10,000+ Hours
Former airshow pilot (Su-26, MiG-17, Stearman)
Flown similar era aircraft (Canuck Jenny(4 aileron), Taylor J-2, OX-5 powered Waco)

This is a fun sim, but I have two problems with the feel of the aircraft; pitch and trim.

The pitch is way too sensitive and would agree with the other comments on that subject. The roll rate "seems" accurate.

The trim issue is more of a concern. While these aircraft did not have pilot adjusted trim they could be adjusted on the ground. These adjustment would be made from the pilots input. I would like to be able to adjust the trim setting in the GUI (or even in a ini type file) to suit my flying style.

I just had a great time swirling around with other planes in the virtual skies of RoF. It is very hard to describe, but in a one-circle with an Albatros the sensory inputs provided by RoF brought back the muscle memories associated with circling around in a steep bank in a tight thermal while looking at other gliders across the circle. It was an immense sense of "deja vu all over again" and I could feel my neck straining against the Gs looking up.

Nice.

lol - I'm going to disagree with a real pilot on roll rate. WWI planes had notoriously ineffective ailerons. They were used more for tuning than initiating a roll. Rudder was how roll was initiated. The ineffectiveness had something to do with airflow over the wings and not aileron area. I'm not conversant enough in fluid physics to really provide details. One advantage of the D.VII was the fact that it DID have effective ailerons.

The planes in RoF seem to fly "modern" in the sense that ailerons are very effective. SPADs had a terrible roll rate, but in RoF I can initiate a perfectly nice roll without any rudder at all.

Now please don't take the above as a rant or whine. I really do like the FMs just fine. The "in flight" portion of this game is its strong point. The roll rate of the SPAD (the first plane that I flew) really struck me. Is my perception correct or not? Don't really know. Just know what I have read and how I perceive the game.

Wow! Some of you guys with 5-digit hours humble my brief experience 40-something years ago as a private fixed-wing pilot (and a lot of unofficial rotary time when flying with pilot buddies in the Army).

Most of my flying was in Colorado where it can be quite (often very) windy and the buffeting in RoF feels very genuine. I do wish they would get those wind socks working because taking off and landing with the wind in the light Nieuports can be really ugly.

You are wrong on the trim issue, at least in many of the British planes.

Almost all of the Sopwith aircraft dating back at least to the Strutter had pitch trim adjusted with a large wheel next to the pilot's seat with cables connected to the elevator.

Note the trim wheel pictured about half way down the page of pictures on this Sop Tripe replica:

http://thevintageaviator.co.nz/image-galleries/sopwith-triplane-replica

And the SE5a had trim adjustment comparable to many 1930s biplanes. Way ahead of its time. It could be flown hands off:

http://www.eaa.org.za/articles/se5a-pilot-report

"Now, lined up into wind I bring the speed back to 60 and wind the tail trim fully nose up for the landing."

http://thevintageaviator.co.nz/projects/se-5a-reproduction/flying-se5a

"Adjusting the elevator trim allows the SE5a to be flown hands off something I’m not used to in a WW1 fighter."

The problem in RoF is that there are no key strokes to adjust the trim the way it could be done in flight in at least some of the aircraft (certainly in the Sopwiths and the SE5a).

That needs fixing.

Again, my real life stick time is limited and long ago but RoF feels (is that subjective!!!) very much the way I recall it, especially the turbulence and flying into the wind. No other sim I've flown (and that's quite a few) comes close!

And, yes, the pitch is too quirky.

That also needs fixing.

HT

That was a nice read Gunloon, I hope that some of the developers get a chance to read it. (In fact I'm going to link to it I think).

I'm sure I've said it already a few times on these forums (and in more detail) but to me the feel of flight in RoF is really very good. There are areas that need work (mostly the tricky details like p-factor, gyroscopics, adverse yaw, stall/spin dynamics, stability/damping etc IMHO) but when taken as a whole the experience is very well done, and this sim has a great foundation to build on!

The trim wheel adjusted the incidence of the stab.

Glad to hear from all you RL pilots that the flight modelling is realistic.

The only aircraft I like are minimalist ultralights. No cockpits, no endless dials and switches. No worries. I flew a B1RD ultralight through 82/83, single seat tail dragger, Basically a hang glider with a lawn mower engine (before Rotax and others got into the ultralight act) mounted on the wing (under which the pilot sat with arse 2 inches from ground in static position). Controls consisted of stick and rudder pedals and throttle (what more could one possibly want). The only gauge was a crude form of ASI .... and this consisted of a hollow tube with a small hole facing forward and a red disk inside calibrated to rise with increasing airflow estimating speed. Not that one went very fast ! Windy days were out and very early mornings were in ! But what fun. Who needs a stinkin' license anyway ....

Now it's all different. Ultralights are just like GA aircraft with all the bells and whistles ... only a tad lighter. Too many rules and regs and such. Oh well ....

To correct the over-sensitive pitch is definitely required. Trim would be nice on those WW1 aircraft that utilised it.

Which is one way of trimming, just to make it absolutely clear that yes, it is a trim wheel.

Which holds very true, at least for the SE5. When slow, a bootfull of rudder is about the only way to bank that sucker.

I have to try the Spad though, barely flown that one yet. The SE5 didnt strike me as heavier in roll than the Albatros or N28 though, both of which I've flown a bit more.

Tx-Ecodragon,
was waiting anxiously for your input. Care to elaborate a bit more on just why you think the aircraft are off in P-factor, gyroscopics and stalling? I'm not aerobatics rated but it seems about right to me. As for adverse yaw, I'll plain disagree and state that it feels just right to me, but we'll never know how these aircraft handled anyway so there's no need getting upset over it.

Have you been able to get any of the aircraft into inverted spins? I've only tried with the notoriously stable SE5, and I'm frankly not surprised to discover that it doesn't seem to have enough negative pitch control authority.

I also love how this is the first sim in which I find a falling leaf can be performed. Now I want that replay feature!

The stability and damping with the pilot in the loop leaves a bit to be wished for, probably in no small part due to the lack of aerodynamic control damping at speed discussed elsewhere. Hands-off I can't see anything obviously off though. None of the rubber-band-on-nise effect which has plagued Il-2 to varying degrees since the big flight model upgrade way back when.

I think it all will come down to things being obviously off in the end. If it's not obvious, then we'll never know unless we're one of the few people who actually fly the Real Thing(tm). The experience of flight dynamics is also heavily tinted by the peripherals used.

What is most impressive is that there aren't really any glaring omissions. Something is clearly very right about the model doing the magic behind the scenes. Trying to create a correct flight model within a frame work which isn't true to the real-world interactions, as is done in e g FSX, always seems to leave significant artefact where it just isn't possible to push a round real world aircraft into a square model aircraft. None of that in RoF. I still have high hopes.

While I can't comment on how a real WWI aircraft flies, they FEEL alright and while doing simple aerobatic maneuvers you need a good understanding of what flight controls do what during that phase of flight. When doing a half-cuban for example, getting to the top of the loop is the easy part, but as you start your 45 degree downline each aircraft has different characteristics about how to go from inverted flight to a normal attitude. -I find the N28 to be the most capable for doing aerobatics.

I do feel there is something missing concerning the aircraft structure strength. I can't seem to get a structural failure doing aggressive flight maneuvers, nor do I black out. The only time I can get the aircraft to fall apart is in a very fast dive.

Stalls and spins seem to be relatively tame and easy to recover from. I have rarely crashed because of either of these. I expected to see the aircraft stall and enter a spin if I pulled back hard on the stick and my wings weren't level. Perhaps these aircraft are just more forgiving then I originally thought.

Trimming, or lack there of, is annoying from a desktop pilot stand point. I have heard pilots of replica WWI aircraft say they are working the entire time while in the a/c to keep it level and flying. So while the unstable nature of the airplane is likely very spot on, it doesn't work for desktop flying. Thankfully I have a CH stick with trim wheels so I can somewhat trim out the aircraft and can let go every once and a while, but it still by no means flies straight.

Flying with a damaged aircraft is fairly rewarding. I have lost an upper or lower wing a few times, sometimes if I am lucky I can gently maneuver and land the aircraft before whats left falls off. I had another flight in the AlbDVa were my left aileron cable broke. In the midst of a dogfight I noticed I was using loads of rudder to maneuver and not till after the fight did I notice it was not moving. It was a nice touch, but it would be nice to know if it was broke from combat damage or just a random mechanical problem.

Overall, I think the aircraft handle how I would expect a primitive aircraft to handle. I would like to see a trim option in game, but my stick can handle it for now.