's and Fw 190's another chance as you've all been flying with the old "flying-brick" models of these fighters for the last two months.


<S>
/Robert

Bug found with the Lavochkins. Previous developers had set the Dragco for the landing gears to 0.0200, instead of 0.0020. This makes the landing gear cause ten times the drag than they normally should. As such it is near impossible to take off from short airfields. Unfortunately I didn't spot this coding error, and a big thank you to all the players who reported their take-off issues to me. The La's otherwise work perfectly fine once airborne.

It was easy to fix, and I have already sent in the updated files to Dan (along with minor wing angle fix and giving the plane more rudder authority at higher speeds). I hope this update can be out within a few days, and will post here as soon as it is avalaible.


Cheers!
/Robert

and nobody noticed this during beta? Or was there even a beta test? I mean, its the first thing you have to do to get airborne even to start to test it. Kinda makea ya wonder.. Guess we'll see what else slipped thru the cracks.. Good work guys.. hope its not too little too late tho..

_________________
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^^^
Geeze dude. Can you give it a break?

Beta test? Yea we have beta test team. Zero beta people get zero testing done. The 2 of us have the same 24hrs. a day as you do
and we do like to sometimes enjoy life outside WB's. Try as we might 2 guys building and testing can't find all the bugs.

With such a large group of guys working on the game we do our best. Even companies with a larger PAID staff
have products go out with hick-ups. Apple and Microsoft come to mind; let alone auto companies.

Would you rather nothing gets done? Would that make you happier?

Have a Great Day.

<S> Pakrat.
Your concern is understood, sir. Looking through the La's again, I could not find any other bugs with the Lavochkin flightmodels except for me not catching a 0.0200 instead of a 0.0020 for the GearDragCo. This can be hard to do sometimes as the flightmodels consist of several hundred lines of code.

Grumpy has it pretty much spot on. During this summer we have been only two guys working on 15 flightmodels. Every new single flightmodel takes a minimum of 20 hours effective time just to research and build (somewhat less for subsequent planes in a series), as our goal will always be to have flightmodels that perform as close to real life data as ever possible. I'm a full time student, studying 6-12 hours a day, with a rich social life, and try to put in these hours of flightmodeling whenever I find the time. Grumpy is probably even more busy with work/family etc. As such the time has also been limited for flight testing, which I hope you'll have patience with. Even so I try to test them in as many ways as possible before release, and now when autumn starts we'll have more ppl in the FM Team able to help out. I did take-off tests for the Lavochkins at the shortest field avaliable on the map I used for performance trials, and the Lavochkins easily took off with runway to spare. I now realise this "short" airfield was much longer than the very short strips used in the Ardennes map, which I instead from now on will use for take-off testing. As such this gear drag bug wasn't apparent to me, and for this I apologise. Except for that, the Lavochkins seem to fly like supposed to and are quite sweet rides for energy fighting, and this gear drag thingy will soon be fixed.

Another thing found today, thanks to player feedback about the P-47's to =Wilz= who then forwarded the problem, is a code issue with a "Min J" parameter which we thought acted in a certain way to simulate propeller effectiveness. After several hours of code-comparing today though I've realised it doesn't fully act as we thought it logically would, and it's the reason why the P-47's and the Lavochkins have been accelerating so slowly on take off (the gear drag only added to this for the La's). This has now been addressed. The update with bug fixes will be sent in to Ient, and hopefully it can go live within a few days.


<S>
/Robert

Nobody is more aware of the time it takes than myself...great big huge <S> to grumps and Robert....very good work...and welcome to the thousand hour club!!!
Never lose heart, take breaks to regroup, your efforts ARE appreciated!

If there were only 5 planes in the game, it would be the greatest already

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