More specifically, I was referring to the checklists. They do not prepare you for takeoff.
These checklists were almost exact identical checklists from the United Airlines and American Overseas Airlines. I know because I built them. 99% of the information in this checklist is taken DIRECTLY from the real manuals.
I didn't have the info in front of me because I never bought the product, I merely tried it at a buddy's house, but you just helped me out a little in explaining myself. What exactly is 3 inches when your cowl flaps are shown in percentages? Therefore, the setting is not in the checklist.
The actual instrument shows physical inches, not a percentage. The quick gauge popup window shows a percent. For accurate tuning of the cowl flaps in flight, it is probably best if you use the gauge itself.
Did service pack 1 fix the drag on the cowls? if they did, then this isn't an issue. I don't know what manuals and information at the time could've told A2A to make the aircraft a completely different performer with them open or closed.
Issue with the drag? The drag is accurate. I think the service pack might have tweaked it, but honestly I don't think we covered it because it was accurate. The cowl flaps cause a HUGE amount of drag and anything over 3 inches at takeoff was considered dangerous and would also risk jamming them. This is real world. There are even documented cases where 377s had them fully open and when the flaps were brought up during takeoff, it induced SEVERE buffeting and drag, which caused a crash and people to die
. However, this is documented and accurate.
Our does the same thing as what the reports stated. When flaps are raised and cowl flaps fully open, it WILL buffet and speed will be hard to maintain.
I loved that feature, but anyone who is a mechanic or FE knows they don't run drastically different, and no motor would've made it's way into practical useage being as unreliable as accu-sim models it. Accu-sim takes things a little to far. Like I've said before, I don't want to see accu-sim dumbed down, but I would like to see it a slight bit easier to manage.
If you adjust the potentiometers correctly during warm up, the gauges generally speaking will all have the same readings. Of course, there are some variables. Your inboard engines will for example run slightly hotter due to the aerodynamics of airflow over these engines. Temperatures might vary slightly as well. So, under all good conditions with potentiometers tuned correctly, the only variables you might see are temps and those causes by random failures (very rare and new for SP1) or bad piloting.
I don't remember what I did wrong or what accu-sim did wrong here, but I remember that I followed the entire checklist and the turbos were still configured to make almost no boost. That was odd, and hampered my ability to climb even more. In fact, I don't remember coming across much info in the way of how to configure the turbo levers other than one switch which didn't help anything.
I wish I could help you more here, but this info is all listed. One thing to note that didn't make the manual is a little helpful advice when using turbos. Once you align the potentiometers and everything is go, when climbing set your turbo switches to climb and advance your throttle fully to maintain 50 inches. Once you have used all throttle up, you should start slowly moving your turbo. You will probably need about 50% or so turbo before you start seeing a difference. You don't want to move it past 70% however (as the manual suggests) because you could overheat your bearings. 70% turbo will easily get you to 25,000 feet. The climb to 30,000 is slow... to say the least and cannot ALWAYS be done. In the real world, the 377 rarely flew at this altitude. Most airlines prohibited it.
Great!! I hope this doesn't insult you guys for all your hard work, but I consider things like this and the problems associated as being due to 'teething' and the lack of maturation. I hope that in the future I'll be able to hear crew member's voices in many more complex aircraft. It makes the game come alive. Maybe other devs will let you make accu-sims for their products. I would love to see this in a modern military bomber or transport. That being said, please don't keep this idea only to old timey warbirds.
Listening to customer input is the bread and butter of our work. We cannot move forward without such input. SP1 was built very specifically because of this input. New features like controller axes assignments etc were implemented specifically because of people asking.
So anyways, no harm bud. Your input is important.
! I'd be even ready to buy an accusim package for some top notch freeware like the HS748 or the Spartan 
