Friday Official Update, July 20, 2012

[Frequent_Flyer]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Well, the reason i'm advocating these changes is that most probably it's a purely numerical calculation issue in the bombsight code (Edit: at least that's how it seems from testing done by various pilots, there is definitely a mix-up between imperial and metric units in how the sight treats your inputs regarding tracking the target and calculating the release point).

It's probably at the same level as the non-starting Hurricane that they fixed. For example, they might have made it possible to start with a colder engine or raised the starting oil temperature, both of which is just changing the value of a variable. That's less than one line of code.

And since i'm simplifying things a bit to make a point and i haven't actually seen the code, let's just up this a little and say it's 100-200 , or even 1000 lines of code. To put this into perspective, i'm a beginner programmer and i can routinely crank out 300 lines of working Java code in the span of a two hour lab session at uni. In these two hours i have to read the problem/assignment, understand it, analyse it, decide on a modeling solution (what classes i need and so on), implement it and check for errors.

Fixing the bombsights is probably an evening's work for the developer team at most, and that's probably the guys who are not even involved with the graphics rewrite.
Small things like that would not tie up the graphics programmers, not to mention that it's probably the field of the AI/systems programmer to do this and not the job of the graphics guys, so it wouldn't really delay the performance fixes.

As an example, the Ju88 gyrocompass was not working ever since the release of the sim and got fixed in the previous beta. All this time however, there was a similar compass on the He-111 that worked fine and the code could have been copy-pasted all along.

I'm not disrespecting anyone's flying preferences here because i fly most of the aircraft in the sim, but this example clearly shows that trivially easy to fix issues with big impact on gameplay are neglected, because most people try to prove/disprove rights and wrongs in the FMs of their favorite/opposing fighters and more or less "steal the spotlights" in every single patch.

If it's not 100 octane it's the lack of DeWilde ammo, the grass being too green, the lack of MG-FF/M in the 110s, etc, etc. Well, these are all important issues to fix but also more time consuming (or at least equally time consuming) to giving players the ability to aim some bombs. And even if all of these things are corrected, there is still no battle of Britain without bombers. It wasn't a mid-channel scrap, it was a bombing campaign.

Just take a look at the FM/DM section and you'll see what i mean

I completly agree, it can hardly be called the Battle of Britian without a competant Luftwaffe BG. If it were as simple to fix as you beleive, it makes you wonder why it has not been addressed. The FM's will be an eternal debate.

[planespotter]

If you look this with business eyes it is obvious why not fixed. Most resources are to the new game and nearly nothing to the old. Why is easy. The sales curve for CoD is established (flat...declining?), and nothing the devs do now for that will change it. There is no such thing as a 'relaunch' of a game and not much money in trying to win back unhappy customers. Better use your staff and money to make a new game to grow sales. So be happy for any work on any patch at all.

[tk471138]

Originally Posted by planespotter

If you look this with business eyes it is obvious why not fixed. Most resources are to the new game and nearly nothing to the old. Why is easy. The sales curve for CoD is established (flat...declining?), and nothing the devs do now for that will change it. There is no such thing as a 'relaunch' of a game and not much money in trying to win back unhappy customers. Better use your staff and money to make a new game to grow sales. So be happy for any work on any patch at all.

....hopefully the devs know that if cod is not fixed, then the new game will be boycotted by many....

your logic is flawed....the devs are the ones who should be happy we still support them and many of us will still buy the new game under the condition that cod is fixed BEFORE that happens....they are the ones who should be considered "lucky" when the game breaking bugs are gone and the game meets reasonable expectations, since the future series relies on this one fact....

personally them meeting expectations is a WIN WIN, for both users and the company, and this is both my hope and my belief that it will come...

[Blackdog_kt]

Both of what you guys say is true to an extent.

They have to release a new sim to get a cash injection and keep the series going, so they need to develop that and their time is spent there.

On the other hand, they do know that fixing CoD to what most would consider an acceptable standard will give them a chance for better sales in the sequel and maybe some new sales for CoD itself.

Finally, there is an overlap between both sims, the current and the future one. Since they will use the same engine, the work being done now for performance and optimization is work that will benefit both sims.

Also, quite a few of the aircraft we fly in BoB will be utilized in the sequel as well, so it pays to fix any bugs in the way their systems are modeled. I've though long and hard about these issues i'm discussing and that's why i didn't spam the boards about them early on (most of what is bugged with bombers has been this way since release), there really were bigger fish to fry at that time to keep the series alive and the community going.

Now however i think is the right time to advocate these fixes, because we've gotten to a point where more people can fly and more people can make use of what the sim models.

This bombsight bug is a case of a certain amount of work with a huge payback: all of the LW bombers during the war used that thing, so spending a couple of evenings to correct it will pay off for CoD, for the sequel and for any other sim that comes afterwards in the series and happens to feature a LW bomber. Not to mention that the Lofte operates on a very similar principle to the Norden bombsight (it was actually based on it by data provided by spies), so this also covers the potential inclusion of US bombers at a later date.

The same can be said for the RAF sight we have in the Blenheim (used in all RAF bombers up until 1942 and in several of them later on), but that one is mostly correct in its function.

[tintifaxl]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Not to mention that the Lofte operates on a very similar principle to the Norden bombsight

Not to nitpick, but it is a Lotfe, not Lofte bombsight. Lotfernrohr in German.

[Blackdog_kt]

It might not be that simple to actually code. It is however simple to determine how it should work and this means that at least the design stage would be very fast: "ok, i need an algorithm that takes variable A for speed and variable B for altitude and follows these two formulas:" enter a bit of trigonometry/vector math here to calculate the bombsight's angular velocity when tracking a target and the release point for the bombs. Their Lofte bombsights in Il2:1946 work like a charm, so it's not that they don't know how to do it.

In other words, compared to other issues (especially FMs) there is a smaller amount of effort needed to determine what is the right way to model it and previous experience on the matter. I think the developers are just so swamped by other issues that people pay more attention to, that they haven't had the chance to take a good look into it.

A similar thing was happening with the Blenheim, until a few guys from ATAG and me took it upon ourselves to document everything that was wrong with it, assisted only by another forum member (who i shall not name) who sent me a copy of the pilot's notes (and that's why i can't name him, because it was still copyrighted material after all these years ).
The developers took note of it and now the aircraft is flyable and most of its issues have been corrected.

So i thought that if i start drumming up some support again, we could gradually get the rest of the bombers in a usable state and go have epic fights