Saturday, August 15, 2009

Adverse Yaw

If you've flown the F-100D model from the hangar, and flown it hard, you'll notice that adverse yaw is included in the flight dynamics model. Most swept wing jets of this era had an adverse yaw problem, even though designers tried to lessen the effect by using spoilers for roll control, or by combining spoilers and ailerons. At high angles of attack (AOA) the pilot needed to limit aileron deflection and use rudder instead to roll the airplane. The F-100D model needs to be flown like this, which means flying at high AOA will be very difficult for you unless you have a handy way to control the rudder. For most of us that would be accomplished by using the "twist grip" feature of a computer joystick. Some of you may have actual rudder pedals to use as input (the ultimate solution), and some of you are stuck using the keyboard or mouse.

So, here's my dilemma. I want to add adverse yaw to my most popular models, the F-4 Phantoms, however this will cause some current users to stop using the models when they find it difficult, if not impossible, to fly at high AOA. My inclination is to go ahead and do it, using the reasoning that users who want to avoid the expense of a joystick are asking too much of the simulation to adapt to them.

What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. Tough Tough call Dave. While I agree on one hand with you on providing the ultimate realism to the sim, is it worth the fallout? Is there a way to track or view the number of users, to see what size of a group it may affect? I would tend to be in favor of it, except when I'm traveling without the joystick... Peter (Farmboy)

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  2. Yeah, it's a tough call. Right now I'm leaning towards making the adverse yaw the default, but putting a switch in the *-set file which will allow folks to turn it off.

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  3. I'd go for it (hurray realism) but think you're wise to include the ability to toggle. As a Mac flyer, rudder control for anything can be kinda hit or miss (Mac keyboard issues?), and stick options that aren't high end are few and far between for the platform. unless, of course, you know different.....
    Cheers, Gary (aka N-SCOT)

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