BoB SoW and SONAR
 

There's a "feature" in IL2 that has always irritated my ears, and destroyed part of gameplay in my view, and this is SONAR (sound navigation and ranging).

Many soundcards, including the 4 i used in IL2 current lifespan, have had this "feature", less present with my latest (audigy2) but still somewhat here:

I could hear any ennemy coming, and start evasive as soon as i did.

Playing with Attenuation= seemed to have an effect, but i never could eradicate this totally.

This changes the gameplay much, because if one wants to bounce the ennemy it can be done only with engine at idle to delay the time when intended victim will hear the incoming threat, and possibly be able to shoot prior being heard.

My own experience flying props (about 300hrs) is that one doesn't hear other engines when in air, even when flying close formation with a more powerful aircraft. On the ground, with own engine at idle, one can hear faintly other engines of close aircraft if they power up, though not too loud. When own engine is powered up, others can't be heard any more. I never flew open cockpit, if one who did can bring his own experiment he's welcome, i think it doesn't change much the experience, but who knows ?

Still, I demonstrated this "feature" to Luthier a few years ago on HL, but it seems there was no will to change it for IL2. It was certainly not impossible to do since a talented modder has done it, but it required time, and time is money.

Now, i haven't read anything yet that makes me sure this "feature" is removed from BoB, and since we are lucky enough to have a dev that reads this forum, please voice your opinion on SONAR, and let's see what happens with BoB.

Never flown open cockpit either. But I can make an elaborate guess being that you can't hear anything at all anymore. Three hints:
1. An open cockpit at higher speed will catch all the turbulences thus creating an amazing amount of fluctuating pressure. This will make hearing an engine much harder if not impossible, depending on the engine type.
2. The pilots have been wearing equipment. Like a hat, helmet even and almost always they had earphones for radio com.
3. Also opening the cockpit might be close to retarded as almost no plane was able to actually close the cockpit again in flight. Getting into a dogfight with open canope however would be absolutely deadly. You'd have a lot of drag, probably die from low temperature and also the turbulence would surely affect your sight etc.

I have flown online on a random server and joined a guy, trying to be his wingman. He then told me to "fu** off already" and not to follow him. Well, later I found the reasons. Even with your own engine sound present it obviously works in IL-2. On top of that some people hack the game so it won't have any engine sound for them.


So in summary I agree. We shouldn't able to hear engines unless REALLY close or if it's huge armadas of planes approaching (bombers). In fact during battle you could barely hear machine guns firing because the overall noise was so incredibly loud.

Oleg already stated this isn't an issue in BoB.

This is great news Dano, can you point me to the post or thread ? :grin:

Oleg words:

"2. In Il-2 the sound engine was designed for HiEnd sound cards. It was so different sounding on Hi End and on regular cards.... On simple motherboard cards of some producers the panning was so simple, that we was unable to control it or regulate the distance... and some people begun to use it... In BoB we will have completely new sound engine that will not depending of type of sound card. We simply did own panning code, etc..."

Thanks m8. I've read this, and see no mention that SONAR is gone for good, but at least there's hope.

That was Olegs answer to the Sonar issue. So it should be fixed. I've never heard other aircraft on my hi-end systems. It was rather annoying hearing others on-line talking about hearing other aircraft.

Sonic radar or "SONAR" :) ruined my sneak attacks for ages... Is the bad unsolved bug of IL2 series.

I'm very happy in SOW lost this exploit and lots of pilots are forced to check six.
Sonars lovers in SOW need fly with red arrows... fine"!!!

It is not exactly a bug. It is issue with how some sound cards and their drivers work and how it is hard to achieve the same effects on all cards. SONAR is not limited to IL2 only, most older games have similar glitches.

I'd say it is a terrible bug for those who want this basic cockpit-sound 'reality' as well as fair play.