Some needed help in the FMB
 

Working with the FMB could be improved

The FMB Object selector box would have a selctor box for choosing country/organization of choice prior to selecting any object ---> This shouldn't be a difficult fix, it would probably only require one additional selector box inside the object box.

Aircraft,stationary objects,artillery,vehicles Object choices would be chosen by country/organization, that relate specifically to that country and organization.

Select Country/organization,example...USA/USN,USA/USAAF,Japan/IJA,Japan/IJN,etc. by a selector box.

You could choose aircraft, vehicles or other objects that were used by that country/organization easily.

For example there would only be aircraft or objects use by USA/USN,USA/USAAF,Japan/IJA.Japan/IJN Only

Under the respective choice there would only be insignia, skins and air groups that relate to that country and organization only.

If an aircraft was used by several countries it would show up in every country/organization where it was used.

P-40 RAAF
P-40 AVG
P-40 RAF
P-40 USSR
P-40 USA

It is so tedious scrolling through the listing of objects and aircraft to make selections, which could be facilitate easily with such a simple search & sort routine. It wasn't such a problem when there were a few objects as in IL2 1.0. Those days are long past. Also, the way the object box is designed it is difficult making choices unless you are very careful moving the mouse.

With such a tool it would be so much easier to assure you are using skins, insignia and proper squadrons and flight groups for the country and organization.

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One other REAL BIGGY is artillery. It is so tedious setting up artillery, because the guns all shoot straight ahead. You have to go into 3D mode to make sure you have line of site on targets for artillery. It would make sense, if artillery could just shoot a trajectory like in the real world.

Naturally artillery cannot shoot through hills, but artillery could sure shoot over hills and destroy targets.

I don't know how difficult this would be. This would sure make more sense for the artillery to be farther behind their own frontlines.

This could probably be handled with one extra selector box for setting the firing angle, 0-90 degrees of angle could be selected.

This would be enough,because you could test the trajectory angle for distance pretty easy, and set up the rest of your artillery.

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Its zoom mapped to joystick axis, position of head did not change.

Wow, some very nice responses going. The more i hear about the new improvements, the more excited i get. I mean, the radar is a great feature on its own (even if we'll have to wait longer for it), but new AI and flying without nav lights at night is even better.


A few questions about gameplay issues in regards to fighting at night:

1) Since it's mentioned in the radar video that there is accurate ground clutter interference, i guess that there is some sort of ground data being parsed to the radar code. Does this make it possible to have navigation/bombing radars like H2S in the future?

2) Since it will be difficult to operate the radar while flying the aircraft, what about adding a level stabilizer feature for the night fighters too? For example, you could engage level stab while working the radar, disengage to correct your heading (the aircraft would still respond to stick inputs when you are in the radar seat and you don't have level stab on, just like it happens with bombers), reengage and so on.
Now if exhaust glow was modeled you could navigate this way close enough to a bomber to be able to see its silhouette or exhausts. From that point on you would disengage level stab, jump to the front seat and just open fire. This is pretty much the way it was done in real life as well, the pilot was guided to visual range by the radar operator, but he still needed to see the target before opening fire.
Which brings me to the final question...

3) Will the AI visual detection range be adjusted for night scenarios? In reality a lot of times bombers came under fire from night fighters that were very close to them, yet they hadn't seen them until the tracers started flying by. It would be highly discouraging to carefully sneak up on a lone Lancaster for 10 minutes only to have the AI gunners start firing at you 500m before you can see the bomber's silhouette outlined against the night sky.

Again, thanks for all your hard work guys, we're eagerly anticipating the first results. ;-)

Yes,adjusting the AI properties for night fighting are already done so don't worry,the gunners won't be a problem anymore.

The stabilizer is not needed,since the G-4 aircraft will be mainly a coop. airplane and there you'll have to find yourself a good bordfunker.Well of course you can fly it in dog.fight server,but i cannot see a G-4 dog.fighting with La-5;I-16 or stuff like that,and most of it's entire potential won't be fully available in a dog.fight server because of many reasons.The simplest one of them is that i have not seen a fully dark night map in a dog fight server since ages,and also using a radar in a dog.fight server where everyone is flying below 2000 is useless and stupid.

UK Dedicated 3 does have a midnight map, but it is certainly the exception.

Please do consider means of reducing AI gunner friendly fire if you are modifying the gunner's code for nighttime.

1) unfortunately no. Longwave radars as Lichtenstein are quite different than centimetric radars. Antennas for metric waves cannot be made big enough to shape beam into narrow cone and still be carried by a plane, so radar "sees" everything around and merges it into a lines on display. That means whole surrounding must be included in process, but direction to any point on ground does not have to be kept, sums of returned echoes can be updated quite lazily and only thing to draw are oscilloscope lines.
Centimetric radar has fairly narrow beam which is rotated around by moving antenna and usually can display bright point to any place on its screen. That makes three challenges, how to extract landscape geometry in chosen direction fast (hit by very fast moving beam), how to model screen which can contain anything and how to do afterglow which was very important to make information useful for user.
I'm afraid my explanation of differences between radar principles was very short, simplified and not much useful, if you want to know more, googling for lobe switched radars will be certainly better :-).

Centimetric radars are on priority list, but still in phase of searching for an algorithm. Modelling H2S would create additional trouble - aircraft for it. It would need heavy bomber (maybe with exception of some pathfinder mosquito variant) and those are very time consuming to model, especially cockpits.

2) still open question, probably will be included

It might be interesting for you that not all "Dogfight- Servers" have constant furballs.
There are some where coordinated bomber attacks are flown.
If that should happen during the night one would find very few fighters there, except night - fighters.
No furballs!!!
The Altitude of the Bombers is usually between 3500 and 6500 m.
Be assured there are more than a few who would really enjoy this feature on a "Dogfight - Server"

Yep, i was thinking of mission-oriented servers where a big part of the regular fliers actually takes the time to follow the mission brief. Thanks to everyone for the responses by the way.

Now that i think of it, lack of H2S-type radars will present another problem for multiplayer, regardless of the kind of mission (coop or DF server). Ok, in coops there is AI as well and in single player all we need is AI bombers, these can simply have with a Gattack waypoint, but what about using flyable bombers?

Most of the other issues can be cleared up down the line when the advertised features make it into the sim. For example a trigger that lights up runway fires when you approach the airfield.

The real issue is navigation, because if players can't navigate and hit the target nobody will want to fly a night bombing mission, and that leaves the night fighters without a target, unless we're talking about AI bombes in a coop against flyable night fighters.

Would a blind boming/navigation device like the British Oboe or the German knickebein (not sure on the spelling) be easier to model? Maybe this could be easier than simulating radar, but it would the need mission builder's input while designing the mission to mark the targets, since most of these systems were based on a couple of imaginary lines intersecting on the map. I guess it will be much easier to code a couple of audio signals when you reach an intersection, than doing an H2S radar.

Of course, i'm not demanding anything here. It's just that the start of electronic warfare is a very fascinating topic that's never been done before in a WWII sim and i'm getting a bit excited :grin:

I know that this official addon will be of higher quality than the unofficial ones, but i can't say no to a combination of both. To tell you the truth, i can't wait to fly a bomber night event on a full switch DF server with a night attack scenario. Navigating via Oboe, pathfinder Mosquitoes marking the target for the heavies, flak, searchlights and some 110G4s and Ju88s flying CAP overhead. It will be like a combination of IL2 and Silent Hunter III :cool:

Hi DT )))

I will ask if it is possible to correct the auto-flap in N1K2J, since they pop-up with minimal G-force being really unrealistic.

THX 4S_Nero

What I'd want for single player is auto allied bombers, auto german nightfighters, and flyable NF Mosquito nightfighter-killers. :grin:

I don't usually fly nights in single player, it simply isn't believable with nav lights on, and it wasn't playable without them, you couldn't see a thing, particularly as there are no exhaust flame plumes. Radar and visible exhausts would make all of that workable.