SoW proposal: Merging different realism preference players online
 

Quick summary: Storm of War will bring even more complicated system management of aircraft. How to be more accomodating to pilots flying with some of these advanced settings and some who do not. More aids for the difficulty/realism section and how they can allow less experienced pilots to fly on realism style servers. A system for making people more tolerant of a larger range of aids on more realistic servers.

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BACKGROUND

Increasing level of realism and detail coming in Storm of War. In particular to engine management, but other systems as well. Engine management will most likely be even more difficult and unforgiving for the uninitiated for that particular aircraft type.

THE PROBLEM WILL GROW

In the IL-2 era that we still live in, the servers are heavily divided by realism settings. The online pilots have different levels of skill, hardware and preferences. Even hardcore pilots can have limits for how much realism and workload they want for flying online. As the systems simulated become more realistic and advanced, the range of realism options becomes more vast as well. This will further cause division on the servers online and make the whole online experience more complicated. This presents a problem that hurts the online experience and divides even the more hardcore crowd.

A SOLUTION IN (bomb?) SIGHT(S)

A wider range of realism settings on the pilot's machine can be accomodated on a single server online. IL-2 currently supports mixed difficulty settings for pilots on servers. The only thing it sets is a 'minimal level' of realism required. This does not change with this proposal.

The examples given below of what COULD be adjustable are not a definite list of what it must be. It is just an example of what is possible to allow together. There are many very complicated features of aircraft not even modeled in IL-2 that can make an appearance in SoW, such as fuel tank selection, controls for pumping the fuel between different tanks, fuel pump primer levers, battery selection for engine starter for each individual engine and a large amount of other very complicated features that many of today's "100% realism!" pilots could probably not handle and would choose to use aids to automate these functions.

The range itself can include many things. Probably not typically on more realistic setups allowing flying without cockpit, turning on long range Friend or Foe icons with perfect range finder and target box, but many other things, especially systems that are aircraft specific and complicated. The list of things could include, from system management aid to flight aids:

• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Speed, altitude and heading
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Target box
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - 100% accurate, real-time range-finder
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Target pilot name
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Target friend or foe indicator
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Automatic instant target destroyed notification
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Throttle setting
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - WEP/Injection etc status
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Automatic engine cylinder temperature warning status
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Prop pitch/fuel mix/radiator/feather/engine on/off status
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Stall warning system
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Out of ammunition warning
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Automatic instant, 100% accurate damage assessment system
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Low fuel warning
• Helmet mounted display (HMD) - Out of fuel warning
• Flight aid - Prop pitch/RPM (for each individual engine)
• Flight aid - Fuel mixture (for each individual engine)
• Flight aid - Oil cooler flap (for each individual engine)
• Flight aid - Coolant radiator flap (for each individual engine)
• Flight aid - Fuel line primer/pressure levers (for each individual engine)
• Flight aid - Fuel tank selection
• Flight aid - Fuel tank pump operation (moving fuel from one to another)
• Flight aid - Super-charger
• Flight aid - WEP
• Flight aid - Take off
• Flight aid - Landing
• Flight aid - Taxiing
• Flight aid - Spin recovery
• Flight aid - Ground collision avoidance
• Flight aid - Automatic prevention of overheating

None of these modify the physics, or the damage the plane can and will take. What the flight aids do is that they do is to have an experienced pilot (artificial intelligence) help the pilot with tasks he is unwilling or incapable of handling. The helmet mounted display aids helps people with crappy monitors, poor eyesight, or just no knowledge of how different system failiures might behave, get information they need.

SPECIFIC EXAMPLES

1. In a P-47, there are limits to how much manifold pressure the engine can tolerate. With these difficulty settings, the pilot could be prevented from moving the throttle setting in such a way as to go past the maximum permissable manifold pressure.
2. After pushing hard with WEP for a while, the engine reaches the point of overheating. The engine settings then cannot be set in a position to keep the engine overheating, and are automatically limited and manipulated to keep it in safe levels. The throttle cannot be moved past a certain point, radiators are opened, WEP is turned off and so on.
3. Handling the aircraft on the ground, taking off and landing are all parts that can cause disaster for the pilot, his side, and fellow pilots. In the planned hours long battles with several sorties per pilot and aircraft (re-arming etc), it is a desirable feature to have for everyone involved. The artificial intelligence can handle these tasks for a pilot who wishes it.
4. Automatic ground collision avoidance and automatic stall recovery will simply attempt (and may not be successful) to recover from stalls and avoid flying into the ground. They will not stop stalls and spins from occuring; only apply the correct technique to get out of spins, which can save the aircraft if having enough altitude. Overriding the pilot's input in these situations will help the inexperienced to stay in the fight and not crash out due to silly mistakes.

A SOLUTION WITH A PROBLEM

More hardcore pilots can feel unfairly treated and put at a disadvantage due to their higher difficulty settings. They will ask themselves: why should I accept that my opponents have it so easy in comparison? This can cause them to reject the idea of accepting the less hardcore pilots flying with automation of systems.

BUILDING A SYSTEM OF ACCEPTANCE FOR PILOTS WITH LOWER REALISM SETTINGS

There are three methods that can be used to gain acceptance as well as promote a desire to disable the automation and move up the realism ladder.

1. Limited aircraft performance. A logical result of a pilot using automated "no overheat" setting is that he cannot engage in the risky practice of overheating the engine. A result is worse acceleration and top speed after a short period of emergency performance. This goes for most systems apart from those relating to landing/take-off and head up display. The automatic stall recovery and ground collision avoidance overrides the pilot's input and will not be seen as an advantage for those who know how to do these things, especially as sometimes we want to really fly on or beyond the limits of the aircraft to shake an enemy from our tail.

2. Score penalty. Any score assigned to the player is penalized more heavily depending on his deviation from maximum realism. Different settings have different penalty, of course. It does not affect the pilot's ability to use the aids nor the outcome of the battle, but it introduces a sense of fairness for all involved.

3. Personal markers. Pilots can be clearly marked for all to see what kind of level they are flying on. Rank has never been used for there was no way to assign it in a logical way. Now ranks can be automatically assigned based on the realism settings of the pilot. Not only being a great source of prestige, it will also in many ways accurately display how skilled and experienced the pilot really is likely to be. The lowest rank being reserved for those with the most severe aids turned on, and the highest reserved for those going the extra distance of turning off even server permitted HUD icons, no matter how limited they may be.

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CONCLUSION

Servers will still enforce their lowest required realism levels (for example, never any icons, or no transparent cockpits). The difference is that the range they can allow can be made larger. The above proposal shows that it is possible to allow a range of different pilot skills much wider than before to fly together in the same space, without any real consequence to those who fly on the highest realism levels. Even better, it is transparent and unnoticable for anyone involved, as the physics is the same for all. The best part: it even makes it more fun.

An interesting idea MikkOwl, but I don't think it will work. The way a pilot acts in a sim will be influenced by the particular 'scoring' he is eligible to receive. Pilots on 'easy' settings will always be more likely to take risks, simply because they have less to lose. If you try to 'level the playing field' by adjusting the scores, you will just end up with people attempting to find the 'easy way' and exploiting the inevitable limitations of any practical simulation. Personally, I'd rather fly on a simulation that attempts 'realism' even if it means I'm always on the losing side. It just makes the occasional kill more enjoyable.

I must disagree. One cannot generalize all pilots on easier settings (and this is a pretty wide range of settings we are talking about, including even quite hardcore pilots). Their motivations for flying with the aids they have is probably mosty because they cannot handle more at that point in time, or lack the hardware setup necessary to do it properly. Then that some will care about scoring, yes, that is true. But then if they cared so much about scoring that they would take more risks to get it, then they are likely to choose having less aids to maximize any score they get. In this sense, this proposal is unlikely to change the fact that some pilots care a lot about score while others do not. The proposal's only challenge is setting the ratios correctly so that there is no ideal sweet spot setup where one gets the most score.

Me as well. Been flying mostly old Bf 110 G-2's versus 1944 Tempests, Spitfires and P-47's online. :) There are plenty of us like that. We can easily co-exist with those others who might prefer lower realism for the sake of some gain. They will suffer performance penalties (in a sense) as well as other penalties while not really giving them an advantage over us.

EDIT: I want to clarify that the lower realism settings (having aids) don't really give them benefits over those who understand how their plane works and how to fly it. It will never make them aim better or maneuver better. It will only help them avoid the kind of specific mistakes that the initiated avoids anyway, like blowing one's engine or crashing on take-off.

:arrow::arrow::arrow::arrow:

This isn't just 'a challenge' it is probably impossible. Whenever a particular set of rules is established, people will look for the easiest way around them. This isn't anything unique to combat flight sims, or even to computer games in general. In any rule-based scoring system, people will find the best way to exploit he rules. The only way to avoid this is by not keeping score. That is probably to radical a suggestion for most online IL-2 players, but having spent years playing offline, where the only thing I could sensibly measure myself against was my own past performance, I don't have a particular problem with it.

If people find this difficult to handle, I'd just ask them one question. What was the final score in WWII? If you can't give a sensible answer to this, then why does scoring matter?

I don't mind having no score at all either, and I would even encourage it. But IL-2 has score (on all servers I have ever tried, at least) and I did not think it would go away, thus if there is score, then apply penalties. Without score, there's still the ranks :)

Pilot, who is not experienced, always flies far from the edge of safe flight envelope, if he is afraid of mistakes. Pilot, who is experienced, tries to fly on the edge of safe flight envelope, if he sees the need. Very experienced pilot can fly in whole flight envelope including critical regions. Mistakes are part of online play and if you make "safety" limits, inexperienced pilots will be able to enjoy the same performance as experienced ones, but without fear of flying mistakes. Looks weird.

1.) If I were to fly on a server I would want to see it ensured that everyone is flying at the same level of difficulty. No mixing between various levels.
2.) Score means squat. :mrgreen: I mean it. You can't and won't change player attitudes or what they do (i.e. shoulder-shooting) by fiddling with something like score. That's a complete non-entity in that regard.

Not enjoy the same performance. They cannot fly in critical regions and take risks. Worse performance but safer.

I think that the list of servers should be filtered by difficulty, I also want to play with people at my same level ,realistic 100%

Does it mean that you would prefer to not allow people to turn off their HUD icons, speedbar, and if it is possible in SoW for example, not to allow them to change fuel pump primer settings, manual fuel tank management and so on? The division of even those who fly together today would be very divided if your preference for uniformity was applied.

If they are motivated by say, score and only score, they will attempt to find the highest level they can fly well at and score kills with (with this proposal). If they don't care at all about score, then they may care about the ranks showing their settings to everyone. And if they don't care about ranks, then they might care about the limited performance envelope they can get from using any kind of aids. And if they don't care about even that, then they can just fly at whatever level they think is the most satsifying for them regardless, and still be able to fit in.

Would you be able to go through a long startup procedure, different for every plane, bind controls for all kinds of features (maybe twice as much as now) including fuel primer pumps and propeller blade pitch angles for every engine, individual radiator flaps for the coolant of every engine, and individual oil cooler flap for every engine, individual fuel primer pump lever for each engine, individual buttons for changing fuel tanks, for pumping fuel between tanks, manual fuel pump, manual oxygen controls, manual selection of engine start power source (including a button for switching the aircraft battery between each of the engines for start).

As you can see, even people like you and me, with G940, can probably not handle all those things, because it is too complicated if we want to learn more than one plane, with all the keyboard binds we have to use and so on.

If you want to force people to have to bind all those things, and learn to use them, then it will divide the pilots when it is just unecessary. Even if some of those things above are done automatically for some pilots it does not affect the gameplay for the others. And that is why this proposal is useful - they can still fly together, at quite high levels of realism.

Yes, MikkOwl - no difficulty mixing. There's no such thing as "a bit pregnant" :cool:. And I stand by my words: Shoulder-shooting and the likes are not motivated by score issues but simply a sign for a lack of manners and a faulty attitude.

If there was no score given to them by being the last to hit an enemy, would they still do it? They would not. Assuming that this assertion is correct (I am certain it is), the conclusion should be that their motivation is to get a higher score, and their lack of manners is what allows them to go that far.

And you seriously want the system to forbid people from turning off their speedbar, icons and ability to set their fuel tank manually even if it is not mandatory for the rest to do so? What motivation do you have for that? I just cannot understand why it is in any way a bad thing to permit one guy to choose to pump fuel between tanks manually even when others prefer to use aids to automate that specific feature (as an example). It doesn't affect anyone but himself. And he himself would probably find himself without servers to play on if he insisted that no one be allowed to automate aspects of the fuel management of their aircraft, without any real gain - messing with those systems only take a matter of seconds and probably don't need to be touched in a dogfight anyway.

I'm not much of an elitist, to the contrary in fact. Never the less i can still see problems in such a system, but they are mostly practical ones.

On one hand, i don't really mind flying alongside or against people with a couple of automated functions while i have none, as long as (like you mentioned) we all stay in cockpit view, no icons and the list of automated settings is not over the top.

On the other hand, this system could actually leave the pilot with the relaxed difficulty settings at more of a disadvantage than the full difficulty pilot. For example, how many different stall recovery techniques will an AI be able to use? How many different variations of engine management routines per type? What kind of skill level will the helping AI be? How can you learn your airframe if you are not allowed to make mistakes? Also, supposing that the AI routines are indeed variable enough to give you a bit of unpredictability, how will you accurately judge your aircraft's performance when you see it behaving differently in a series of similar events?
By having an AI routine heavily modulate your flying to keep you safe, you've effectively put yourself in a position where you are as predictable as the AI.

I think the practical problem behind this is that a more experienced pilot can still shoot you down and on top of that, you have reduced control over how your aircraft performs and most of all, reduced feedback from it, which is essentially what helps you learn.

There are situations where this system would be helpful, but that would be mostly dedicated training events/missions/servers where the "rookies" fly alongside the "veterans" and gradually soak up experience until they can go full real themselves. With such a scope in mind, it could in fact be useful.

Just as everything else, if it makes it in it should be an option and not a mandatory game mechanic. If there are servers willing to mix realism settings, then the admin would for example flag certain settings in the console as selectable by the user and keep the rest adjusted according to his desire. If on the other hand he doesn't want to mix them up, he would simply flag none of it as user selectable.


For the reasons i outlined above, i think that the list of automated functions you suggest is a bit large to see any widespread use apart from training. I can't see a lot of full-switch players willing to participate, as a part will consider the odds stacked against them, another part will deny it on a matter of principle, some will object to it out of pure elitism and finally, my personal reason is that it takes away the challenge.

That's not only on the part of the pilot receiving the AI help, but on my part too, as it will feel like fighting against the AI whenever someone on relaxed settings pulls too many Gs in front of me.
Sure, if he pulls too much he will stall, snap roll, bleed 100mph of speed and loose 500 feet of altitude, but i know better than to cut my throttle and follow him if i'm not 100% sure i can kill him with a single snapshot. Otherwise i'm getting myself set up for attack by someone else, because in order to follow him i also have to slow down by 100mph and drop 500ft lower. What that effectively means is that despite his clumsy technique, he has managed to evade my firing pass and has gained anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds to escape depending on what each one of us flies, speeds and altitude that the engagement is taking place. If the AI kicks in just as he starts to push the airframe and limits him to a 2.5G relaxed break, i'm simply going to pull a bit of lead and fill him full of holes.
It could be like shooting fish in barrel and i'm no hotshot by any means.


What could maybe work is a single difficulty setting for automatic startup/shutdown that would be a sub-setting of realistic systems management. That could work pretty much like Black Shark, with you sitting back while the AI goes through the motions and then it would only be limited to starting up and shutting down engine,radios and whatever other systems your plane might have, useful only at mission start and after you land and exit the runway.
In such a way, if you want to you can start things manually, or if you don't or happen to be trying a new airframe you can simply press the "engine on" key, but this should again come with a drawback. For example, a quick and dirty but still safe manual start up will be faster than having the AI going lazily through the entire checklist. An automatic one will be by the book, while a manual one you can do as you like.

For example, if the weather is too hot or too cold, the "by-the-book" settings the AI uses might fail to start the engine on the first try or quickly have it overheat before you even start taxiing respectively. A manual start up on the other hand is different if you take a look at your gauges.
If you see the outside temperature gauge in your cockpit indicating cold weather, you can either prime the engine a few more times, or if you have electric carb heaters you can give it some heat to help it start (not sure on the last one).
If you on the other hand see that the weather is too hot, it will start easily and with fewer strokes of the primer. The caveat is that the AI's by-the-book procedure of x amount of priming strokes for a standard temperature, might result in over-priming in a hotter one. It's still flooding the engine with the same amount of fuel but the hotter,rarified air will not be enough to burn it, requiring more revolutions of the starter motor until the excess fuel is pumped through the engine unburnt and out the exhaust, until it can finally start. With a manual start you can probably get it right 99% of the time after you develop a feel for your aircraft during your first 3-4 sorties, plus you can open the cowl flaps a bit more before starting to make sure you don't overheat just by starting up and sitting on the tarmac waiting for your turn to take-off.

It may sound awfully complicated to read, but would probably be a difference of a few seconds to clear the excess fuel. So, the AI would manage to start the engine in 10 seconds from the time the starter is engaged, while a manual start-up could work a mere two seconds after the starter is engaged. In any case, seconds count and it would be an incentive for people in a hurry to learn how to do it so they can get rolling about half a minute faster in total.

What was the final score in WWII ? Geez , I understand what your getting at but, It will never work. Competition is at the very core of any MP experience. Its the desire to strive to be the best. Therefore one cannot be the best if there is no score. This is even more so in Flight combat. I mean thats what made a Ace a Ace. Sure you can have ranks but a rank carries no weight if there is no score attached to it.


As for the final score in WWII ? I can say this, Nazi Germany lost so many planes and good pilots that they lost air superiority and that was the start of their End. Even though I don't know the exact number, of aircraft they lost. I know that it was great enough that they could no longer defend the skys over their land.

More importantly , just as you asked "what was the final score in WWII ?" to make a point. I will in turn ask " How many people know what Ace shot down how many aircraft ? "
I'm sure just about anyone on here, can tell you how many planes each Ace shot down.

Now if a flight game was say a persistent MMO style battle where one side as a whole won every 6 months, based on a Ticket bar that just represented how one side was winning or losing,,,,,,,, Then you may be able to do away with individual scores, however I doubt it. I personally could deal with that, as long as I knew it was helping my side. Thats just me though and I'm a very team work kind of gamer.


DESODE

I think that is part of the motivator for players to try to move beyond the aids. If they achieved ideal flight through aids then there would be less motivation. I did cover this aspect in the initial post and stated it was a disadvantage in many cases but it permits so many more players to take part at an earlier stage of experience/skill/hardware. Still a win-win situation.

There's many, many things someone must learn in order to fly successfully (in a completely realistic simulation) without aids. One must start somewhere. Things can always be learned by flying even with aids, and for those things that are not yet mastered, I think that the more realism minded players would really prefer not to have their team mates crash their Junkers 88 on take-off or into others when trying to land. I.e. some things are best practiced offline ;) The larger the range of settings that can be toggled, the easier they can be learned one at a time. Nail the taxiing bit and take off bit, but still can't land without crashing into the ground crew servicing your team's planes, can automate just landing - for now. Can't handle fuel primer pumps yet and thus can't even take-off, well, look it up later, or just fly without it as it is of no major consequence for the most part of flight. Can't handle stalls/spins yet because there's so much to learn - leave the aid on until getting grips on the other things.

None of us stepped from non-gamer straight into a realistic simulator. The learning courve was long and hard. Spin recovery and those things are not that hard to learn for someone who has some grips on flying physics, so it will probably be one of the things early turned off.

[quote]the practical problem behind this is that a more experienced pilot can still shoot you down[/qoute]
On any servers enforcing a somewhat decent level of realism, this will always be the case no matter one's settings. This is the way of things. The proposal does not attempt to rectify this. It only attempts to allow those who cannot handle 100% realism due to whatever reason (and that most likely includes nearly all of us here) to participate with those who can without giving an experienced pilot advantages if he also choose to employ the same aids.

The current IL-2 system allows mixing realism settings by default - unless all realism settings are set to max. I don't think there even is an option to enforce people to use less realism/aids than max if a pilot wants to. SoW is going to add more extreme realism settings for complex management of all kinds of systems, and this is what I see as the main problem on the horizon (depending on just how realistic SoW turns out).

It is only a list of examples of what could be included in a single range, and also of aids that don't currently exist but could exist (and how they would integrate even in a more hardcore environment). For the 'realism first' minded players, I think even they would get taken back by very complex management of the fuel/electrical/coolant/starter etc system, assuming it is included, and would choose to have it automated, while others out of principle will switch their fuel tanks manually. Hardware available is a consideration. I have a G940 and Saitek Quadrant, but I cannot even reach my keyboard when flying, and I could not use all the systems if they were simulated with my current setup. Others are the same and I would prefer it if servers were accomodating to this fact (and more, as it is to everyone's advantage).

There's some misunderstanding here. I was not specific enough: the stall/spin recovery aid I suggested would not act to disallow stalling and spins, but only (attempt) to recover from spins using correct technique that veteran pilots know perfectly how to do already. They would stall and enter spins if pulling too many G's, but at least they could have a chance of recovering if not too low. Your impression of my suggestion sounds more like turning off stall/spins in IL-2 (yes, that one alters physics while this one would not, but if this suggested aid did not even permit stalls, it would be affecting things a bit too much). :)

In that sense, your personal experience fighting someone with spin recovery aid would be no different from a veteran pilot, all else being equal. They'd stall out and then try to recover, from your perspective. There's no way you could tell if they had it or not.

Now you see the spirit of things ;) I agree with it, but I don't think it should be as basic as two options for aircraft system management - one for stuff more than throttle, and one for start/stop procedures. There's many more systems that should be toggle-able depending on the user's preference, experience or hardware available. In IL-2 'complex engine management' takes over the radiator (mostly), prop pitch/RPM and fuel mixture all at the same time. It would be nice to specify if I want to move on to learning how fuel mix works and bind that to a lever without having to also learn prop pitch at the same time. In SoW this will be more complicated, warranting more options for automation.

As for the fuel primer pump thing, it's not just a matter of knowledge, it's also about (as mentioned) hardware. Even if something can be learned, it might not be possible to manipulate it in a fun/good/decent/ergonomic/immersive way.

Great post, loved reading and replying to it!

I want to add my thoughts on the purpose of scoring.

The problem is that there's no wingmen that vouch for your accomplishments to the squadron/wing commander. There's no rewards. Nothing to prove how good you are performing to yourself and others, how much you have really helped your armed forces. And, without score, one cannot even compare one's performance to others (beyond statistics, which do not care about one's accomplishments, only keeps track of how long, how much, how many).

This is why I like score. But I don't like score that is not implemented well (shoulder shooting should not even exist mechanically. Steps should be taken to assign the kill to the person who did the most system critical damage and so on). When score is badly implemented, it promotes bad behaviour, and so then I would rather not have score to discourage that behaviour.

for shoulder shooting part of the cure would be that if just one of your bullets hits a friendly your score would be nil and you must join again.

I can see your points and while i disagree on certain items i could see a use for it, of course based on the only fundamental truth in gaming "let's make it a toggle and not mandatory, so everyone can be happy".

Some things i probably misunderstood as well, some i liked and some i disagree with, but in any case thanks for explaining ;)

One final note though on the actual complexity and how many controllers you might actually need. This post of yours was what got me thinking.

This sounds a bit harder than it actually is. I have a simple MS sidewinder precision pro and i can do most of these things in IL2 already. You don't need separate throttle,mixture,prop pitch and radiator controls for each engine. The solution is already in IL2.
Press "select engine 1", start it up with the controls provided (manual or auto). Press "select engine 2" do the same. Press "select all engines and start rolling. If you take damage and need to throttle back one engine to "synchronise" their power output and avoid the need to trim for assymetric thrust, simply select one of them again and move your throttle and prop pitch sliders a bit back until the needles overlap. That's why most allied twins have a single gauge with two needles and also why 4 engined heavies have two gauges with two needles each, as long as needle #2 overlaps needle #1 your engines are producing identical power.

Seriously, it's only a month since i started delving in that stuff and i don't even own the sim i practice and learn these things at, i just fly it whenever i visit a friend on his PC and it's way easier than it sounds.
Wanna know how to start a P47 in real life? It's done in a mere 5 steps!

1) Hold the brakes just in case, battery and generator on, this thing won't start without some juice right?

2) Select the main fuel tank and turn on the boost pump. It can be the auxiliary too, but again just in case, we select the fullest tank. We need some fuel, plus we need some way to move it from the tank to the engine. Normally the fuel is sucked in by vacuum when the engine is running but now it's not running yet, hence the boost pump.

3) Turn on the ignition (both magnetos) and set mixture to rich (ie, full). Again, the fuel might be getting pumped but if the fuel valve on the engine is closed (mixture lever) we can't start. If everything's working as it should you get the specific fuel pressure that the manual says. Unless there are random failures implemented in SoW it will always be correct and even if they are, i doubt that many servers will run with those enabled. In single player, if you want to you can enable it and pause while you read the manual. Even easier, every gauge and needle in the cockpit has a green zone to tell you what normal operation is without having to memorize all kinds of numbers.

Again, it's all pretty self-explanatory up to this point as long as you ask yourself "what does an engine run on?".

4) Prime engine 2-3 times for warm conditions, up to 6 for cold conditions. You have a thermometer in the cockpit that tells you how the weather's like.

5) Time to engage the starter! Ever jump-start a car? You know, get it rolling downhill on neutral with ignition on, then you suddenly punch a gear in to force the pistons to turn and make it start? It's exactly the same principle and crude enough to fit the brute image of the Jug :lol:
The starter is a just big disk with a lot of inertia. You spin it up with power from the battery (switch left to "energize" label), when the high pitched wine you hear has stabilised and not "rising" anymore in tone it's at its full RPM. At that point you move the switch right to the "start" label, the disk connects to the engine via a clutch of some sort and transfers its spinning energy to it, turning it around.

You got fuel in the engine (we primed it and set all fuel systems to on), you got power going to the spark plugs and you just gave the thing a good kick to get it rolling. Congrats, you have a turning propeller in front of you. From this point on just keep the needles pointing inside the green arcs and you'll be just fine ;)

Now let's see how we can do this without the need for click-pits that are usually disliked by combat simmers. I'll assume no fancy hotas, just a normal stick like the Sidewinder series and a keyboard. I'll also try to suggest ways that will retain functionality between different airframes and not be specific to one aircraft at a time, so that we can cut down on the amount of total controls needed. I will only look at controls that don't already exist in IL2, so that we can get an idea of how many extra we'd need.

In step 1 the extra controls are battery and generator. In multi-engine planes it would be "select engine 1" and then "toggle generator" and so on, eliminating the need for multiple keyboards assignments of the same controls per each engine. So, we have 2 on/off toggles so far.

In step 2 we have a fuel selector. Let's work this with two controls, like the flaps up/flaps don function we already have. One is "fuel selector up/clockwise" and the other is "fuel selector down/counter-clockwise".
Allied birds have rotating ones, i think some axis birds have levers, hence the double function for each one, so we can keep the necessary controls to map to a minimum. Just look inside your cockpit, decide where you need to turn it and press the corresponding key. Critical control on one hand, but if you're changing tanks at the last possible moment before combat you're already doing something wrong, so no reason to fret for having to glance down to the cockpit floor for a split second.

Why not have a single control that will cycle the selector through all of its possible positions you might ask. Well, because most fuel selectors have an "off" position too and that's not something you want to encounter before combat while you are changing from drop tanks to internals.
Also, some planes have more than one fuel selector, for instance the Jug in our example has one for internal tanks and one for drop tanks. A control to select them one at a time similar to engines could work in this case, "selector"+"1", "selector"+"2" on the keyboard and so on. All in all 2 controls to rotate the selectors and one control to choose between more than one selectors. We're up to 5 total so far.

In step 3 we have magnetos and mixture that are already modelled in IL2, so no change there. Step 4 brings us the primer, one more new control for a total of 6.

Finally, step 5 is the starter, which as you notice is a three-way switch with energize, start and neutral positions. In order to cut down on the amount of keyboard bindings, why not make this sequential? This can't harm anything (unlike a sequential fuel selector control like we discussed before). Furthermore some planes have a single starter button, some have a two-way switch and some a three-way one, so if we can simplify it it makes sense to go ahead and do it. So, in planes with a starter button, pressing the key we mapped just corresponds to pressing that button. In planes with multi-position switches, each press of the key corresponds a different switch position, done in the logical sequence. In our example of the Jug, pressing "starter" key would move it from neutral to energize, pressing it again would move it from energize to to start and pressing it one final time would return it to neutral.

In total, we need only 6 new keyboard bindings for a totally authentic start-up of this warbird. Others will require more (for example, the mk.IX spitfire is a bit weird) and others less. Case in point, we all have seen those Luftwaffe mechanics crank up the engines on those 109Es. What are they doing? Well, the 109Es (and possibly later models too, i'm not sure) also have an inertia starter, but they don't spool it up from a battery. It's the mechanic that spools up the starter with the hand-crank, before the pilot engages it to start the engine.

In this case it would make more sense to have a "ground crew" tab in the comms menu to request things like an external power source or a mechanic to hand-crack the starter and....OH MY GOD, it just hit me after writing all of this diatribe. I'm off to post the idea in the poll thread about systems modelling :lol:

That's a good way to ruin it for those that go trough the pain of learning to do things right.
My interest for IL-2 died when everyone and his little brother started using their own home brew online. It killed it quick for me. The feeling that we were all on the same playing field was gone.

Would you really feel that everything was ruined for you if, for example, you used manual fuel system priming pump levers and fuel cock levers when someone else had set an aid on to automate that part? If yes, why is that? If no, why not?

Although not entirely related: why do you feel as if the playing field was no longer level with user custmisation?

Flying ww2 aircraft was long hours of a lot of hard work mixed with brief moments of sheer terror. The better trained pilots had more time with the head outside the cockpit. Aids and automatic game features eliminates the need for traning. In most cases, traning is what made the difference between hunters and pray. The guy that has the game do the hard pilot work, like watching gauges, follow correct procedures, keeping the engine at the correct settings, has more time to look around and do the fun part of flying. That creates a very solid advantage online.


Because it wasn't. Some people flew with heavy fluffy clouds, othes without, some people used home brewed weapons, some tweaked their engines to their own wishes. The game died right there for me.
Even the large mod packs have their own people pushing certain flavours of reality. Theres no level playing field for a long time in IL2.

Just stick with 4.09m then!

I stoped playing Il-2 for some time now.

I'd love if they'd model all plane's systems as they were and as they worked. It may be impossible to operate in a multiengine aircraft but for single engine fighters is not that bad: :-P


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfbU5DtUPb4:-P

This is what I'd like to see too. I want to learn how to do these things properly. I think though, for me it would require either clickable cockpits or separate in-game keyboard profiles for each different plane type.

About the stuff mentioned in the original post, it reminded me of a racing sim called rFactor and the server-side settings it allows players when racing online. I wonder if this (see screenshot) is the sort of thing you're talking about?

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/5...orsettings.jpg

The assists selected in the screenshot are pretty much the default standard for open servers (combined with less than 100% realistic damage).

Now, you don't have to use them, but most people by far do, just to remain competitive. So, realistically, there is an issue there with providing assistance measures for people. Which can be basically summed up as - if the assistance measures actually work, then those who use them will have an advantage over those who don't.

Which is not to say those people using the assists can't still be out-driven or out-flown by those who don't use the assists. But the fact remains, for assists to be useful, they must be providing an advantage of some sort. Otherwise they'd be of no use and people wouldn't use them. And they won't use them at all if they actually disadvantage you competitively (like some of the 'assists' left unchecked in the example above).

If indeed these settings are the sort of thing you're suggesting, and they were implemented in SOW, then like in rFactor and other sims, the SOW servers would soon enough settle on their own selection of assists that would be considered standard settings.

For me, on 'full-real' servers, I wouldn't want to see any assists available at all. But for the majority of online servers a degree of selected assists would be alright (and although I'd rather not be disadvantaged or cheated out of a victory because of it, I think it would be inevitable eventually). And for the old furballing, unlimited plane-set, opposing bases 5 kilometres apart style servers, you'd probably have everything short of invulnerability available.

So, yeah, the only differences I can see between what you're suggesting and what we've got now in IL-2 is that you're suggesting the assists become more sort of pro-active. That is, instead of not switching something on to make things easier (ie. one of the realism features), you're suggesting something is switched on to make things easier (ie. aids or assists).

Or maybe I've misunderstood you altogether. Because, as I understand it, people can still choose to fly full-real on an 'arcade settings' server, right? I honestly can't remember. If not, they should be able to, and simply changing that in SOW could address the whole issue of merging different realism preferences online, even without intoducing new assists or aids.

Is a good thread by the way, now I know how to start up a P-47 and a FW-190 :-)

Les.

That's the kind of experience I'm after too, thanks for posting Jaws. Now, how many of those switches would need to be accessed in a combat environment? Hardly any I reckon. I agree that mouse clicking during combat would be impossible but most of the time you'd be operating switches before/after takeoff or during cruise....no problem.

Just hope the third parties can deliver for us.

That was an excellent video and shows that most of the controls used in a start-up have absolutely no bearing during combat, they are set-and-forget until it's time to land.

In fact, if you pay attention you'll see that there's a cover over the switches so that the pilot will not push them accidentally, you wouldn't want to turn off your artificial horizon by mistake for example.

This is obviously an instructional video so he goes through the motions slowly. I think that if he wanted, he could have it up and running within less than a minute by simply pushing everything in succession.
As for the warm-up, we can see that most high performance WWII engines reach operating temperatures very fast. The captions said "Wait for 45 degrees Celsius oil temperature before taxi" and in the time required for him to look around the cockpit and confirm that he didn't forget anything, it was already at that temperature.

The rest is stuff that you do while taxiing to the runway, i mean since you're obviously going to s-turn in a taildragger might as well check if your turn indicators work.

I'm off to watch the rest of his videos on the 190 :cool:

The video with the fuel tank selection is nice too.:-P

Partly yes. But the last to hit the flaming wreck without a wing still gets all the score for it, so it's possible to hold back and shoot at it after the actual gunner already sees that he 'got his man', with no risk to the real gunner. Finding who caused the most damage and, especially, bringing the plane to a critical point, should be the basis for kills. Shared kills is also acceptable, as was done in real life.

The startup procedure was interesting (even though I have not even read it all, I saved it, because I love learning how things worked in reality). In the other thread someone mentioned that you tend to be a bit too verbose and write a lot of text, and it is true (I used to be exactly like that back in the day - I saw it as an accomplishment. Problem was, people did not read or reply to them because they required a lot of time and effort to read and reply to in an appropriate way. I since have tried to learn (half-assed) the art of saying as much as possible with as few words as possible. :D When I see some of your very long posts, I think "I want to read, and reply to all that, but it's so much I'll come back to it later when I'm more awake etc". Sometimes that is so late I forgot about it.

Yes, we can have realistic everything in SoW for sure, people can handle it. Even if we don't. The theme I am talking about though is how to encourage allowing a wider range of aids being used coexisting on a single server, for everyone's benefit, not how to set up one's controls to handle max realism.

You are completely correct. In particular some systems cannot give an advantage to control manually (such as stuff related to fuel system) and only detracts from scanning the skies. However, there are exceptions. Many of the other aids can in fact give a disadvantage to the person employing them compared to a competent person doing it manually, in terms of aircraft performance and flight dynamics.

The score and rank assignments based on these things are meant to further encourage and compensate for any differences.




On servers that allow any kind of modding, yes, there can be cheating.

Only some servers (one, in my own experience) allows using user tailored mods. The others (most) enforce a stock game. A few enforce use of a specic mod collection (there's only really two being used) where one does not touch flight physics nor pull the game in any direction except polish, and the other does adjust those things towards their 'flavour'.

Out of the four main options above, two of them should suit you fine (no flavour thing, no way to cheat - level playing field). And only one of them actually allows cheating.

The proposal here attempts to show how most automation aids can be a disadvantage versus those who 'learned it right' and so they can/should be more accepted. And it proposes a system to further distinguish those who learned it right and reward them appropriately. The aids are then reserved for those who are foremost just not yet capable of flying without them, allowing them to participate which would otherwise be impossible.

Delicious video. I'm sure it would be possible even in multi-engined. And anyone capable of taking on that task should get recognition for it online. And hopefully, he could be flying with other four engine bombers where the pilot is not capable of handling it all by himself.

At the moment, I solved the problem of individual prop pitch levers for individual engines for twin engined planes, and I from now on intend to fly the Bf 110 G-2 vs those tempests and spits from 1944 - without auto prop pitch! That means that the prop levers will directly set a specific blade angle for each engine. Overreving will be possible. Lots more to take into account, and higher chance (since I don't know how to do it right - yet) to get shot up. But it's going to be awesome! The feel of authenticity. The machinery to play and tinker with.:twisted: With my British Bf 110 manual describing how to fly it all on manual by my side.

Sure thing, I'm sure many of us, if not most, want to learn those things, if we had time/could/capable etc. Question is, would you be willing to fly with people who automate some or many of those things because they can't yet do it? Using the ideas from the proposal about ranks and score for example, to give further rewards for you if you did indeed fly at that level.

The nature of some aids is a bit like rFactor aids, yes. I don't know if rFactor aids actually give advantages or not (in other driving sims, they can give a huge advantage since they give you 100% optimal handling of certain aspects of race driving). This is not what I advocate for aids.

What I am suggesting is stated in the opening summary of the first post (might have been added after you wrote this post, don't remember). Recapping: Mention current aids (that aren't way out there mostly) and what will be considered aids in SoW (like automating fuel tank selection/pump primers perhaps), as well as suggestions for new aids and how they would work, and how they could bring the people now stuck at the lower 'arcady' levels into the more realistic settings until they 'learn the ropes' manually, if they can. Most aids would not bring a benefit over those who know 'how to' fly it manually, but would still allow those who are not yet at that level, or just can't be bothered to do those last extra bits for whatever reason, to participate with those who go the extra mile. And to bring acceptance to a wider range, that is coming, no doubt, the proposal of using ranks and score rewards/penalties to distinguish those who use aids vs those who do not. The end result will be that very realistic servers can allow a wider range without much if any consequence of allowing this wider range (for most aids give no advantage).

The aids raise the flight ability to 'functioning' level for the lower level pilots but not beyond.
This is completely off-topic. Exception perhaps to show that there's little reason to completely reject the idea of people automating these aspects flying together with those who do them manually.