cannon range: game vs reallife
 

Quoting Spitfire Pilot JD Lindsay from Robert Bracken's book "SPITFIRE II THE CANADIANS"

"I fired on a straggling 109 at the 800 yard maximum range with a 20 mm cannon and got strikes on the aircraft."

How does this range compare with the game? My marker for deflection shooting starts to show in just under 4000 ft to target. There have been lots of comparing aircraft, but little about game vs reallife weapons in this forum.

You would also have to compensate for the convergence zone (if your cannons are outboard like in a Spit or BF109E-3) at 800yds. The game default is 300 yds, so the point where your cannons actually hit at 800yds would be well to either side of your cross hairs. I don't know about realistic mode though, is there automatic correction for guns in that? Also cannons have relatively slow rates of fire, I'm sure its possible, but it would be a pretty good shot.

I don't believe there's any convergence in this game. Maybe on the PC version -- but not here. "Real" standard settings for wing mounted guns was 200-300 yards (pilot's choice). I believe Hartmann had his set for 50-100 yards. Whether someone is firing at me from 50 yards -- or 800 yards in this game, their rounds never cross paths. You can see this as someone is firing on you from your six -- all the streams just fly by straight ahead -- no matter the distance.

I was assuming the pilot referred to the maximum range as to how far away that the rounds could actually do effective damage to his target. I am doubting there is any convergence in this game.

The convergent point is set to 300 yards which seems to be the “sweet spot” for a quick kill in my “9” (Spitfire Mk IX).

See Thread:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=10350

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Yeah, the Devs said 300 in a thread, but I've seen this too. Maybe if they're close enough?

Theres definitely convergence on Sim, try shooting targets from 500yds and you won't get very effective hits. It will become obvious when you compare the effect of shooting close and far away and its not just your aim. Also see the thread linked a few posts above.

I'd have to disagree; I think there is a convergance zone. When i first started playing i couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. But i had made the mistake of taking the firing settings from a different game and using them with IL2. I was starting my firing runs at 1000 yds. At times I could watch my tracers go around the plane after crossing several 100 yards behind. A couple of days ago I told myself i won't fire at anything farther than 400 yards. Since then my kills have almost doubled. My rule now is if I think I'm too close....get closer. Seems to be really working for me...

I think some folks (not saying you guys) are thinking that convergence is a range where your rounds do the most damage. Sure -- I'd agree that a 20mm or 30mm round would do more damage the closer the target is due to velocity (if thats even a consideration in this game) -- but convergence is the point where all of your ordinance meets, and I haven't seen any of this in Arcade or Realistic modes. I may be wrong -- but it still makes for interesting conversation -- and the "video game crowd" may read this thread and learn something cool about aerial gunnery.

I'll admit -- I've only played Sim twice -- and got mauled by guys who I never even saw:-) So, you guys may be right about convergence being a part of that mode.

I have to agree with DoraNine - there is either no convergence at all, or it is "cheated" rather than done properly. There's no perceptible difference in shooting a target at range in realistic or simulator, so I very much doubt that it applies to one and not the other.

There's at least a couple of ways convergence could be implemented:

1) Doing it properly. i.e. giving each gun on each plane an angular offset. This would have the benefit of a visual pay off of seeing your tracer round condense at the convergence point and then fanning out like a shotgun blast there after. It also has the advantage that the damage model would deal with it as it is and that kills would be genuinely easier because you could potential put all your bullets into the same part of the target. From a development point of view, however, this is the least favourable option as it is high maintenance and more prone to breaking for any plane.

2) Cheating. i.e. modifying each bullet's damage multiplier based on distance travelled. A system like this, or that can accommodate this, may well be in place already if the game models kinetic energy loss on the bullets. The downsides of this approach are that the tracers don't visibly converge, and the target impacts can't simulate convergence because the bullets will have a greater spread than they should. This can be compensated for by exaggerating the damage scale though. The benfit of this approach, from a development point of view, is that every bullet fired from every plane can be passed through the same function, so it is zero maintenance and easy to tweak on a global scale.