@@Elloliott it's very finicky with some jets. It works the best on jets with high fuel consumption like the F-14, JA-37, F-16, MiG-29, etc. That's where you'll see a massive amount of fuel savings.
@@Acepilot235 Alright, that is not quite correct. You are able to go into more than 100% on your engine, engaging your afterburner. WEP is at max 113,5% iirc. If you dont scroll up all the way, you can get between the 100% and the 113,5%. HOWEVER this is not how Gaijin has modelled afterburner stages, as this same mechanic is present in propeller aircraft, which, as you might know, do not have afterburners
@@huntingfox3351 no but propeller aircraft have WEP which is why in game its called WEP. ( War Emergency Power) it wasn’t often used as it could damage the engine ( back then the engines werent as reliable as modern piston engines) and since planes had more drag and limitations back then it wasn’t always easy incase a engine goes out(not that it ever is) and the fact that WEP could only last a few minutes. Also it wasn’t available on all aircraft.
Well ... there is a visible difference with the 3 stages on the afterburner. But let's say during take off and battlefield approach you don't need full power, then you can save a lot of fuel this way. But usually never use anything but full afterburner during combat.
You don't want to be after burning or even 100% throttle while turning in a dogfight. Dropping it to around 65 - 80% will give you a much tighter turn. Plus afterburing makes your engines hotter and increases the chance a fox-2 hits you.
@@richardmoore609 this is pretty stupid advice. Below corner speed your turn radius does not decrease with a decrease in speed. It remains constant. All you’re doing by cutting throttle is decreasing your turn rate.
@@dogeness yeah, BELOW cornering speed. Don't let it get that low and try and break off before that. But keeping your throttle on wep for an entire dogfight is dumb.
@@richardmoore609 not getting below corner speed is a ridiculous condition to try to keep in any war thunder dogfight. With the G limits pilots in game have you will simply get out-pulled and shot down. You’re basically saying to never get in any turning dogfight whatsoever.
Officially this is called first-stage afterburner, halfterburner is just what I call it for brevity. Another name someone had for it was "Eco-burner" which I liked To add to the video; setting throttle to both keyboard and wheel will allow you to have both fast and accurate control options over your throttle, so you can use keyboard to quickly power up and down, and wheel when you need a specific percentage
Pretty sure this works by default on console too by doing the same thing; instead of the wheel, you're just barely nudging the left joystick past WEP. It's only really consistent when you're going straight or in a gentle turn though, as your roll axis is on the same stick and trying to keep it pushed in that exact spot as you're rolling around turning and burning in a dogfight is at best annoying, if not outright impossible.
I only do props and early jets but this trick is great when trying to manage engine heat. Having both fast and precise control means that even when running efficient you are never more than 1 second away from emergency power. Especially useful when flying Spitfires, particularly the Merlin powered ones.
Fun fact everyone! Now you see clearly how much you WEP (Example : 110% WEP) So this would probably show something like: 103/105% WEP instead of a 110% let's say.
You don't really need to use afterburner that much, there's a reason why it's called emergency. Fyi irl afterburner is rarely used except for takeoffs and emergency interception, using them while in a battle is good if you know WHEN to use it and not overuse them.
It’s not called emergency, and there’s a reason we moved away from the “emergency” terminology like WEP. You need the extra power in a fight, and if you’re not using it, you’re going to be at a disadvantage in many cases. It is intended to be used liberally while fighting. The only time you *wouldn’t* use AB while actively fighting is when you’re trying not to get too fast (2 circle fight/managing closure rate), or if you’re already low on fuel.
@@goawayihavecommentstomake1488 Yes, and we haven't used that term in aviation since piston-driven engines were in use. Afterburners, however, can technically be used for the entire duration of a flight without special maintenance inspections being required, so it's not an emergency setting. The only limitation is fuel and range. War Thunder simply uses the term for any "greater than 100%" power setting.
Man can’t wait to unlock jets, had warthunder for like a month or two and I’m 2 planes from braking into tier 3. Gonna be a lot of grinding for jets bruh but that’s just how the grind goes
they need to find another way to implement this with a bind on your keyboard, as mine are set up to have my scroll wheel as zoom/machine guns as lmb/cannons as rmb
Funnily enough (despite the snail adding the actual percentage on our HUDS now) there is a visual difference if you ever switch to cockpit cam. The fuel flow will be marginally lower on 1st stage ABs compared to full AB (It’s most easily seen in the Mirage 2000Cs as they have a digital flow meter as opposed to an analog one)
For the F-14 we have multiple stages, 1,2,3 and very small if at all difference between 4 and 5 3rd stage afterburner is the most efficient while providing the best thrust. 5th stage just blows everything out of the water
You can also tell the difference from the engines temperature And I figured out how to do this on Xbox a while ago you just go to 100% and push gently for halfterburner or full WEP and if you wanna go back to halfterburner or what I like to call it stage 1 and 2 afterburner you gotta go back to 100% from my experience
Kinda important, the multiplier for the scroll wheel is very finicky and can be “misaligned” to the point that you skip over the first stage afterburner and go straight to a higher stage or full AB. You can avoid this by going to max WEP with keyboard and then scrolling back down to 100%, you’ll know you did it right if you see 101% the first time you scroll up. I’m not a game dev but if I had to guess how it works, the scroll wheel doesn’t move you up by 1.0%, it moves you by 1.2% or something, depending on your multiplier. Hard to notice since 1.2 + 1.2 = 2.4, which just looks like 1 + 1 = 2 when you don’t display the decimals. But 1.2 x 5 = 6, which looks like 1 x 5 = 6 in the game.
IRL it's called First stage Afterburner. most 4th gen Fighters have twin stage afterburner one is for cruise and the other is self explanatory. there are some 4th Gen that only have one stage in their afterburner but they are normally light fighters or a 3rd gen ++
Yep. Been doing this for a while now but only works on a mouse as you said. It frustrates me that WT apparently doesn’t know what an afterburner is. AB is not AB. It can be THROTTLED. Full AB(+) aka war emergency power will yes eat your fuel up, compared to normal mach 1+ AB or stage 1 etc.
you can actually adjust your afterburner from 101 to 110% (it jumps to 110% right away if you increase throttle past 100 with your keyboard). You can only see this using WTRTI for example
In the Tornado cockpit you can see that the fuel flow using this method is like half of the fuel flow with full afterburner. I habe used it for the Tornado ever since i noticed that
Btw what many haven’t realised yet is that it’s not just 2 stages either. It’s many of them. I use a program that shows me some more stats like my engine thrust. You can clearly see there is many different wel settings. You can go full but also like 10 steps in between.
There’s actually 5 stages of afterburner in most of the top tier jets including the f-14 and the f16 U can see the difference by looking at your fuel (In the F-16 with my loadout u can fly at mach 1 at low altitude level flight only if ur using stages 2-5) I recomment to use stages 2-3 when flying straight depending on your jet’s fuel consumption)
some jets have cockpit instrumets which can indicate how much of AB you have set. if they dont have this, look for fuel pressure, fuel consumption, nozzle mode, exhaust temp. you can see scrolling 1-1 on your mouse wheel will increase these ever so slightly until you max out
you can see this with all prop planes, when you use half WEP the exhaust flames will stay the same as 100% throttle, using full WEP they‘ll turn purple/orange
One of the first things I spotted when f14 dropped. Best way to use this is when taking off, once you’ve reached Mach 1. just throttle down to 100, then back to wep by one singular scroll on the mouse wheel. You’ll save gas
For the record, you can do this trick using just keyboard if you want to keep your scroll wheel for something else. You just need to quickly let go of shift are going from 100 to WEP
I use the same trick on the f-16. It even has a guage in the cockpit displaying fuel flow rate, which can be uaed to see the difference between thw various levels of burner. Not sure if the f-14 has the same guage.
At a MiG-29 the throttle control lever goes like this: first 60% is dry thrust and painfully slow ass plane, and the other 40% is afterburner. In DCS i like to keep it around 80% In conclusion: they should change the throttle to be like this: 0%-80% is dry and 81%-100% is afterburner.
For anyone playing the J35's it's the best thing because 20 mins wet is barely anything to stick around. With half you can even reach top speed and wrip in a straight line
It’s called multi stage after burner and you can tell it by learning the sec aproxemet waste time on your fuel gage Most modern jets have it in dule burner stages , the f14 has tripe stage so 3 stages of burner
Or just use afterburner to get altitude then cruise to the battlefield at 80% then when in range up to 100 and when engaging use afterburner. Youre quieter and slightly harder to lock on to, can be good tactically, but primarily, if youre at alt, you dont gain much by flooring it to the battlefield, can drop to 100 and dive at -5 to somewhat keep up with afterburning jets, but you save so much in that 3 minutes before the fight starts.
Going from the Marineflieger Tornado as my main jet (grinding, grinding grinding) to the Fulcrum was a painful experience in terms of fuel management...
Everyone should already be doing this so that you can map pitch to W/S. You have more control when dogfighting with two inputs for the tailplane/elevators
I always forget I have old settings of warthunder. When I started shift and LCtrl was throttle along with mouse wheel. Didn’t realize u have to bind it now..
i have it set up with my W and S keys to where i can hold it and it will do like usual or i can tap it and it will go down 25% throttle. as a mostly ground player tho i wish when you were setting the range the thing would scroll "X"m at a time to adjust more precisely.
you ca see the difference in the cockpit, when you look at the fuel flow idnicator now schowing less pph ( pounds per hours ) consumption than on full AB Realistically this would be AB min and AB Max Or Min reheat and Max reheat depending on aircraft
Or… you can take low fuel and all drop tanks or just take max fuel since if fuel determines you winning or loosing , there is something else you need to work on
I always do this… idk how old this video is by my throttle will tell me the percentage. I always run at 105% and when I need that boost I crank it to 110%. This video probably came out before they added this tho and I would have had no idea
So I actually took the money that I saved and not having to buy the title of this game and then put it down on a hotas thrustmaster throttle. With a vkb stick. Cheap but yet effective the throttle actually comes with its own Ruger paddle but I went and bought the Rutters peddles to😂 it definitely makes me feel like I get more out of this game then just using a mouse
Not being familiar with the controls, I feel that scroll wheel for throttle would be a standard binding given both frequency of use and finer precision in modulation. But...like...it's not the default? Don't tell me that mashing keys for steps in up/down adjustment is the default. That seems both slow and tedious in a warplane sim hahaha