How to Live and Die in the Virtual Sky by Dan "Crash" Crenshaw

As Air Combat simulations become more advanced, artificial intelligence improves, flight modeling and flight dynamics become more realistic, the need for real world fighter maneuvers becomes more necessary. Unfortunately, there is a void for the flight simulation enthusiast when it comes to this type of information. There are a few very good books that can help you learn some of this information, unfortunately they are out of print, difficult to find, or difficult to read and understand.    "How to Live and Die in the Virtual Sky" is intended to fill this void.  Many years of flight simulation experience, testing of several air combat simulations, and a great deal of research has been compiled here to teach the basics of BFM or Basic Fighter Maneuvers. The only way to understand these lessons will be to practice them. These lessons will center primarily on JET air combat. Many of the maneuvers will apply equally as well to propeller driven aircraft. The fundamentals will apply to both.    This information applies to both computer run opponents as well as Human opponents. Many recent simulations have very good AI (Artificial Intelligence) and can actually perform very close to how a textbook flying human would react. However, when fighting against a human opponent, the element of surprise is highly likely. Human opponents will execute maneuvers and try tricks at all costs in an effort to survive. You must stay on your toes when fighting a human.   I would like to point out, I personally believe that all flightsims should be flown from inside the cockpit, and not outside views. I will grudgingly concede that for TRAINING purposes, outside views will help you understand what the aircraft is doing. But once you have learned the basics, you should practice from the pilots eye view. Many sims are coming out that will allow you to lock out the outside views in a competition, and many competitions have this rule. So I highly recommend you to work at getting these maneuvers down while in the hot seat.   There are currently 8 lessons, 2 to be released each week. Go to the Air Combat page to see the full story This article was originally published at the Combat Simulations site   Back to MENU

 

The Winter War By Robert L. Shaw (An extract from the draft of an untitled book on the history of fighter technology and tactics. Ó Robert L. Shaw) The Winter War has been moved to the Fighter History page.

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