Bro just imagine there’s a VSI and try to keep it on the indicated climb rate that’s already on the stat cards😂 its already there for you in meters per second and automatically changes for mods/payload
Bro still thinks the statcard is a reliable source, you'd think most people would've grown out of it by now... If you actually thought about what you're suggesting, you're saying that if the statcard says something like "Rate of Climb: 20m/s", that means that the plane's ideal rate of climb is the same at all altitudes? From sea level into the stratosphere? I'd like to see a prop plane that can climb at ALL above 12km
"I'm going to bed now. Bye." 🤣Had me in stitches - Love the dedication to this. I've tried to get the real-world maths into this in the past, and just can't fathom it, so appreciate the work you put into this. You earned your sleep
Thanks! I tried to explain it so that people without a physics background could at the very least see what's going on. Hopefully it was easy to follow, but even if the theory didnt make sense, I tried to make the process for finding the climb speeds easy to replicate for any plane you want to test.
climbing is about building up energy. Speed is also energy, so minmaxing potential energy gain at the cost of kinetic energy can be something of a trap.
Hey, I have actually asked you in the comments about climb rates, and you wrote me this whole essay there. I'm very thankful about that, and I agree with the conclusion....partially. With literally no information about climbing in the game.....at all. A Lot of planes rely on gaining just a tad bit more altitude advantage, and while yes, optimizing climbrate perfectly is useless, but just by climbing at 300 km/h instead of 250 the difference is reasonable enough, especially in a day and age where......I'm not gonna even hold back. full team of US Mains grinding for F-16 going low altitude into the first head-on, full-commit, and just dying, leading to games ending in NO LESS THAN 3 MINUTES......
Lol i agree 100% I wasn't trying to recommend not climbing at all I was moreso saying that if you're already climbing using the set IAS climb method or you care enough about climbing that you're gonna click on a video like this, then the additional height gained by micromanaging climb IAS is relatively minimal, under 500m difference. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use this information, it's just that for most people playing, AFK climbing is still perfectly workable. There are indeed certain planes that rely on an energy advantage more than others but at the end of the day I'm just saying that you're free to choose to micromanage or just afk climb and based off of how minimal the gains are, I personally am choosing to afk climb
lol just look at a stat card it’s all u have to do to see climb rate😭 and for vsi it’s not that hard to imagine lol you get used to it in your own way, it’s also in some cockpits in game tho
Phenomenal, after all this time i can't believe you heed to my request all the way back then! Very thoughtout and informative video, definetly worth the wait, i'm really starting to feel like you're fully becoming AdamTE's spiritual successor. I'm still a bit disappointed with the conclusion that focusing your energy on optimizing and maximizing climb rate is kind of a waste of time, but the video still helped shed some light into the intuition of what to look for in your metrics when doing so. I get that you've said yourself that you don't care to find the gain in climb rate with MEC so i won't bother you with that. But it would be interesting to see the difference in testing and strategy of climbing in jets of various types, like how Adam briefly touched upon in his video, but i guess it would be best for you to look for more fresh and interesting new topics to touch up on. How you doin btw? Is the channel gonna become more active? After seeing this i can't wait for more to come.
Yeah I'm not too interested in micro optimizing past this point. I did lay out all the tools I used to test this though so you can do that yourself if you're really interested. If you do then I'd like to hear what results you get (i just don't wanna do the work myself lol) Oh I know I didn't get into it in the video but zoom climbing is never really worth it compared to steady climbs even in jets from what I can tell. While a lot of early jets perform best at sea level, the specific excess power dropoff from higher altitude isn't big enough that you put yourself in a better state to climb after a zoomclimb. Remember that after you've done your zoom climb, you still want energy left over to keep flying and maneuvering so unless you're going in for a stall shot on someone, a steady climb not only maximizes the SEP generated at each altitude but also sets you up to continue generating the maximum SEP further into your climb. A zoom climb will put you in a position where you may have more altitude than a steady climber, but never more energy or potential to generate more energy. There may be an altitude where zoom climbing is more efficient, probably the service ceiling of the aircraft, but that isn't the case at sea level
In regards to the channel, I went on a kind of long break not just cuz of studies and other stuff but I also wanted to take a crack at "solving" war thunder flight models using the datamines but that trail went a bit cold. I might take a shot at it some other time... Also wanted to take the channel in a different direction in terms of style and presentation since there are enough minimally-edited-voice-commenting-over-gameplay-footage people and I wanted to distinguish myself in some way but the longer I think about it the less sure I am of what exactly that would be so for now I'll be benching that. I like making videos and I like talking to you and other people who comment so hopefully I can get off my butt and actually do that more
Yeah I have a bit of an engineering background though aerodynamics isn't something I've studied in depth. If I find the time to I'll probably get around to making more videos soon
Cool video! honestly I didnt know it leveled off that hard in terms of climb rate on the wide speed. Oh and also climb was said give or take 35 times :)
Thank you for the vid. Next time i take out my 109 imma just climb 20° and go afk for a few minutes. Also that poor I-16 having a seizure from going too fast 😂😭
My approach was always to climb so as to minimize drag, since prop efficiency is more or less constant above 200ias for most planes (though there are exceptions, namely BF-109s). When induced drag dominates, you get visible wingtip vortices in-game, so 20-50IAS above the speed at which the vortices disappear always puts you very close to the optimal climb, and you can easily figure it out on on the fly.
that may work as a rule of thumb for low tier props but generally speaking, the speed at which lift/drag ratio is minimized is not the ideal climb speed. you can look on the wikipedia page for rate of climb for the graph but you're looking for the speed where there is the maximum difference between engine power output and L/D ratio are achieved, which is not necessarily at the speed of minimum L/D ratio. I'll also politely disagree with the claim that prop efficiency doesn't change significantly above 200kph ias for a majority of the planes. As an example, the p51h has a prop efficiency around 60% at 200kph while it only begins to level out at 80-85% at around 300kph ias at sea level. The p51h makes wing vortices at maybe 220kph ias, but 350kph is much more than +50kph from that. though these are just my 2 cents, if your method works for you then what ive said here doesn't really mean anything
@@CatWerfer Look at energy instead of climb rate. For most single-engine monoplanes, prop efficiency plateaus at 80-85%, while minimum drag is between 200-250IAS, where you see prop efficiencies of 65-70%, so you have maybe 20% of effective engine power to gain by flying faster. On the other hand, the power lost to drag increases dramatically at higher speeds (parasitic drag power loss scales with velocity cubed), so you cannot go much faster. Thus, the optimal climb IAS is *slightly* faster than the minimum drag IAS (which is constant) and so it doesn't change much with altitude or engine power, which is why it's standard practice. Note that you can climb at a lower-than-optimal speed and end up slightly higher but with less energy (which is not what you want, maximizing total energy is the goal of a climb) so the optimal climb IAS is difficult to determine, but it exists
@KekusMagnus again, this is probably fine as a rule of thumb but you can't really call it "optimal" if you haven't actually tested it. I think I've made my methods and calculations about as clear as possible and if you still disagree then there's not much I can do for you
@KekusMagnus an increase in drag can dtill be worth it, as your climb will be faster. Power is velocity times force, with more drag, your climbing force is lower, but a speed increase can more than makr up for this, overall increasing your climbing power.
I used to rely on that outdated spreadsheet RELIGIOUSLY before I saw a video done by AdamTheEnginerd, but I'm too lazy to do proper testing so I "vibe" what IAS I climb at based on the engine power of the aircraft 😂
The speed is the significant difference I think; calculating the difference in kinetic energy, you'll find that there's approximately a 25% difference in kinetic energy between even a speed difference that small, because kinetic energy scales by the square of speed. Now the thing is, of course, potential energy makes up a greater amount of the total energy. And in the end, I agree with your takeaway that it doesn't really matter a ton in practice. There's so many other more important factors, and even besides that, most War Thunder prop fights nowadays happen at lower altitudes. I would say you can definitely get away with climbing "well enough".
yeah, I calculated that the energy difference between 290kph and 260kph at the end of the experiment would equate to about a 70 meter altitude potential energy difference, not that significant in comparison to the whole thing. One thing I neglected to mention in the video now that I think about it though is that the 17.5 degree climb started with a higher speed going into the climb at 1km too, around 355kph vs 345kph for the max SEP climb, but the original point still stands
Dont forget, you are climbing to dogfight! This means that you need speed to manouver. If you only care about altitude, by the time you notice the enemy, drop your nose, and gain speed you will be in a disadvantegous position! So at high altitudes always shallow climb or level out, you can catch so many people by suprise this way.
100%, I usually try to maintain 300kph IAS once I'm at an altitude that I know I'll start encountering enemies at. This video is more of an isolated look at just aircraft climbrate but your point is also important in the actual context of a game
Nice video, although the result was more or less expected for props. I think we'd see much more interesting results with jets. Edit: Maybe we should consider specific energy of the plane at the end of the climb rather than just the altitude to factor in the differences in end velocity.
mm it was kind of unexpected to me, I expected a lot larger of a difference so i was kinda shocked when it wasnt the case. If i get around to testing jets I'll probably make a short video on it but it probably won't be soon... if you wanna try it then go ahead, I'd be happy to hear what the results are. Also you are 100% right about measuring specific energy instead of altitude, the micromanaging IAS for max SEP did end up with a higher specific energy state thanks to the higher end speed, though the difference wasn't that much... I was just too lazy to redo the tests while taking specific energy in mind lol
Very cool video, afk side climbing it is I guess But there's something bugging me, for some planes with an airspawn for example, would you have the most altitude advantage (or minimise your altitude disadvantage) when meeting the enemy by maximising your climb rate as usual, or by speeding towards the enemy base before they have a chance to climb high enough? What about planes that perform better at lower altitudes? The airfields are far away enough from each other that it probably doesn't matter but for weird planes like the mosquito it seems to have some effect on my match performance
Using Mec probably not necessary because with mec the engine is usually running at slightly reduced power and open rads to keep cool. It'll be the same results just slightly longer to reach the same alt
Hey! There are vids talking bout binding Radiator control and turbo/supercharger on "full-real controls" once you bind them you can go back to simple/mouse aim. Its a trick I noticed fighting the same plane but against a veteran sim player. Sad that there are little to no info regarding what every setting does. Hope it helps!
Yeah i know there are a lot of MEC settings like radiator control and fuel mixture control as well as video guides on how to use them, I'm just saying that I can't be bothered to test them, at least right now😅
@@CatWerfer good on you. Thanks for doing this vid. Still makes my heart yearn; to learn more about other factors and nuances we will spend years understanding. Glad to see, you have a community that's supporting you. Keep pushing mate, cheers!
I am sorry i am lazy as fuck :D but are you planning to make a spreadsheet with the most used props and the ideal climbing angle so that i can leech of your hard work? Thanks
Maybe I'll make a spreadsheet but to be honest I'm just as lazy as you and so unless I want to go super sweaty mode I don't think I'll keep testing this knowing that the benefit you gain from optimizing climb is kind of minimal. I'll probably test at around sea level and just steadily decrease the IAS i find there as I climb
you mention 17.5 degree climb being the best climb angle for the P-51H, is that universal among all (at least prop) planes in the game, or is that only for the P-51H (and maybe a few other plane that just so happen to share that rate of climb)?
It's probably not universal, the P-51H has a strong engine so most other planes would probably do better at a shallower angle, thought I haven't tested it so I can't really confirm. A lot of people seem to want it so I might end up making a spreadsheet for this stuff down the road... but that would also take a super long time to test...
@@CatWerfer I respect that you put the work in though, now I can rest soundly on that conclusion - whoever said math is useless was a fool :P I think I'd rather invest the time to learn MEC, radiators and superchargers.
