After flying for a bit now, I realize that when I use rudder (in the camel) to help turn, my air speed drops like a brick. I can be going 100mph and if I hit the rudder to start to turn, my speed will drop to 60mph in just a second or so.
Very Very Very slight rudder adjustments wont cause this if I'm turning with my stick.
this makes the rudder almost useless, except for micro movements to line up a shot.
That's not accurate, is it? I thought rudders were to help you into your turns and make sharper turns (it's modeled that way in RoF).

My CH Pro pedals have nothing else bound to them except:
Yaw Control (rudder)
Pov1: Head POV (it wont let me delete this for some reason, but it doesnt do anything as far as I can see).

Under control functions, "breaks" have nothing bound to them (not that this would work in the game anyway, right?)


Is this just a case of a different flight model for WoFF, or is something wrong that I should investigate?

Rudder response in WOFF isn't at all like Rise of Flight. You might not be able to feel it, but try the same rudder inputs in the fly-by view. You'll see your aircraft doing a hockey-skid through the air. I would suggest going light on the rudder and relying more on roll+elevator instead.

Oh, for me the rudder in OFF and unfortunately in WOFF is almost game breaking part of otherwise nice FM.

For example:

I'm attacking an enemy in a dive, due to speed difference I'm obviously going to overshoot it, so what do I do in WOFF? I apply a full rudder, correct a bit with ailerons, et voila - I've just slowed down to whatever speed I needed.

Another situation. I need to lose altitude quickly. Sideslipping is the way to go, but in WOFF I could bank my plane 90 degrees to one side, apply full opposite rudder and fall like a brick without having to worry about losing my wings because forward speed goes almost to zero.

OFF had the same problem, by applying a rudder and opposite ailerons I could almost circle around a ground target like a helicopter. Some planes in ROF can fly in a similar way (most notable DrI, which was known for this IRL), but not to this extent.

On the other hand since there is no noticeable adverse yaw and the rudder induces very little rolling so it is useless in turn-fighting, but instead it just causes you to lose the speed rapidly.

This doesn't feel right. I'm not asking for ROF level modelling, but right now applying rudder works like pressing brakes in a car.

Could devs answer whether it is possible to do something about it?
Or is it a hardcoded limitation of CFS3 engine?

I always assumed that when you apply rudder that some of that speed bleed was just that you arent moving _forward_ at that speed but more of a side slip, which is still faster than whatever the indicated speed was. Am I wrong? You seem to pick speed up pretty quick when you remove the rudder input.

Efficient ailerons didn't really come into use until 1915. Prior to that turns were primarily done with just the rudder.

Rudder deflection still causes an aircraft to bank. Think about the difference in lift from left/right wings as the aircraft yaws.

Don't confuse initiating a turn (with rudder) with sustaining a turn.

I'm glad I'm not crazy, and that this is a game issue.
I knew it was counter-intuitive to how rudders are supposed to work.

I lost a pilot in late 1917 due to this...flying a camel, in a turn fight with an alb (which the camel should be able to out turn), I apply rudder to sharpen the turn to get behind the alb, speed drops, camel drops like a brick and I die.

Kind of like something out of a coyote and road runner cartoon -- sudden stop..."uh oh", and straight down.
I guess you could just use the stick to turn and use the rudders for full stop breaking when you need to keep from over shooting a target...but that's not what ww1 aircraft are about.

I hope OBD will address this issue.

Use the rudder more gently?

Or set the Scale in the Advanced settings in WOFF Key Mapper Tool to reduce the sensitivity.

or adjust the sensitivity in your joystick configuration software (if you have).

Camel was notorious for killing pilots so I'm glad it killed your pilot for bashing on the rudder in a turn, nice and dangerous - the gyro and torgue fooled many pilots too.

Pretty much more pilots were killed by their own Camel in training or combat than by enemy fire.
(I'm sure someone can quote the numbers of deaths).

Yeah, no. I didnt "bash on the rudder".
Using 25% rudder shouldnt stop your plane in midflight....like slamming on your breaks (100%) on the freeway. Rudder shouldnt do that at all, even at 100%.

There's an issue with the rudder modelling.
Hopefully it can be looked at.

Thanks to RoFfan, I think he's found the issue with the camel's rudder.

There is a file in aircraft/camel_QC1 that lists the rudder of the camel as being 9 square feet.
That's about twice as big as it actually should be.
At that size it's practically a parachute

I'm actually working on adjusting the Rudder=Break issue and will post my findings soon.
Hopefully we can find a workaround that fixes this.

Never experienced this in all 3 years of development nor has it been reported by beta testers.

Testing it again here all that happens is eventually I end up spinning the camel and losing altitude...

What FM setting have you got in workshops - make sure you have it set to 'realistic' - the rest are not really accurate and are there to allow folks to learn.

WM

Thanks WM.
BTW, just so you know, I really am enjoying your sim. You and the team have done a TERRIFIC job making WoFF into a fleshed out ww1 aviation experience.

That said, I'm not just bringing things up to bring them up, but am interested in helping to fix what I can.
I was a beta tester for another sim and so I notice these things...

Workshops settings are all on default (and have been since initial installation) except for bypassing claims.
Player Flight Model is set on Realistic.

I think RoFfan found the issue:
The camel_QC1.XFM file in aircraft/camel_QC1 that lists the rudder of the camel as being 9 square feet.
It should be 4.9 sq. ft.
I adjusted the value to read "4.9" instead of "9" and the Camel responds much better. There is still a speed bleed, but it's not as excessive.

I'm assuming QC1 is the Quick Combat.
So does that mean that SQ1, SQ2, SQ3, SQ4 are the quick scenarios?
And so which is the campaign file?
I have:
AC1, AC2, AC3, AC4, AC5, and Camel_Sqd.

I guess I could edit all the camel rudder files in each of those, but I'm only really interested in the campaign.

Thanks!

Perhaps this could be fixed in an upcoming patch?

I wonder if something is wrong here. For the sake of completeness I tried out the "easy" setting. I can't tell the difference from "realistic." They are exactly the same.

which is the file that the campaign accesses?

Editing FM will eventually break something - the AI are "trained" to fly.

Then I'm glad we've uncovered this.
I dont want to break something, but the rudder sq. ft. for the camel was 4.9 sq. ft, not 9 sq. ft.
(and fin was at 3 sq. ft.)
aerodrome link

Can this be addressed in a future patch?

--EDIT--Let me clarify that request:

Hopefully this can be added to a list of things to be looked at, after being prioritized along with other issues that are being reported.


--EDIT-- And again for clarification, here's the .xfm line I edited.

<Rudder area_sqFt="4.9" limit_deg="28" effectiveness_frac="1.22" propEffect_frac="1.89"/>

Here's the original:

<Rudder area_sqFt="9" limit_deg="28" effectiveness_frac="1.22" propEffect_frac="1.89"/>

I've been flying the Camel for awhile now and I haven't noticed any difference in it's rudder behavior compared to other machines.

It still feels like it operates about the same as the rest, to me. The only time there's much of a loss of speed due to rudder use is when I jam it wayyy over. *shrug*


Do you have your rudder sensitivity too high for whichever controller it's running on? I started using the rocker switch on my HOTAS throttle and had to lower it down to around 6.

XFM is new and not using the same information in the FMs the same way, we can look at it sure, but for me and many others the Camel and rudder behaviour are fine.

Nefaro that's how it is for me so odd.

No, I dont think so Nefaro. I dont have any issues with any other sims.
Pol's got me worried tho. I dont want to break anything, especially since I finally have things running smoothly.

This rudder fix works great. But I still dont know which file to adjust (camel_AC1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) for the campaign.

And I dont know if this impacts the way the AI flies the camel.
In QC, things work just fine, so it would appear that adjusting the campaign file wouldnt be an issue....

No issues with the rudder in the Camel here either.

The AI has no problems flying the Camel - they are literally trained to fly every craft individually.

If you change the FM then they may start to have problems because you cannot retrain the AI - best to leave it alone - we will see if others come up with the same issue and act accordingly.

There is no difference in the FM or AI routines between QC and Campaign either.

HTH

WM