Convergence confusion, please help.

[MadTommy]

Yes this subject again, I have just read numerous threads about gun convergence, and i am only more confused than before.

Please help me with a few things.

Firstly:
Horizontal & vertical convergence bug:
Are they switched in the now official Steam patch? i.e does horizontal convergence setting actually influence vertical convergence and visa versa?
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Secondary:
I also read:
It seems there is a small error in CoD regarding the gunsights. Instead of measuring the wingspan from horizontal line to horizontal line, as they did in real life, the CoD sights measure the distance from the central dot to the horizontal line.

This means that you have to double the setting on the range dial.

So, if you set your convergence (in the settings screen, before entering the mission) to, say, 150 yards, then you have to set the range dial to 300

Is this correct?
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Fourthly:
How do i workout how to set vertical convergence? I assume this is relative to bullet drop, why would you want to have this different from horizontal convergence? I've read mention of 'cone of fire', but surely this is just the same as being out of convergence?

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What range do you use online?

I tend to use 250yds as a Spit/Hurricane pilot.. but i picked this number out of thin air! ;)

Thanks for any help!

[5./JG27.Farber]

Q1: Yes.

Can't help you on the other questions, I fly blue. Sorry.

[Robo.]

Q2 - not anymore, this has been fixed. Don't forget your loadout menu is in meters, the gunsight convergence is in yards, wingspan is in feet.

So if your convergence is 150 yards, set it to 136 (m) in the loadout menu and if you shoot at a 109 (which you should!), set wingspan to 34ft.

Convergence depends on your personal preference, you're right about vertical value, it is where the bullets cross the line of sight ballistically. All this is extremely important for the RAF fighters.

[MadTommy]

Thanks for clearing up Q1&2... they were the most important!

[Ataros]

1&2 were fixed IIRC

3)
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8881/bf109e1e3starreschusswa.jpg

4) Try those mentioned by Mr.X below his video (2nd comment)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZczgdRRdGV8

[MadTommy]

Ok thanks..

BUT... now i'm confused again about whether vertical & horizontal convergences are reversed. :(

I'll test it when i get a chance.

[lonewulf]

Hi Mad

I share your sense of frustration over this whole convergence issue. I've seen the diagram supplied by Ataros before, and it's very pretty of course, but I'm still completely confused about how convergence is actually set. Frankly, I doubt whether anyone here really understands it. Convergence is really just one number as far as I'm concerned. It is the point in meters or yards along your line of sight where you want the projectiles from your weapons to group. That could be 50 or 1000 m. Whatever you choose, I really fail to understand the other value, whether that's called the vertical or horizontal convergence, doesn't change the fact that it appears superfluous.

The point of convergence in the supplied diagram actually appears to sit about a meter or more above the line of sight. I have no idea what's going on with that .

[MadTommy]

Hi Mad

I share your sense of frustration over this whole convergence issue. I've seen the diagram supplied by Ataros before, and it's very pretty of course, but I'm still completely confused about how convergence is actually set. Frankly, I doubt whether anyone here really understands it. Convergence is really just one number as far as I'm concerned. It is the point in meters or yards along your line of sight where you want the projectiles from your weapons to group. That could be 50 or 1000 m. Whatever you choose, I really fail to understand the other value, whether that's called the vertical or horizontal convergence, doesn't change the fact that it appears superfluous.

The point of convergence in the supplied diagram actually appears to sit about a meter or more above the line of sight. I have no idea what's going on with that

i agree that diagram means nothing to me.

What has really annoyed me now is:.. every individual gun has 2 convergence settings, each plane has 8 guns and something like 8 fighters on the red side (that number is a guess).. soooo i have to type 128 numbers into the GUI to setup my convergences for just the Red side alone!! Jesus wept at less ! :-P

P.S Who stole my third question in my original post? ;)

[MadTommy]

Vertical & Horizontal convergences are reversed. Confirmed by testing.

[5./JG27.Farber]

You set the guns up the same, if you wanted to be really picky, you could adjust them to be perfect based on the spacing between guns...

For shooting fighters:

The Vertical is important because its where your rounds land in your crosshair depending on the range of your target... So if guns are set too 200 and you fire at a target at 300 they will pass under him... If you set the Vertical to 400 and fire at a target at 200 they will pass over him even though he is flat and level and bang on the pip!

The horizontal is important, proberbly more important especially in wing mounted weapons. However you also have to decide on a range that suits all situations... Set this to 100 metres and you will never hit anything beyond 215. This is becasue after 100 metres the rounds are flying in a pattern the size of a dinner plate but by 200 metres (cos its twice as far as the convergence figure) the rounds will be flying in the same pattern as the guns that fired them but mirrored, because they have passed over each other...

For shooting bombers:

you just need longer ranges cos the targets bigger and you want to fire from longer ranges to avoid the gunners...

Got it? ;)

You could by drawing a scale diagram and or calculating the distances and angles turn your spitfire into a shotgun! :-P


Its for the 109 but:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riJXEF7kerE&list=PL86IUXXu2hjjOPnPn22absl0ZNhRw-tg1&index=9&feature=plpp_video

[Ataros]

The diagram above shows vertical conv. set at 400 m. and horizontal at 200 m. This is a historical setting that allows to have effective firing range from about 150 to 300 m. probably (for central weapons up to 400+ m). Note that ballistics causes a round to pass line of gun-sight 2 times.

It is not possible to achieve such a wide range if vert. and horiz. set at one point.

Under Mr.X video you can see that he uses 150/500 setting for blue(to fire at closer range than historical probably) and 250/400 for red aircraft (as they lack speed and have to fire at 109 which are running away from longer distance usually).

[lonewulf]

Ataros, thanks, that's interesting but what we have in the diagram is a compromise setting rather than convergence. The closest the diagram comes to convergence is at 200m. As things stand, the cannon converge at 200m (but at some undisclosed height above the line of sight (which seems highly problematic to me), and the MGs converge at 400m, along the line of sight but at a range where the cannon rounds are beginning to become widely dispersed, and in fact, much more widely dispersed than the diagram suggests because the recoil would introduce extreme horizontal and vertical dispersion at that range.

However, even assuming that the diagram describes a standard LW setting for the E 3/4, (and I suspect possibly it does) it is nevertheless calculated using the know trajectories of the 8mm and 20mm rounds. Physics being what they are, we can calculate where an 8mm round will be relative to a 20mm round when fired from the same point. However, you can't just change those values around as you please. For example, using your diagram, we cant set the vert. convergence at 200m for both the 8 and 20mm rounds and then change the horizontal convergence from 400m (as in the diagram) to 600m. That would be physically impossible because it would require the trajectories of the two types of ammo to deviate from what gravity dictates.

So, I appear to be back where I started from trying to work out why there are two separate convergence values that are not necessarily related to each other.

Can someone please point out where I'm getting my wires crossed.

[5./JG27.Farber]

Can someone please point out where I'm getting my wires crossed.

Did you see post 10?

I understand what your saying about Real world. The diagram is indeed a compromise! Because when your off the ground, you cant change your convergence! You also can't change the distance to your target as you desire in a fight... (unless your sneaking up on him).

[lonewulf]

Thanks Farber. Yes I did see your post and I did watch the video and yes both were helpful. And I don't necessarily disagree with the approach taken in Ataros' diagram where the guns are adjusted to be effective over as broad a range as possible. This is often done when sighting in a hunting rifle, for example. Instead of adjusting your sights so that your projectiles group right in the middle of the target at say 100m, it is better to have the rifle shooting about 3-4cm high (depending on the caliber) at that range, so it will still hit the vital organs of something like a deer at 300m. (Please excuse me if I'm currently in the process of telling granny how to suck eggs.)

However, it still seems to leave me with an unresolved problem. How can you seemingly assign arbitrary values to both hor. and vert. convergence in the game? Once you have determined what one or other will be, the other value is surely predetermined I would have thought???.

[MadTommy]

Thanks lads.

Need to look to see if these convergences can be edit via an ini file rather than the GUI which is painful...

[5./JG27.Farber]

However, it still seems to leave me with an unresolved problem. How can you seemingly assign arbitrary values to both hor. and vert. convergence in the game? Once you have determined what one or other will be, the other value is surely predetermined I would have thought???.

The ground crew would have looked it up in a book I suppose. You never heard a fighter pilot say my guns were set to 200/400 this is what your saying right? I get it now. Yea but it is what it is and we have the option so we have to set it. I wonder how much control over convergence pilots really had?

Thanks lads.

Need to look to see if these convergences can be edit via an ini file rather than the GUI which is painful...

Yea the reversal twists your melon... but is it gonna be reversed in the conf.ini aswell? Best off just writing, V and H on a piece of paper and then in put your values, then exchange symbols. - at least thats what I did.

[MadTommy]

Yea the reversal twists your melon... but is it gonna be reversed in the conf.ini aswell? Best off just writing, V and H on a piece of paper and then in put your values, then exchange symbols. - at least thats what I did.

No its not that.. its just there are so many inputs to setup all fighters, it would be really a lot easier to edit the file directly. But I can't find the file where these are located. Its not in the conf.ini, unless I missed it.

Do you know where this data is stored?

[5./JG27.Farber]

user.ini ;)

[MadTommy]

user.ini ;)

Do you mean confUser.ini ? If so i've searched through this and cant see it. I've found no user.ini anywhere.

Thanks for you help :)

[5./JG27.Farber]

C:\Users\farber\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\user.ini

np :-P

[MadTommy]

C:\Users\farber\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\user.ini

np :-P

Weird, i don't have a user.ini ??

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7530/ilcerror.png

edit:
hmm found it in C:\Games\Steam\userdata\30619971\63950\remote

[Matt255]

Vertical & Horizontal convergences are reversed. Confirmed by testing.
Great, atleast now i know why carefully adjusting convergence made my gunnery worse.:rolleyes:

Must've been super hard to fix that bug in the first place.:-P