Thanks Daidalos Team for an Official post!!

Wow, speedy response on the HUD info request!

...and no, the game engine does not support self-shadowing. It's just too old. The environment was written before self-showing was even a thing a games, so there you go...

Can we have the same option "bottom of screen" for subtitles ? (à la EAW)

A togle key for HUD would be fantastic too, i often don't need the text (read gauges, lever position) but sometimes i need it temporarily when controls don't move in cockpit.

Can we mod the engine?

You mean re-write the core of the game ? Well, then you can make whole new game, sell it and become damn rich...

Well, but then there's this fella, Ankor, who activated selfshadowing and bumpmapping in CFS3/WOFF via D3D wrapper library...And the CFS3 engine is even more ancient than Il-2's.....

Maybe Daidalos Team and us can start Il2 1946 on a new engine, but wich one? Home made engine, Unreal Engine, Cry Engine, etc???

lol

But maybe they can tweak the current engine, by changing some stuff from scratch (sorry I'm not a game developper, so I don't really understand how it work)?

I found that : http://a2asimulations.com/forum/view...hp?f=2&t=39599

Look cool

And that : http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...at#Post3881675
(We could have DirectX 11 in Il2 1946 by following the same steps lol)

It's fairly "easy" to add things like modified AI parameters or new bomb release settings. Changing the engine is a major undertaking. Consider that Activision has been using the same ID Tech engine technology for Call of Duty games dating back to at least CoD 4: Modern Warfare if not earlier. They only changed the core engine as of this year's November release. That's a half dozen or more years of large team that is highly funded, deciding that a new engine switch was far too big of a task.

Now take that down to a volunteer group of enthusiasts like Team Daidalos. It's just not going to happen.

For a new engine... check out IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad and their Digital Nature engine which they built over several years for Rise of Flight.

Unless they ask Ankor nicely :grin:

Ha ha ha, with TD's high and mighty approach to others it has to be Ankor who must ask TD if they would like to use his work...

You mean TD doesn't actively search for ways to make IL-2 better for everyone beyond their own yard? :shock: Is this like their official stance or smth? If so there must be a good reason for it, right? Maybe the contract with 1c/maddox is like a collar and a leash that severely limits their degree of freedom and whatnot?

CFS3 is largely forgotten by Microsoft on the other hand......

P.S. Anyways, I'm just an end-user of their patches, so I shouldn't complain while they keep comin'.

Hi! I'm that fella :)
Well, I was wondering why Il2 still don't have such features modded in, but I suppose it is just more difficult to get them working there.
You see, CFS3 graphics engine is very primitive - closer to DirectX 7 than 8, doesn't have any programmable shaders and thus uses very standardized and straightforward set of drawing functions. It was relatively easy to get (almost) all required information out of them without even looking at the engine code.
IL2 on the other hand is very likely to be optimized for its own custom shaders which may make extracting geometry and lighting data more complex. Though I don't really know any specifics, never looked into it.

Thank you sir, for explaining this stuff. If you ever manage to crack it and implement it, you'll bask in forever glory and be praised till kingdom come, with Il-2 community being much bigger than CFS3 and OFF and all. ;)

I understand about the size of community, but it is unlikely I will be doing anything for IL2 - I don't have much free time and as I know it is primarily played in OpenGL mode and I don't know a thing about OpenGL programming.

Then maybe your example will inspire someone else to carry the torch! Kudos anyway!

ok why don't TD communicate with ankor to make this game better even only on Direct x mode?

Well, because IL2 is totally optimized for OpenGL, and no one that is serious about having the game look good and run at it's best plays it in DirectX.

And frankly, all these visual effects that keep getting asked for, and sometimes added to the old girl, drag it's performance down. My frame rates have taken a hit with the new smoke that was just implemented, for example.

This game engine traces it's roots to the late 90's. There is only so much that can be done with it, and frankly, I'd be happier with more content than eye candy. Like the new P 40s we will be getting, or more maps, or other 3d model improvements.

For now, IL2/46 is still the king of WW2 air combat simulation, though at some point it will be replaced by a newer game, maybe. Currently there is nothing that I am seeing on the horizon that looks to be able to knock IL2/46 off the top of the mountain, but some day that sim will come.

Enjoy the old sim now, while it's at it's peak, and for what it is.

Exactly.

Interesting. I remember trying to get the Flanders crowd to try the ENB mod back in the day of OFF version 1. None of them would try it. They all thought I was trying to send them a virus. :???:

Introducing shadow shaders in OGL optimization would bring IL2 1946 leaps and bounds forwards.

Even if it were just the cockpits that got the shadow treatment :)

Uh. My card doesn't support OpenGL 2.0. I depend on the game to still be close to the original specs, if you want fancy graphics, maybe CLOD?

Because of this we are asking for this option can be enabled or disabled by the user as an option in SETTINGS SETUP. Maybe adding one more option in settings like ULTRA HIGH or as a simple switching SHADOWS ON/OFF
Who want to use, use, who does not want to use, just disable the option. Like any other option in the setup. The user chooses he wants to use this settings or not.


sorry my english.

What he said.

Your English is good enough to convey your thoughts, don't you worry.

What I saw about AnKor work, we could change DirectX 9 feature in the game like he did with CFS3... Like better water, lighting, smoke shadow, water reflection, self-shadowing, etc.

I'm with you there. I'd bet nearly noone plays IL-2 for its good look by now. The content on the other hand makes it shine. Better to improve that aspect further IMHO.

Exactly, because content is the problem with every single "replacement" for IL2 that is currently being developed, or was so.

CloD is still just about 109e vs. Spits and Hurries... Sadly stillborn and a dead end.

DCS WW2, well, maybe in 10 years they might have two or three maps and perhaps 4 aircraft flyable...

BoS, is on thin ice financially, is working against an almost impossible time constraint, and will have very limited plane sets and a single map, and will have to prove itself before I, and lots of others put our cash on the barrel head.

IL2/46 will be the WW2 air combat sim of choice for some time yet.

ElAuren's is right... Newer products have new and better engines from the get go and that is where the future will be but IL-2 1946 has enormous strength in the variety and depth of detail of content. It will take a successor years to get there.

I will say that I think IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad is the most likely in my mind to succeed. It's launching with 8-10 planes which is about what the original IL-2 Sturmovik launched with in 2001. Give it some time.

IL2 Sturmovik 1946 interface is almost perfect.
No need to do something different as the clickable panel and other real bullshit they did in Cliffs of Dover. Improve graphics would be enough. The same interface, the same variety of aircrafts and maps from IL2 1946 with better graphics would have a new game a great success.
IL2 1946 should be the basis for any other simulator that wants to succeed.
It's not because i'm accustomed to the controls or the interface. It's because it really is the best system. Here in Brazil we have a phrase for this, something like "should not make changes on the team that is winning".

I do not know if IL2 BOS will be a success. It may seem so at first because it is new, but it is limited. Only one map, only one scenario, only German and Soviet aircraft ... The CLOD is equal and it's boring. I have the CLOD and I refuse to play that crap. And who wants to fly P51 does what ? I like the variety of IL2 1946. I have HSFX and UP3 with DBW. If they can improve the graphics i'll fly the IL2 1946 by another 20 years. No other simulator outperforms the IL2 1946.

sorry my english again ;)

Well I do have CloD and with all the ATAG Patches it is beautiful. When I want to see nice landscape, and water and when I want to see the sun playing on the control panel, then I fly around with CloD for 10 or 15 minutes.
When I want to have a WW II airwar sim, then I turn on Il-2 1946 and fight on hundreds of maps with hundreds of different aircraft.
And when I am in a fight I really don´t have time to enjoy the landscape or care about some nice little shadows ...

Daidalos Team, Thank you for the really great work you have done!!

I hope this is the right place for my post.

First of all thank you Daidalos Team for what you did and what you are doing.

Now what i would like to see in IL2:
I "quick" record my manouvres to see how i perform a barrel roll, hammerhead and landings too but the ntrk never show what i did. in recording of 5-6 minutes it's very bizarre, for instance, that when i go to see the tracks, the plane is not able to re-make the barrell roll I performed, it just begins to roll then stops.
when i land (maybe an almost perfect landing) the plane go half under/into the concrete of the track, etc etc.
when i shoot at a plane, in the playback i see the enemy plane breaking and 1-2 seconds afterward i see the fire of my mg ...

I know many people have the same problems

i think this is a big problem because sometimes it's very funny to see it and maybe create a movie but how to do it with those problems ?
but, more important, i think that to learn "how to" one of the most useful thing is to see how they came on your 6, how they approached you and/or how they react to your attack/defence ... so not just fun/movie etc.

so i really think that it would be very appreciate by the community if it could be fixed

The longer a replay is recorded, the lower it's "resolution". It's as if the recording function has a fixed budget of data points. If it's a short one or two minute recording, the data points are very close together and you get very precise replays. If the recording is, say, ten minutes or more, the data points are spread further apart and you see "gaps" in the replay.

another replay problem may arise thru the weather settings.
Early versions of Il2 did not allow variable wind settings. With later versions though, having turbulence "on" can upset the replay of a track, as the turbulence is newly generated "at random" with each replay, and so differently affects trajectory of aircraft, etc. So, turn weather off, if you want to record.
Felix

Original game was/is coded for OGL & Dx so no change there.

You can quite happily sit there looking at it unaffected by OGL coding that the rest of us are looking at as it is at present with perfect mode and water 4 (Nvidia) and effects 2 etc etc.

Thats not to say a rework of the Dx8 or Dx9 IL2 1946 is using could be as good or better than OGL
but i suspect a rewrite of the complete game textures would be in order if its optimized for OGL only.

Quite frankly its your choice using a 8+ year old PC.

:rolleyes:

Yes all good there.

And what card is that? 3dFX VooDoo? ;)

Geforce 6600.
OpenGL 1.5

But Geforce 6600 IS OpenGL 2.0/2.1 compatible, so what's the problem? O_o

Actually it's all OpenGL... the DirectX mode is a wrapper only. It'd be interesting to see development of a more modern DirectX mode. It'd open up the door to all kinds of possibilities but its no small task and it would be years in the making.

Another game had a similar kind of experience. FreeSpace 2 was a space combat game that came out in the late 90s. The source was opened by the developers and the community has been busy working on it ever since. The visual effects have come a long way but we're talking a decade worth of open source development done by a pretty hardcore team. I suspect that in many ways that engine is a lot simpler than what IL-2 hooks into.

hope to see mc200 serie1 cockpit

I'm gonna call him Trollwyn on DD TS next time Im on there lol

:)

Yea I know fella I'm just going through the motions for a certain member here :)












.

I am sure that he would appreciate that Alpha :) Tolwyn has threatened to upgrade his puter when he can get someone to do it.

I fly at lot of Quick Combat bomber intercept missions. One single-engined fighter vs. big formations of massed bombers.

That means I inevitably take hits to the front of the plane, usually clustered around the engine and cockpit, even when I use proper tactics.

To see the effects of my gunnery I usually fly in arcade mode. That means I see exactly where the bullets hit - both mine and theirs.

While I've complained about specific fighters being quite vulnerable to attacks from dead ahead before, I now think that it's a generic problem, from Bf-109 to Yak.

1) Frontal armor doesn't seem to be modeled at all for single-engined fighters. That is, armored propeller mounts, armor in front of oil or fuel tanks mounted ahead of the pilot in the nose, armored firewalls between the engine compartment and the pilot, and armor glass to the pilot's front don't seem to slow down bullets at all, even against rifle caliber bullets at several hundred meters of range.

Additionally, the "armoring" effects of bullet penetration through liquid aren't modeled at all.

For example, I regularly get pilot wounded results from bullets which pass through the fuel or oil tank bulkhead/armor, through the oil/fuel tank itself (about 20-30 cm of liquid for an oil tank) and then through the forward firewall armor!

While this is realistic for 20 mm or 0.50 caliber bullets, it seems impossible that a 0.30 caliber bullet could do the same.

PK results usually occur when a bullet goes directly through the armor glass. Again, realistic for a .50 caliber/12.7 mm bullet or a cannon shell, but not so much for a 7.62/.30/.303 bullet, especially at much more than 50 meters range.

2) There seem to be gaps in frontal armor. That is, all the plane models have a slight gap between where the armor plate for the forward firewall ends and the armor glass begins. Often, I get PK results from bullets which pass through the bottom of the cockpit frame between the armor plate and armor glass.

If that's realistic, congratulations to the modelers. I suspect, however, that there would not have been gaps, since engineers and mechanics would have closed them or engineered overlaps between armor plate and armor glass.

3) Engines, especially inline engines, seem to be extremely vulnerable to just about any damage. It doesn't matter what plane you fly, if it's got an inline engine, any hit from dead ahead through the prop boss will usually smoke it.

While this sort of damage is realistic for hits to oil and coolant radiators, and for hits from 0.50 caliber or larger bullets, it seems a bit unrealistic for shrapnel hits at anything other than point-blank range, and for rifle-caliber bullet hits to engines at ranges beyond about 100 meters.

First, the game doesn't appear to model all the parts between the propeller spinner and the engine block (perhaps another 25-50 mm of mixed aluminum, mild steel and tool steel).

Second, it doesn't appear that the game models angle of penetration, chance that the bullet will ricochet or fragment, or the inherent toughness of the engine block itself (perhaps 25-50 mm of cast iron, with about 1/10 the penetration resistance of homogenous rolled armor plate).

Since I'm not sure that the game can model angle of armor penetration, and I know it can't model the exact thickness of each engine block, it seems more reasonable to apply some sort simple penetration reduction modifier based on "angle off" from the gun to the target, which isn't applied at 0 or 90 degrees, and is maximized at 45 degrees. Additionally, there should be some sort of randomized penetration reduction (perhaps 1-20%) for any engine hit to represent chance of fragmentation, ricochet, hits to non-vital parts and the inherent toughness of the engine block.

4) It seems far too easy to blow big pieces off of bombers. For example, my target of choice these days is the Wellington, and despite its notably strong geodesic construction, the damage modeling allows me to blow the entire nose, wing or tail off using just a few 20 mm cannon shells!

The same problem applies to other notably tough aircraft such as the Ju-88, B-29 or B-17.

While I know that parts breaking off is supposed to represent the sort of catastrophic damage that the game can't properly model, it still seems unrealistic for bomber to be torn apart by anything other than a collision with another bomber, severe fire or massive explosion. I find it unrealistic that I can blow the wings off a B-17 or a Wellington with just a few 20 cannon hits.

Would it be possible to model lethal damage to bombers without modeling breaking parts? For example, would it be possible to set the threshold at which the crew bails out of AI planes and the plane becomes unflyable short of the level at which the wings come off?

Every inline engine I know of has an aluminum engine block, and I rather think that they are not 1 to 2 inches (25 to 50mm) thick.

However, I do agree that the inline engines are too fragile.

Fly the P40 for a while. I'm sure that the tail gunners could simply use
7.65 Browning Walther PPKs and bring them down with one shot.

^Would you guys, like, have some raw data, like, you know, logfiles, tracks or screenshots to pass around, so others could verify your claims on the (perceived) shortcomings of damage modeling?

I believe that all WW2-era high performance aircraft engines had cast iron blocks and that cast aluminum blocks are mostly post-war. Remember, aluminum was a somewhat scarce resource for many nations during WW2, whereas mild steel was relatively common.

I admit to eyeballing the exact thickness of the engine block using cutaways of Merlin and Daimler-Benze engines. But, remember, inline aircraft engines are big (~3/4 metric tonne, nearly 1 English ton, vs. 200 kilos/300 lb. for auto engines) and are designed to deal with much greater forces than auto engines.

I'm not saying that aircraft engine blocks are bullet-proof by any means, since cast iron is relatively soft and brittle as steel goes. But they're going to be a bit tougher to penetrate than auto engines, which is mostly what you see being shot up by various guns on YouTube.

There are also four different damage states the game engine needs to model for damage effects to inline engines - no functional damage (i.e., pitting of the engine's exterior, but no penetration), penetration of the block around the gearbox (= oil leak and eventual failure or seizure of the engine due to gearbox overheating), penetration of the block around the cylinders (= coolant leak and eventual seizure of the engine due to overheating of cylinders) and the penetration of both the exterior block and one of the cylinders which results in loss of engine compression and a fuel leak in addition to the effects of a coolant leak).

As a variation on penetrating the cylinder, there's also the possibility of damaging one of the pistons, cylinder head or camshafts, or one of the spark plugs or part of the wiring harnes, which would reduce engine compression and possibly cause overheating or engine seizure without the fuel or coolant leak.

Since engines in IL2 are modeled as solid blocks of metal, it seems that the simplest way to model the different types of hits would would just be to assign random percentages of no functional damage, coolant leak, oil leak, fuel leak and compression loss/engine seizure based on bullet energy, with .50 caliber or better bullets having a chance of multiple different hits, but with .30 caliber bullets just getting one type of hit (and with fuel leak/loss of compression/engine seizure hits being very rare).

Given the fluid pressures and temperatures involved, I think that IL2 is realistic, if not a bit generous, in allowing damaged inline engine to survive as long as they do. But, since I'm ignorant about these things I'll defer to others with more experience.

True, if you don't have pictures it doesn't exist!

I will try to upload pictures.

For others who wish to add pictorial evidence, set up a 16 bomber vs. 1 fighter QMB mission and turn arcade mode on.

To prove my point, be sure to use planes with weak rear defensive armament, like the Ju-88A or He-111H, or with massed rifle caliber MG in turrets, like the Wellington.

Use Ace level AI and stupid tactics like hanging out at 100-300 m right behind a bomber formation.

You'll get the results I described soon enough; loads of PK, pilot wounded and badly smoked/seized engines, usually following just a few bullet hits. As a bonus, you'll occasionally get a control cable hit (esp. for the older planes like the Bf-109 or the Soviet fighters) from hits that penetrate the engine and forward firewall.

Pictures

#1: Yak 1B - Pilot arm wound through gap between forward armor plate/engine firewall and cockpit combing at medium-long range.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401765054

#2: P-40B just after getting "shot-shotted" at extreme range through the propeller boss by Ace He-111H-2 gunners. Note the remarkable accuracy since the nearest enemy plane is over 700 meters away! (So much for fixing "sniper" AI gunners. :( .) I got the "engine overheat" message within seconds after the hit, and the engine was whining badly indicating that engine seizure was going to happen just a few seconds later. This problem seems to be unique to the P-40 series.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401765076

#2 P-40B just after getting shot at medium long range by Ace He-111H-2 gunners at a slight angle off. Engine smoking badly due to oil leak with only a few minutes of life left. The bomber that inflicted the hit was over 300 meters away, just outside of the frame in the upper right hand corner. Note the remarkable grouping of two bullets within 1 foot of each other against a maneuvering target!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401765088

Happy yet?

And, mind you, I didn't have to work for these results at all. They represent 3 consecutive missions!

Pursivant, you had better do some more research,

The Merlin had an aluminum engine block with steel cylinder liners.

From Wiki:

The Allison V 1710 also had an aluminum block, as did the Daimler Benz DB series, as did the Hispano and it's Russian copies, etc... etc... etc...

If these large (26+ Litre) engine had been made of cast iron they would have been far too heavy for aircraft use.

I stand corrected then, and I feel stupid because I looked at that very page and somehow missed the aluminum reference. It also appears that cast aluminum block engines date to WW1 (Hispano-Suiza produced the first one).

Anyhow, that would explain why some inline engines are so vulnerable. Bullets will generally go right through aluminum, although some grades of aluminum make decent armor (the M113 APC had 3/4" of aluminum armor which prevented penetration by most small arms fire).

So, it's not so simple as figuring joules of energy vs. mm of homogenous rolled armor and dividing by some factor to get penetration of cast iron!

More pictures

#1 Bf-109E-4 getting smoked by a Wellington III Ace gunner at medium range (~300 m when hit) from a shot from above. I didn't play it out, but I'd suspect that the engine has 5-10 minutes to live. Also notice two different bursts of MG fire passing extremely close to the plane from other Wellingtons at extreme range (600+ meters). Kind of a poster child for toning down Ace AI gunners, especially since most gunners were trained to hold their fire until the enemy got within 500 m.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401771087

#2 Bf-109E-4 getting smoked by a Wellington III at medium range (300 m) by a shot through the prop. Expected engine life 5-10 min.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401771087

#3 Same as above but notice the remarkably tight grouping of hits on the Bf-109s nose at 450+ meters!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401771087

#4 P-51B flamed by Ace Wellington III gunner at about 200 meters while maneuvering. While the shot doesn't show it effectively, one .30 caliber bullet was sufficient to set the forward fuel tank on fire, and another shot smoked the engine. A better view would have shown the bullet hitting right in the middle of the forward fuel tank. And this wasn't a fire that broke out after fuel hit the engine, the plane was suddenly engulfed in flames.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401771087

A couple more pictures of the P-51B's vulnerabilities.

#1: P-51B after getting zapped by the nose gunner of an Ace AI Wellington III at about 200 m range while closing at about 550 kph, so perhaps about 750-800 kph total closing speed. Normally, I'd call this a fair hit - lots of extra energy, close range and I wasn't maneuvering much - except that you'll notice that none of the bullets' trajectories actually directly penetrates the engine block or the cooling system! (The bullet at the top was also glancing.)

Even with a soft aluminum engine block and lots of extra energy on the bullet, there's a good chance that realistically all of those bullets would have ricocheted rather than penetrating.

And, ONE glancing shot was sufficient to instantly seize up the engine. No warning, just a dead engine. Not realistic behavior even for a mortally wounded engine.


http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401800105

#2 P-51B after getting hit by the tail gunner of an Ace AI Wellington III at 450 m. This one caused a coolant leak, so perhaps 5-10 minutes of engine life.

In addition to a remarkably tight bullet grouping by the quad machine guns (almost no dispersal at all - the bullet in the wing is from the head on pass I took earlier) at extreme range, you'll also notice that the bullet that inflicted the fatal damage penetrates exactly where the P-51 had 1/4" of armor plate! So, either an AP bullet or the armor plate over the coolant tank isn't properly modeled.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1401800123

Despite what I posted above, I think there are some places where shots between gaps in armor are realistic. While complete armor diagrams are hard to come by, especially for Soviet planes, it appear that there could be gaps in armor, especially between armor glass and the forward armored firewall.

For example, on many planes, there is a slight horizontal gap between the firewall armor and the armor glass. This means that shots from directly ahead and slightly above can get through the gap to injure the pilot.

Hey! I'm not trolling!

While it's true that newer Geforce drivers may, on paper, deliver openGL 2.x support, I've tested on a couple machines with the nvidia A7n8x MB and my exact same card and I couldn't for the life of me get the newer Geforce WHQL drivers to "take" forcing me to go back to some older Geforce drivers.

Yes, I've removed the drivers, selected standard VGA and rebooted and tried manually pointing to the *.inf file and also trying to run the nvidia SETUP on the latest drivers. No luck.

What operating system ?

@Pursuivant: Those pics show what the problem really is, and is not engine frailty: it's the incredibly unrealistic gunner accuracy in this game, when most RL reports and accounts testify gunners were more a dissuasive resource than a real threat for pursuing fighters, except at close distance and straight flying.

As I've stated many times gunners in this game -both AI and human- have it too easy to aim and shoot. AI because it cheats, humans because a real gun station would never move as fast, accurately and lightly as a mouse pointer.

If real gunners were so effective, then contraptions like the Defiant would have been a resonant success, and not the failure they were.

Good point Dux.

I'm not disagreeing that there is a problem with IL2's gunnery model, but I also think that there are problems with damage modeling, as some of my pictures pointed out - like one rifle-caliber bullet causing an instant fire in a self-sealing fuel tank which was designed to survive exactly such attacks, or instantly making an engine stop.

The ability for gunners to easily track targets is just one of the problems.

* IL2 makes flexible guns much more inherently accurate than they should be, by ignoring natural bullet dispersion over range due to atmospheric factors, and lack of inherent accuracy due to turbulence, slipstream buffeting and airframe vibration.

* Gunners have much better and faster ranging abilities than in real life, especially at long range. Functionally, even experienced turret gunners were useless at much beyond 500 meters. For this reason, experienced gunners held their fire until their targets were within 300-500 yards. Yet, there's an abundance of evidence that IL2 AI gunners are not only opening fire at 700-800 meters, but also score multiple hits!

* IL2 ignores the fact that it's very difficult even for skilled airmen to properly estimate range in the absence of other objects to help judge size, and in thin, clear air at higher altitudes which makes distant objects seem closer than they are. It's also difficult for the human eye to adapt to looking for distant object in the absence of other objects to focus on. Experienced airmen had to focus first on a distant part of the plane, and then start looking for distant foes once their eyes adapted.

* In some cases the game overestimates a gunner's ability quickly to slew a hand-held gun around, especially when when the plane is pulling Gs or is traveling at high speeds and the gun barrels are hanging out in the slipstream.

* 4.12 went a long way towards making gunners less accurate when the plane is maneuvering, it still doesn't go far enough, IMO, to make it difficult for gunners who aren't seated and strapped in to shoot while the plane is pulling Gs.

For example, the gunner in the top turret of the IL-4 had just a "hammock" to sit on, with no back or foot support and no seat belt. How he was supposed to shoot when the plane was doing anything other than flying straight and level is a puzzle.

* IL2 ignores any change of flexible gun or crew "malfunction." Turrets and guns never jam, turret windows don't ice up at altitude, guns never ice up due to cold or overheat after they fire long bursts, and gunners don't need to spend time changing magazines or belts when they run out of ammo. Nor do gunners suffer from frozen or numb fingers, have their goggles fog up, suffer from hypoxia or slip on piles of spent shells at their feet.

* While 4.12 introduced a realistic lag time for gunners to "acquire" their target (that is, detect it, identify it as hostile, calculate a firing solution and aim prior to opening fire), I'm not sure that it's applied evenly, nor is there greater target acquisition time when attempting to shoot targets at extreme (i.e., beyond 300 meter) range.

* AI skill levels for bombers are too "generic" and it's highly unrealistic for an entire bomber crew to have even Veteran level skills, much less Ace level.

For example, in 1942-43, many U.S. bombardiers and navigators never got gunnery training and even graduates of gunnery school got so little effective realistic practice that they had to be retrained once they got to the combat zone. Even worse, until about 1943, many Soviet air gunners didn't get ANY realistic gunnery training!

So, you might have an Average or even Veteran pilot, plus a few Average gunners, and a few Rookies (or even men who were completely unqualified and whose skills are even lower than IL2 currently models).

* Gunners with restricted arcs of fire and limited ranges of motion are far too effective.

For example, I find just about all the gun positions in the Ju-88 or He-111 to be useless at effectively engaging a maneuvering enemy, since they have such limited visibility and arcs of fire. And, for just about all of the gun positions in those planes to engage planes at the extremes of your arc of fire you have to move the gun in such a way that you can't aim.

Realistically, any gunner lying on his belly is also going to have to contort his body to take shots at targets as the edges of his arc of fire which will further harm accuracy.

Based on this, I think that any gun with much less than a 120 degree cone of fire (e.g., most tail gunners in two-seat attack aircraft) should have severe penalties to hit anything other than a non-maneuvering target, both due to the limited ability to track the target before it enters your arc of fire and the limited arc of fire itself.

Despite this, I've regularly taken hits while maneuvering in a single engined fighter from the ventral and rear guns of the He-111 or Ju-88, even at extreme ranges.


* If IL2 wanted to have historically realistic gunnery, Rookie level gunners (i.e., those selected for gunnery training school) would achieve a maximum of 1% hits against a slowly maneuvering target flying roughly at 90 degrees of deflection to the gunner's plane at 250-300 yards while more more less flying in parallel to the gunner's plane - similar to training conditions against target drogues towed by slow-moving target tugs attempting to simulate "combat curve" fighter attacks.

Lesser deflection and less maneuvering would slightly boost hit percentages, faster movement or more maneuvering by the target would drastically reduce hits, as would engaging targets at longer ranges. Closer targets would progressively boost hits, to a maximum of about 5%.

Average level gunners (i.e., graduates of a good gunnery school) would have 2% basic accuracy, Veteran 3% and Ace 5%. These represent realistic hit percentages expected for graduates of late-war USAAF, USN/USMC and RAF gunnery schools, and tests of veteran gunners.

All of these levels assume some level of formal gunner training. Remember, a fair number of gunners had NO training, or such bad training as to represent no real training!

Another possible solution for dealing with this issue is seperating AI Gunner(s) Skill from AI Pilot Skill. Presently, all planes have one Skill setting. If you want your bomber pilot to have a Veteran Skill setting, all of the AI gunners will also be Veterans.

If you attempt to control the AI gunnery issue by dropping their Skill setting to Rookie, the pilots then become basically useless. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to seperate the two Skill settings, but this addition could have a very positive effect on gameplay.

Aviar

I'm not sure the IL2 game engine would easily allow that change.

Anyhow, I've noticed that Ace bomber pilots seem to collide with each other more than rookies do!

XP

Please excuse my ignorance since I don't delve too much into the arcade portion that shows the bullet strikes.

Do each one of those bullet lines represent one bullet or a volley? I ask because in game, planes do occasionally fly through a stream of gunfire.

I do agree that larger planes/Bombers tend to fall apart too easily. But given a simplified factor (I'm assuming it's much more complicated) how much more 'tougher' would you make the larger panes closer to a realistic catastrophic failure?

IL2 models individual bullet trajectories and does a good job of it. Each arrow represents one bullet. "Starbursts" represent fragments generated by explosions.

You can set up arcade mode by setting "arcade = 1" in your conf.ini file.


I'd alter damage models for twin-engined to 4-engined bombers so that wing or fuselage failures only appear if the plane is involved in a collision with a plane of similar size, is hit by an explosive shell of 30 mm or larger, has its bombs or fuel blow up, suffers a prolonged and severe fire (i.e., a massive fuel fire that goes on for at least 5 minutes), goes into a long high-speed dive, or suffers prolonged and extreme g-forces (i.e., in excess of 3 G for at least a minute).

For cumulative damage from 20mm and smaller rounds, and from collisions with small planes, there should be some other mechanism to indicate "the plane doesn't fly anymore". Possibilities include extreme levels of drag or loss of lift, or inability to control the plane due to damage cable runs and control surfaces.

I think that this would be easy to implement, since all the developers would need to do is set an energy threshold required to trigger a particular breaking part effect. As a very rough guess, I'd say that for light bombers and dive bombers this would be .50 caliber, for lightly built medium bombers and transports it would be 20 mm, and for anything bigger it would be 30 mm.

I believe that this is realistic because if you look at film footage of bomber shoot-downs by fighters, the lethal damage is almost always from engine failure, fire, or pilot kills. Rarely, you get a bomb hit or fuel explosion which blows the plane apart. Control surfaces might come off, but the plane itself is never broken apart just by gunfire.

The pictures of bombers you see falling in pieces are due to the plane suffering a direct hit by flak, from its bombs or fuel exploding, or from it being torn apart by air resistance or g-forces.

Remember, the Luftwaffe estimated in 1943 that an average pilot required 20 20mm cannon hits to bring down a B-17 from the rear. There's no way that a B-17 or any other big, heavily built plane (B-29, B-24, Ju-88, Wellington) is going to fall apart after just 5 or so 20mm cannon hits, as I've often seen when flying IL2.

I really want to see some proof about this statement.

BTW, some few extintions back, when most of us were young, someone complained against the effect of buzzaw as something missing on il2, when using .50s

but even then, 5 20mm shots to brake a B-17's wing, is absolutelly outstanding in my game experience.

The B-17 had warren truss rather than spar. It was notoriously hard to bring down if trying to "saw the wing off." The B-24, with large spar, was more accommodating.

A good example of exactly how the B-24 wing spar would fail under stress is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug

About 1 minute in.

The B-17 wing could fail if you got enough cannon shells in just the right place.

http://www.ww2incolor.com/d/432815-4...oyed_by_Me-262

Assuming that the caption is correct and the Me-262 was able to "buzz-saw" the B-17's wing at the wing root, rather than just weaken the wing sufficiently that wind resistance and gravity finished the job, that still indicates that it took four closely spaced 30mm cannon hits to take a wing off a B-17!

Perhaps I'm overstating the case that 20 mm or .50 caliber hits should never be able to take the wing off a 4-engined bomber, since in combat anything can happen, but I think it should be a very rare event - perhaps 1 in 100 or 1 in a 1000. Certainly, I shouldn't be able to consistently and quickly take the wings off a B-17 using a Bf-109G firing a few 20 mm shots from 300 m.

What I'd find to be much more realistic is those same bullets starting catastrophic fires that spread, then having the wing fail under stress after a few minutes as the fire softens up the aluminum. Or, have damage that makes the plane enter a spin or steep dive which causes wing failure.

For more lightly-built and smaller planes, the "buzz saw" effect is highly realistic and well implemented in IL2.

Well... you may cut a B17's wing with 20mm fire from german planes, but this will require a Bf110, or a 190. Doing that with a 109 is absolute suicide. You really need to place a very good burst to acomplish that. It is better to just go for the fire. After they are on fire you may just choose another target.

I ratherly enjoy looking at the planes on fire those 20mm generate, but they go down slowly from it. Only when there is an explosion, and generally in the engines. Also, they need lots of impacts to start a fire.

Self sealing tanks should work fine against machine guns, but against canons their efectiveness will be far less.

One thing I will complain about bombers, it's the high life expectancy of gunners in ALL bombers. It wasn't like that a lot of patches away, but right now, killing a gunner, even on very exposed positions, is much more difficult than before.

Arnie's still flying rear gunner in the IL2 !

Like I said, taking off a B-17's wing with 20mm fire should be possible, but quite rare.

Perhaps there could be some sort of tracking mechanism in the game that would register how close various .50 caliber and 20mm hits are to each other and only trigger the most catastrophic effects in big planes if there are sufficient hits within a certain radius.


Self-sealing tanks were mostly designed to survive hits by shrapnel and single rifle caliber bullets. Also, they didn't seal instantly, so any hit to a fuel tank will result in some leakage. While it should be extremely rare, or even impossible, for a single flak fragment or .30 caliber/7.62 mm bullet to start a fire in a self-sealing fuel tank, a concentrated burst of fire from a .30 caliber MG, a few hits by a 0.50 caliber MG or even a single hit by a 20 mm gun should have the POTENTIAL to start a fire or unstoppable fuel leak. It shouldn't be a sure thing, but he risk should be there

I have to partially disagree. In comparison to an airplane a human is a small target, and for many gun positions the gunner was an even harder target because he was hidden behind armor or was seated, kneeling or crouching which made him a harder target. So, getting a solid hit on a gunner is quite tricky, especially at range.

But, what I've notice in IL2 playing in Arcade mode, is that the "instant kill" locations on a human figure in the game are tiny. To get a "pilot kill" or "crew killed" result you have to get a head shot - right through the middle of the head. To get a pilot wounded/crew wounded result, you have to hit the torso. I haven't yet figured out the parameters for arm or leg hits, but I think that they only are triggered by hits to the thigh or upper arm.

But, realistically, any hit by a .30 caliber fired from a MG through the neck or torso is likely to result in serious injury or death. Should the victim survive, they are also likely to have serious bleeding and are likely to quickly go into shock due to blood loss and pain. Functionally, that means they're dead, since they're out of combat.

While modeling effects of gunshot wounds is tricky, as a very rough model, the farther you get from the heart and spine, the longer the victim has to survive. If TD wanted to make crew more vulnerable, they could expand the "instant kill" area for .30 caliber bullets to cover the entire head, all of the neck, and line down the torso centered on the spine and extending about 15 cm to each side. While not all of these hits will result in an "instant kill" functionally, the effects are the same.

The exception is that there should be a small chance that rifle caliber bullet hits to the head not kill, but will result in unconsciousness for some period of time. This allows the game to model what happened to Saburo Sakai, and a few other extremely lucky but less famous pilots. But, if this option is implemented, the game would need to have some method of telling the player that the "black screen of death" just represents the pilot being knocked unconscious.

ANY hit by a .50 caliber or larger bullet is likely to render a crewman non-functional, and is almost certainly going to result in immediate death or severe bleeding which quickly leads to death. One of the reasons that .50 caliber is preferred for sniper rifles these days is because just about any hit is likely to result in fatal injury.

Likewise, it doesn't appear that gunners are rendered less effective by any sort of hit other than outright kills (although crew are vulnerable to bleeding. A few times, I've seen delayed "gunner down" messages when playing in arcade mode.) I hope I'm wrong, but it appears that the game engine ignores the effects of wounds to gunners, other than bleeding.

Were the game to properly model arm wounds to gunners, gunners manning hand-held guns would have a very difficult time moving their guns around or holding them steady following an arm hit. Gunners manning turret guns would have difficulty elevating, turning or firing their guns based on which hand was hit.

Leg hits wouldn't be as big a deal for gunners as for pilots, except:

1) gunners who have to stand or kneel to man their guns are effectively out of combat.

2) gunners who must use foot pedals to control a gun turret (e.g., the ball turret gunner on the B-17 or B-24) couldn't elevate or depress their guns.

3) Seated gunners who must use their legs to brace themselves in place would have a much more difficult time firing their guns.

So, Aviar's comment that Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his role as Terminator, is manning all the guns isn't far off the mark!

I just wanted to point out that the B-17 and B-24 Sperry ball turret pedals didn't control the turret in the way you suggest. The left pedal moved and was used to adjust range to target, as indicated by the site reticule changing in width. The gunner moved his left foot to adjust the "uprights" as needed to keep the target wingspan framed as the enemy got closer. That "told" the computing sight the rate of closure. Using hand grips, the gunner also kept the target framed laterally, "telling" the computing sight how the target was moving left-to-right, etc. The site also received own-aircraft altitude, own-aircraft speed, and it's elevation and azimuth position with respect to own-aircraft.

The right pedal was a footrest. However, some turrets had a back-up foot switch to fire the guns when failures forced the gunner to disengage the drives and crank the turret by hand. I don't think the Sperry ball had that.

I'd just like to hear of some news from the guys. The last time anything was posted was back in January - 6 months ago!

Pips, I wish I could give you something useful, but I'm just a modeler. Projects are alive and moving from what I can tell. The B-24D Monguse and I built seems in good shape now, but it requires some new tech due to the peculiarities of turbine-assisted supercharging and semi-automated mixture control found in US heavies. We had not crossed that bridge before. Computing gun and bomb sights have opened their own challenges.

Please bear with us.

The common tactic of LW and Hungarian fighters was to kill the rear gunner of IL-2s first. It resulted in extreme casualties amongst gunners. It wasnt easy of course, but also not that so difficult.

Anyway, I also agree, B-17 and B-24, maybe even He-111 should be much harder to shoot down. In fact, they arent much more durable than La-5/7, and definitely less durable than IL-2!

Interesting, as the P 47, which we have had for a very long time, is also turbo-supercharged, and all late US aircraft have the "auto rich" and "auto lean" feature, as do many British aircraft.

I'm guessing this means they have been incorrectly modeled all along?

And thanks to you and Monguse for the tireless effort on that beautiful B 24.

Very good point. I wonder if any of this might have an impact on the P-38 or P-47 as well.

Shows you why I'm only a modeler lol. I don't think turbine supercharging was ever actually modeled (e.g., no axis for variable adjustment). I don't fly much, but I have the impression that Auto-Rich and Auto-Lean were never really done either. The advantages are high altitude and long range, neither of which is very appealing to the average player. On the other hand, Auto-Lean could really stretch a light fuel load, letting you carry more bombs--provided you know enough to avoid cooking the engines.

I need to get back to my paper airplanes. Lord knows I'm out of my depth here ;)

Most of us probably are :) I know of maybe a handful on the forums here and elsewhere that truly understand all of the mechanical bits and pieces and how they affect performance. The rest of us have a passing understanding at best.

Laying out some B-24 missions and it's great to hear that development is getting there.

Can't wait to put that early Liberator on my Aleutians scenario.

Me too. I've been under the hood for so long that all I want to do is watch someone else do something with it for a change.

Anybody know the release date? I know itis on the way, but do they know when they will give it to us?

No idea we all need to be patient

24th of June, said the little bird. No hurry.

Coincidence? or ever the court jester as it's 'two weeks for sure' !;)

When ready.

There is no release date set within the team.

The only user, posting a release date, or any other DT-related news, which can be 100% trusted is this one.

Anyone else is just trolling, or speculating.

No news since January :(

I'm dying!!!

Hello daidalos.team

I don't know how much you know, but could you give us a unofficial "read me" of features that you 80% think have been implemented? Things that were under serious consideration last contact with the DTModers, Thank you.

I am looking forward to seeing how much they improve on the game, 4.11 to 4.12 was a lot as far as options and game smoothness went, And I have confidence that this patch will equal or exceed that.

Thank you again

You should get that looked at! :cool:

Lavochkins
 

Hi everyone and the Team! I experienced the Lavochkins are so... bugged or something, when they climbing vertical they still getting energy for 1-2 seconds, or don't lose any at least.
I'm playing IL-2 1946 since 3 years, told to myself -No, it cannot be- and other vulgar words in my language, but it's very annoying. So, please fix this flight model if is there a way.

Best Regards:
Royzewic

Lol...

This is an old, old, OLD issue. Like, about a decade old. It's a legacy of one of Oleg's super-mega-ultra-uber-performing Lavochkin FMs. The La-7s in particular were all but unstoppable. It was normal for AI (and even a live player in cases) to sustain high-speed bat turns and steep climbs without losing much energy at all. In addition, they were nearly indestructible. I can't count how many jokes were made about "Soviet Stronkest Delta Wood is Bestest!" in the old Ubi forums.

Believe it or not, what we have now is actually a toned-down version of the old Lavochkin's FM; it's not nearly as OP now as it used to be, though it is still quite formidable. In reality, the La-7 was a very strong and dynamic aircraft, more than a match in a dogfight against even the FW-190s. Not sure how well the relative performance between the two is represented in the sim, but now it is generally considered acceptable by many in the community (either that, or we simply got tired of making noise about it over the years lol), considering what Luftwaffles had to contend with before...

Sorry if that doesn't help your concerns, but I just thought it was a funny topic that brought up a lot of interesting memories and topics. :)

Also, it is impossible to stall/spin with La-5FN. It really looks like there is a strong bias towards Lavochkins, they are the only aircrafts in the game that still have that exaggerated flight models. From the russian side, Yaks are very well modeled (except Yak-9U, a little bit too fast), so Lavochkins should be fixed to match historical accuracy. There are quite detailed test reports available from NII VVS, these should be used as reference.

Indeed, the situation was much worse and got quite a bit better. I think the G limit modelling implemented by TD had the largest effect on the aircraft as it can still technically perform the bat turn but it will break the airframe doing it. Also the German planes got some much needed love as well.


I wouldn't mind a look at the La-5/7 series FM again. The problem with the La-5FN not stalling I believe is to do with elevator authority. Every other La-5/7 can pull quite a bit harder but also stall... so in some ways the La-5FN is a bit handicapped although in some ways its a benefit as it artificially prevents the pilot from stalling it seriously. It also reduces its peak ability.

Well, maybe you are right, but still, when I tested the maneuverability of the La-5FN, versus an ace AI A6M2, I couldnt outturn the Zero, but I definitely could keep up with it. In a red vs red test, Yaks had no chance in a turning fight vs La series. The Yak-3 was close, but still not enough. The La-5 was good, that cannot be denied, but not THAT good.

Somewhat unrelated may be the turn times being a little too low.

The trick with the Yak is that although it's a good turner (and generally gets better as the series goes on) the best turn speed is at a medium speed around 300 or 350kph. Keep it at that speed and you can out turn any opponent that the Yak is likely to face in a historic battle.

The La-5FN seems to turn well at more speeds... which may be an error. I'm not sure. It is a top performer which I wouldn't want to take away from it. But it would probably benefit from a close look.

Correct me if Im wrong, but I read somewhere (dont know where, it was long ago) that the Lavochkin's initial turn rate was excellent, but sustained wasnt that good. Still much better than 190, and comparable to 109G. So unlike Yaks, it wasnt a true dogfighter, but had incredibly good low altitude speed performance, and it was best employed as an energy fighter.

Concerning speed performance:
From NII VVS tests (most reliable source I think), it is revealed that low altitude performance (up to 3000m) is more or less OK for La5/F/FN, ingame but above that, they are either too fast (15-20km/h - La-5FN, 20km/h - La-5) or way too fast (30km/h - La-5F) And this is if we compare the best performing aircraft tested by NII VVS and what we have ingame.

Real turn rates are 1-1.5 seconds worse that ingame. This sounds insignificant, but it isnt.

La-7 is a different beast, which was definitely far superior to any german plane. We would need an additional 1944 version, with lower performance as in NII VVS tests.

Here's two "eye candy" options for multi-crew planes:

1) The ability to order specific AI crew to bail out without triggering a full-crew bailout. That is, you could order just the bombardier or tail gunner, or both, to bail out.

2) The ability for a player controlled crewman to bail out without triggering a full-crew bailout. That is, you as tailgunner could bail out leaving the rest of the crew behind.

The first option is a nice bit of eye candy for bomber pilots who want to give badly wounded and bleeding crew a chance of surviving, albeit it possibly in captivity.

Historically, it wasn't uncommon for Western Allied bomber crew over Axis-occupied Europe to bundle their grievously wounded colleagues into their parachutes and toss them out the escape hatch. The idea was that the wounded man was almost certainly going to die if he had to spend many hours at high altitude before he could get medical care, whereas the Germans might take pity on him and save his life if he survived the parachute drop.

Another reason for the first option is to simulate the heroic bomber pilot who orders everyone out of the plane except for himself prior to attempting to land a badly damaged plane, or orders everyone else out while he attempts to keep a mortally wounded plane flying prior to bailing out himself.

The second option is sort of silly, but I guess it would allow players to quit a mission without ending it.That way you could still watch the action from your parachute or some other view. For online players, bailing out would be slightly less of a dick move than just logging out of the server.

Either option could also be used to simulate secret agent drops, with a particular crewman actually being a spy/partisan. It would allow any bomber that doesn't have a dedicated paratrooper loadout to drop a few parachutists.

Two months left?

Any news about 4.13? Should we hope or already not?

Thanks for update, I'm reeeeaaalllly wanting to take a B-24 out for a spin.

Hey TD Dev's, got a couple of quick suggestions for you on the upcoming patch.

First Suggestion: Aircraft/Ships/Vehicle/Objects/Target sorting (including stationary). --- Can you please make it to where we can select aircraft or other objects for use in the QMB/FMB something like this: Allies > US > Navy > Fighters > F4U-1a. Objects> Buildings > Airfield > US Hangar

Second Suggestion: Manual Landing Gear: --- Can you re-code to make it to where all I have to do is hold down a key on my keyboard Instead of repeatedly punching it several times.

Third Suggestion: Amount of objects at one time to add --- Make it possible to add as many as 32 aircraft/vehicles/ships/personnel at one time in the FMB. Because frankly 4 at a time just gets crazy with the amount of clicking we have to do.

*side note it would be cool to actually have historic levels or aircraft on the carrier. 8 on deck to spawn and the rest spawn inside and get brought up by the elevator.


--

Why would you want to have that?!
All you need to do if you would like to have this, is to program a controller to repetitively sent these key presses.
Personaly i like the manual gear for some planes. It keeps you busy as would be in real during take-off or landing :)

A quick seach on internet did return this if you do not have special controllers. Maybe you can give it a try:
http://www.computerhope.com/tips/tip209.htm
http://www.autohotkey.com/

Cheers,
Ray