Gun Convergance?
 

Looking for some advice about setting the gun convergence on the Spits. The default is 500m for both machine guns and cannons but should these be the same and set at a much lower distance? I read that the Mk1 Spits had their machine guns set at around 200 ft but not sure what the cannons convergance distance should be (when fitted). I am wasting far too much ammo trying to get the deflection angle spot on when aiming at a very small target in the gunsight but also find it damned hard to get a BF109 within 200ft.

Watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpnJeM3wjew

That's very useful, thanks Letum! I will experiment and see what works best for me. I hadn't realised that the sights were different and was using the same calculation regards targetting distance irrespective of what I was flying......:(

I have always struggled with ground targets and now I understand why!

I love Dart's videos, always a good watch.

Convergence at 150m.. The a/c should full your gunsight ring before you fire.
http://www.vanjast.com/IL2Pics/Hits1.jpg
http://www.vanjast.com/IL2Pics/Hits2.jpg

Video, inspired by RAF Manual 'Bag the Hun'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsIz2bIBLwM

RAF Manual 'Bag the Hun':
http://depositfiles.com/files/pe6dl08z9


USAAF Manual 'Fighter Pilot Gunnery - Make your Bullets hit':
http://www.mediafire.com/file/yzjwn3...%20Gunnery.pdf

Thanks for all the vids - gunnery is probably the most most important skill next to flying profficiently.

One of the problems for me (as someone new to IL1946) is that the game seems to encourage you to fly with a rather long convergnce range in SP. The AI seem to see you on their 6 at a pre set distance even though I fly in pit view and in their blind spot. As a beginner, having the default convergence allows the player to line up the AI accurately and getting the shots in before they start evasive turns at somewhere around 400m distance. Setting convergence anything lower than 400m in SP always ends up with the AI twisting and turning before they get into convergance range even though they really shouldn't be able to spot you on their 6.

From what I can tell, in SP all a/c have a convergence of 500m and only the players can be changed. I wonder if SOW will set convergence for the Hurricanes and Spits at the correct range in SP mode?

If you think of it...
If any a/c comes up your 6, are you just going to sit there saying 'shoot me sucker!!' ??
Any reason why they shouldn't spot you on their 6 ?

Nope.. you're going to start moving and weaving to get on their 6, same with the AI.

;)

MG's have almost no effect at 400, you have to get in closer.

(btw - AI engines don't overheat, turn this option off)

I know MG's have little damage effect at long ranges (i didn't when I first started BTW!) which is why I wonder if the AI default convergance will be set to the historically correct figure in SOW.

Switch off 'Engine Overheating' in SP?
I haven't tried that as I assume I would then be faced with that problem in MP and would not know how to deal with it. Managing throttle, Prop Pitch, correct RPM, etc, are other essential requirements of this SIM.......The reason I really appreciate IL1946 is that it isn't easy - whatever choices you make :grin:.

Anyway, be easy on me, I migrated to IL1946 from the console version BOP and it's been a hell of a steep learning curve but I absolutely love this title and utterly addicted to it!

Ok, then I suggest you handle it the way I do - don't fly offline at all. ;)

LOL! I tried going on line far too soon and soon realised I was great 'cannon fodder' and a crap fighter pilot.....:grin:

I take your point though, you do learn a hell of lot in MP if you are prepared to be patient and tag onto the more experienced flyers and follow them. I balance my MP experience with lots of SP.

SEE,

Virtually all the guys will tell you that 400-500m is way to much. Many of us use 200m, some 150, some 250. Those videos are really useful and well worth taking in but there's nothing like putting it into practice.

For online play try joining a Squad. They will help you out, train you and give you that all important cameraderie. :)

You can find Squads on the Ubisoft IL-2 forums (I don't think there's one here on 1C-Maddox but have a look). I haven't posted there for quite a while as we have a fairly strong squad already but we now have a few places available so you could visit our website if it interests you but I don't want to turn this into a Recruitment thread. For other Squads look at that Ubisoft IL-2 forum.

Our website is at
http://firebirds.2ndtaf.org.uk/

That's what each and everyone of us went through when we started playing the game. It's a game where training, learning and skill/tactics really enhances your abilities in this game.

Just like klem said in his recruitment post, you won't be able to fly/kill efficiently without all the knowledge that is out there. Don't get too comfortable in SP though, AI cannot compare with a human pilot and they get very predictable after a while.

After 6 months of intense work my MP kill to death ratio has improved but not enough at around 2 to 8. I try not to make the same number of basic errors as I did when first going on MP and now fall victim in less 'humiliating' ways :grin:.

I hit the track record button and later analyze where I went wrong or how the guy in front evaded my guns - am I taking this too far I wonder?

Joining an on-line squadron and having the opportunity to further improve my skills sounds like a great idea. How do you communicate though - using a mic or by typing text? At the moment I am flying 'pit view servers' on MP with no comms as there is no one to actually talk to.

I currently have my MG's at around 200ft and cannons at 300ft and getting in closer but everyone is absolutely spot on regards chasing AI compared to MP.

Talking about offline:

I really don't shoot at 400M, but the effects of different MG rounds at that range vary. A .50 cal still packs some punch at that range (that's about 440 yards). A rifle caliber like a .303 has already lost a lot of energy by then. Closer is always better.

I set MG's under 250M usually. With .303's, I set it at 200M.

I set cannon even closer around 150M for "kill shots". The muzzle velocity of cannon tends to be lower than that of MG's PLUS the projectile itself is heavier. Therefore, the "drop" on cannon is higher at a given range. So if you set everything at 400M, MG's and cannon, and fire both at the same time and if both are set at the same "height", the cannon shell should go under the target if the MG's are hitting. (note that I think IL-2 takes elevation into account when setting convergence, however)

Also remember that convergence is your optimum range. At double your convergence distance, the width of the "cone of fire" is the same as the distance between the MG's on your plane. The bullets have already converged and are now spreading out....think of the cone of fire as sort of an "X" if viewed from above. So, effectively, the spread of bullets is still reasonable at double your convergence.

The opposite is also true. If you set your convergence too far out, say 400M, when you get closer to a target your bullet streams will not have converged. You might have to fire at a near target with only one wing's worth of machine guns. At the right angle, a near plane can fly right between your bullet streams.

I am not sure that IL-2 takes "elevation" of guns into account, but I think it does. If I am flying aircraft that fire through the prop where convergence is not really much of a factor, I will set cannons at about twice the distance of MG's. Doing this, it "appears" that the extra drop of cannon rounds is compensated for. In other words, the trajectory of the cannon round is higher than the MG rounds. So if I set MG's to 250M and cannon to 500M, the rounds from both "merge" in height at about 250M. Seems that way at least.

I hope in SoW convergence can be set for each pair of guns. As an example, on a plane with 6 MG's in the wings, you could set the inside pair to converge at 150M, the middle pair at 200M, and the outer pair at 250M (or maybe vice versa). I know in some branches of service the pilot had some options.

I heard a P-51 pilot talking about his preference being for all bullets to pass through one small point at a given distance. He said other pilots liked more of a "spread", but one of his strengths was being a good marksman. In contrast, Richard Bong thought himself to be a poor marksman even though he flew a P-38 and so only opened fire at very close range where he "could not miss". More control over convergence would allow players to tune the cone of fire to their own style.

I have seen youtube videos of IL-2 pilots getting kills on deflection shots at distances approaching 500M. How they do it? I don't know :)

EDIT: I always fly with overheat "ON" now. It takes a lot more work and I know the AI is cheating, but managing the engine temp is a skill unto itself and, hopefully, will be modeled better in SoW.

Splitter

They just show us their lucky shots;)

Deflection shooting is learning, learning and learning. It isn't easy so you will need experience to make good deflection shots. It can be very usefull, but if you aren't good at it, it's a waste of ammo.

If I said there's actually a Virtual Combat School you can join that teaches you not only combat flight/maneuvers/tactics but takes you all the way from basic and pretty much teaches you all you need to learn, would you be interested?

All comms in IL-2 is mostly via TeamSpeak (TS2&TS3), using a mic. You can use the chatbar online as well but that's just too bodgy and can't compare to spoken communication at all.

No, you're not taking it too far BTW. :)

Most Squads use Teamspeak 2 or Teamspeak 3 as do the Hyperlobby servers (many have their own TS)

Track analysis is a very usful way to see your errors if you can understand what you are seeing :)

No offence Splitter but both MG and Cannons merge at the same point if set. IL-2 caters for MG and Cannon convergence separately so if you set them both to 200m (~ yds) they both hit the same spot at convergence (apart drom some divergence/scatter that may be programmed in).

Settings like 200m are good for +/- 50m as the scatter before and after 200m isn't too much so absolute precision is best for maximum damage but give-or-take a little is fairly good too (you know, you start to fire just as getting into range and stop just beyond it).

With 200m conv, I also use the trick on a runaway target of firing at the top of the canopy at up to 400m if I want to get a few strikes to scare him into turning.

And I can hit something with a few rounds at up to 600m+ even in a turn by aiming a little higher and up to 5 fuselage lengths ahead on a crossing target. You get lots of scatter and you'll be surprised how often you do engine damage. It's not really "spray and pray", you are aiming for the result.

So from what you are saying, convergence in IL-2 takes "elevation" into account. In other words, there is a vertical component as well as the obvious horizontal. Good to know.

Yeah, I've gotten long range hits but usually not much more effect than slowing the other plane down. I usually only try this in planes like the 109 where there is plenty of MG ammo and a squirt or two won't leave me short.

Splitter

Nice videos, thanks for posting them.

I think, like everything in combat flying, most depends on the pilot and his bird. What I mean is that each pilot has a range that he's getting better results than other distances.
Furthermore, it's got to do a lot with the plane. For example, if you're flying in a competitve environment, you can't hope for a close shot when flying a rata. Enemies are supposed to never let you get so close to them.
On the other hand, flying B&Z in a FW, you should be able for "kiss of death" shots.

Much depends on the characteristics of your aircraft as a whole and its proper employment as a complete weapons system.
I haven't been online in months, but when i used to i managed to dig up a manual for the FW190 that was written specifically for the way it flies in IL2.

Some very useful stuff in that one, but when i saw the proposed convergence ranges i jumped in surprise. Nevertheless, i tried it out and to my continued surprise it was awesome. Get ready for it....700 meters :-P

The reasoning was that the 190s have plenty of ammo for long range deflection shots and are slower than P47s and P51s up high so you need to shoot from further out, but you can also outrun other planes on the deck which means you will shoot from close range, in which case you use just the two inner guns (they are mounted very close to the centerline, so they are not affected much by convergence).
However, the vertical component of this convergence setting is what impressed me the most, as it made the Mg151 rounds travel in an almost perfectly straight line like lasers. Ok, they still arc up and down, but i'm not a virtual ace by any means and i still managed to get some 500m deflection shots that did considerable damage.

For example, in one occasion i was hunting a tempest on the deck and he was outrunning me. He was the red teams last available fighter, if i killed him we would win the map. I started giving him some short bursts here and there while requesting cover from the rest of the blue team in my area (there were a couple of hostiles close by but they were kept occupied), watching where my tracers passed in relation to his airframe and adjusting my aim. About 4-5 attempts later i scored a couple of hits on his outter wings that slowed him down, got closer and shot him down.

On another occasion, i had a P-38 cut across my nose from 10 to 2 o'clock...at a range of 1000m or so. I saw this big, nice fat silhouette about to move through my gunsights, estimated the distance, remembered i was set up for long range and had lots of ammo, gave it about 3 gunsight's worth of lead and a two second burst. Imagine my astonishment when i saw hits scored all over his upper wings and fuselage and some of his tailplane assembly flying off the rest of the aircraft.

What's nice with this setting is that people never expect you to shoot that far. So, they might be cutting across your nose thinking that they are safe while they are transitioning to an advantageous situation, only to be met with a hail of 20mm.

The difficult part is two-fold. First of all, it's no small feat to be able to estimate the proper lead at such ranges. Second, when you are close you need to learn to shoot in a totally different manner. The vertical displacement of the guns is so much to enable them to reach 700m that you are not only shooting wide, you are also shooting high. This means that the proper aiming point is not the gunsight's center anymore, you need to have the target at the upper half of the gunsight and push your nose down a bit. Plus, the outer two guns are pretty much useless closer than 350-400m as they will always shoot wide.

However, there is a way to turn this into an advantage as well. With cannons you don't need as much concentration of fire as with maghine guns, so you can use the spread to ensure a higher probability of a hit at the expense of concentration. Even when being a mere 200m from the target with a long range convergence, you can swing that brilliantly responsive rudder left and right a bit and make sure your outter guns have some use, raking the guy from wingtip to wingtip.

All in all, i don't use that setting anymore but it opened my eyes to what a longer convergence can do (not to mention it helps a lot when attacking bombers). Nowadays i fly with anything between 325 and 500 meters in 25m increments, i usually opt for 375m when i'm going to be against faster enemies and 325m when i know i can outrun the opposition. It's still good for longer ranges, but it also makes it easier to score hits when up close.

I really hope we get ballistic tables for SoW. :cool:

Also, I would love to set convergence and elevation separately.

Why is that swiss? in IL-2 you can set different convergences for m/gs and cannons and you need to know that set to 200m, or even 700m, the 'elevation' convergence will co-incide with the 'lateral' convergence or you will have your rounds converging laterally at the set range but too high or too low if 'elevation' wasn't set to the same figure.

It would then be historic correct, german fighter have different values for the harmonization with the sightline and crossover.

For example the Convergence Settings for a FW-190A8

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/5...benannt2tz.jpg
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/1...benannt3gs.jpg

See Kodiak's post.

For the 190 f-.i., I would set the fuselage MG parallel, elevation 150.
Different settings for the wing cannons, if possible each pair their own.

all these mad eme rememebr teh good days with the ki 43, not teh last version. I use teh one with the scope in a stange tube.
most of times people almost thought WTF a ki 43 against my powrfull spit or fw 190
in fact the only thing that i had was 2 guns and very good manuverability.Just got pissed by the hit n run tactics( i could easily evade but they do not give me the chance to attack them), but if they decide to stay at my altitude... tehy were mine. The most beautiful thing with taht plane is when i was against P47, those flying tanks.
however i almost every time managed to survive because i made small shot but most of time at the right converging distances. I was 100x deadlier if tehy started evade manuver 'cause teh donated their copits , so i shot the pilot= plane down
rememeber 6 months ago a 2 team dog fight where stood with my ki 43 against 5 planes and downed 4 and damage dlittle the last, and returned to base. maybe one of my best online experiences so far in il 1946.

returning to convergence distancei always use 150 to 200, if i have a plane like a fw with lot of wepons on the wings, i put cannon to 150 and MG( or viceversa cant remember) to 180-185, as i thought that as i most of times i hit targets with different spped to mine or evading i thought that is more probabile to have hits in different ranges( but small ones) so often hitting a plane centraly with teh longer converging and just afte rwith the second assured to me most damage and success, as with that i hit also most part of plane.

Swiss, I don't know if I have misunderstood you but Kodiak's post shows the m/g guns harmonised at 400m and the cannons harmonised at 550m. You can do that in IL-2. In each case on Kodiaks charts the elevation/trajectory is also harmonised to 400m and 550m respectively.

At the m/g convergence point (400m) the cannon rounds are about 77cm higher and about 30cm to each side but they converge further on at 550m.

You can harmonise the m/gs at 150m but in that case it would be so close that they would converge on the rise and not on the fall. The would probably fall again down through the sight line at between 300-400m but of course they would be separated laterally by, I would estimate, around 1m.

There is more to it than first appears:

http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Air...nBoresighting/

[QUOTE=klem;198385]Swiss, I don't know if I have misunderstood you but Kodiak's post shows the m/g guns harmonised at 400m and the cannons harmonised at 550m. You can do that in IL-2. In each case on Kodiaks charts the elevation/trajectory is also harmonised to 400m and 550m respectively.[quote]

Kodiak: reason n°1
Swiss: another reason, call it n°2 ;)

I have the manuals myself, still - that is my bird, and if I'm able to, my fuselage MGs won't intersect at all, laterally.
Sure I could set a high distance, but then I'm stuck with bullet drop...

Thefore: isn't true.




Where did you get the numbers from? Kodiaks table or an educated guess?
Are there ballistic tables for Il2?

Aaahh! you want some separation, laterally, at 'convergence' range. Ok, well that's up to you. Most of us are trying to get maximum, or 'point', concentration at convergence for maximum damage. However on fuselage guns we sometimes set long range like 600m-800m for longer range hitting (which is more achievable with fuselage guns and useful for ground attack) and still good for shorter range air to air with a lower aim. You can't separate elevation from separation in IL-2 convergence setting.

I got the numbers from Kodiak's chart as he put that up as an example and a reference. If they are accurate for that aircraft, and they look like it, the numbers would only apply in that instance but the example is generally relevant to all.

I don't think there are ballsitics tables for IL-2 but there are masses of ballistics data out there on the web. I made a spreadsheet of them from a few good sources.