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[Schutze]

One thing that irritates me is fuel handling in this game. If airplanes have realistical fm and weight makes impact how come airplanes for example (bf) can carry 3h of fuel or more (didnt wanted to wait that long). I was over London for 3 hours at cruising speed (prop pitch set to standard)  in the early war model. If someone read books or interviews of war veterans there is no way aircrafts of that age could pull that off.

So can someone look up to the game and see if realistical fm and weight also accounts the huge ammount of fuel that the airplane is carrying, (becouse that would be huge gameplay difference). Since the game is about realism and the fuel would be not counted could it be fixed in a mod? If someone wants to fly free mode that obviously its his choice. But a mod would be a choice for people who like it more realistical.

How it impacts game:

*with that huge ammount of fuel people are not forced to engage. in battle of britain you had to count the fuel and made best of it.
*if you have fuel leak you can engage in several fights since the fuel tank is so huge the ammount of fuel leaked is insignificant. In reality if you had leak you had to either bail or land on closest airfield.
*Certain air combat maneuvres or fights at high altitutes that use lot of fuel are constantly aviable since the huge ammount of fuel.

Thank you.

[Verhängnis]

Mike had the best explanation on this, so I hope it isn't minded if some of it is shared here:

The fuel consumption thing is one of the most neglected parts inside IL-2. Don't ask me why, but for some reason nobody really seemed to care for it so far.
At regulary intervals I make a fool of myself by misreading things I already clarified. Sorry for that.

In fact at first glance it seems like cruise speed, fuel capacity and range values of the flight model would make up the fuel consumption. They don't.
In fact there's a line in the FlightModelMain.java file which does calculate a FuelConsumption public value according to those values, but that value being calculated is never used anywhere else in the game.
Instead, the Motor.java file does all the fuel stuff inside it's private computeFuel function.
Now what's the calculation inside this function based on?
Well, basically this function calculates the fuel consumption according to 4 edge points. These edge points do mark the fuel consumption at 0%, 50%, 100% and maximum (i.e. 110%) power level.
Inbetween those edge values, the fuel consumption proceeds linear from one edge point to the next.

Default values, which are something like gallons per second, are:

Piston Engines / Rockets / everything not mentioned explicitely below
0% = 0.4
50% = 0.24
100% = 0.28
Max = 0.3

Jet Engines
0% = 0.075
50% = 0.075
100% = 0.1
Max = 0.11

BI-6 rocket engine (referred to as "PVRD")
0% = 0.835
50% = 0.835
100% = 0.835
Max = 0.835

Let's come to a conclusion.
You've got two possibilities.
First one is to set the right fuel consumption parameters inside the engine model, that's the .emd file.
The parameters to be set are:

FuelConsumptionP0
FuelConsumptionP05
FuelConsumptionP1
FuelConsumptionPMAX

Doing so, you can set the overall fuel consumption of that specific engine.

I hope I could shed some light on this topic...

Best regards - Mike

So any aircraft engine file without these four specific values set will take on generic ones. So I guess it is possible to try and get better fuel consumption of each engine type, any more would require changes to a core file which would affect everything and cause other compatibility issues.
But really, I think you just had the difficulty options allowing unlimited fuel.  3 Hours is ridiculous!

[SAS~Malone]

lol, yeah - don't think i've ever managed 3 hours on one tank in a 109....
then again, i seldom have 3 hours simply to test my fuel consumption...

[4jg4-Knight]

The Me 109 had a range of  850 km.From Calais to Dover the distance is 50 Km.
But in a dogfight the aircraft consumes much more rapidly fuel.I've heard a german pilot saying(i'm part german) that once across the channel they could engage in dogfights for only 20 minutes.But keep in mind that before reaching british coast they had to fly in zig zag pattern to escort the slower bombers(this also increased the rate of consumption).

If you fly at idle speed and cruise around doing nothing you could fly for much longer.3 hours seems way too much though.
Imagine dogfighting the british spitefire and knowing you have only 20 minutes of fuel before bingo.That is why all veterans think they never had enough fuel.

[SAS~Malone]

then again, you can do a fair bit of dogfighting in 20 minutes, lol...

[ANDYTOTHED]

The longest I've gone in game was about 5 hours from take off to landing on the western europe 1944 map
That was in a P-51 with drop tanks and I had plenty of fuel left. About 3 hours if the accounts about those 8 hour shuttle missions are correct.

[4jg4-Knight]

I said once over the channel you had 20 min.But if you fly over London or Biggin Hill then the situation becomes more ...complicated  .

[4jg4-Knight]

@ANDYTOTHED

The p51 had with droptanks four times the range of the 109.

[ANDYTOTHED]

I know, I'm just saying the fuel situation isn't as bad as the original poster said it is. As far as I can tell the 109E had a range of 400 miles, the spitfire mk I 500. There isn't a problem

[Schutze]

I hope someone who understands that problem will look on that issue.  For now obviously people can take less fuel if they want it realistical. However mod is better becouse it can be used also on realistical servers so its guaranteed that all players will have proper ammount.

[CWMV]

Not really.
What happens if your flying a 1-1 scale map? Then your boned.

[crazyflak]

Indeed, the problem root is map scaling, not FM. 90% of maps are not 1:1 scale but usually half sized over the ground and over seas even worse, so what is the point of having a realistic fuel capability and consumption if everything is 2 times closer than reality? none at all.

Who is willing to spend 12 hours missions for 2 minutes of action? No one! We have too much to do as to waste 12 hours of GAME without action while RL takes most of your gaming time, and this is without considering that we usually play more than 1 game. Surely this takes away the fuel stress factor, but you can't have everything.

So better do as usual: calculate the factor "game distance in map "x" against real distance", then use that factor to divide 100% fuel by that amount and then take that as max fuel. Do the same with all planes (friendlies and foes) in the mission. This will approximate the "fuel stress" factor close enough.

No mod can adjust your fuel to unconsistent map scaling and get a "realistic" fuel capacity for that map: as said, not only scaling is not consistent between maps, but inside the VERY SAME map, distances could be 1:2 in some parts and 1:100 in some others..