Defiant or not, an AI target tug version of any plane (existing or new) would be a very useful training tool for eternal newbies like me... :grin:

???

IL2 already gives you the opportunity for far more realistic gunnery training than any WW2 pilot ever received.

Just set up a QMB mission with the targets of your choice as friendly planes, give yourself unlimited ammo, and blast away.

If you want to get a bit more complex, set up a mission in the FMB where you've got an AI plane towing a glider and try to shoot down the glider (very difficult if you're not using cannons) without shooting the tow plane.

If you want something a bit more challenging, set up a bunch of enemy planes in the QMB. If you want to make things easy for yourself, give them empty loadouts and/or rookie AI.

In any case, you can keep track of your hit percentage from the appropriate screen in the QMB, and can keep track of your hits in real time using Arcade mode.

Windsock style gunnery targets were with best substitute available for actual targets, but they weren't very good.

Tow planes were typically slower than combat aircraft, they could never be as maneuverable, and the risk of hitting the tow plane prevented gunnery students from attacking the target drogue from certain angles (like 6 o'clock level, which is pretty much your preferred deflection angle for most attacks).

Air forces that could afford it tried to use remote controlled drone targets, or esoteric aircraft like the P-63 "Pinball."

Air forces on a budget learned that the closest thing to effective combat gunnery training was to attempt to shoot the shadow of a maneuvering aircraft as it moved across the ground. But, this required that training take place close to the ground (dangerous for rookie pilots) and limited training to sunny days.

Given the time and effort required to develop new planes for IL2, I'd vastly prefer that TD or outside developers concentrate on combat types.

why are all the planes from the IL-2 mods are not in The Team Daidalos updates. There are alot of planes in the other mods. somebody did a ME-410 cockpit already and a few other planes too.

Because their quality isnt good enough. Modeling an accurate and detailed cockpit is very hard. Again, only a few planes would be possible within reasonable time:

Most of those tend to be half finished with many errors both modelling and in programming.

TD focuses on finished products, quality, and stability whereas the mod packs tend to be less focused on those but they are rapidly updated and they get things to a "almost good enough" stage so that people can play around with them.

It means going slower but also maintaining a relatively consistent product.

In addition to the reasons that Icefire mentioned, DT doesn't reach out to modders. Instead, it's up to modders to contact DT and work with them.

I forget where I saw it, but at some point I recall members of TD saying that the Me-410 mod (at least the AI aircraft, if not the cockpit) was up to their standards, and they'd be willing to have it in the official game if the creator contacted them. So far, that hasn't happened.

In a few cases, there have been projects that started out as collaborations between outside developers and DT, but went off the rails. For example, the Dewoitine D.520 was originally developed with DT's blessing, but the creator refused to reduce the model's polygon count to acceptable levels, so it ultimately got released as a mod.

A flyable B-25 Mitchell would be a great addition, especially any of the gunship models. Even the C and D models were field modded with additional machine guns in the nose for ground strafing. One of my favorite books "Air Combat at 20 Feet" tells the story of Pilot Middlebrook and his early model strafers over New Guinea, which we now have a great map NBNG to fly over. Gunships played a big role in NG as "America's sturmovik."

Well, we have a B-25, the J version. But indeed, it would be nice to have other variants, especially the C, and also the "other" J with solid nose. That would need only some external model changes only.

A field modified B25J would require just addition of fixed guns in the nose (4, 5 or 8 can be seen in pictures), removal of bombsight and bombardier position, and painting over part or all of the transparent nose panels. Some changes in damage model would be probably required, considering also the possible addition of internal armour plates to protect pilots from ground fire.

Possibly it would be easier to model a completely new, solid nose, but then also external armour plates around cockpit would be needed.
Finally, variations in windshield can be seen on all strafer variants.

So these solid nosed B-25J variants were all field mods? I didnt know that.

http://planesandchoppers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/9841.jpg