Small Bf-110 combat report and some nice details i spotted

[Blackdog_kt]

Just flown a sortie in the 110 after turning the forest detail even lower. It was mostly playable, in fact more than my previous attempts (i7 920 @ 2.7 GHz, 3GB RAM, Ati 4890 1GB), despite the ever present stutters.
By the way, it seems like a conspiracy, it will decide to have a fit and freeze only when you're lining up a sweet gun pass or are about to make a nice 3-point landing...i haven't landed a single plane yet without some form of damage incurred
Anyway, that's not my main point here, just providing a frame of reference.

So i set up the Calais bomber intercept mission, i got myself in a single 110 and set the opposition to two Sunderlands.
At the same time i would pause, alt+tab and tune my Freetrack settings, which ended in finally having a setup i'm comfortable with (i migrated recently when my TIR4 Pro died a couple of months ago, so i wasn't exactly familiar with setting up Freetrack), something that took a considerable amount of "fighting the controls" out of the overall experience and helped me fly a lot better.
I also mapped the "view instruments" command to a button on the base of my sidewinder precision pro stick (the other 3 are gunsight view and increase/decrease prop pitch), something which helped immensely with managing the engines correctly with CEM and temperature effects enabled.



So, after making a few passes and damaging the enemy flying boats (i'd love to fly that beast in a future expansion by the way), they started descending during their exit from the target area. One of those beasts almost got into a scissors fight with me, which ended with me raking his fuselage with cannon rounds, barely missing the cockpit.
By the time i was done admiring my handiwork in external view they had gained some distance, so i went into a long, shallow dive to catch up with them. The leader was lower, below a cloud around 500-700m of altitude, with the wingman following him at around 1200m. I decided to get the low one first, settled into the attack and i came in high and fast from his high 7. Apparently, i should have done so earlier since that helped me score cannon hits on its wing and engines, the beast caught on fire and the crew jumped.
Pushing the props to high RPM and the throttles forward i zoomed back up and after a similar pass i got the remaining flying boat as well.
I roughly set my repeater compass on a direct course back to base, pulled back on the power and started a long, shallow and fast descend. The dreaded stutters struck again during landing, ending in broken landing gear.

Overall a very enjoyable sortie (just flying back to base for about 10 minutes or so gives you a lot of stuff to do and monitor, it's not just wasted time anymore), totally reinforcing my belief that once they patch away the stutters this is going to be a totally awesome simulator.



Among all this, i saw some very nice little details.



First of all, if flying with full CEM and temp effects enabled, you can't be looking at your instruments all the time during combat but you also have to keep your engines healthy.
That's why we have that little transparent window showing us the position of the controls and that's why it's not tied to the realism settings: it's a way to simulate that a pilot would just reach out and feel the throttle's position to judge if he's within the permissible manifold pressure by experience, just like we don't look at our shifter lever when changing gears in our cars: "We're below 3000 meters, so with the throttle there i should be getting between max continuous and 30-minute climb power. Good enough until i can take a look at the gauges to adjust it with more precision and it won't blow the engines away in seconds."
Also, the values for continuous, 30 minute and 1 minute RPM and MP are clearly marked on the 110's instruments.
Furthermore, due to the nature of the Luftwaffe props (they are not constant speed props and require constant adjustment to maintain RPM) this whole CEM thing becomes even more difficult (and more satisfying too once you get the hang of it).

Well, a lot of people lament the external sounds but the internal ones are not only dynamic, they are useful as well because of being dynamic. After a few minutes of flying i would judge my MP by looking at the throttle position in the info window, but for the RPM i was tuning the engines purely by sound.
I don't know if the binaural audio made it to the release and gave me an advantage for flying with headphones, but it's definitely possible to keep your engines running well and powerful by ear alone. The sound's dynamic nature was especially noticeable when throttling way back during the descent with the props pulled back a little, they started making a slow-droning sound due to the windmilling effect.



Second nice touch i spotted confirms the sick levels of attention to detail. While cruising back to base i saw that ammo counter on the 110 and it indicated around 40-50 rounds left. With the plane in a stable, more or les trimmed cruise, i zoomed in on it, kept the trigger pressed and watched it count down to zero, at which point two red lights came on.
Now i remembered someone mentioning on these here forums that the cannon ammo in the 110 came in 60-round drums, so the little masochist in me was wondering just how far this goes.
I opened up the radio commands menu and tried to find if it's possible to order the radioman/gunner to change them. After being unable to find it and squinting to make out the command menu with the info panel overlayed on top of it (mental note: move/resize that window so that i doesn't obscure the radio menu) i was about to call it quits and assume that the full round complement is loaded in one magazine a la IL2:1946 and that i just happened to catch a glimpse of the ammo counter as i was about to run out.

Imagine my surprise when at that exact moment the left red light turned off. Could it be? I didn't want to press the trigger and spoil the suspense just yet so i waited a bit more and voila, the right hand light turned off too. I zoomed in on the instrument and what do you know, both counters indicated 60 fresh rounds, i pressed the triggers and i had cannon fire again. They actually modeled the gunner reloading those drums in mid-flight
This could have very interesting implications in combat, for example if your gunner is wounded/killed he can't change the magazines for you and you'll have to make do with just the machine guns.



Finally, after my not so successful landing i went to external view, zoomed in on the 110's nose and started firing to see the muzzle flashes up close. As i turned the camera around and the plane came to rest in a relatively nose down position i could see the impact points for the rounds a few hundred meters in the distance. And then it happened. Tracer ricochets. Needless to say i kept firing, the effect is very well done and seems sufficiently real due to the well-adjusted frequency of the ricochets (not too often but definitely observable) and the believable directions the rounds go off to. It looks particularly good with tracers that have smoke, like the cannon rounds.

And that's it for today i guess. Sorry for the long post, but it's nice to discover so many new things every single time i fly just one friggin' sortie. All this game needs is a steady 30 FPS, nothing more

EDIT: The gunner also calls out contacts in your rear quarter, but as with most radio messages in the game it needs some refinement. Whenever i overtook the flying boats he would say 'Skipper, Sunderlands at X meters" and other similar things. It's useful, but it would be even better if he also called out their position (eg, "5 o'clock high") instead of just their altitude.