Using guns in turrets?

[smink1701]

I use trackir5 and am having some trouble controling and aiming guns in turrets. In il2 when you switch to gunner position the plane goes into auto pilot and you use your mouse to move and aim gun. With CLOD my mouse doesnt move gun although left click of mouse will fire weapon. Also, tried to program mouse in controls but game won't let me. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong???

Thanks to anyone who will shed some light.

[Seeker]

I have the same problem.

[RocketDog]

I can't get the Blenheim turret to move after switching to combat mode and the mouse pitch control is reversed on most of the aircraft guns (i.e., move mouse up, gun pitches down). Reversing the axis has no effect. Add it to the list of bugs...

[Strike]

You gotta hit F10 to get the mouse to track for gun movement. Otherwise you would have to press the mouse wheel and steer the gun at the same time!

[Dave3317]

I can get the turrets and guns to move and fire but they are so slow with delayed reactions. I know it may not be totally realistic but i much prefered 1946 turret/gun control

[Sokol1]

Offline you can use joysticks axis to control turret, and reverse axis if need.
Or key+axis.

Go to axis, turret, and just press and hold a key before move axis (Y or Y) to move turret.

Ie. Space + Joystick Y axis, Space + Joystick X axis.

Then the turret move fast.

Just remember to change plane control do AI before jump to turret position.

Not tested online.

Sokol1

[justme262]

I think they wanted to make turrets harder to use to make it more realistic. Historically it was difficult to hit an enemy fighter from a turret.
I tried to man a turret online and as soon as I moved from the pilot position the autopilot would put the plane in a dive. Which made it hard for me to concentrate on the slow, inverted, multi buttoned, counter intuitive, historical controls of the turret...

oh well I stick to fighters online now.

[machoo]

Too many steps involved to do simple things in this , this is the annoying thing about COD. I just want to fire a gun FFS but I first have to do this this and this , and then open this , and pull that , and turn this. Jesus.

[Blackdog_kt]

I use trackir5 and am having some trouble controling and aiming guns in turrets. In il2 when you switch to gunner position the plane goes into auto pilot and you use your mouse to move and aim gun. With CLOD my mouse doesnt move gun although left click of mouse will fire weapon. Also, tried to program mouse in controls but game won't let me. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong???

Thanks to anyone who will shed some light.

First of all a little tip, the aircraft in IL2 doesn't go on autopilot if you don't want it to (you can toggle it on/off), there are many people flying the plane and shooting from the gunners seat at the same time.

In CoD now, you need to do these things in sequence:

1) If your turret has a parked position (usually to streamline the fuselage and burn less fuel during cruise) you need to set it to the active position first, the default key command is ctrl+O i think.
Aircraft with such a turret are the Blenheim, Br.20 (both top and belly guns), Stuka, He-111 (the top gun) and the 110.
I might be missing one, so just press the relevant combination just in case. In some aircraft the turret needs power on to transition between positions (electric/hydraulic,etc). For example, you need the engines to be running to do this in the Blenheim, while the ones in the Stuka and 110 are manually operated so they work right off the bat.

2) You must enable mouse look to control the gun with the mouse. This means disabling the mouse cursor, default key is F10.

3) You can now use shift-F1 view for turret guns, which greatly helps with aiming.

4) Some turrets feature not only a moveable gun but a moveable mount as well. Examples are the Stuka, Blenheim and the top turret on the He111. When moving the mouse you move the gun. When pressing the keys that move the mount, you can turn the entire gun mount assembly around and get a different field of fire for your gun's range of motion.


Known Issues: There was a conflict last time i tested, if you use a mouse button to fire the gun you can't move it at the same time. If you set another button for firing, you can keep moving the mouse and the gun will respond. I don't know if this has been fixed.

Also, the Br.20 top turret controls were reversed.

[Seeker]

<Bows to Blackdog_kt> I'm constantly amazed at your procedures testing, and grateful for your will to share the results

WTF we're they thinking?!?!? All this to man a turret? And don't give me "realism"! where's the realism in F10 FFS?

Who the hell designed the game portion of this game? Who made the decision to make even gunning a turret, the #1 way most of us introduce kids to this genre for the last 6 years, dam near impossible? Does he still work there? If so why?

<Rant over>

Should there be any devs reading: Fix this. Fix this very soon. You'll go crazy trying to satisfy the rivet counters and FM chart monkeys, and you know it. So try at your own tempo. But for gods sake get some work done on the game interfaces. People will forgive performance, blame their machines and throw another couple of thou' at a graphic card "to keep the faith". But the experience has to be FUN!

FUN, goddamit.

Somewhere down the line, I'm dam sure they forgot this.

[Art-J]

I don't want to see the turrets dumbed down for the sake of "fun", if the plane was equipped with moving mount and parked position option, these should stay, obviously. However, some things that can be made more simple and intuitive, the ones we got used to (mouse button for fire, reversed Y-axis mouse aiming), they should be fixed.

[ZaltysZ]

conf.ini:

[rts_mouse]
SensitivityX=1.5
SensitivityY=1.5
Invert=1

Those values control mouse speed and Y axis reversal. Keep in mind, that if you invert it, it will affect mouse look too.

[Seeker]

I don't want to see the turrets dumbed down for the sake of "fun", if the plane was equipped with moving mount and parked position option, these should stay, obviously. However, some things that can be made more simple and intuitive, the ones we got used to (mouse button for fire, reversed Y-axis mouse aiming), they should be fixed.

Well, any dumbing down should be approached in the traditional IL-2 way, via difficulty, or if you prefer, dumbing down options.

And I'd agree with you that while one may discuss how "dumb" a server should be, at the top level any sim should strive for realism.

However, that doesn't explain the difficulty for difficulties sake approach that seems to be have been taken in so many aspects of this game's design.

Far too many gamers have always thought "harder = more real = more macho" and it's simply not true. It's not true in pure simulation terms (ask any real pilot here what he thinks of the visibility/dot range/icon range discussions) and it's absolutely not true in game terms; and it's amazing to me that the "harder = more real" fallacy has filtered through to the design team who should have the maturity to know better, especially as we approach the American launch, a country famed for it's need to "dumb down" every consumer device known to man (Objects seen over your shoulder with Track-ir may be closer than they appear).

Yes, a powered gun turret was a complex and complicated installation. And guess why it was complex? Because every effort was spent to make it easy to use, that's why! That's realism, but apparently when we discuss realism it only counts if it makes the game harder.

Where, oh where is the realism in the F10 button? How does making the turrets just that much harder to use increase realism?

Where, oh where is the realism in inverting the controls compared to all other Clod interfaces? How does exchanging up for down increase realism? Why not change left and right while you're at it, wouldn't you get even more realism?

I really wonder just what they're thinking of.

[KG26_Alpha]

As a "Ace" IL2 1946 tail gunner...............:shock:

I find CoD tail gunnery needs simplifying by more flexible key mouse options.

In IL2 I'm used to flying backwards whilst using the tail gunners.

In CoD its impossible to this efficiently without being able to bind key operations.

By the time you get all the procedures out the way your shot to pieces.

Also I don't seem to be able to damage fighters with the tail guns.

Don't even mention the inverted mouse in TG :(

So yes simplify the tail gunner stuff and fix the mouse firing locked movement and mouse inversion to start with.

Then the bomb arming and then the .................................................. ......

[Ploughman]

F10 toggles the mouse cursor. If you want clickable cockpits and to be able to use the mouse to aim your gun, you want F10 to switch between mouse modes.

FFS.

[Seeker]

F10 toggles the mouse cursor. If you want clickable cockpits and to be able to use the mouse to aim your gun, you want F10 to switch between mouse modes.

FFS.

Click a lot in the gunner position do you?

Confusing how the game interface is programmed to how it could be programmed are we?

FFS.

[Blackdog_kt]

Click a lot in the gunner position do you?

Confusing how the game interface is programmed to how it could be programmed are we?

FFS.

I can understand your frustration but there's a reason behind it. It's not in-cockpit switches you might want to click on from the gunner's position, it's on-screen windows like the chat-bar or the map, plus i think the F10 toggle stays the way you set it between sessions. If i want to give my nephew a ride as a gunner, i just disable it once at the start of the mission ;)

I'm not trying to come off as a smart-a*s, i actually find the interface implementation very good, it's just hard to shake old habits from IL2:1946. The interface is complicated but it's also very customizable too, but i find that is a byproduct of the overall complexity in modeling more of how each aircraft operates.

For example, we have no clickable switches in the gunner's seat but that could change if we get in-game voice comms that model radios or when the expansions start moving to late war scenarios. In many bombers some gunners had a dual role, for example the Ju88 rear gunner is also the radio operator, the B-17 top turret gunner is the flight engineer and the fuel transfer system that moves fuel between different tanks in the event of damage is operated by him, and so on.

I think the main issue with gunners right now is that moving the gun mount is not very smooth when using keys/buttons for it. This is not such a big deal in most aircraft where the gun has a wide range of motion, because you can just turn it to the approximate direction of the oncoming fighter and then use the mouse as normal.

The problem is that it makes it hard to use the Blenheim turret, because the gun mount controls are tied to it. This happens because the gun also has a small range of movement on its own (regardless of turret position) and the mouse is mapped to that, which leaves the gun mount controls to operate the turret.
To further explain it, turret left/right is mapped to the gun mount controls, while gun left/right and gun up/down works with the mouse. The problem is that turret left/right is more useful than gun left/right as the gun has a tiny range of X-axis movement within the turret's porthole. If they just reversed it so that the mouse controls gun up/down and turret left/right and the gun mount controls are used for gun left/right, it would be fine.

The Br.20 top turret on the other hand (although the axes are reversed for now, i guess this is a bug) is fully mouse controlled because the gun doesn't move inside the turret, but moves along with the whole turret assembly.

The control logic goes something like this:

1) If there's only one possible movement it's tied to the mouse.
2) If there's two possible movements the mouse moves the gun and the gun mount controls move the rest of the assembly.

I hope i'm making sense here, hopefully this should help people understand what's going on and map their controls in a better fashion.

I think that mapping a secondary analog control to the gun mount controls would solve this problem for people who have a HOTAS with a ministick or even a console controller with those analog thumb controllers (it was mapped to the joystick by default but that also moves the control surfaces so i changed it to keyboard), until they come up with a better solution or modify the control logic on a per-aircraft basis.