Flying the Unfriendly Skies

This entry rated SHG-13 by the Academy of Gaming Arts and Sciences for its Super High Geek factor. It is about combat flight simulations and may not be of interest to everyone. I really geek out in this one.

One of my many hobbies - yes ANOTHER hobby - is playing massively multiplayer on-line combat flight simulations; in other words, flying the unfriendly skies in incredibly realistic simulations of World War I and II fighter planes and shooting people down in vicious aerial dogfights. This is one of the ways in which I blow off steam and relax. Although I don’t know how relaxing some people would view it because afterwards my shoulders and hands are so tightly wound that I need a hot shower to loosen the muscles back up. I know that saying what I am going to say next is going to open it up for all sorts of wise cracks so feel free to make em. Many times I have been in such an intense dogfight (a duel with a single enemy plane) or a fur ball (a duel with multiple friendly and enemy planes) that I have to actually pry my right hand – my joy stick hand – off of the stick and massage my hand for a little while. How’s that for relaxing?

To give you a little idea of my view from the cockpit I have included some screen shots made during an attack run on a group of dozen Japanese dive bombers. I am flying my favorite plane, the P-51-D Mustang. The action is taking place at a simulated 18,000 feet.

He won't be needing that landing gear. First pass at the slow moving Japanese dive bombers. Buddabuddabudda! Six fifty caliber machine guns make Swiss cheese outta Japanese steel

I usually fly with music playing; Talking Heads, selections from the Star Wars films, The Matrix and Top Gun soundtracks to name a few. I love having adrenaline pumping music playing as it really helps my immersion into the action. Jenne can tell you that when I am "flying" I go into a sort of Zen-like state of concentration and it takes more than a few calls of my name to bring me out of it and snap me back to the excitement and sheer thrill of taking out the trash. To further help my immersion state I have a game controller setup beyond that of the average game or sim player. Yeas, I have truly "geeked out" with the game controllers. I have a joystick modeled on the one found in the F-16 fighter, a separate throttle controller and yes, I even have foot pedals to control the plane’s rudder. I can program up to two-hundred commands into my controllers so that I never have to touch the keyboard! Yeah, I know it seems pretty over the top, but we all have our fetishes... mine is fighter planes.

It’s all fun and games until somebody looses a wing! I’m sorry did you need that wing? My second pass on the same crippled bomber. BIG BADA BOOM and he goes down in flames!

At this point you may be wondering how realistic can a computer “game” be? Well these are no arcade style games to be sure and in fact some of the more ‘anal retentive’ players – AKA Simmers – would be quick to correct you that it is a flight sim and NOT a game. I’m not that anal retentive. Everything about the real aircraft and the environment is accurately modeled and affects play. It’s as close as you can come to actually flying the real thing without the cost of fuel and maintenance, and no matter how bad you crash, you always walk away unscathed. The sim models the actual flight characteristics of each plane (climb rate, turn rate, stall speeds, compression*), the ballistics of the guns and cannons, the clouds, sunlight and glare, weather conditions, damage taken, lift, thrust, drag and gravity. These factors, and some I am likely forgetting, all have an effect on the sim. So yeah, it’s pretty detailed and yet to me it is a lot of fun and it all becomes second nature after a while. Apart from the fun factor and getting to “fly” planes I will never get to fly in real life I get more out of it than just the visceral feel and adrenaline rush. My hand/eye coordination is excellent from years of playing in these sims. My powers of observation and situational awareness – SA in combat flight sim parlance – are very acute and this has had the side benefit of helping with my photography and with my defensive driving (I can see that SUV coming, but I might not be able to avoid it). And to a point I feel confident that I could perform basic flight maneuvers in a real aircraft. Team work is also important in combat flight sims. Fly alone and you get shot down quick. Fly in a group and support each other and survivability and success rates go way up. To that end people have formed virtual squadrons. Some are based on actual historc squadrons - 4th Fighter Group, 94th Aero Pursuit - and some are totally fictional - Flaming Ferrets. I wonder if there is a group called the Militant Ass Clowns! And speaking of team work, I have met some nice folks through the flight sim community too. We have flown on each others wing, and sometimes we fly on opposite sides. I shoot them down and they shoot me down in return, but all in good fun and we take to the unfriendly skies once again.

* Compression. Okay this is real geek/nerd stuff here and I will try and keep the explanation simple. Compression is what happens to the air in front on the wings of an aircraft especially in a dive. The faster the aircraft moves the harder it is for the air in front to get out of the way and it starts to compress and form a wall of air in front of the aircraft and the wings. This puts extreme stress on the aircraft and causes severe performance issues. The most severe is that the wings rip off of the aircraft and it beomes a missle headed for the ground. This is very bad. I fly a couple of different planes; P-51D Mustang, P-47D Thunderbolt, and P-38 Lightning. The first two are much better divers (especially the P-47) than the P-38, which suffers compression in a dive at 350mph. The plane wants to "nose up" at that point, which in a way is good because if it didn't the wings would go bye bye and I'd be hitting the silk (AKA parachuting).