I have been making minor adjustments in some of the Simdata aircraft files for the past few weeks and it occured to me that I never see these changes take effect.
Today I ran some test that I consider quite severe just as a test of my suspicions. I copied the Block 40 data into a special folder and saved it and then I replaced the data in the simdata block 40 file with several other aircraft --- Cg, Cj and Dj models.
I looked on the net and the Cj and Dj models are the Block 50/52 series. The program data does not provide us with a block 50 file but I assume the Cj is the one.
There are differences between the block 40 and the block 50 in the sim. However I cannot get these differences to show up by substituting data from other models into the block 40 model.
I am wondering ---- it appears that changes in the data files are not having any effect on how they perform in the sim. They just seem to be a lot of numbers that look nice but do not have any effect on the performance of the various models in the sim.
How can this be. What does effect things like drag, lift, fuel flow, speed , etc.
In the old days a minor change in something like drag or fuel flow in the Simdata files would instantly show up in the sim.
if you are talking about BMS, you will find two files
F16_block40.Dat (OFM) and F16_block40_afm.Dat (AFM)
The first one is used by the AI or if you select "simplified FM" in the option Tab
the second one is used by the new FM engine (except for engine data that are still read in the OFM file)...
so if you change values in the OFM and fly with Realistic flight model, you wont see any change.
you would need to touch AFM file to see impact on your FM, however, i strongly discourage you to do so and in any case , unlike the OFM , there is absolutly no way to control easily your roll rate from the dat file as the FLCS is hardcoded.
In short : The AFM is the result of 8 years development, i can garantee you that the roll rate behavior is absolutly spot on
cheers
jp