The meaning of this game

[_JaRa_]

Hey guys

after a longer break from flying sims I thought I'd give it a try again. Let me nail it down:

My kudos to the development team!

I already loved the original IL2, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how the game has progressed. Now this is not just another fanboy post between complaints and bug reports. I want to emphasize your valuable conrtibution to keep the idea of realistic simulations alive. Putting so much work into a product for such a small community requires a lot of enthusiasm and attention to detail.

The flight model feels spot on. All complainers and wannabe-experts should take their time to swallow that.
Now I've never flown a WW2 warbird yet, so strictly I cannot judge if certain performance figures are modeled correctly, but I've flown shitloads of GA aircraft, aerobatics planes and some post-war trainers with a clear focus on aerobatics and as a physicist I looked deeply into the physics of flight and tried to nail down every small detail that makes an airplane behave as it does. So yes, I think I can say if a flight model feels right even though I haven't flown that particular aircraft in reality yet. And I'm talking about what "flight model" really means. I couldn't care less about the parameters that make plane A turn tighter than B, climb better or fly faster. Ask enough veterans and you'll always find someone who confirms your wet dreams about your favourite plane. And then, without being respectless, ask yourself how many details a WW2 veteran with the relatively low combat times possible in WW2 could possibly remember more than 70 years later.
I'm so tired of people blaming the flight model for being shot down and bother the developers to turn their pet plane into a hollywood movie UFO. This constant bitching about making every plane perform better and better ruined IL2 for me back then. Guys, there are enough pointless arcade shooters out there, so let the team focus on the important things!

Sure, some relative performance parameters may still be more or less off, but honestly, who can really judge that? There simply was no systematic flight evaluation for WW2 aircraft, period. So you think that turn rate diagram "109 vs Spit" you just dug out says much? Forget it, it doesn't even describe 1% of the information needed to actually describe the overall aircraft performance. Same with those few climb rate or "climb in a combat turn" figures. Mushy stuff for a very vague comparison. I am involved in real airplane performance analysis and even when it comes to just some simple maneuvers, you need much more information than most people here could possibly imagine.
I'm not saying the developers should not try to improve it any further, I'm just saying it is not as simple as some may think.

The important thing is that the actual flight dynamics are modeled such that airplanes feel right. Look at the diversity of the stall and spin characteristics in this game, analyse some aerobatics maneuvers you know from real planes and compare them to the game - convincing! See how a side slip works, let the plane dance around and notice all the small effects that also happen in reality. These things will reveal whether or not the developers really know what they're talking about.

And another big thanks for supporting VR. This makes it so much more immersive. It is a shame that VR generally progresses so slowly. Of course there are reasons for that. But a sim even on the biggest monitor does not even come close to the feeling of VR. 3D vision, nautural head rotation for tracking targets, parallax view to "un-block" the cockpit framing, head movement to peek around whatever blocks your sight and finally, only in VR you can really appreciate the fantastic artwork of the cockpits.

Keep up the good work!

[Jumoschwanz]

Good post. Years ago I put up a post on one of the forums titled "There are no uber planes, only uber pilots".

I am not a fan of Chuck Yeager personally, but he hit it on the head when he said something close to "The pilot with the most experience will always win no matter what he is flying.".

IL2 online WAS destroyed by those who wanted their aircraft to do their job for them, and they wanted it so badly the ones who could started hacking the sim and making "mods" to improve their favorite aircraft or it's weaponry.

I remember exactly the day when I jumped on the server of a well-known to this day Allied squad's server and they were running mods for their P-51s so their 50-cals hit like the best 20mm cannons in the sim, after that it was all downhill as one mod-pack after another came out and the online community was not only divided between mod and non-mod flyers, but between two or three different hacks different individuals put together.

In any establishment or organization or world, it is not going to be the intelligent honorable people who destroy it, it will be the immature, greedy ones who do, and that is exactly why there is no more large IL2 online community anymore, because the bad pilots put their desires ahead of the good of the community and sim.

[MB_Avro_UK]

Thanks for those two excellent posts.

The reality of fighter combat was to surprise your enemy and shoot him in the back. If you were not in a position to do that, withdraw.

Best Regards,
MB_Avro