CoD--Becoming a Masterpiece

[nodlew]

To be quite fair I havn't seen tons of guncam clips where wings have been BLOWN off...

Agreed, there's that famous one with the Bf-109 hit in the left wing producing a very violent explosion--appears to be ammo--which instantly detaches the wing and the plane goes into an super-fast counter-clockwise rotation.

There are various films of all kinds of aircraft blowing up in every way possible--I'm sure Oleg's team has studied them all and could tell us what part failed as a result of what kind of ammo strike.

I am thinking that, perhaps, there is a finer physical modeling at work here than I expected. I was surprised that firing at bombers with multiple leaks in their wing-tanks streaming fuel almost never sets them on fire. But then, usually, those planes are going pretty fast, which prevents evaporated fuel from building up in the air around and within them. I have experimented myself, and it is pretty impossible to ignite gasoline in its liquid state. Only the fumes are combustible--volatility refers to the tendency of a liquid to produce combustible/explosive FUMES. When I achieved the kill on the 110 in the screens above, it was moving pretty slow in a climbing turn. If you look at the screens you can see a gray "mist" shrouding the wing. Fuel vapors? So perhaps in order to fully appreciate the damage model of the game, I'm going to have to remember some basic chemistry and physics. If so, consider me VERY impressed.

Some befuddling things are beginning to make sense to me--like the time I hit the elevator of a 110 and set it on fire, causing the crew to instantly bail. It was a tiny little orange spot on the elevator of the plane. I was thinking, "What is back there that could catch fire?" Answer? Hydraulic lines.

I think the AI has been tweaked to good effect in the last patch, and the previous one. There seems to be more variety. I shot a 109 and set its engine completely ablaze. The cockpit was completely engulfed, but the pilot continued to pursue his target and attack. It was something to see, that one plane, looking lie a meteor, pressing his attack. Can't remember what happened next. Did he finally bail? Burn to death and crash? Didn't pay attention. But where another might say "Dude, the AI is retarded! The guy didn't bail and his plane was totally on fire!" I say, "Dude, very cool! I just shot down an extremely dedicated National Socialist!"

Maybe one of the things we have to overcome, is that over the years playing other flight sims, we have come to take certain kinds of events and AI behaviors as "right" which aren't necessarily so. Just because a pilot will bail out 100% of the time when his plane is completely on fire in Il-2, doesn't mean that in reality all pilots instantly bailed out if their planes were on fire. People do crazy things.

I was using default convergence (anyone know what range it is by the way?)

Blackdog, I believe the default convergence for all planes is ~ 338 meters both vertical and horizontal, which my conversion calculator says is about 370 yds. I'm certain at this point that the game takes conversion in metric units, which is no problem in a German plane. There is a thread here that shows how to change the default convergence of the planes, and how to save custom loadouts etc for particular missions. I will find it and provide a link. Setting my own gun convergence has really helped me a lot. I like 300 yds since it is historical (for the Americans anyway, probably the Brits too) and I enjoy practicing deflection shooting. Yes, I could set my guns to 200 or 150 yds, and close to point-blank range and chop up planes like celery, but that seems a little cheesy to me, although it was the preferred tactic of the highest scoring aces of the war. They were mere killers with no sense of sportsmanship, says I. I will provide a link to the relevant thread. I hope the next patch fixes this bug that won't let us save custom gun configs in the normal way.

Here is the link to the ammo-loadout, gun convergence information: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...un+convergence