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Aesthetics and familiarity


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Reading some Bill Gunston, I came across this fetching phrase: "Between the world wars French bombers were invariably aesthetic monstrosities."

I am fond of many French interwar airframes and am contemplating a Farman 222, but I wouldn't try to defend it or its stablemates as handsome.

Flicking on through the book, I came upon images of Catalinas and tried to look at them as though I'd never seen one, made a kit of one or flown in one before and began wondering if I find it attractive simply because it's familiar.

Would the Farman 222 look less like Frankenstein's airframe if I was French? What if the lineage was never cut short and developed into more streamlined forms?

Thoughts on these matters and suggestions for the ugliest airframe of all time, please.

I've also been intrigued by aircraft with similar specs but drastically different aesthetics - Spitfires and Tempests could both chase down V1s but I doubt there's many would claim the Tempest's lines were a match for those of the Spit in terms of beauty. Any other contemporary mismatches?

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A more general question before offering specifics is what design elements make an airframe aesthetically appealing. I think a streamlined profile and even proportions across the airframe components has something to do with it, hence the appeal of the P-51, F-5, and F-16. By contrast some aircraft looks like they just shouldn’t be able to fly, such as the Carver ATL98 with its fat nose and skinny wings or the Fieseler Fi-167 with its seeming off-center wing placement and its small engine.

Steven Brown

Scale Model Soup

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A more general question before offering specifics is what design elements make an airframe aesthetically appealing. I think a streamlined profile and even proportions across the airframe components has something to do with it, hence the appeal of the P-51, F-5, and F-16. By contrast some aircraft looks like they just shouldn’t be able to fly, such as the Carver ATL98 with its fat nose and skinny wings or the Fieseler Fi-167 with its seeming off-center wing placement and its small engine.

Steven Brown

Scale Model Soup

I think smooth lines have a lot to do with it. The more sharp angles and mysterious bumps are added to an aircraft the less pleasing it is on the eye I find. The F-22 is probably on the line between looking aesthetically appealing or not for me, the F-35 has crossed that line.

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I think for most people their aesthetic criteria are not fixed in time, they tend to evolve. There is a very complex set of reasons for that (age, culture, world events, keeping up with the joneses, corporate manipulation etc.). I can give many examples of these. In aviation, I think the most important factor is our affinity to the subject. E.g., the individual was a stakeholder in the design or operation of the aircraft, the aircraft has a national and historical significance, or the aircraft has influenced a wide group of people in the person's social circle hence their visual and narrative exposure to the aircraft is heightened.

Incidentally, part of my research is on understanding humans' perception of geometric forms and their semantic descriptions of such forms (Link1, Link2, Link3). In the first link's video, for instance, you may see what it means to make an airliner "more fighter-like" or how to make a Ford Mustang "less masculine" It is all based on crowd-sourced data. This is not totally aesthetics, but quite related. When I first started getting interested in this field, I thought for sure aesthetics was strongly and purely engrained in the geometry of the product. Reading a whole a lot on Gestalt principles and Kansei strengthened that view. But now, my views have changed strongly. There are many many external factors that dictate our aesthetic judgement and form is only a piece of the bigger puzzle.

Not too many people find the F-22s attractive. But if the aircraft was involved in a conflict with significant success, I am sure more and more people will start to develop an affinity to it. Operational success is not the only way these types of things tend to shift, but that is just one example. FWIW, I did not find the F-22 interesting at all until I started building a model. With all the hours of looking at the thing on the net, my perception started to shift, and now I see things that I really like. I find the Phantom very good looking but I don't think there is anything particularly beautiful about it at the geometric level. It is all the mental buttons that aircraft pushes.

Edited by Janissary
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Janissary said it well.

I also think they evolve. Designs do grow on people, and often things are disliked initially simply because they are different. You can read about this in Blink

You bring up interesting thoughts though. IMHO people can develop a new appreciation for looks and I think scale modeling really helps with that. By the time I am done building any kits I have a new (or renewed) appreciation for its looks.

P-47s do not have the classic look of a Fighter we would expect. F-35 does not look like a classical fighter, like say an F-16 or Mirage but I think its going to be brutally effective. Which is funny because I think the F-35 has brought the "looks can be deceiving" argument to the fore in a big way. How do its looks alter the perception of its ability to do its job for or against?

I don't subscribe to the "if it looks good it will fly good" theory. not least of which because what "looks good" is relative, but also lots of "pretty planes" have failed where ugly aircraft have succeeded. there are also cases of the expectation being ugly, Attack helicopters are supposed to look unappealing. The uglier the better. same with the A-10

Edited by TaiidanTomcat
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Not too many people find the F-22s attractive. But if the aircraft was involved in a conflict with significant success, I am sure more and more people will start to develop an affinity to it. Operational success is not the only way these types of things tend to shift, but that is just one example. FWIW, I did not find the F-22 interesting at all until I started building a model. With all the hours of looking at the thing on the net, my perception started to shift, and now I see things that I really like. I find the Phantom very good looking but I don't think there is anything particularly beautiful about it at the geometric level. It is all the mental buttons that aircraft pushes.

I'm similar with regards to the F-15. There's something that the two seat models have that appeals to me that the singlke seat ones just don't have. I also prefer my F-15s with conformal packs on the fuselage. I think both things give an otherwise rather slab sided machine a bit of much needed curviness. When I look at a single seat Eagle, something in my mind always tells me there's something missing from it.

I'm also like that toward the two seat Eurofighter. However, in that case, I just think from some angles that the two seat version looks a lot more aggressive and purposeful than the single seater.

If I stepped out of aircraft and looked at cars, I have to concede that I've never understood the appeal of Lamborghini cars from a design persective. With the exception of Miura, they do nothing for me.

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Although an aircraft fanatic, I'm also a car fan & obviously get far more opportunity to study & admire or be repulsed by these.

As I understand it automotive designers generally have their art pretty much nailed down at a basic level & there are numerous ratios of X size against Y size that will simply make or break a car almost universally, although this doesn't stop some designs getting through that don't fit the bill due to someone trying to be clever or down to the realities of the real world taking over & determining the finished product. I believe that it's fundamental human stuff in just the same way that symmetrical faces are almost universally found more attractive than non symmetrical faces.

My tastes in aircraft are for obviously supersonic designs which I assume comes from what I saw & read about when I was young - I think that the F-4 is gorgeous & the epitome of a big supersonic fighter, but lets face it, the F-4 really isn't any beauty, so I'm figuring that's down to familiarity. Digging a bit deeper, give me an F-4 A, B or C any day with it's clean nose or a Spey F-4 with it's broader shoulders - I'm figuring this is down to aesthetics.

Being a petrol head, one thing that I have noticed is that I decide that I like whatever car, it gorgeous & I wish I had the cash to get one (aesthetics), the facelift model arrives & spoils some of the attributes of the original & I don't like it (or nowhere near as much), but give it a year or two & I find myself liking the facelift model & seeing the original as dated. This phenomenon doesn't seem to fail much & I see it in other petrol heads that I know as well - this must be familiarity.

In KFC this would be a combo.

& undoubtedly some of the French aircraft that Bill mentions were exceptionally ugly or bizarre.

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Form Follows Function.

Case in point: F-117

Totally agree with this. Another great example is the A-7 Corsair II. Evolved from the F-8 (which many consider a beautiful a/c). It's nickname says it all (SLUF) and yet i can't help but love it's ugly lines simply because of it sheer effectiveness and dedication to function over form.

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Interesting topic, Janissary. I'd seen C-47s, and had even gone places in them, but I always thought they were just slow and noisy. I never would've called one beautiful. But then I built a model of one, and I noticed that I started seeing them differently. Their lines are clean and functional. They did (and still do) a very good job of doing what they were designed to do, and they did it for a long, long time. Same goes for the C-130 and the C-123 I'm building now. Ugly is in the eyes of the beholder.

Looking at aircraft, I often associate them with shapes in nature. Aircraft designers have learned a lot from birds and fish.

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I think your familiarity theory has some strength to it. I've often asked myself why do I like aircraft so much, my answer has always been that if you can see beauty in something like a Fairey Gannet or a Vickers Vildabeest then it must be true love. :monkeydance: :monkeydance:

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I'd seen C-47s, and had even gone places in them, but I always thought they were just slow and noisy. I never would've called one beautiful. But then I built a model of one, and I noticed that I started seeing them differently. Their lines are clean and functional. They did (and still do) a very good job of doing what they were designed to do, and they did it for a long, long time. Same goes for the C-130 and the C-123 I'm building now. Ugly is in the eyes of the beholder.

I went through this exact transition with regard to C-47s.

Growing up in the 1970s, when even two seat Cessnas were getting the nose wheel, swept tail treatment, the DC-3s still in use looked like tail dragging neanderthals. I fell in love with them when I flew in one, my first flight at age 7, but it was only when I read about, and saw in museums, some of their contemporaries that I realised how advanced they once were. Compared to the Curtis Condors and DH Dragons still selling at the time, these airframes must have looked like they came the pages of a science fiction comic. That I got to know them when they were looking a bit dowdy is in part due to the fact they buried all competing airframes of their era.

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