Realistic pilots?

[Feathered_IV]

Some aspects of pilot health should certainly be incorporated into the game.
Oxygen deprivation deserves as much of a place as gee-effects. It would add a lot to gameplay too. Visual impairment such as an almost drunken, wandering gaze or spots in front of the eyes would fit well with the onset of hypoxia. Turning up your oxygen flow to Emergency while in combat to get a slight edge in clarity of view while under gee loads would also be a logical feature. As would the consequences of a damaged or depleted oxygen supply.

[winny]

I agree that XP would be a bad thing, because you actually do gain experience in RL whilst playing. You learn what works and what get's you killed, you become better at spotting your targets..etc.

Having said that I wouldn't mind a heart rate monitor or something to slightly humanise the experience. Adrenaline only staves off fatigue for so long and I read accounts from USAF WW2 pilots where they literally wore thier opponent down.

Also there could be longer blackouts because I've also read a few accounts where pilots blacked out then came round completley alone in the sky.

Read recentley that one Spitfire pilot blacked out every time he dive bombed.

[Seeker]

I think random failures of organs would be in line with the new difficulty options.

Thinks like a probability of your lungs filing with useless froth if your pressurized cockpit is pierced by a stray gunner's round, or a random chance of tearing your liver every time you pull up from a dive bomb attack.

Still, it's going to be hard to control the modders, Was Rudel disabled, or could he pull more G on pull out?

Did Bader secretly enjoy the heart/lung cheat coupled with the leg mod?

Mind you, with no 6DOF it's going to be hard to check the correct leg is missing, don't you think?

[JG4_Helofly]

Originally Posted by winny

... Adrenaline only staves off fatigue for so long and I read accounts from USAF WW2 pilots where they literally wore thier opponent down.

Also there could be longer blackouts because I've also read a few accounts where pilots blacked out then came round completley alone in the sky.

Read recentley that one Spitfire pilot blacked out every time he dive bombed.

That's the thing. I also read pilot accounts (Hartmann, Meimberg) who described that some pilots flew only with their muscles because they were stronger then average and could win a fight against less fit pilots in dogfight.
Of course in the simulation there would be only one fatigue model for all, but this clearly shows that fatigue was an issue in combat and also important from the tactical point of view.

IMO it would already make a difference if we had some minor changes like faster blackout combined with slight penaltys in controle movements so that you can't move the stick with 100% strength when on the greyout limit.

But let's see how blackout will be modeled in SOW. Maybe it will be different from what we have now.

[Ltbear]

well dunno about the pilot realism, but crew members who call out enemy planes would be a step towards realism....let us start there and then move on



LTbear

[TheGrunch]

Originally Posted by Baev

Examle: if the pilot is tired, he wouldn't be able to get full stick/pedals deflection, well, it's not necessary, there is a trimm(cheat).You can instantly switch trim to possitive/negative dead end. Poor I-16 pilots!
So, trimming issue must be solved.

But this is a realistic advantage of using a trim.

[winny]

Originally Posted by Ltbear

well dunno about the pilot realism, but crew members who call out enemy planes would be a step towards realism....let us start there and then move on



LTbear

Good point. You've got to hope that the A.I plays by the rules.. The fewer the 'No way could he do\see that!' moments the better.

I wouldn't mind if bomber crews gained xp and got better shots, could spot enemys from further out, quicker reloads, it'd be nice to get a crew through a campaign and have some reward for doing so.

[Furio]

Originally Posted by winny

Also there could be longer blackouts because I've also read a few accounts where pilots blacked out then came round completley alone in the sky.

Read recentley that one Spitfire pilot blacked out every time he dive bombed.

You can read everything and the contrary of everything, because human beings are different from each other. I have another question. Fatigue reduces the ability of making the right decision (like fear) and increases the chances of making mistakes, and this is probably its single most important influence, much more than tired muscles. But how can this be implemented to a sim pilot that fears no evil and is not actually fatigued?

The more this whole thing is discussed, and the more – in my opinion – it reveals its complexity. It can be surely said that the human body is far more complex than any WWII fighter, not to mention the huge complexity of human mind.
Anyway, I would want to summarize my opinion: I don’t think that any of the previous proposals would really makes a more “realistic pilot”. They simply would add arbitrary difficulties, as in World of Warcraft’s kind of games.
For these reasons, I ask TD to not proceed with any such additions, unless they are implemented as options.
Thank you.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by JG4_Helofly

True, fatigue is different for every person, but we also have a standard blackout model for everyone in the game. In RL people react differently to G-forces, but blackout is modeled in the game and no one complaines about it. Why should it be different with fatigue?

I also agree with this. There could be some slightly randomized variation (small stuff, like for example +/- half a G or so before the onset of a blackout/redout) to simulate not only different pilots but the same pilot on different days. It could also probably be set by a mission parameter, for example if i'm flying a scripted campaign and the mission builder wants to simulate my pilot having spent the previous night in the pub and staying up at night, etc, but this would be mostly used in single player situations. In online scenarios, most people would object to having even half a G of disadvantage before blacking out so it would revert to the system we already have.

A similar game mechanic could be applied to fatigue in general and not only blackouts/redouts.
The thing is, if some people want more variety then some other people will complain if they are on the disadvantaged side of this, so maybe it could be a difficulty option: standard fatigue or randomized fatigue (within certain limits like in the example above).

I don't really expect to see this in IL2 at this point in time because TD already has a load of other features they are working on. However, it's a good subject in general and it might provide useful ideas for the devs to implement in SoW at some point down the line, so i fully support it.

Originally Posted by Seeker

I just can't wait to see how the red/blue whiners tie themselves up in knots trying to argue thier case while scrupuously trying to avoid inferences to ethnicity or master race..

Hahahah good point actually

Originally Posted by WTE_Galway

The game should ship with a mini-gym that measures the players physical strength, stamina, reaction times and flexibility.

Then those personalized parameters can be used to tailor the fitness level of the pilot in game to those of the actual player.

One substantial advantage of this is it will get geeky sim players out jogging, lifting weights and doing workouts to get their fitness up to scratch before a big online matchup.

Another good one, this thread is turning into a gold mine.

To get back on topic however:

Originally Posted by JG4_Helofly

In a way, we already have "fatigue" in game. When the pilot is wounded, full deflection of the control surfaces is no longer possible.

I agree with you Furio. It would not be easy to implement such a system. That's why it would have to be simplified like the "wounded model".
For exemple: After several minutes of dogfight and high G manoeuvres, the pilot would progressively loose some percent of strength resulting in less rudder deflection. There would be a lower limit. Say 75% of total strength. After some time flying "normal" maoeuvers, the strength would go up again.

The idea I had behind all this was not to try simulating the human body and his brain to the last detail. The idea is to make aircombat less extreme and therefore more realistic. People would start to think more before engaging. They would gently climb after the dive and not try to slow from 700 to 300 km/h in one hard immelmann turn in order to get quickly behind the enemy flying low and slow. At the moment, the only limit is the structural limit of the airplane, and people fly accordingly.

But of course, it would not be perfect and arbitrary, but at least we would see more interesting combat with people having a chance to fight in inferior planes against better planes with pilots who only know "stick back!"

This, 100 times over. Our blackouts and "pilot wounded" effects are not a 100% realistic, custom-tailored experience...they are a case of "apply this across the board and let users deal with it the way they see fit" situation. Modeling of other effects that can be detrimental to a pilot, like G fatigue or hypoxia, could be the same. We don't have blackout bars or a 2d pilot figure showing messages like "left lung: 29%" whenever an enemy round connects with the cockpit, all we have is "player:wounded" with a red tinted screen and reduced control forces applied and "player:killed" with a black screen and it does the job just fine.
In a similar fashion heavy breathing and a "player:fatigued" message in the hud would be enough to know you are pushing your virtual body too far (just like the airframe creaks and groans under damage) or a darkening screen with a gasping breath sound could signify the onset of hypoxia.

So, i tend to see the arguments about fatigue modeling being overly complex as a diversion for the community to focus on in an effort to discredit the feature as non feasible. But why?

See, iI get a feeling that whenever someone comes up with an idea to introduce some progress into the standard features of a flight sim that even slightly upsets long standing gameplay habits (not fairness or customizability, just plain gamer habits), there's always a few people who will make fun of it either because they think it's technically dodgy to achieve, or suggest so because they don't want to adapt their gaming style. Yes, simulations are gaming too by the way.

It happened with the debates about better complex engine management in the past, it happened relatively recently when people where asking for a clickable interface for SoW (not for the interface per se, but to be able to model and interface with secondary yet important aircraft subsystems in the sim without the need for 2 extra keyboards worth of keybinding commands) and so on.
Just like people said "the mouse is clunky to use in combat" (when it was explicitly stated that it would be an option for secondary aircraft controls and keyboard/HOTAS commands could also be used in the proposed feature) because they didn't want to learn how to operate a few extra subsystems to the expense of jumping right into the action, today we see people claiming that fatigue is difficult to model because they won't be able to yank and bank for as long as they have made a habit of doing so (just for the record however, for SoW Oleg took the side of the "pro-innovation" crowd and we'll get both the aircraft systems modeled in detail and a choice between keyboard/HOTAS and mouse to control them), when in fact modeling fatigue in IL2 would essentially be a combination of already existing features.

We already have blackouts, we have limited pilot forces when the player is wounded and we recently got progressive lowering of airframe limits with the G-stress feature in 4.10, so it's not like the wheel will have to be reinvented or anything. Take the existing airframe G-stress model with some tweaking of the limits and substitute airframe limits for pilot blackout and force limits, then reverse and possibly tweak the same mathematical model to simulate the pilot regaining his strength/resting during the idle portions of the flight and it's good enough for a 10 year old gaming engine.

Does it take work to do? Sure it does. Does it need more work than other equally important features, like TD's AI tweaks (wind correction, AI not seeing through clouds, etc)? I seriously doubt it. I'm not demanding anything, however i'm strongly debating in favor of it being doable because if everytime someone who proposed a cool new feature decided to listen to the "can't be done" brigade, we wouldn't have any need for the cool guys in TD because we'd still be flying secret weapons of the luftwaffe. It's called progress and it's generally a good thing

I think all the talk about it being overly complex to achieve or the need for it to be ultra realistic from the get go is just smoke and mirrors to prevent it from happening because then, oh noes, we would have to adapt to something new!

The funny thing in all this is that for some reason, the same people who argue against injecting a bit of extra challenge in our hobby via such new features are usually proud of flying full switch or high difficulty settings in general. Well, full switch in my first sims (secret weapons of the luftwaffe and red baron) isn't even close to full arcade in IL2 and full switch in IL2 will probably be like 70% difficulty in SoW, just because of all the extra subsystems that SoW will model.

And before someone says they don't want others to force a change on their gameplay habits, nobody is going to force anyone to play a certain way. The devs have a proven track record of providing separate on/off options for each such feature. Don't like blackouts or bullet drop? Turn off blackouts and realistic gunnery and you're good to go.

It's actually dead simple. If a standard fatigue tolerance was modeled for IL2 pilots, sooner or later it would be something as ordinary as blackouts, bullet drop or other fundamental in-game physics like realistic landings and damage on/off that the user can either disable, or choose to use and learn to work around.

I think people tend to focus too much on being proud of seeing that "100% difficulty" number and miss the big picture, which is how much harder reality is than that artificial 100%. If the devs can do it and there are people who will enjoy it, i say give them such a feature and let those who dislike it turn it off in their options.

[winny]

Originally Posted by Furio

You can read everything and the contrary of everything, because human beings are different from each other. I have another question. Fatigue reduces the ability of making the right decision (like fear) and increases the chances of making mistakes, and this is probably its single most important influence, much more than tired muscles. But how can this be implemented to a sim pilot that fears no evil and is not actually fatigued?

The more this whole thing is discussed, and the more – in my opinion – it reveals its complexity. It can be surely said that the human body is far more complex than any WWII fighter, not to mention the huge complexity of human mind.
Anyway, I would want to summarize my opinion: I don’t think that any of the previous proposals would really makes a more “realistic pilot”. They simply would add arbitrary difficulties, as in World of Warcraft’s kind of games.
For these reasons, I ask TD to not proceed with any such additions, unless they are implemented as options.
Thank you.

Just because you can't model something 100% accurately dosn't mean it shouldn't be even considered.. Otherwise there would be no IL-2.

Why have blackouts at all?
And any suggestions made on the forum should be optional. Relax.