4.11 General debugging

[MicroWave]

Hi Aviar,
The problem might be the random generator. With every mission it starts from the same seed and hence you get the same sequence of numbers. I usually place my plane somewhere on the map and fire my guns. This 'breaks' the sequence.
So, in your example you should fire your guns before you reach the waypoint where random pattern is generated. The pattern will probably be different then.

[IceFire]

Here's a new and obscure one.

When using the Italy Online map the new default skins for the Bf109s painted in Italian specific markings do not appear. They do appear on East and West front maps but not on the Italy Online map... judging from the other aircraft it is set up as a MTO map but these skins do not correspond with the MTO. I should have caught this one earlier.

[Aviar]

Originally Posted by MicroWave

Hi Aviar,
The problem might be the random generator. With every mission it starts from the same seed and hence you get the same sequence of numbers. I usually place my plane somewhere on the map and fire my guns. This 'breaks' the sequence.
So, in your example you should fire your guns before you reach the waypoint where random pattern is generated. The pattern will probably be different then.

So what you are saying is 'DO NOT USE THE RANDOM SETTING FOR AN AI FLIGHT'...

Thankfully, I only have a couple of missions that I have to go back and correct. Thanks.

Aviar

[MicroWave]

Originally Posted by Aviar

So what you are saying is 'DO NOT USE THE RANDOM SETTING FOR AN AI FLIGHT'...

Thankfully, I only have a couple of missions that I have to go back and correct. Thanks.

Aviar

It's perfectly fine for AI flights to have random pattern. You just need some player input to break the random sequence. I fire the guns, because I know that this does the trick; maybe some other input also does the trick.
The only thing is that it would be hard to see what pattern was chosen for AI flight, cause you can't see it on the minimap. But player doesn't need to be part of the AI flight.

[Aviar]

I wanted to add another thought to Patrol waypoints. It appears that the 'Radio Silence' setting does not affect the 'added' Patrol waypoints.

As you know, when an AI flight reaches a waypoint, they will call out their altitude and heading. Personally, I use the Radio Silence setting for many AI flight waypoints so these many radio messages do not clutter up the mission.

However, this does not appear to work on Patrol waypoints. It still works on the 'original' waypoint but once the flight starts it's Patrol, it starts calling out each waypoint. (Depending on the settings, this could be a lot of waypoints.)

If you have 4 or 5 AI flights flying Patrol, that could be a LOT of radio calls. Is there any way this issue might be addressed?

Aviar

[pixelbaron]

Lights don't seem to extinguish if you assign them to a specific team. I've placed a bunch of lights along a runway and assigned them to Blue and they pretty much stay on 24/7 and thus the command "Request Runway Lights" doesn't appear to work at all in game.

[Herra Tohtori]

I spotted something that, to my eye, looks a bit anomalous with the Fiat G.55 Sottoserie 0 / Sottoserie 0 Late.

Specifically, the flight model for these planes seems to have something wrong in them, regarding their turn performance with take-off flaps on.

This graph is produced with 4.101 FM data (available in http://www.flightsimtesting.com/IL2Compare.aspx), but I also checked with 4.11 FM data on IL-2Compare on my own PC and the results are similar if not the same:



To explain the graph briefly: The two curves for each aircraft are for no flaps, and take-off flaps setting. With the G.55 Serie I Late (Red) you see the high performance turn rate with no flaps, and with take-off flaps engaged, the overall turn time increases while turn rate decreases, but improves it at low speeds compared to turning at slow speed with no flaps. This is to be expected, and seems to be correctly modeled in the flight model.

However, when you look at the Sottoserie 0's corresponding curves in blue, you can notice that take-off flaps actually reduce turn time significantly, at even higher speed than with no flaps, and turn rate shoots sky high, over 30 degrees per second which is apparently more than the designers of this graph expected.

Basically, with the Sottoserie 0, using take-off flaps moves the turn performance curve to the opposite direction than happens with the Serie I (and pretty much all the other aircraft in the sim). Curiously, the same behaviour plagues both the Sottoserie 0, and Sottoserie 0 Late, while Serie I and Serie I Late seem to be normal.

Granted, the take-off flaps will not actually give that much of a performance increase in my opinion, considering that they will jam and slow you down if you use them to turn around in 11 seconds at 320 km/h (plus your plane will disintegrate from the g-forces), but regardless it seems clearly anomalous behaviour that should be sorted out and fixed.


To my amateur eyes it looks almost as if there's a flipped sign somewhere in the FM code for the Sottoserie planes, which makes the performance curves with take-off flaps setting to move in the opposite direction than they should... but I have no idea at all how the FM's work in this game and what actually causes this behaviour.


EDIT: Just to clarify: I know this is not technically a flyable aircraft, but I think the FM still shouldn't be broken... who knows what shenanigans the AI can get up to with this kind of flight model.

[swiss]

TA152 C overrevs in a dive ~2900rpm, engine temp ok.

ntrk: http://www.mediafire.com/?9b4asyzzt25uyyz

[Pfeil]

Originally Posted by pixelbaron

Lights don't seem to extinguish if you assign them to a specific team. I've placed a bunch of lights along a runway and assigned them to Blue and they pretty much stay on 24/7 and thus the command "Request Runway Lights" doesn't appear to work at all in game.

As I've already used runway lights that work with the command, I did some testing(player is on the red team):

Lights that are placed far enough from a runway/airfield will not extinguish, neither blue or red sided.

Lights placed near an airport will be extinguished by default, and only illuminate when a command is issued to the tower.

Lights placed near an airfield can be either side: red, blue or a combination of both will all extinguish/illuminate when a command is issued by a player from either side.

Lights extinguish some time after a command for runway lights has been issued.

AI planes don't appear to use or require the lights.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by pixelbaron

Lights don't seem to extinguish if you assign them to a specific team. I've placed a bunch of lights along a runway and assigned them to Blue and they pretty much stay on 24/7 and thus the command "Request Runway Lights" doesn't appear to work at all in game.

Are the lights inside of a homebase circle?