A very bad learning tool.....
 

Hi all,

I recently set up IL246 on someone's computer for them along with Teamspeak and Hyperlobby because they wanted to try it all out.

My advice to them was to try flying on as hard a settings as possible so that they would learn as many skills as fast as possible, instead they did the exact opposite, flying on servers with very easy settings, arguing that they could learn easier that way. I backed off on the pressure and thought that it is okay, they are still going to learn something flying on any settings, but after trying the server they fly on I went back to my old way of thinking really fast.
Yes, I did try it, and I am pretty sure that there is zero to learn on some servers, it is simply reduced to the level of a small child's video game.

To me every box unchecked is something someone is not learning, a skill they don't have an won't have. Even though "realistic gunnery" is checked, it is negated by not having any cockpit, which makes it more like practice for watering flowers with a garden hose. On top of the easy settings they go beyond that and ban energy fighting, something that was sort of important to pilots in WWII.......

I was game to try and find something interesting or fun about flying on the server, but I just could not do it as I had become bored of Pac-Man about 1981 or so.
Hopefully over time I can get my friend to see the fun in using IL2 as a simulator instead of a game.

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/...60459633_n.jpg

I keep telling that the way to learn flying is to not do it in combat where they have too much else going on.

The unchecked boxes an not just things not learned but learning bad things that take longer to correct.

Still for gunnery practice, a time spent with unlimited ammo and arcade ON gives concentrated lessons per hour on knowing where your shots go. But that can cut you if what you learn is to hang on the trigger and hose ammo.
Same practice with friends, use invulnerable planes but again take care to not pick up lazy or bad habits.

If you go in deliberately knowing the lessons you seek and not turning practice into pure "fun" (turn off thinking and go wheeeee for release as a regular thing) then you can sharpen parts of your game well past what mixed use gives.

A lot of pilots are very successful, but usually only in a very narrow range of server settings.

On servers with easy settings you will have someone that has been flying on there for years that is king of that particular turd mountain, but they might go onto a server that has one or two more boxes checked off in the difficulty settings and they are completely lost.

Even a pilot that is really good at flying on hard settings might only be able to handle it if it is strictly controlled. Take the 1 vs.1 specialist for example. They will be able to shoot down 99% of those who join their little game, but if you put them on a server where a lot is going on, that has a big mix of AI air and ground moving along with several human pilots they have to watch out for, then they are going to get shot down a lot because they have not developed the tactics and savvy to keep themselves in one piece there.

It is a simulation of WWII flying if you always have to stay vigilant because you know at any minute you might be bounced from any direction. Whenever you are taking a shot at any other aircraft you have in the back of your mind that the wingman is watching you and approaching to shoot you down in turn. Whenever you get near enemy assets then you are attacked by AAA as well as maybe enemy aircraft, nothing is easy or controlled or certain.

It is not surviving such a server that makes you an ace, because even the best will get shot down sometime on such a server. What makes you an ace is simply being there at all and toughing it out and accepting that whatever happens is part of the simulation.

I know a lot of guys that fly these settings that really are not that good at it, but they hang in there and take it in stride, and I give them all the credit I can over the guys who will not fly unless things are exactly as they want them with no surprises. When I shoot someone down on hard settings and land after dodging their wingmen and the AAA then I know I have shot down an ace and they get a salute. Likewise for anyone who shoots me down on such a server. In any other conditions then I will keep them in the drawer.

Conversely, I found that a lot of the gamers that do well on closed-pit servers with big maps are not that good at close-in knife fights. The air-quake servers may not be that realistic, but the people who play there a lot get into a LOT of fights and know how to finish a kill and how to reverse a bad situation. The closed-pit veterans learn that the best way to fly on closed pit is to start with an advantage, surprise, exit plan, etc; so they don't do well when they can't have those elements and are forced to fight it out, like when they're escorting bombers for example.

+1

You could use open cockpit to learn a thing or two that are really imposible to learn on closed cockpit. Normally closed cockpit advocates relly solely on surprise to act. And it is far easy to achieve surprise on closed that on open cockpit scenarios. Reality was closed, but this is still a game.

I quit playing Open Cockpit when people used external views of other players to figure out where they are.

Look at all the hotkeys you get when you dump external views. OTOH when you stop using those views you lose a big edge on servers that allow them.

Pick your arena. Some like city, some like country, some like the burbs.

It is possible to allow externals only on friendly aircraft. Servers have got more tools now. Even the one that allows to have externals when not on the air, but you can only change in between allowed views.

This is 100% wrong, a story from those who have not been there.

On hard settings it is true just as in WWII you can have the advantage of surprise, but it works both ways! You are surprised all the time with attacks from unseen foes and you DO have to learn to counter those attacks and turn around fights. There is the gaping hole in the logic of those championing easy settings...

The gamers on arcade settings have their outside views they scroll through, icons and even the silly arrows of open cockpit servers that eliminate all surprise attacks. So it is common sense and logic once again that shows those on easy settings are the ones who never learn to deal with all possible problems.

Of course there are going to be a few hurt egos out there making excuses for flying on easy settings, always have been and always will be.

No, flying IL2 on hard settings is not actually flying in WWII, but it is a lot closer than flying easy settings.

I have flown all types of servers over many years. It is the pilots that are used to using icons, outside views, no G limits etc. that end up stalling and spinning their planes out in close dogfights.
On Skies of Valor I have never lost a 1 vs. 1 dogfight against the regulars that find me with their crutches, they scan through outside views on their map and look for easy targets, and on the ridiculous Fun4All that bans energy fighting and blackouts, they are not even worth talking about.

Its a game.

Let those servers do what they want with their settings.

The good point about IL2 is the fact there are so many servers with different settings to entertain different types of gamers.

There's nothing realistic to compare this with WW2 except the aircraft names.

WW2 you flew to live ............. in Il2 most fly to die.

Well then you've proven my point, haven't you? You fly on different servers, and I bet you got a lot more dogfighting practice on the ones with easy settings, I know I did.

I fly on a closed-pit war server, dogfights are extremely rare there. I can fly for a whole 90 minute map without getting in a fight that consists of more than one passing attack. It's still very fun in its own way: protecting or attacking bombers, reconnaissance, sneaking deep into enemy territory for a quick hit & run. But it's obvious that the top scorers on that server are not as good as the top scorers in easier servers in situations where they can't run away and are forced to fight it out.

Not as good at what?

I was talking about externals allowed, you are talking about something else.

Also, all your ranting is about fighters, you sure never played on attack role.

Not as good at gunnery or evasive maneuvers in a close fight that they can't run away from. They're more timid, more predictable, easier to dodge and get a bead on in such situations.

Those 5 minute 'death kick' servers help recondition the pilot brain to reconsider their suicidal tendencies..
It does work somewhat - I put more emphasis on getting home or landing 'somewhere' on one piece.

I tried a 'quake server' after many years of closed pit.. I was an absolute failure. :grin:.. it's just a fun thing.
;)

I don't agree about gunnery. Not at all.

And if you check videos where WWII fighter pilots tell, getting into close fights was usually the last thing you want.

How about energy management? LOL!

Well...

There's one thing that's definitely true, full real settings is harder than externals allowed and enemy cameras and enemy padlocks and icons.

Flying, shooting and spotting are way harder. The actual advantages and disadvantages of aircraft come to shine in full real in the best way possible.

It's certainly a different experience and somewhat more enjoyable IMO, than the less realistic servers. I used to really like the spitv109 server (full real but I think it allows HSFX history mod for extra content, and graphics but it should be basically same gameplay as vanilla), but nowadays I don't have HSFX 7 installed, so I have to figure out how to get updated on all my game and mod patches.

E.g. why T&B in an aircraft with poor visibility? You can do that with external views allowed and padlock allowed but not really in full real, at least so well. Likewise good visibility like P-51 mustang with its teardrop canopy is really nice.

You can feel happy about surviving sorties and getting points here and there in full real in my opinion. And you can use nice flight paths and tactics to try to sneak into enemy territory and fulfill your missions.

I do think that the aerial war of WW2 would have been rather more different, if the real pilots had stuff that is "semi-realistic settings" :rolleyes:8)

You're basically talking about an F-22 with passive sensors all around your aircraft (external views)

airborne radar (enemy cameras)

enemy padlocks (basically radar warning receiver or radar)

As a person who runs less than Perfect Graphics I can live with short, very limited icons, thank you.

We'll have to disagree on gunnery.

Exactly, getting into close fights is the last thing that pilots on more realistic servers want, so they don't do it often, so they're not good at it when they're forced to do it.

The better pilots on the easier-setting servers (not Fun4All) are very good at managing their energy. Some have been flying air war sims since before IL2. They prefer to fly on the easier-setting servers because they don't have the time or patience for the full-switch ones or because their friends fly there, not because they're not good.

On servers where building your energy instead of flying furiously wasteful flat circles gets you kicked when you make an attack from higher energy, you don't learn ways to handle anything but staying slow and stupid. You can't learn a whole range of flying and gunnery then and you can't learn much about handling being bounced when the rules are set to kick anything but swirley-whirley cluster-forking.

The only server that I know of that currently kicks for B&Z is Fun4All. All other servers that don't check all the realism boxes allow energy tactics and many of the experienced players there are very good at it.

When practicing off-line, I find it handy to have unlimited ammo, arcade mode and external view with the ability to view enemy planes.

After a fast pass on an enemy, I pause the game and toggle to the enemy view, cycling through the various planes to view the enemy I've just attacked to get a sense of where and how my shots hit.

I also find external view of my own plane extremely helpful in assessing the weaknesses of the plane I'm flying and catching problems with the IL2 damage models.

For example, when I get killed, I pause the game, switch out to external mode and check the path of the bullet that killed me. That's helped me realize that most single-engine fighters in the game have a small gap between the forward cockpit firewall armor and the armor glass.

In any case, things like plane ID tags and padlocking corrects for the game's rendering limitations and for the limits of computer monitors.

I'd also point out that we're simulating the exploits of men who usually had 20/20 or better vision, excellent peripheral vision, and extremely good object recognition and reaction times. So, arguably things like padlocking, plane ID, etc. allows IL2 to model a "human factor" that most people (and probably most players of IL2) don't have.

Viewed in this light, it is no more unrealistic than allowing out-of-shape, middle-aged civilians to have the same resistance to g-forces and injury as a highly-trained and athletic 20 year old.

I agree. Unless you have a three-monitor setup of 25+ inches each, your vision is so much limited in comparison to RL that visual aids like plane IDs and the like cannot be considered 'unrealistic' IMHO. And I think a 2D 'flat' instrument panel (like UDPSpeed) would be closer to RL experience than the present-day 3D one, even if you use it with a TIR and a stereoscopic mod.

These cheats create more problems for gameplay, balance and immersion than they supposedly fix. Now, a "friendly icons only, at close range" - type of solution is acceptable, if only to prevent friendly fire, but that is generally needed only for non-historical planesets.

There's no point in comparing Il-2 to RL in the first place, and speaking of limitations in general, the only "limitation" a player may have is in a completely different place than eyes or hardware.

Errr, Il-2 is generally considered a simulation game, and what the heck a simulation is about if not compared to RL?

I think that compromise is possible.

First, there should be an easy server or mission option to set the range at which bogies become detectable and identifiable. That allows mission builders and server hosts to easily limit balance an immersion problems. Yes, I know you can change these ranges in the conf.ini, but it's a hassle. Better to get it set up in the FMB or server settings.

Next, there need to be more detection and identification levels than currently exists once the "dot on the horizon" comes into view. These levels should be friend or foe (friend/foe), then plane type (e.g., 4-engined), then exact plane type (B-17), then confirmation of friend or foe due to national markings (e.g., American B-17), and a final level were exact plane type, unit markings, pilot and other details become obvious (B-17F, DF-A, 324th Bomb Squad, "Memphis Belle").

The mission builder or server admin should be able to control the range at which these various levels of information become available, and some potential for error could exist at lower levels of information, especially in poor visibility conditions (e.g., mistaking SBD for A6M2 due to sun glare) or when friendly or hostile planes "aren't where they should be". (e.g., friendly planes far behind enemy lines, or vice-versa)

That would set up the possibility that you can't always trust your icons! Realistically, this would represent bad information reported by radar operators or ground observers.

Since icons represent the "human factors" of eyesight and target identification skills, these ranges should vary not just on visibility conditions, but also pilot skill.

Veteran or ace pilots should be able to pick out other planes in the sky sooner and more accurately than rookies, while completely untrained pilots should almost never get full information and might mistake unfamiliar or easily confused allied types for hostile, and vice-versa.

The mission builder or server host should also have the option of making certain planes "unfamiliar" or "familiar" making it harder or easier to identify (but not detect) them.

This would help to create realistic missions where pilots encounter new or rarely encountered aircraft types, such a missions where Western Allied pilots encounter Soviet aircraft.

Additionally, the ranges at which you learn details about particular planes should vary. A big plane with a distinctive silhouette and no camouflage, like the B-29, should be easier to detect and recognize than a smaller plane which could easily be mistaken for another type, such as the Typhoon and the Fw-190 or the P-51 and the Bf-109.

Finally, the amount of information you should get should also change based on the angle from the pilot of the observing aircraft to the aircraft to be spotted. For example, it should be easier to detect and identify a plane silhouetted against clouds below it when seen from above than it is to detect the same plane based on its horizontal or frontal profile.

Tweaking these factors would help AI behave more realistically, better simulate the many "human factors" that are absent in the game, and provide a better compromise between reality and the game's graphical limits.

Server admins can change these settings using mp_dotrange:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps846b803a.png

There is no randomness, though, and the ranges are very much fixed independent of direction.

Nice tool! It looks like it would be very easy to allow this information to be customized in the FMB or official serving settings.

I wonder if it is possible to change the order in which information is presented? Realistically, it should go like this: dot (i.e., detectable) > type (i.e., general plane type) > color (i.e., friend or foe) > name (i.e., exact plane type and unit id).

Range information should be separate from the other icon information and should be based on pilot skill for AI.

There should also be the option to disable it or "dumb it down" so that you don't get precise range information.

If Range information, rookies should get inaccurate information or no information about range at all. Veteran or Ace pilots should be able to more or less accurately range planes out to several miles, but never with better than +/-10% accuracy, or maybe +/-5% accuracy within 500 meters. Average pilots might be able to predict range out to several miles with +/-20% accuracy, and out to about 500 meters with +/-10% accuracy.

These settings can be adjusted in the server console. The command is mpdotrange.

Good to know.

Is there any way for a mission builder or someone flying offline (other than setting up a "server for one") to get the same functionality?

Server admins typically set these settings in the server's server.cmd which is loaded once when the server is started, or using FBDj (which initialises these settings when it connects to the server). These settings are the same for all players on the server.

Offline, you can create a file which Il-2 will load periodically to refresh these settings (offline they are reset when a mission is loaded). Most people call it something like icons.rcu. This means that it is not in the control of the mission builder, rather the player can alter these settings on their own machine if they wish.

The contents should be your chosen icon settings, followed by a timeout which loads the file again, e.g.:
The timeout is in milliseconds so the above represents 60 seconds.

The DOT setting determines the distance at which the dot model of an aircraft first appears. The ALTCOLOR and ALTSYMBOL are relatively new, I believe and allow aircraft to be highlighted by a symbol without providing extra information. The others are all fairly self explanatory. Looks like there's also a NAME setting which probably shows the player's callsign.

The above settings would make the dots appear at 10km. For friendlies the type (aircraft model) will appear at 100m, the markings (e.g. RS -A) at 2km, the range at 100m and the color (red/blue) at 10m. For enemies, the type will appear at 10m, the ID at 10m, the color at 10m. 0.005 or 5m is I think the lowest setting the game will recognise and basically means that the defined info doesn't appear, for all intents and purposes. 25km is the maximum setting for any value.

Once you've chosen your settings and created a file to load, open the game's existing rcu file and paste the following at the end:

Source: Airwarfare

The single player defaults are as follows:

Kudos to TheGrunch for this very useful information.
I just returned to IL2 after 5 years break, with new equipment at my desk, and was surprised by difficultiy of spotting targets at higher resolution monitor.
Now I can change icons visibility in offline training missions.
Thanks again, TheGrunch.

No probs! I think in honesty it should probably be a game setting like any other, might be worth mentioning in the DT requests thread.

Icon Settings:

You can change your icon types and distances by typing these variables in console in game the command syntax is:
mp_dotrange [FRIENDLY|FOE] [DEFAULT] [COLOR<km>] [DOT <km>] [RANGE <km>] [TYPE <km>] [ID <km>] [NAME <km>]
FRIENDLY or FOE keywords define which party the following parameters apply to the aircraft of the viewer’s army, or the aircraft of the hostile armies.

The following keys define
the distance at which the appropriate icon is enabled:
•
COLOR: The distance at which icons take the color of the inbound plane’s army.
Icons farther away will be drawn in grey.
•
DOT: The distance at which the “dot” plane marker becomes visible.
•
RANGE: The distance at which the distance measurement appears in the icon.
•
TYPE: The distance at which the airplane model or model family becomes visible.
•
ID: The distance at which the tactical number is visible.
•
NAME: The distance at which the aircraft’s pilot name is visible (if it is driven by a
human pilot).
mp_dotrange DEFAULT restores the Pacific Fighters predefined icon setup. mp_dotrange run without parameters prints the current icon setup ranger, which may be issued by both client and server.
(e.g mp_dotrange FRIENDLY COLOR 0.1 DOT 15 RANGE 5 TYPE 0.1 ID 0.1 NAME 2.5
This will give you friendly info at Aircraft dot at 15km range at 5km Pilot
name 2.5km all other at 100metres



Additional icon options

Three more options were added for mp_dotrange command:
ALTICON,

ALTCOLOR,

ALTSYMBOL.

ALTICON sets the maximum distance when the icon will be shown. ALTCOLOR sets the color of
the icon.

ALTSYMBOL sets the one character symbol which will be shown as icon.

These settings only kick in when old style icons are not shown, i.e. when distance of COLOR, TYPE, NAME, ID and RANGE are smaller than the distance to the aircraft.

Example:
mp_dotrange FRIENDLY DOT 25.0 COLOR 0.1 RANGE 0.1 TYPE 1.0 ID 0.1 NAME 0.1 ALTICON 2.5 ALTSYMBOL + ALTCOLOR 3

This will display a symbol "+" above the aircraft between 1.0 and 2.5 km in color 3 (green).

Woke, your logic and thinking is still flawed.

Anyone can set up a dueling or fast-dogfight server with either easy or realistic settings. If you duel with easy settings you will learn less than those who duel on hard settings, very simple.

If you practice with unlimited ammo for instance, you will spoil yourself and not learn to get as much done with a limited amount of ammo, the list goes on and on.

I started out flying realistic settings right off the bat, I was lucky, and it is why I don't need unlimited ammo, icons, outside views or "wonder woman" to cut it in any sort of combat.

As to Alphas comments that "it is just a game", sure it is to some, those who fly easy settings for sure. But a lot of people want a simulation, those who fly realistic settings. If you want to eliminate all public debate on the subject this forum is set up for then maybe you should just close it and change it's format to simple pages of information?

As to real WWII pilots having super eyesight, you can read ANY first-hand account of WWII combat pilots and they will be talking about how some of them could see far better than others, and how with time some of them cultivated the ability to know where to look for items of interest, this exact same thing happens in IL2 on hard settings, everyone has different hardware and different eyes so it simulates the variety found in real life. Some pilots in WWII were smarter than others too, and that gave them better use of the information before their eyes or where to find it, same with IL2 pilots.

I know IL2 pilots with very new computers and huge monitors, but they are not as smart as others who have lesser hardware and get shot down all the time. It is exactly like a pilot crying that his plane is not as good as the guy who shot him down, when in fact you can read Chuck Yeager's book and see how he says that it is the guy with the most experience that will win, hardware means nothing.

So if you are having fun flying Easy settings on IL2 and you are happy then great, I was never talking about you so go un-bunch your panties and take your ego back home. I was simply stating that those who DO want to learn to fly realistic-settings will learn best by flying realistic settings, those are the guys I am talking to, the simmers not the "gamers".

I wonder what "simmer's gate" will be about?

Sure, anyone CAN set up a dueling or fast-dogfight server with realistic settings, but most dueling or fast-dogfight servers have easy settings, especially these days when there are fewer servers around. So most of the best duelists and dog-fighters these days fly on easier setting servers, whether by choice or necessity.

I started off with wonder-woman on busy servers and got TONS of practice in turning, dog-fighting, energy management, shooting, etc; I got pretty good at fighting opponents that I could see.

Moving from an open pit server to a closed-pit one with externals, I overcame the challenge of not being able to see through my plane's nose. It took a few days, but my gunnery adjusted and again I got pretty good at fighting and shooting opponents I could see on such servers.

Moving from closed-pit with externals to full-switch servers I had some trouble with situational awareness and would put myself in bad situations where I would get bounced or outnumbered by opponents I didn't see, but that only lasted for a couple of weeks. Once I overcame that I found that I was better at turning, dog-fighting, energy management, and shooting than all but a handful of the very best pilots on that full-switch server; see all the practice I got two paragraphs above.

There's no substitute for practice, you get the most practice on busy servers, and most busy servers have relaxed settings. Boxers practice with helmets, big puffy gloves, and different rules than in real fights. Hockey players practice without the full-contact or rough play they get in real matches. Basketball players practice the same 2v1 break against a single defender over and over. All of those things make it "easier" than the "full real" or league games, but it doesn't make them pick up bad habits, it makes them better because of the repetition.

Yea, it would make sense that somebody doing something for a short time would be better at it than those who had done it for years, that is just the way the world works.

I am sure we would all like to see the stat page for this full-switch server you are at the top of......thanks in advance!

The simmers will "out sim" themselves and we will be left with the gamers still having fun gaming.

I can do both quite well but I fly CooPs mostly in "non serious mode" we all have fun on TS and lots of friendly banter is thrown around.

Take your game how you like it, that's why the different settings are there.

But......

If you are a stats monger and hunt single handedly with no wingman on a df server then your gaming the game no matter how you dress it up.

IMHO

Alpha, is there a way to make icon settings (as described in #33) default? I mean an auto-loading script instead of typing every time in console. Thanks

Who said I was doing it for a short time? I've been flying on various servers for years, on full-switch servers for the past year or so. Anyways, it's not about how long, but how often. On a crowded air-start easy setting server you can get into a fight every other minute or so. On the full-switch server I fly it takes 5-10 minutes just to takeoff and go to the target area, more if you also want to enter with good altitude and from an unexpected angle, and then you're not guaranteed to meet anyone there either.

I try not to obsess about my stats too much, so they're not that impressive; I fly fighters, bombers, ground attack, bomber support, help out team-mates in bad positions, etc, I take my lumps. But when I encounter an enemy on roughly even terms or at a small disadvantage I either win or successfully disengage nine times out of ten.

Here's my stats from when I started flying full-switch and flew the red site on Frontove Nebo, lost more than won initially, 50/50 more recently: http://www.il2.org.ru/war/pilot/wars?pilotid=45174

Switched to blue the last couple of months. Even though I rarely fly and don't know German planes that well, last war the only person to shoot me down was the top red pilot: http://www.il2.org.ru/war/pilot/wars?pilotid=46333. A 2.33 kill/death ratio in the most recent war (albeit a small sample), not bad seeing that only a third of those sorties were in a good fighter (109F4) while the rest were in bombers and older fighter planes: http://www.il2.org.ru/war/pilot/plan...&pilotid=46333. For comparison, your current ratio on Vinny Puh where you fly the 109G2 most of the time and fighters all of the time is about 0.7: http://212.192.155.118/index.php?nav...820/index.html.

I do alright despite all my really bad learning tools.

Lol!!!

And if you have been flying for "years", whatever that means and only worked your way up to full switch in the last year or so, it sort of proves my point, as if you had flown full switch from the start with your heavy schedule it would have only taken you weeks or months instead. That is why easy servers are as the title of this thread stated, "a very bad learning tool" for flying realistic settings compared to actually flying on realistic settings. You are the one who is proving the original point of this thread.

Years means years, what do you think it means? More than one, less than the 14 that this game has been out.

You think it could take anyone just "weeks or months" even to be regularly able to score more often than die in a full switch server? I haven't met anyone like that, not on the servers, nor anyone claiming that on any IL2 forums.

I get what you're saying, there are bad habits you can pick up in an easy setting server. I felt very claustrophobic the first time I flew online with my nose and cockpit blocking 60% of my view and with the F6 button not working. But those habits are easier to break than you make them out to be. On the other hand maneuvering, energy management, and most gunnery and tactics can be learned on the easier servers and those skills carry over to closed pit.

Are you running a dedicated server ?

If you are IL2 SC or FBDj can set the icons for the dedicated server.

If you are launching the standard client IL2 1946 v4.12.2 there's a icon set up in the gui
Setup>misc>Icons>

Or you can use the RCU file in the root directory and load preset icon ranges for different mission types.
You will have to enter them manually.


EG:

@a ddot dot DEFAULT

@a t1 mp_dotrange FRIENDLY DOT 15 COLOR 0.75 TYPE 0.5 ID 0.5 NAME 1.5
@a t2 mp_dotrange FOE DOT 15 COLOR 0.75 TYPE 1.0 ID 0.5 NAME 0.50


@a fdot dot FRIENDLY DOT 15 TYPE 2 COLOR 1.5 NAME 1.5 RANGE 0.5 ID 0.01
@a edot dot FOE DOT 15 TYPE 0.31 COLOR 0.31 RANGE 0.31 ID 0.2

@a 11 mp_dotrange FOE DOT 14 TYPE 2.0 COLOR 0.001 NAME 0.1 ID 0.001 RANGE 0.001
@a 22 mp_dotrange FRIENDLY DOT 14 TYPE 2.0 COLOR 0.001 NAME 5.0 ID 0.001 RANGE 0.001


@a i1 mp_dotrange FRIENDLY DOT 25.0 COLOR 0.1 RANGE 0.1 TYPE 1.0 ID 0.1 NAME 0.1 ALTICON
2.5 ALTSYMBOL + ALTCOLOR 3

@a i2 mp_dotrange FOE DOT 25.0 COLOR 0.1 RANGE 0.1 TYPE 1.0 ID 0.1 NAME 0.1 ALTICON
2.5 ALTSYMBOL + ALTCOLOR 3


For automatically setting the icons:

First you create a new file in your IL2 directory called icons.rcu
(create it in notepad and ensure it doesn't end up with a .txt suffix)
and enter your mp_dotrange commands inside.
Here is an example:

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">mp_dotrange FRIENDLY DOT 15.000 COLOR 0.005 RANGE 0.005 TYPE 6.000 ID 0.005 NAME 0.005
mp_dotrange FOE DOT 15.000 COLOR 0.500 RANGE 0.005 TYPE 6.000 ID 0.005 NAME 0.005
timeout 60000 file icons.rcu</pre>

The last line makes the file reload roughly every 60 seconds.

Then you add this line to the end of your rcu file:

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">@file icons.rcu</pre>

So now every time you start a mission your preferred icon settings are applied automatically.

Thanks, Alpha, much appreciated, but I'd like to set it for offline training. Is it doable?

Edit: Found the answer here (a very informative thread): http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3496755/2

I don't have to speak in generalities when I talk about myself because I have nothing to hide. I have been flying IL2 on realistic settings since 2001. I have also flown easy and normal settings server for many, many hours in the same time period so I have seen first hand what other pilots have been able, and not been able to do in that time period.

When your argument is simply "I haven't met anyone like that", then you have no argument at all because you have been flying realistic settings for less than one-tenth the time some have been flying them, and you were not flying those settings seven years ago when the most popular server with Realistic settings had over 1600 different pilots on it every single month.

Since MODS and HACKS divided the online community and destroyed the popularity and appeal of it, unfortunately no newer IL2 pilots will ever be able to have the experience that the golden-age of IL2 offered again. Sad....