flight's concept of a 'good landing'

[Gary Tarolli]

Its nice to see so much discussion about flight going on.
I wrote the original flight/dog programs, but haven't done much in the
last few years.  Rob Mace has done the GT version and all recent mods.
Let me clear up a few things and help set the record straight on some others.
Also let me try to explain why flight doesn't always try to be real.

First - the "-z" option is probably obsolote now.  Flight used to set a
governor of 20 frames per second so that very fast machines would not have
an unfair advantage.  Due to a bug in swapintervals, this was removed I
think.  And most recent versions now actually adjust the calculations
according to how many frames per second the pgm is actually achieving.
However, I think there's a bug in most of the released versions that make the
G-limit and Wing-stall limits come into play much too early.  Future
versions should have this bug fixed.  Anyway, if you're still wondering
what the "-z" option did, it used to turn off the swapinterval governor.

The "T" threat cones were written for Williams Air Force Base (in Arizona
if I remember right).  The heads-up display (-h) was also written for them.
I left the "T" in there undocumented rather than take it out, just for the
hell of it.  Someone added code to fire SAMs (probably just sidewinders)
when you get close.  Apparently , this version has found its way to Canada.

Here's a suggestion for you solitaire players - why not record an airshow
with "dog -o" and then fly against the planes in it and see how many kills
you can record.  Of course, the planes in the recorded airshow wont be
firing on you, but if you fly a tricky route in the airshow, it could make
it challenging for someone to shoot you down.
Another variation is for each person to record a 5 minute airshow and
then you can swap airshows - if you kill your opponent's plane more times
than he kills yours, you win.  Sort of a a batch dogfight (yuck

Stalls: the ballet pirhouette (sp?)  reported in the B-747 is just a bad stall.
	Stalls are unpredictable in real-life.  Since I had no good data on
	how to model a real stall, I decided to take the liberty of making
	it do something fun - if you stall really bad you get a random spin
	based on just how bad the stall is.  The worst stall is probably 
	when you go straight up then fall down backwards.  Once I was
	flying at about 100 feet and pulled a real sharp turn and somehow
	stalled it real bad - I got sent spinning about 1000 RPM and needless
	to say crashed.  The other day I was following someone ready to 
	shoot him down when all of a sudden he stalled and went spinning
	wildly - it was fun to watch! - but since he lost so much airspeed
	i flew right by and didn't get to kill him.

Refueling: sure its tough on the ground crew to refuel you when you're going
	300 knots, but would you rather have to park your plane on the runway
	and really wait for the crew to service you?  I think the term sitting
	duck is appropriate....

Landing points:  what can I say? - do you think the FAA would like it if
	you landed on the taxiway at Logan or O'Hare?  The points are just
	some arbitrary grading system I made up to make it challenging to 
	land.  Also, if you're dogfighting it gives you a way to recharge
	if you are good enuf to land with people trying to kill you.

One more tip - if you type the '~' key - it turns off all fuel consumption
but takes away all you rockets and sidewinders.  However, you can fly 
forever with your canon.  Since fuel accounts for a lot of a plane's weight,
its best to first burn off all but 1 pint of fuel (1 quart if you are 
conservative or paranoid about running out) before using it.  Of course,
you can turn fuel consumption back on, but don't expect to get your
weapons back! 

I think that about covers most of the topics I've seen on the airwaves.
Remember - half the things in flight are meant to be real - the other
half are there to make dog more fun than it would be if things were too real.
Some things - like exploding planes and body parts falling to the ground
are left as homework exercises ...