It would be cool to give dogfight a bit more of a realistic flying feel by giving the planes their performance statistics that they actually had. Number of gun rounds armament, speed, stall speed, rate of turn, and any issues they commonly had. For instance the sopwith camel had its center of mass off to its right because of its fuel tank so it could turn sharper in that dictation as well roll harder to its right.

The Guns firing should be more realistic as well. In ww1 it was uncommon to be able to get your gun rounds to fly as nice and straight as they do in dogfight. They had more of a cluster form and they did not just fly straight for every they curved back down to the earth. In a turn fight you should have to lead your target more than you do to get a hit on them. I can be in a sharp turn with an enemy plane and if the tip of their tail is in my gun site I can shoot and get hits. In a dogfight in ww1 that would not be possible in a turn that hard a sharp.

On the turning front I remember zup saying althat in the begining the planes didn't turn as fast, they where more in line with their real performance, but players complained about the sluggish feel.

I am sure every one would like it better with the planes flying realistically and historically accurately. The way the fly now is ridiculous and boring. It makes only a couple planes worth flying and their is no substance to a kill. Kills in this game only come form the guy who has more stable hands and can see that little black dot among all the red. The game is more like a first person shooter were you guy is constantly running forward. The game should not even be called dogfight any more. It should be called something else like top shooter or something. Maybe it should be called bomber instead because if you go to dogfight every one throws a fit about it.

If the game was more realistic you would actually have to work to get your kill. You would have to think harder and be smart for once when trying to get your enemy off your tail. Now all the game is all you need to do to win or get a kill is point and aim or be the guy who can pull his plane harder in a turn. The aircraft do not stall until they hit the game ceiling or you kill the throttle. You can pull a hard turn and still fly 140 km an hour and never stall. Their is no energy conserving going on. You can also shoot down an enemy aircraft from around at least 5 to 10 Km away which is farther than most heat sinking missiles could get a kill in vietnam. The game is missing all but a few chartists of a real dogfight or flight sim. The only characteristics it has is that you shoot to get a kill and that you fly in a three dimensional world with an x, y, and z axis. You can go vertical and horizontal. And that is it. It only has two concepts of flying and dogfighting when their are hundreds of them.

I would like more realism, but it would create a need to revamp the game. Also, realism equals harder. The harder it is, the less likely the chance of the masses likinig it. Less popular equals less income & the need to work the programming. Some planes relied on a wing mounted gun as a main or backup. That would be difficult to model, especially when you still need to fly the plane as you fire. Rotary engines would also turn one direction better from the gyroscopic effect of the spinning engine/prop & torque. Planes progressed rapidly in that time too, so later planes would typically be better, but early planes could have a place if aircraft choice was dictated by a specific time period. True, long range head on shots would disappear. This game isn't good for teaching combat maneuvering. Realistic maneuvering would be difficult without a way to watch what the other guy was doing, as with a hat switch. That's critical when you add energy to the mix.

The bottom line is that there will be only a couple of planes that players would pick & they'd be the higher perfomance panes or those with better firepower or bomb load. The rest would be abandoned. You can see that in the game now. Since many fighters didn't carry bombs at all, save for the occasional one brought & dropped by the pilot, missions would need to change too.

I really like the idea of fairly accurate flight characteristics, but it also presents problems. That guy that likes to fly at max altitude to avoid fighting to bomb would be unstoppable unless you were relatively high too. You'd stall out getting to him. As it stands, the flight programming is probably good for what the game is, an arcadish WWI combat flight game. Anything more & it'd be better to progress to a bonafide PC online sim like Aces High. That type of game leans on realism much more & things like fuel load, energy, even flap usage matter a great deal. You also have to think about the plane you fly & how it best performs (don't turn fight a Zero with a Corsair, like real world).

I've been distracted about 50 times writing this, so forgive my disjointed rambling. Long story short, I think too much realism would be outside the scope of the game & the devices players use, but we could use a little more of it.

Exactly the game needs more realism. It does not need to be ridiculously real. The graphics don’t need to change or anything. The plane stats just need to change. With the way the game is set up more planes would be used rather than abandoned. We would see the more of the triplanes, spad, sopwith camel when it gets added back. The albatross D.V.A would remain a largely used plane as well as the se5a but the other planes would be brought up more as well. There would be more of a variety of the aircraft flown. People would fly the camel, nieport and triplanes for their agility. While others would fly the se5a, spad, and the albatrosses for their speed. You also can watch what the other guy is doing using your finger to move the screen and watch him.