Quote:
Originally Posted by csThor
It's not a mixup of metric and imperial units, it's simply that the "Rücktriftwinkel" calculation was forgotten to model. IIRC somebody posted a part of the bombsight manual here. It should appear if you use the german term in the search mask.
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Thanks for the tip. According to the search results, this is equivalent to the trail or terminal velocity setting.
As luck would have it, i've been recently reading about bombsights and wikipedia has some great articles about the British CSBS (the one we have on the Blenheim) and the Norden. The Lofte is very similar to the Norden in how it operates.
It never occurred to me that this setting is missing, because i thought it was handled automatically by the simulator.
Some things in our aircraft do get handled automatically. For example, leveling the bombsight or managing the hydraulic pump in the Blenheim, you don't have to do it because the sim does it for you, but it is modeled (just try to raise the Blenheim turret when you are on the ground, even if the engines are on...it's not possible because the hydraulic pump is set to power the gear and flaps). So i thought that the trail setting is automatic as well (it certainly is in the Blenheim).
So, let's see what this setting is. Bombs drop in more or less parabolic trajectories. They start roughly parallel to the aircraft (unless you're weird and your name is He-111, then they drop ass-first because the bay is vertical
) and progressively nose down while they fly due to air resistance and gravity (negative forward acceleration due to friction and positive downward acceleration due to gravity)
Each bomb type has its own trajectory, depending on aerodynamics of the casing and its weight/density.
Since bombs accelerate and nose down during their flight, it's easy to see that a bomb released at higher initial speed (the speed of the carrier aircraft) and lower altitudes will be more parallel to the ground upon impact, than one released at lower speed and/or higher altitude (the forward speed is easily countered by air resistance during its flight and it settles in a dive).
So, the higher you go the more chance of the bomb settling in an attitude where it has a lot of vertical and very little forward motion. And yes, if unaccounted for it will impact short.
Please behold technical schematic no.1, also known as "my awesome MSPaint skills, let me show you them"
What they did was calculate trajectories for the bomb types used by each bomber and added a function to the sights, so that bombardiers could select the correct one depending on their bombload (so probably mixed bombloads means mixed results because the bombs have different trajectories, while maybe the sight can only handle one preset at a time).
In some bombsights it was called trail (i don't know in what values they measured it), in some later RAF sights they would input the bomb's terminal velocity and now i learned that in the Lofte it was called Rücktriftwinkel and it compensated wind resistance through the drop.
What amazes me is how our friend Heinz realized this is missing, since there is no clear way to test for it. Eg, we would have to make our own bombing practice range in the FMB with objects at preset distances, to see that they impact short by specific distances each time.
For information on the matter:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...twinkel&page=5
I'm starting to think that this explanation is the most possible one. It would certainly explain why we need to do all kinds of weird unit conversions when bombing from high altitude, while people who bomb from low altitude say the sight works fine for them.
Finally, two more questions (now that Blacksix is taking notes
):
1) What's up with the R22 autopilot mode? It's supposed to hold the plane level with the horizon during the bomb run, but it seems that the engines don't have enough power to keep it from losing altitude at that angle of attack.
Certainly the 111 has trouble achieving its rated power settings, or the instruments read incorrect values (eg, full fine pitch at take-off and it barely goes up to 2100RPM).
2) Why do the bombs explode backwards (the last one to impact explodes first)?
Thanks everyone for your help and i'm hoping we see a fix for these issues in the next patch
