Physical Weathering. The flip side of the visual weathering setting, this slider allows you to set how well the aircraft’s systems operate.

0% means the plane is in perfect working order, and 100% means it’s an accident waiting to happen.

The actual details of a higher Physical Weathering setting are determined randomly, including which systems are affected, how broken they are, and at what times they may completely break down.

While 100% physical weathering means on average a much higher chance of more things going wrong, the random nature of the failure model can mean that you’ll fly an uneventful mission in a 100%.plane, and have a wing fall off on start-up in a 1%.plane.

NOTE: This setting is not for the faint of heart. Even the more hardcore players often find it infuriating, reset it to 0 and never touch it again.

You can only take so many missions in which your engine seizes in the middle of a heated dogfight and you float down helplessly waiting to get shot out of the sky.