Sure, there's a lot of stuff that needs fixing but overall i'm happy for the time being because my time is taken up by learning all the new features.
If we had a sim with 2-3 flyables and a simpler type of gameplay it would be a different story, because there wouldn't be enough things to occupy us and we would end up focusing on the negative parts.
As it currently is i find that i can overcome the occasional frustration very easily, simply because i'm overwhelmed by a myriad of small, subtle details. Each one by itself is not much, but when i fly a sortie and i get 3-4 of these small, sometimes hard to notice events i realise it's exactly that which raises immersion to new levels for me.
There are so many variables that by the time we've experienced and become accustomed to all the ways each aircraft can break apart or get shot down and the novelty factor has worn off, sufficient time will have passed for new features to be enabled or the game to be better optimized still.
In that sense i find that while it's far from perfect as a total, it has a lot of excellent elements and enough variation to keep my mind from focusing on the bad points until they get fixed.
Long story short, i know it's not there yet and i won't blindly deny it, it's just that there's an ample amount of features so well done to experience while flying and those can make me completely forget about the parts that need fixing. It's enjoyable enough at this point and it will only get better with time, so i'm not worried at all.
To add to the original theme of the thread, i was practicing some QMB sorties yesterday flying the 109 and 110 (i had been flying Hurris lately so i thought i might brush up on my Luftwaffe skills and improve my prop-pitch technique while in a dogfight).
I was using default convergence (anyone know what range it is by the way?) but i usually shoot from much closer in short bursts. The combination of these two factors results in my cannon shells usually going wide of the target, so i decided to see how the 109s machine guns fare against the opposition.
At some point i was bounced by a Hurricane but i didn't receive any damage. I engaged him in a scissors fight and after taking advantage of the 109s good low speed handling, the fact that it can hang very well on the prop and that it accelerates well, i managed to force an overshoot and then catch up to him almost instantly, at which point it was his turn to start the scissors.
From my days flying IL2:1946 i have a habit of pointing my gunsights in the target's trajectory and waiting for him to come in my line of fire, instead of trying to constantly force my plane around and bleed energy in the process. This works especially well in the low speed range where the enemy can't make any abrupt maneuvers for fear of stalling, so you can for the most part point your nose a bit ahead of him and wait until he crosses the point where you estimate the required lead to be.
So, we were both in a left turn, i was in lag pursuit and at that point i saw him reversing. I kept going for a few degrees more, leveled off and started reversing myself but only mildly so, putting myself from a left-handed lag pursuit into a right-handed lead pursuit curve in a way that his trajectory would intersect mine at about 40-60 degrees angle off while being roughly aligned with his plane of motion. Having conserved most of my cannon rounds up to that point i decided to fire all guns, since the aspect under which the target was visible was broad enough and our speeds favorably slow to stand a chance of scoring good hits, despite being much closer than convergence...his entire fuselage and most of his wing was about to cross my sights at a leisurely pace due to the high angle-off and our minimal relative speed.
At that point i got one of those "instinctive" snapshots, which for some reason have always worked much better for me than going to zoom view or taking deliberate, calculated shots that end up with me overcompensating for the target's actions. These are always a great satisfaction to achieve. So, i had him in my 10 o'clock and as he crossed into my 11 i added a bit of rudder to steady the aim and with the gunsight about 5 degrees off his nose i pressed both triggers for a split-second, probably just enough for maybe 2-4 rounds to fly from my cannons. I saw the tracers stream unerringly towards his cockpit, one connecting perfectly between wing-root and canopy and the other slightly aft.
He immediately went up in flames and spiraled out of control into the water below without bailing out, according to the info text i had scored a pilot kill.
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