Friday update and discussions 2011-03-18

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by whatnot

Haven't done much bomber action in IL-2 myself but plan on on starting soon with Clod. As I watch and drool the bombload release sequence it makes me wonder: did WW2 era bombers have configurable release sequences? Meaning whether you want to drop all of your bombs with one lump, have a delay of xxx ms between each etc? Also if you can configure to drop n bombs or is it all or nothing?

I guess it all depends on how each individual bomber design handled this. Most of what you describe was possible in mid-late war heavies like the B-17 but i don't know what kind of controls an Italian crew had in a Br-20.

In most USAF bombers that used the Norden bombsight, it was possible to set the delay between bombs if you were dropping the normal way (coupling the gyro-stabilised bombsight to the aircraft's autopilot, setting wind drift, moving the crosshairds on top of the target and letting it calculate the release point automatically).

There was also a salvo switch that dropped everything at once, probably also used to jettison bombs in a time of emergency (unless they had a separate jettison switch, i can't remember with 100% certainty). I don't remember if they had a manual bomb release switch that still made use of the delay setting between bombs (useful for dropping on the command of the lead ship in a good pattern, instead of dropping all the bombs in one salvo), but it was still possible to fool the gyroscopic bombsight into dropping the bombs on command, by moving the crosshairs.

I think the German Lofte bombsight was also a gyroscopic unit with automatic release features.

British bombsights i'm not familiar with, but i think that during the earlier part of the war they were using manual release bombsights, where the bomb aimer would dial in the aircraft's speed and altitude and the sight would calculate the impact point or the release point. It was then the bomb aimer's job to press the release button as the target passed below the crosshairs.
That's more or less similar in principle to the bombsights used in the TB-3, Pe-2 and SM-79 in IL2:1946.

Since such a bombsight couldn't interface with the autopilot and couldn't fly the bomber where the crosshairs were pointed (something that the gyro bombsights could do), the bomb aimer would provide directions to the pilot over the intercom: "Steady, left, left, a bit right, ok steady....bombs away". It would be awesome to have this CoD, switching to the bomb aimer's position and when looking through the scope, being able to give such commands to the pilot by press the left/right keys

Originally Posted by cheesehawk

I'm not sure balance is the key. I'm more interested in historical accuracy in FM, DM, and weapons systems. Don't give me UFO Spitfires with high damage capabilities if blue seems to be better equipped, and likewise, don't tinker with the 109's FM if it seems to not be able to handle the Spits...

Every week there's a new post about how so-and-so's favorite plane doesn't fly like it should, that the guns are too weak, or whatever... Screw them, make it closest we can to what was actually available, and we'll adjust our flying to that!

I think that when previous posters talked about balance, they meant it as in "balance in the various types of game content" and not in the sense of "gameplay balance between the aircraft of the two sides"

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

lol, you really are an idiot, "COD IS MADE NOT TO BE ABLE TO RUN ON TOP OF THE LINE MACHINES" Have you heard yourself, your saying that by design this game is going to suck until many years to come.

Do you judge visual quality by what you see or by how far you can push the sliders in the graphics options screen?
If medium detail CoD looks better than maximum detail IL2 enjoy the improvement instead of stressing yourself over being unable to run CoD at maximum, because in most probability you're not meant to just yet. And if medium detail CoD looks equal to or better than the competition, it will definitely not suck unless one is obsessed with benchmarks and the like, or expects maximum performance and quality at the same time.
I couldn't max out IL2 for years and even then, whenever i thought i had peaked it some kind of new detail feature would surface in a patch, like improved water and so on.

In that sense, being unable to run the game at max with most of the current mid-range PCs is not stupid, it just means that the game engine is ahead of current hardware capabilities and this gives people something new to expect in the future. As long as you can scale it down to match current hardware so you can play it you should be fine, instead of being worried that you can't max it out when it's clear the hardware for that is not here yet. Luthier said it himself a few weeks ago in another thread, something to the effect of "we made a 2013 game, then we had to scale it down so it runs on 2011 PCs". If that's the case then of course you'll not be able to max it out....unless you have a time machine in your garage