ahh yes i play realisitci and im very good at it
infact no1 has beeten me at cta realistic manston

Good link, I've been looking for something like this for a while. Thanks.

no get a grip winny how can a mode that uses a third person camera angle and uses big red signs to tell you where to shoot be more realistic than sim mode

Because sim mode makes it so hard to see opposition planes you have to get down on the deck to put them against the sky to spot them. The best sim match I played was at the weekend on Sicily coast. The match was played out over the sea so you easily spot the other planes and BNZ them very easily. This had the effect of raising the altitude of the match. As I say I dont see the point in removing one of your axis during a match. Playing out a dogfight at treetop level gives you 4 options, put the power on, bank left, bank right or climb. Climing is suicide if someones on your tale so its always a turning game. Without any kind of tracking this usually works on losing your oponent thats on your tale

What I said was the dogfighting in realistc was more authentic. I've read loads of WWII combat reports and I never read one where the main tactic seemed to be to stay low. If you had an altitude disadvantage in WWII you were in trouble.

As for the big red target indicator.. Switch the hud off and stick it in cockpit view. And third person looks nice, nobody is forced to use it.

Target lock is a better simulation of how your eyes actually work. Human eyes don't pan around smoothly like that.

I stand by what I said.

i do agree that some maps are easier than others to spot enemy planes but i dont agree that all sim games are tree top flying for example the other night i played a historical match with spit mkII and hurricanes against 109E3s high above dover, but also i do think it depends who you are flying against.

Newcomers to realistic should be coached by sim and realistic veterans.
Concepts like velocity vector, lift vector and pursuit courses should be thoroughly explained and practiced.

A rookie should train on a BF109-E and the instructor on either a Hurricane or a Spit MkII. Make butterfly entries to a head-on fight, make use of the vertical on an energy fighter, and a decent guns defense practice. "Zoom and boom" and "turn and burn" techniques explained. Then, the rookie can make his choice as far as weapon goes.

Sim matches would be a lot more effective and fun if more teamwork was involved. To me, Situational Awareness (SA) is the most difficult thing to achieve in sim mode. If I can spot a guy ("See – Decide – Attack – Break") unless he is a good defensive guy he's gone. But if I am clueless as to what's going on during a match, then I get shot down every five seconds. Yesterday I played a couple of sim matches where I had good SA and bad SA. On the good ones, I stayed ahead of everyone with 7-12 kills. On the bad ones I did not even scored a single kill.

Good SA comes from your mate calling out altitude, situation, bearing and heading. An example could be "This is Dr Laplace. I'm on a Spit MkXVI, turning hard left @ 1,500ft, 200mph, going south". Then your mates can look for you and help you if you miss the target. Also, calling out bandits (Bandits!, 12 o'clock high!) helps.

I am not an ace like some guys here who somehow manage to get EVERY kill EVERY time. But I am a good teacher. If there's anyone here that would like to go online and practice some of this stuff with me I'd be more than happy to help. We need more sim and realistic players. Also, I am inviting the aces to help me show the rookies the art of dogfighting.

Yes. When i'm playing sim with the regular 360 sim players, our battles can vary a lot in height. I try to stay as high as possible especially when i'm flying my P-51D and if i get too low I usually get picked off by squirrel's La7 within seconds. One way to make players fly higher is to add some cloud cover, people tend to try and hide in them if they are getting chased.

Try winter at Stalingrad in the morning or day with poor weather. awesome and easy to spot planes too.

Oh and flying as a P-51, plane trains and head ons are what you want to see. Spotting then Hooking onto the back of a plane train after a high speed dive can get you a double kill, and in a head on, once you get the hang of sliding past with the rudder instead of just flying into the other plane, you can get many nice kills without the collision.

The best way to solve the treetop dogfighting problem if you wish you head up to altitude is to host or convince the host to set poor/rain/storm weather. Visibility will be tragic at lower levels, so people should get the hint to head above the clouds if they are a sim regular.

Besides, nothing is better for me in a dogfight than shooting a wing off an opponent and watching them disappear into the bad weather (whether I get kill credit or not).

More weather/match variety and teamwork on sim matches is much needed, but to get there we have to have a good group of sim-willing pilots. Here's hoping that realistic is the new black, and that sim will be in season soon.

Cheers.

At the end of the day I will play any mode, just as long as there are players about to shoot. I have noticed a gradual decrease in players over the last couple of weeks.

I was talking to Ratman the other day and he said the game had lost its shine to him. He is one of us arcade lot shifting into realistic for a change though so at least he is still playing. He said realistic had given the game a new lease of life as its a challenge again. I agree with him on that and I reckon some more matches we can start to develop tactics to combat the daisy chaining and head ons