Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[MoHaX]

For thoose who is eager for details, here is Youss's (he is expirienced il2 pilot) first impressions from CoD:
http://www.sukhoi.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=66721

Use google translator please, as my english is not good enough to give you good translation of his exciting impressions, but hopefully I can clarify some things if google translator would be hard to understand.

Some features:
- "Press I button" doesnt start engine with "complex engine management on". Rotation starts and then stops very soon
- Bf-109 tends to roll during takeoff, no heavy yaw movements as in il2
- There is no runway as in IL2, there is just flat field surronded by hangars and other buildings. You can takeoff in any direction.
- lots of details on airfield makes it much easier to take of and landing as you feel speed better
- he was amazed with low altitude flight. Its feel of speed is much improved compared to IL2. Main thing is there is no flat surfaces. Whole ground is non flat, and his first thought was "how can I do emergency landing here?" He wasnt able to find any flat and big enough area.
- contacts visibility is very good if they are on same level as you. If you are above them you lost them immediately. Sea is very noisy because of waves and you cant see enemies. If contacts are above you they are blended with sky and its hard to find them again.
- on a high G (he did vertical loop) heads tends to move down and sight (aiming device) goes up on your screen, you have to correct your view direction.
- you need to turn on sight illumination, otherwise its hard to use it. Cabin lighting is amazing.
- bots behaviour is very diffrerent from IL2. He knows Il2 bots very well , but he wasnt able to shot down any one. They lowered from 4 km to sea level and still no one was heavily damaged
- he wasnt able to hit a spitfire with cannons, very very hard to aim. Guns fire slightly unsynchronously and BF-109 starts to yaw right and left. Hard to continue to fire for more than 2-4 rounds.
- even slight roll without proper work with pedals make airplane to slide and its your tracers start to drift away from sight center.
- smoke tracers are very very beautifull
- sound is amazing, huge "BAANG" on every cannon shot
- Airplane is very sluggish, stalls start immediately without any pre-stall shake
- on low speed airplane doesnt react on you controll. It seems that stall fighting is not possible anymore
- he wasnt able to hear spitfire on his 6. Once he saw a tracers he immediately did roll and jump into clouds
- once he jumped into clouds all windows become misted. When he goes from cloud it was hard to tell where is sky and where is ground, he had to wait some time whiled windows became unmisted
- he approached 2 spitfires on his way back. He missed in his first attack then he went up and after that he lost spitifires. He flew in that aread for a while but wasnt able to find them.
- airfield visibility on a shore is very good: big field surrounded with buildings
- use flaps you have to press "F" once and then hold it again until you satisfied with flaps angle
- he pressed "G"once to extend landing gear, but as it appeared later he failed with that
- there was no speed bar or other text on screen, neither for flaps nor for gears
- he landed without gears. Propeller was damaged and airplane was covered with cloud of dust once he stopped to slide
- after mission stats showed the Do-215 was shot down, 2 spitfires and one Bf-109. He had 3% fire accuracy for 1 spitfire and deliver 10% damage to him.
- His Bf-109 had 15% damage. There are no details how much of that damage came from enemies and how much from his langing or other wrong actions
- In "zoom view" you cant pan too much, just +- 20 degrees (maybe +- 30)

[kendo65]

Thanks MoHax. Some very interesting (and exciting!) details there.

Don't worry about your translation - much better than Google


---
"he wasnt able to hit a spitfire with cannons, very very hard to aim. Guns fire slightly unsynchronously and BF-109 starts to yaw right and left. Hard to continue to fire for more than 2-4 rounds."

Some people won't be happy! I can see the comments already

[MoHaX]

Update from that thread:

- to extend gears you have to press "G" twice: one to make switch neutrall, and one to actually extend gears. Same for "F" for flaps: one to make switch neutrall and then hold it as long as you need.
- on full zoom view sight can go off screen due to head movement on high G
- there are two "zoom view" types. One simply moves camera closer to sight device, and another keeps camera where it was, but FOV becomes much narrower (real zoom).

Hi Luthier, this may have been covered before so if it has please ignore it.
Could you tell us if its Possible with Cliffs Of Dover to see damage on a ship after strafing, for example, is it possible whilst strafing a ship to maybe hit a magazine or orther explosives maybe even sink it if extremely lucky.

Many thanks.

[Jg2001_Rasputin]

Tree Luthier already commented on a similar question

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Originally Posted by Jg2001_Rasputin

Tree Luthier already commented on a similar question

Thanks for that, does that apply to strafing as well or just bomb hits?

[Jg2001_Rasputin]

That wasn´t specified. But I think I can recall that it was stated long time ago that it would be possible to damage shipswith guns in CoD. We already have the feature to sink small ships with guns in Il2 so why shouldn´t they have it implanted it in CoD. Im optimistic in this regard.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by MoHaX

For thoose who is eager for details, here is Youss's (he is expirienced il2 pilot) first impressions from CoD:
http://www.sukhoi.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=66721

Use google translator please, as my english is not good enough to give you good translation of his exciting impressions, but hopefully I can clarify some things if google translator would be hard to understand.

Some features:
- "Press I button" doesnt start engine with "complex engine management on". Rotation starts and then stops very soon
- Bf-109 tends to roll during takeoff, no heavy yaw movements as in il2
- There is no runway as in IL2, there is just flat field surronded by hangars and other buildings. You can takeoff in any direction.
- lots of details on airfield makes it much easier to take of and landing as you feel speed better
- he was amazed with low altitude flight. Its feel of speed is much improved compared to IL2. Main thing is there is no flat surfaces. Whole ground is non flat, and his first thought was "how can I do emergency landing here?" He wasnt able to find any flat and big enough area.
- contacts visibility is very good if they are on same level as you. If you are above them you lost them immediately. Sea is very noisy because of waves and you cant see enemies. If contacts are above you they are blended with sky and its hard to find them again.
- on a high G (he did vertical loop) heads tends to move down and sight (aiming device) goes up on your screen, you have to correct your view direction.
- you need to turn on sight illumination, otherwise its hard to use it. Cabin lighting is amazing.
- bots behaviour is very diffrerent from IL2. He knows Il2 bots very well , but he wasnt able to shot down any one. They lowered from 4 km to sea level and still no one was heavily damaged
- he wasnt able to hit a spitfire with cannons, very very hard to aim. Guns fire slightly unsynchronously and BF-109 starts to yaw right and left. Hard to continue to fire for more than 2-4 rounds.
- even slight roll without proper work with pedals make airplane to slide and its your tracers start to drift away from sight center.
- smoke tracers are very very beautifull
- sound is amazing, huge "BAANG" on every cannon shot
- Airplane is very sluggish, stalls start immediately without any pre-stall shake
- on low speed airplane doesnt react on you controll. It seems that stall fighting is not possible anymore
- he wasnt able to hear spitfire on his 6. Once he saw a tracers he immediately did roll and jump into clouds
- once he jumped into clouds all windows become misted. When he goes from cloud it was hard to tell where is sky and where is ground, he had to wait some time whiled windows became unmisted
- he approached 2 spitfires on his way back. He missed in his first attack then he went up and after that he lost spitifires. He flew in that aread for a while but wasnt able to find them.
- airfield visibility on a shore is very good: big field surrounded with buildings
- use flaps you have to press "F" once and then hold it again until you satisfied with flaps angle
- he pressed "G"once to extend landing gear, but as it appeared later he failed with that
- there was no speed bar or other text on screen, neither for flaps nor for gears
- he landed without gears. Propeller was damaged and airplane was covered with cloud of dust once he stopped to slide
- after mission stats showed the Do-215 was shot down, 2 spitfires and one Bf-109. He had 3% fire accuracy for 1 spitfire and deliver 10% damage to him.
- His Bf-109 had 15% damage. There are no details how much of that damage came from enemies and how much from his langing or other wrong actions
- In "zoom view" you cant pan too much, just +- 20 degrees (maybe +- 30)

Originally Posted by MoHaX

Update from that thread:

- to extend gears you have to press "G" twice: one to make switch neutrall, and one to actually extend gears. Same for "F" for flaps: one to make switch neutrall and then hold it as long as you need.
- on full zoom view sight can go off screen due to head movement on high G
- there are two "zoom view" types. One simply moves camera closer to sight device, and another keeps camera where it was, but FOV becomes much narrower (real zoom).

Excellent information and just what i was hoping to see!

Most of all, these caught my eye:

Originally Posted by MoHaX

- "Press I button" doesnt start engine with "complex engine management on". Rotation starts and then stops very soon

So, even if we don't have the full start-up with primers and boost coils, we'll have to use our brains and turn on the fuel supply and ignition first. Excellent compromise that gives an idea of managing the aircraft without having to research separate checklists for each one. It's like the only thing that's missing is actually "turning the key" and i'm happy enough with it.

The crucial point is, will people who don't take the time to learn some new things be at a disadvantage when flying full switch? The answer is obviously yes and that's good, because it gives us more variety. Up till now we had virtual pilots with good SA, pilots who shoot well, pilots who know how to maneuver or manage their energy and pilots who rely on superior tactics. It seems than in CoD we'll have a new category, pilots who really know their airplane inside out and get an advantage from this.

Originally Posted by MoHaX

- use flaps you have to press "F" once and then hold it again until you satisfied with flaps angle

I guess he's not referring to the Spitfire and Hurricane because they only had two stages: no flaps and full flaps.

For the rest, the system is very accurate. A lot of aircraft during the war had only a 3-way lever with neutral, up and down positions instead of predefined notches and the pilot usually had to look to the sides and read the degrees marked on the flaps themselves as they extended (in the P47 for example), or on some kind of mechanical indicator on the wings (eg, in the FW190).

This means no more selecting combat flaps with a single keypress while focusing on the bandit, we'll have to either look at the wing and lose sight of him or just do it by feel while looking through the gunsight.

Originally Posted by MoHaX

- there was no speed bar or other text on screen, neither for flaps nor for gears

Once again, a more "head in the cockpit" approach will be needed.

It's all these little details that will make full switch flying closer to what usually happened in real life. We rarely hear about protracted engagements and when they happened, it was usually either a small duel isolated from the main fight (where pilots can afford to devote their entire attention to one bandit), or a group effort to make one pass and disengage but being caught by the rival group and having to defend.

Most of the times, pilots preferred to configure their aircraft for what they would try to do the next minute or so, execute their attempt and try to get out as fast as possible, simply because it was not easy to manage both the aircraft and the enemy at the same time.

Also, the talk about how easy it is to lose contact with bandits during an engagement will also reinforce this style of fighting.

All this might seem less inviting and certainly less frantic to those who like action packed dogfights, but it's not a problem because we have the difficulty options to tweak to our taste.

Personally speaking, for me these features are not only welcome but also a huge step towards more realism, where preparation and knowledge counts as much as, or even more than, reflexes and talent.
Like i already said, the added complexity will give us the ability to use some new flying styles, variety is good

[JG4_Helofly]

As usual, I agree with Blackdog.

Looks like we are getting closer to realistic dogfights. No more F16-like HOTAS flying and care free handling.

According to Ilya, fighting with complex engine management set to "on" will be pretty hard. That´s going to be interesting

It will also be interesting to see how people will react to the increased realism level. At the moment even in Il2 most people fly with arcade settings (no cockpit, externals on, etc.). I wonder if "full real" will still be played online.

[furbs]

only after ALOT of offline full real to work it all out