I see my tears and then some in there some where..

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...8&d=1342791415

I hope the wet floor wasn't BlackSix's reaction when Luthier said he had to do another Friday update and all they had still was a few more screenies. :-D

I enjoyed the damn floor picture, the bf109f looks nice.

Thank you Mr. B6. Manning AA guns, tanks and other items will be a hoot. Sorry about your teams flooding problem. Looks like an AC condensation drain wasn't working.

Thanks for the correction ;)

Well, i'm glad more people see it this way.

Currently, the easiest way to make multiplayer interesting is to make it possible to drop bombs on targets.

Imagine you are flying and see a group of 10 human controlled bombers. One team will escort them and the other will intercept them. It's a magnet for getting dogfights and in servers where there are specified targets, it will make things so much more interesting because of the need to fly CAP for the defenders, or the need to come around from an unexpected angle for the attackers.

So, let's say we make a decision to fly out to sea, then attack the target from the North to surprise the defenders and just exit south to friendly airbases back to France. Now we have to coordinate with the escorts and time their departures because they won't have enough fuel to go with us the whole way. They will have to sweep the target 5-10 minutes earlier and then escort us home. So, now we also need to navigate and have an idea of our ETAs. Similarly, the defenders will have to choose between patrolling in force and relying on radar vectors, or spreading their fighter cover thinner to cover more area.

So, suddenly we have a handful of added tactical considerations that make our gameplay more interesting. Suddenly, the map is not just empty space but useful space.

We have the pilots. Not many, but there is a core of people who set aside a great deal of time, learning by themselves, testing how things work and coming up with workarounds for things that didn't work. After all their experience, if a few things get corrected it will be easy and worth the time to pass this knowledge on to others.

We have the servers. We have the mission designers and the people who can make use of scripts.

The one thing we don't have is the ability to carpet bomb an airfield from 7km of altitude and that's why we don't see epic fights. I know i'm not going to spend an hour climbing up there and getting to a target in formation, if i can't blow things up, just so the other pilots on the server have something to shoot at :-P

If I am right it's a design limitation to keep pilot away from entering a dangerous flight regime. It does not certainly means that the plane will break apart at 65° bank but prevent pilots from entering a situation where coupled effects (let say gust, slip angle, etc...) could prevent you from regaining ctrl or damage the structure.

Some big airplanes even today are limited to 45 or even 30 deg.

You should read the Fana de l'aviation from this month. There is a flight test of the recently restored IL2. I am sure that there is even a more detailed text somewhere in the Russian literature and devs have read it alrdy. I also guess that what we see on the pictures is the result of the old buggy AI with their rate of roll, the one that will makes shy even an F16 pilot (Fort Worth is in Texas).

~S!

PS: I hope you're still around to read this ;)

Hello,
Quick question to the dev team and B6: will you solve the problem of mirror on the Spitfire and Hurricane in the patch has come.

Blackdog, Good points. However, it appears performance related issues, ie. the sim pausing when a group( as few as four ) EA are encountered. Dramatic framerate reduction when hits are obtained causing debris particals, vapor, smoke and/or fire to trail from an EA. Sometimes followed by CTD . Even if the bomb sight calulations are rectified it appears the performance issues most encounter would reduce the immerssion factor to an unacceptable level. I find it disconcerting no mention from the developers regarding performance increases.I was under the impression the " new graphics engine " was being implemented for this express purpose. I am cautiously optimistic the " trees" will be fixed.

+1

Now that the office move is completed and the floors are mopped -- which is good to hear -- could you please advise what fixes have been applied to the currently incorrect flight modelling of the Spitfires (all marks), Hurricanes (all marks), Bf 109's, and ME 110's?

Well, the reason i'm advocating these changes is that most probably it's a purely numerical calculation issue in the bombsight code (Edit: at least that's how it seems from testing done by various pilots, there is definitely a mix-up between imperial and metric units in how the sight treats your inputs regarding tracking the target and calculating the release point).

It's probably at the same level as the non-starting Hurricane that they fixed. For example, they might have made it possible to start with a colder engine or raised the starting oil temperature, both of which is just changing the value of a variable. That's less than one line of code.

And since i'm simplifying things a bit to make a point and i haven't actually seen the code, let's just up this a little and say it's 100-200 , or even 1000 lines of code. To put this into perspective, i'm a beginner programmer and i can routinely crank out 300 lines of working Java code in the span of a two hour lab session at uni. In these two hours i have to read the problem/assignment, understand it, analyse it, decide on a modeling solution (what classes i need and so on), implement it and check for errors.

Fixing the bombsights is probably an evening's work for the developer team at most, and that's probably the guys who are not even involved with the graphics rewrite.
Small things like that would not tie up the graphics programmers, not to mention that it's probably the field of the AI/systems programmer to do this and not the job of the graphics guys, so it wouldn't really delay the performance fixes.

As an example, the Ju88 gyrocompass was not working ever since the release of the sim and got fixed in the previous beta. All this time however, there was a similar compass on the He-111 that worked fine and the code could have been copy-pasted all along.

I'm not disrespecting anyone's flying preferences here because i fly most of the aircraft in the sim, but this example clearly shows that trivially easy to fix issues with big impact on gameplay are neglected, because most people try to prove/disprove rights and wrongs in the FMs of their favorite/opposing fighters and more or less "steal the spotlights" in every single patch.

If it's not 100 octane it's the lack of DeWilde ammo, the grass being too green, the lack of MG-FF/M in the 110s, etc, etc. Well, these are all important issues to fix but also more time consuming (or at least equally time consuming) to giving players the ability to aim some bombs. And even if all of these things are corrected, there is still no battle of Britain without bombers. It wasn't a mid-channel scrap, it was a bombing campaign.

Just take a look at the FM/DM section and you'll see what i mean :-P

As far as i can see theres a pair of pedals. This indicates the devs are flying either CoD or probably IL-2 classic. 1st proof that the devs are testing themselves and so i have no doubt where the tears are coming from.. :) Allons!

I completly agree, it can hardly be called the Battle of Britian without a competant Luftwaffe BG. If it were as simple to fix as you beleive, it makes you wonder why it has not been addressed. The FM's will be an eternal debate.

If you look this with business eyes it is obvious why not fixed. Most resources are to the new game and nearly nothing to the old. Why is easy. The sales curve for CoD is established (flat...declining?), and nothing the devs do now for that will change it. There is no such thing as a 'relaunch' of a game and not much money in trying to win back unhappy customers. Better use your staff and money to make a new game to grow sales. So be happy for any work on any patch at all.

It might not be that simple to actually code. It is however simple to determine how it should work and this means that at least the design stage would be very fast: "ok, i need an algorithm that takes variable A for speed and variable B for altitude and follows these two formulas:" enter a bit of trigonometry/vector math here to calculate the bombsight's angular velocity when tracking a target and the release point for the bombs. Their Lofte bombsights in Il2:1946 work like a charm, so it's not that they don't know how to do it.

In other words, compared to other issues (especially FMs) there is a smaller amount of effort needed to determine what is the right way to model it and previous experience on the matter. I think the developers are just so swamped by other issues that people pay more attention to, that they haven't had the chance to take a good look into it.

A similar thing was happening with the Blenheim, until a few guys from ATAG and me took it upon ourselves to document everything that was wrong with it, assisted only by another forum member (who i shall not name) who sent me a copy of the pilot's notes (and that's why i can't name him, because it was still copyrighted material after all these years:-P ).
The developers took note of it and now the aircraft is flyable and most of its issues have been corrected.

So i thought that if i start drumming up some support again, we could gradually get the rest of the bombers in a usable state and go have epic fights :grin:

....hopefully the devs know that if cod is not fixed, then the new game will be boycotted by many....

your logic is flawed....the devs are the ones who should be happy we still support them and many of us will still buy the new game under the condition that cod is fixed BEFORE that happens....they are the ones who should be considered "lucky" when the game breaking bugs are gone and the game meets reasonable expectations, since the future series relies on this one fact....

personally them meeting expectations is a WIN WIN, for both users and the company, and this is both my hope and my belief that it will come...

Both of what you guys say is true to an extent.

They have to release a new sim to get a cash injection and keep the series going, so they need to develop that and their time is spent there.

On the other hand, they do know that fixing CoD to what most would consider an acceptable standard will give them a chance for better sales in the sequel and maybe some new sales for CoD itself.

Finally, there is an overlap between both sims, the current and the future one. Since they will use the same engine, the work being done now for performance and optimization is work that will benefit both sims.

Also, quite a few of the aircraft we fly in BoB will be utilized in the sequel as well, so it pays to fix any bugs in the way their systems are modeled. I've though long and hard about these issues i'm discussing and that's why i didn't spam the boards about them early on (most of what is bugged with bombers has been this way since release), there really were bigger fish to fry at that time to keep the series alive and the community going.

Now however i think is the right time to advocate these fixes, because we've gotten to a point where more people can fly and more people can make use of what the sim models.

This bombsight bug is a case of a certain amount of work with a huge payback: all of the LW bombers during the war used that thing, so spending a couple of evenings to correct it will pay off for CoD, for the sequel and for any other sim that comes afterwards in the series and happens to feature a LW bomber. Not to mention that the Lofte operates on a very similar principle to the Norden bombsight (it was actually based on it by data provided by spies), so this also covers the potential inclusion of US bombers at a later date.

The same can be said for the RAF sight we have in the Blenheim (used in all RAF bombers up until 1942 and in several of them later on), but that one is mostly correct in its function.

Not to nitpick, but it is a Lotfe, not Lofte bombsight. Lotfernrohr in German.

Damnit Blackdog, I am one of those guys arguing in the FM threads. Just remember, the grass is always greener in the other patch ;)

It is so weird that totally simple things are never fixed (such as the bombsight). Another example: the mirrors have never worked, why not disable them via patch so you don't have to manually switch them off every sortie, until such time as they are fixed?

It is only speculation, but I suspect the main problem is inadequately documented code left by programmers who have left 1C. Code can be quickly generated and modified by an individual, but modifying other's code can be a nightmare. Changes that 1C makes always seems to have a lot of unintended consequences, as is compatible with this situation.

camber

P.S we really do need the MG-FFM firing 100 octane DeWilde ammo, as long as the tracers are the correct color. How DARE YOU request a functional bombsight :)

I'll get some your questions in this thread and give them to Ilya today or tomorrow.

Thanks a lot Blacksix, that's wonderful.

I will probably have a more detailed report for the bombsight bugs in a few hours.

I have been discussing this a lot with some of the bomber pilots who fly on the ATAG server and one of them (Aus3620) has helped me a lot by running all the tests and making videos of the results.

We have found out that the Luftwaffe bombsights in the He-111 and Ju-88 track targets correctly. The player simply has to input his altitude and speed (i'm just waiting for a confirmation on if that speed is IAS or TAS).

What is wrong is the calculations for releasing the bombs. Even if you calibrate the sight correctly, the bombs always impact before the target.

To score hits the player has to convert IAS to TAS from the imperial table in the manual instead of the metric one. For example, if you are flying at 300km/h and 3000meters, you have to go to the imperial chart and input the number for 300mph and 3000feet (but just the number as it is, you don't convert it from mph to km/h).

Also, the altimeters seem to be under-reporting a bit and the way to account for this is to convert meters to yards. I don't know if this is simply a case of calibrating the altimeters, because when we spawn they are set at 1000mbar by default.

However, most people have found that with default weather this gives inaccurate altimeter readings. For example, one of the coastal RAF airfields has an elevation of 72ft but when you spawn there, the altimeter reads about 300ft.

If Ilya Shevchenko wants more information about this, i'll be glad to describe the issue to him in more detail via PM or email.
Thank you and thanks to all the players who helped me with this and took part in the exchange of knowledge and testing. We have learned a lot of technical details along the way and if we can help you fix the bombsights in time for the next patch, it will be great for all sim pilots.

Expect a more detailed report later in the day in a separate thread (i will post here a link to it).

It's not a mixup of metric and imperial units, it's simply that the "Rücktriftwinkel" calculation was forgotten to model. IIRC somebody posted a part of the bombsight manual here. It should appear if you use the german term in the search mask.

Thanks for the tip. According to the search results, this is equivalent to the trail or terminal velocity setting.

As luck would have it, i've been recently reading about bombsights and wikipedia has some great articles about the British CSBS (the one we have on the Blenheim) and the Norden. The Lofte is very similar to the Norden in how it operates.

It never occurred to me that this setting is missing, because i thought it was handled automatically by the simulator.

Some things in our aircraft do get handled automatically. For example, leveling the bombsight or managing the hydraulic pump in the Blenheim, you don't have to do it because the sim does it for you, but it is modeled (just try to raise the Blenheim turret when you are on the ground, even if the engines are on...it's not possible because the hydraulic pump is set to power the gear and flaps). So i thought that the trail setting is automatic as well (it certainly is in the Blenheim).

So, let's see what this setting is. Bombs drop in more or less parabolic trajectories. They start roughly parallel to the aircraft (unless you're weird and your name is He-111, then they drop ass-first because the bay is vertical :-P ) and progressively nose down while they fly due to air resistance and gravity (negative forward acceleration due to friction and positive downward acceleration due to gravity)

Each bomb type has its own trajectory, depending on aerodynamics of the casing and its weight/density.

Since bombs accelerate and nose down during their flight, it's easy to see that a bomb released at higher initial speed (the speed of the carrier aircraft) and lower altitudes will be more parallel to the ground upon impact, than one released at lower speed and/or higher altitude (the forward speed is easily countered by air resistance during its flight and it settles in a dive).

So, the higher you go the more chance of the bomb settling in an attitude where it has a lot of vertical and very little forward motion. And yes, if unaccounted for it will impact short.
Please behold technical schematic no.1, also known as "my awesome MSPaint skills, let me show you them" :-P

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1343043669

What they did was calculate trajectories for the bomb types used by each bomber and added a function to the sights, so that bombardiers could select the correct one depending on their bombload (so probably mixed bombloads means mixed results because the bombs have different trajectories, while maybe the sight can only handle one preset at a time).

In some bombsights it was called trail (i don't know in what values they measured it), in some later RAF sights they would input the bomb's terminal velocity and now i learned that in the Lofte it was called Rücktriftwinkel and it compensated wind resistance through the drop.

What amazes me is how our friend Heinz realized this is missing, since there is no clear way to test for it. Eg, we would have to make our own bombing practice range in the FMB with objects at preset distances, to see that they impact short by specific distances each time.

For information on the matter:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...twinkel&page=5

I'm starting to think that this explanation is the most possible one. It would certainly explain why we need to do all kinds of weird unit conversions when bombing from high altitude, while people who bomb from low altitude say the sight works fine for them.


Finally, two more questions (now that Blacksix is taking notes :-P ):

1) What's up with the R22 autopilot mode? It's supposed to hold the plane level with the horizon during the bomb run, but it seems that the engines don't have enough power to keep it from losing altitude at that angle of attack.
Certainly the 111 has trouble achieving its rated power settings, or the instruments read incorrect values (eg, full fine pitch at take-off and it barely goes up to 2100RPM).

2) Why do the bombs explode backwards (the last one to impact explodes first)?

Thanks everyone for your help and i'm hoping we see a fix for these issues in the next patch :grin:

The most logical way of modeling atmospheric conditions is to model standard atmospheric conditions which is 1013 mbar/hPa at sea level and I assume 1C has done it in this sim.

In order to get correct altitude the pilot should dial in correct atmospheric pressure to altitmeter. If you keep default 1000 mbar setting you get 13 mbar error which is 13 x 27 ft (8m) near seal level = 251 feet/104 meters. The error will increase when flying altitude increases. (1 hPa difference = Alt 2,5 km = 11 m, 5,5 km = 16m, 10 km = 26 m) Naturally you also must take in account the ground level at airfield and add it to the altimeter.

Just my 2 cents if this might be some cause of problems you have discovered...

Determine the weight of the falling object. The easiest way to do this is usually to measure this quantity directly. You can also estimate weight if you know the construction materials and dimensions.

2
Calculate the frontal area of the falling object. The frontal area is the apparent area facing in the direction of falling. You can determine this area by measuring the outline of the object from that orientation. For example, if the falling object were a cone, the tip of the cone would point straight downward, and the frontal area would appear to be a circle equal to the area of the circular base of the cone.

3
Determine the drag coefficient of the falling object. You can usually avoid having to calculate the drag coefficient yourself by looking up an approximate value in a reference book or on the Internet. If you need a highly precise value, you should consult with an engineer.

4
Determine the gas density of the medium through which the object will be falling. If the medium is the air, then you should know that air density decreases with altitude, which means that the object's terminal velocity will decrease as it gets closer to the ground (where the gas is denser and pushes back harder, providing stronger braking power). Thus you can calculate terminal velocity at any one altitude using simple mathematics, but to calculate the change in the terminal velocity over a long-distance fall, you will require the use of calculus or empirical approximations. Air density also changes with the weather; there is no uniform density value for a given altitude. To get the most accurate measurements of air density, you will need to multiply average air density values by local weather condition offsets. Atmospheric information is available in the United States from the National Weather Service, a service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

5
Calculate terminal velocity at a given altitude with this equation: Terminal V = sqrt ((2 x (Object Weight)) / ((Frontal Area) x (Drag Coeff.) x (Gas Density))).

In plain English, the terminal velocity of the object is equal to the square root of the quotient of twice the object's weight over the product of the object's frontal area, its drag coefficient, and the gas density of the medium through which the object is falling.



Read more: How to Calculate Terminal Velocity | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_6134922_calc...#ixzz21SPSlnUQ

Black Six plz ask about FM&performacne both British and German planes.

Beacuse actually situation is very bad.

RAF fighters both Spitfire and Hurricanes had wrong power engine settings, had wrong performance - way too slow - at emergency +12 lbs power rating they could reach speed RL planes had at only + 6 lbs power rating. Also British planes can't used power ratings from manual - or if used engine broke after very short time.

Other hand 109 is still too slow at slow speed - ab. 20 kph, slats open too late ( at too low speed and or too high angle of attack), had strange stall characterisctic ( should be more gentle) and had too sensivity rudder.

Dont forget the roll rates ;)

And service ceilings and way off as well.

Sent from my SCH-R910 using Tapatalk 2

Nor you! LOL

http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/232

Blackdog....Your and ATAGs efforts are much appreciated...I look forward to engaging the bomber formations!!!!

<S>

Well, that's the plan more or less: if we have an incentive to go up there in force it will be better gameplay for everyone ;)

A few days ago i was dive bombing in a Ju88 and had a human gunner. I was dodging a Spit all the way home as best as i could and the player manning the guns was doing a very good job, so we managed to reach home base with only light damage.

The only serious damage what that the hydraulic pump got shot off, so we couldn't extend gear and flaps. I had to side-slip it in to control speed by drag and executed a belly landing.

One of the best sorties i ever had, my gunner was going "wow, look at that" on the chat as he watched the string of bombs explode during the pull up, all sorts of fun, immersive things, and then it hit me. I was excited just getting a mission with the kind of outcome many bombers had in the real battle.

Just imagine how much better it's going to be and how hectic, if we have 5-10 player controlled bombers level bombing from altitude, 110s for top cover trying to BnZ the RAF, Hurricanes trying to force the 110s to TnB, 109s trying to cover the 110s and Spits trying to tie up the 109s. Or spawning in Manston and taking off as the bombs go off around you, aimed by real people who will see you taxing through their scope and try to get you, instead of AI bombers that hit a predetermined spot. It's going to be madness i tell you :-P

Terminal Velocities
 

Thanks for this very interesting item - I haven't looked at the article yet, but you might need to consider a few more variables before identifying a value for Cd for the bomb.

1. Bombing altitude. If you are bombing below the height needed to attain terminal velocity, the bomb won't attain it, and the Cd value will need to be computed from a theoretical velocity.

2. The Cd of falling objects will generally increase to a point where the object has shock waves generated from it at near-sonic bomb velocities. As the bomb goes sonic/trans-sonic the Cd will probably drop slightly.

3. The Germans did an awful lot of aerodynamic research during the war, and I would be surprised if the likes of Schlichting et al did not provide a pretty comprehensive Cd-Velocity envelope for specific bombs, or a more generic CD-velocity profile for use in general calculations?

4. My own interest in this has been from determining the theoretical 'effective' range of WW2 aircraft cannon/mg, in which the highest velocity (and drag) is established at the muzzle and thereafter decays through sub-sonic drag. For my calculations, I found a very interesting article on the net by a team of Indian researchers who managed to investigate and tabulate the trans & sub-sonic CD values of a fired test cannon shell. I appreciate that the bomb is probably more aerodynamic than the shell, but the CD - Velocity characteristic will be similar.

5. Air density - or static pressure - is generally a function of altitiude but of course changes due to atmospheric conditions. If my memory serves, air density can be calculated from P/RT where P is the pressure at altitude (which will vary as the bomb descends), the gas constant R for air and the absolute temperature. No-one can predict precise values from the (discomfort) of a bomb-sight, but these values should be reasonably accurate.

Hopefully I can now take off my annorak, as it's getting rather warm in the UK ;-)

Marx

Wait wait... transonic drag is much higher than subsonic. This why it is called the Mach wall.

Though I didn't write that up, it does suggest that the calculations required are not a simple feat

and I guess that's why (the yanks, at least, in the later stages and the PTO) went back to iron sight "guestimating" , dive and skip bombing for low level raids?

Yeah, that's me, flying on a wing .. ready to stall. :grin:


http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...0&d=1342791429

.

Hi

Do we have a new patch in this week so .... ?

^^ posted July 20th, 2012.
So it's been a week, did a unicorn come down & deliver this magical patch while I was in the kitchen making a samich or somethin?