CoD--Becoming a Masterpiece

[snwkill]

Yep my only dream is a 30 second replay function, also the "start recording" button crashed my game last time I used it, haven't gotten to try it with the new beta yet.

I figured they would keep up the good work, from what I have seen not many of their games have ever been highly rated. I will take tons of content after release, any day over a nice release and then no community.

[PeterPanPan]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Pulling lead was next to impossible in the older games, it was a black art. You really had to learn to shoot with the enemy hidden under the nose of your plane--it was ridiculous. I knew that it wasn't right.

Actually, this is quite accurate, for a Spitfire anyway. With its long nose, pulling a lead would hide the enemy under your nose. With its shorter nose, this is one advantage the Hurri had over the Spit.

PPP

[nodlew]

Peter,

I didn't mean that there were never situations where the target would get covered by the nose of your plane--depending on the orientation of your fighter vs. the location and vector of your target. There are certainly many possible firing solutions where it might be. In the case of a slow-maneuvering, slower-flying bomber with a large surface area, perhaps some of those solutions might be the ideal shot. Given the design of the gun sight, and given its necessary position above and behind the elongated engine of the plane (more pronounced on some planes than others), this would, physically, just plain have to be the case.

However, most of the WWII era gunnery manuals I have read, including "Bag the Hun!" (British, by the way) describe employing the gunsight reticule to estimate distance and proper lead of the target, and this is not possible unless one can maneuver one's own aircraft in such a way that the target remains visible in the sight relative to the reticule. The problems doing this in the past that I referred to were the result of a number of game deficiencies--the most egregious of them being that the sights were crudely modeled (too cramped, wrong size, no way to compensate for range by lofting your shells, etc.), making their employment unrealistically difficult. Another culprit is bad flight models of AI aircraft, or the player aircraft, causing planes to maneuver and fight in unnatural ways (not being able to employ rudder effectively in a turn for example), resulting in one never seeming to have a good sight picture of the target.

As Il-2 improved over the years, this problem was mitigated, and as my own skill increased, obviously I learned to compensate, pick my shots, and hit the enemy planes.

My point is that the way the AI behaves and the way my plane responds in Cliffs of Dover along with the realistic gunsights and ballistics of the shells has finally completely resolved this issue from my perspective. I am able, from any workable angle, to point my gunsight ahead of the enemy plane, work the ailerons and rudder to achieve my desired lead, fire my shots and usually witness the effect or lack thereof on the target.

And it is my assertion that this is a giant leap forward in the simulation of aerial combat of the WWII era.

Thank you for your time.



Another that I just thought of--AI aircraft, even if the flight models of the planes are correct to the nth degree, are free from the physical and psychological limitations (habits, proclivities) of human beings. AI aircraft have always behaved as if, beyond the programmed limitations of energy maneuver for the planes and avoiding collisions with the ground, they really couldn't care less if they are oriented "properly" to the Earth or not. In a dogfight, they are always turning as tightly as the code will allow them to get on your six, which means that every dog fight is the same Luftberry circle, with your and your opponent's planes standing on their wingtips, turning at the edge of blacking out, until one can fire on the other. In this orientation, the target will ALWAYS be beneath the nose of your plane, since to keep on him you must be in the same maneuver plane as he is, and in a tight turn, the shells will drop off very dramatically, or rather, instantly. I do not detect this behavior in CoD, and I am very pleased to be able to say so.

Here, again, I have written ten pounds of verbiage and taken extreme grammatical pains to be clear in order to make myself understood, when really, anyone who was making any effort to understand me in the first place would have taken my meaning from the earlier pithy remark. It's a good thing I really like listening to myself talk...er, type.

[rakinroll]

Originally Posted by mazex

Like someone wrote in another thread. Try starting IL2 now and prepare to be amazed with how crappy and outdated it feels!

Yes, CoD is amazing but il2 still gives what i need about ww2 simulation. I do not agree with you.

[nodlew]

Thanks Strike, for the nice screen and the elaboration on the damage model. The damage model in this game is, I think, still quite above most of our heads in terms of the realism and complexity it attempts to produce in game. But I am already seeing some of the variety possible. In my last mission, a pretty big one in the FMB with Hurricanes, Spits, Blenheims, 110s, and 109s, I finally caused my first gunnery induced explosion in a target--pretty sure that's what it was. Anyway, with a short burst there was a fireball and the wing on the 110 I was shooting at broke in half. I've set quite a few on fire, but no explosions until now. I probably hit the ammo--don't think fuel tanks explode catastrophically (generally).

And I can confirm that the custom loadouts and gun harmonization greatly increases lethality. With a hit percentage of only 17% in that mission, I was responsible for destroying 3 enemy planes, and contributed to downing another--3 BF-110s, and 1 BF-109, with all my guns harmonized in the ver and hor at 300 yds, ammo load out pretty equally devoted to Ball, Inc, and AP.

[nodlew]

Blew up all right, but was not ammo, must have been fuel.

Screen 1 shows moment I open fire, guns harmed at 300 yds--



Screens 2 & 3 show the impact of the first rounds--incendiary obviously--





Then this happens--











So, 110 hit right at the wing root by a very few rounds, including one or two incendiaries--explosion shears wing off, big orange gasoline-looking fireball, which trails the plane for a second or two, then snuffs out, leaving the plane plummeting, barely smoking--pilot bailed and survived.

I would love to know what gadget I hit to produce that effect. Anyway, I will be aiming at that spot next time I shoot at a 110.

I wonder if this could be one of those situations where a fuel leak caused a build up of fumes in the wing and surrounding air, and then the incendiaries ignited that and caused the explosion. If so that might be hard to intentionally repeat.

we must be fair, so....I treid multiplayer last night...syndicate server, and it was smooth most of the time, FPS avg 50 on my pc. That is when 25 ppl were there. In video settings I reduced only buildings and trees. AA set to 2x. Vsync is working now but still it seams that head panning isnt smooth as it should be (as it is in other games). Still stuttered a bit but only occasionaly. So there is hopw the sim will be optimised and polished even better and that they will fix the landscape and external engine sounds. And a small note, nobody pointed out before, I noticed that the stick in the cockpit is not moving smoothly (offline too)...

[Strike]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Blew up all right, but was not ammo, must have been fuel.

Then this happens--

So, 110 hit right at the wing root by a very few rounds, including one or two incendiaries--explosion shears wing off, big orange gasoline-looking fireball, which trails the plane for a second or two, then snuffs out, leaving the plane plummeting, barely smoking--pilot bailed and survived.

I would love to know what gadget I hit to produce that effect. Anyway, I will be aiming at that spot next time I shoot at a 110.

I wonder if this could be one of those situations where a fuel leak caused a build up of fumes in the wing and surrounding air, and then the incendiaries ignited that and caused the explosion. If so that might be hard to intentionally repeat.

To be quite fair I havn't seen tons of guncam clips where wings have been BLOWN off. They are quite sturdy and the wingspars are basically massive girters that run across nearly the entire span. What it looks like to me is fueltank detonation. And the huge fireball is the result of the evaporating/combusting fuel that is spilled out of the fueltank and finally it's all gone up in smoke.

Looks quite spot-on to me Thanks for sharing!

[Blackdog_kt]

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.

[Strike]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

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.

Nice story mate.

Most impressive part is what you started saying. The variables in this game are so many you have basically infinate possibilities of an outcome of a dogfight or larger furball. Anything can happen. I actually watched one of my tracks the other day where I was chasing a 110 and suddenly my Hurri caught fire. I jettisoned the canopy and bailed out over the british coast. I thought well jerry tailgunner sniped my fueltank, but when reviewing the track I was looking at the target early on in my engagement only to notice the gunner was already dead before I closed in on him...

weird, it turns out a second 110 being chased by another hurri going 90 degrees in relative to my direction did it. His tailgunner was shooting at the hurricane below me off to my right hand side and he missed but the single stray incendiary or tracer bullet hit my fueltank and set it on fire..

WHAT ARE THE ODDS!? of course for some stupid reason it's all corrupted since the latest patch. Like old times in IL-2. My plane just shoots thin air and crashes into the ocean way too early.. weird.