CoD--Becoming a Masterpiece

[Strike]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Blew up all right, but was not ammo, must have been fuel.

Then this happens--

So, 110 hit right at the wing root by a very few rounds, including one or two incendiaries--explosion shears wing off, big orange gasoline-looking fireball, which trails the plane for a second or two, then snuffs out, leaving the plane plummeting, barely smoking--pilot bailed and survived.

I would love to know what gadget I hit to produce that effect. Anyway, I will be aiming at that spot next time I shoot at a 110.

I wonder if this could be one of those situations where a fuel leak caused a build up of fumes in the wing and surrounding air, and then the incendiaries ignited that and caused the explosion. If so that might be hard to intentionally repeat.

To be quite fair I havn't seen tons of guncam clips where wings have been BLOWN off. They are quite sturdy and the wingspars are basically massive girters that run across nearly the entire span. What it looks like to me is fueltank detonation. And the huge fireball is the result of the evaporating/combusting fuel that is spilled out of the fueltank and finally it's all gone up in smoke.

Looks quite spot-on to me Thanks for sharing!

[Blackdog_kt]

Sure, there's a lot of stuff that needs fixing but overall i'm happy for the time being because my time is taken up by learning all the new features.

If we had a sim with 2-3 flyables and a simpler type of gameplay it would be a different story, because there wouldn't be enough things to occupy us and we would end up focusing on the negative parts.

As it currently is i find that i can overcome the occasional frustration very easily, simply because i'm overwhelmed by a myriad of small, subtle details. Each one by itself is not much, but when i fly a sortie and i get 3-4 of these small, sometimes hard to notice events i realise it's exactly that which raises immersion to new levels for me.

There are so many variables that by the time we've experienced and become accustomed to all the ways each aircraft can break apart or get shot down and the novelty factor has worn off, sufficient time will have passed for new features to be enabled or the game to be better optimized still.

In that sense i find that while it's far from perfect as a total, it has a lot of excellent elements and enough variation to keep my mind from focusing on the bad points until they get fixed.

Long story short, i know it's not there yet and i won't blindly deny it, it's just that there's an ample amount of features so well done to experience while flying and those can make me completely forget about the parts that need fixing. It's enjoyable enough at this point and it will only get better with time, so i'm not worried at all.

To add to the original theme of the thread, i was practicing some QMB sorties yesterday flying the 109 and 110 (i had been flying Hurris lately so i thought i might brush up on my Luftwaffe skills and improve my prop-pitch technique while in a dogfight).
I was using default convergence (anyone know what range it is by the way?) but i usually shoot from much closer in short bursts. The combination of these two factors results in my cannon shells usually going wide of the target, so i decided to see how the 109s machine guns fare against the opposition.

At some point i was bounced by a Hurricane but i didn't receive any damage. I engaged him in a scissors fight and after taking advantage of the 109s good low speed handling, the fact that it can hang very well on the prop and that it accelerates well, i managed to force an overshoot and then catch up to him almost instantly, at which point it was his turn to start the scissors.

From my days flying IL2:1946 i have a habit of pointing my gunsights in the target's trajectory and waiting for him to come in my line of fire, instead of trying to constantly force my plane around and bleed energy in the process. This works especially well in the low speed range where the enemy can't make any abrupt maneuvers for fear of stalling, so you can for the most part point your nose a bit ahead of him and wait until he crosses the point where you estimate the required lead to be.

So, we were both in a left turn, i was in lag pursuit and at that point i saw him reversing. I kept going for a few degrees more, leveled off and started reversing myself but only mildly so, putting myself from a left-handed lag pursuit into a right-handed lead pursuit curve in a way that his trajectory would intersect mine at about 40-60 degrees angle off while being roughly aligned with his plane of motion. Having conserved most of my cannon rounds up to that point i decided to fire all guns, since the aspect under which the target was visible was broad enough and our speeds favorably slow to stand a chance of scoring good hits, despite being much closer than convergence...his entire fuselage and most of his wing was about to cross my sights at a leisurely pace due to the high angle-off and our minimal relative speed.

At that point i got one of those "instinctive" snapshots, which for some reason have always worked much better for me than going to zoom view or taking deliberate, calculated shots that end up with me overcompensating for the target's actions. These are always a great satisfaction to achieve. So, i had him in my 10 o'clock and as he crossed into my 11 i added a bit of rudder to steady the aim and with the gunsight about 5 degrees off his nose i pressed both triggers for a split-second, probably just enough for maybe 2-4 rounds to fly from my cannons. I saw the tracers stream unerringly towards his cockpit, one connecting perfectly between wing-root and canopy and the other slightly aft.

He immediately went up in flames and spiraled out of control into the water below without bailing out, according to the info text i had scored a pilot kill.

[Strike]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Sure, there's a lot of stuff that needs fixing but overall i'm happy for the time being because my time is taken up by learning all the new features.

If we had a sim with 2-3 flyables and a simpler type of gameplay it would be a different story, because there wouldn't be enough things to occupy us and we would end up focusing on the negative parts.

As it currently is i find that i can overcome the occasional frustration very easily, simply because i'm overwhelmed by a myriad of small, subtle details. Each one by itself is not much, but when i fly a sortie and i get 3-4 of these small, sometimes hard to notice events i realise it's exactly that which raises immersion to new levels for me.

There are so many variables that by the time we've experienced and become accustomed to all the ways each aircraft can break apart or get shot down and the novelty factor has worn off, sufficient time will have passed for new features to be enabled or the game to be better optimized still.

In that sense i find that while it's far from perfect as a total, it has a lot of excellent elements and enough variation to keep my mind from focusing on the bad points until they get fixed.

Long story short, i know it's not there yet and i won't blindly deny it, it's just that there's an ample amount of features so well done to experience while flying and those can make me completely forget about the parts that need fixing. It's enjoyable enough at this point and it will only get better with time, so i'm not worried at all.

To add to the original theme of the thread, i was practicing some QMB sorties yesterday flying the 109 and 110 (i had been flying Hurris lately so i thought i might brush up on my Luftwaffe skills and improve my prop-pitch technique while in a dogfight).
I was using default convergence (anyone know what range it is by the way?) but i usually shoot from much closer in short bursts. The combination of these two factors results in my cannon shells usually going wide of the target, so i decided to see how the 109s machine guns fare against the opposition.

At some point i was bounced by a Hurricane but i didn't receive any damage. I engaged him in a scissors fight and after taking advantage of the 109s good low speed handling, the fact that it can hang very well on the prop and that it accelerates well, i managed to force an overshoot and then catch up to him almost instantly, at which point it was his turn to start the scissors.

From my days flying IL2:1946 i have a habit of pointing my gunsights in the target's trajectory and waiting for him to come in my line of fire, instead of trying to constantly force my plane around and bleed energy in the process. This works especially well in the low speed range where the enemy can't make any abrupt maneuvers for fear of stalling, so you can for the most part point your nose a bit ahead of him and wait until he crosses the point where you estimate the required lead to be.

So, we were both in a left turn, i was in lag pursuit and at that point i saw him reversing. I kept going for a few degrees more, leveled off and started reversing myself but only mildly so, putting myself from a left-handed lag pursuit into a right-handed lead pursuit curve in a way that his trajectory would intersect mine at about 40-60 degrees angle off while being roughly aligned with his plane of motion. Having conserved most of my cannon rounds up to that point i decided to fire all guns, since the aspect under which the target was visible was broad enough and our speeds favorably slow to stand a chance of scoring good hits, despite being much closer than convergence...his entire fuselage and most of his wing was about to cross my sights at a leisurely pace due to the high angle-off and our minimal relative speed.

At that point i got one of those "instinctive" snapshots, which for some reason have always worked much better for me than going to zoom view or taking deliberate, calculated shots that end up with me overcompensating for the target's actions. These are always a great satisfaction to achieve. So, i had him in my 10 o'clock and as he crossed into my 11 i added a bit of rudder to steady the aim and with the gunsight about 5 degrees off his nose i pressed both triggers for a split-second, probably just enough for maybe 2-4 rounds to fly from my cannons. I saw the tracers stream unerringly towards his cockpit, one connecting perfectly between wing-root and canopy and the other slightly aft.

He immediately went up in flames and spiraled out of control into the water below without bailing out, according to the info text i had scored a pilot kill.

Nice story mate.

Most impressive part is what you started saying. The variables in this game are so many you have basically infinate possibilities of an outcome of a dogfight or larger furball. Anything can happen. I actually watched one of my tracks the other day where I was chasing a 110 and suddenly my Hurri caught fire. I jettisoned the canopy and bailed out over the british coast. I thought well jerry tailgunner sniped my fueltank, but when reviewing the track I was looking at the target early on in my engagement only to notice the gunner was already dead before I closed in on him...

weird, it turns out a second 110 being chased by another hurri going 90 degrees in relative to my direction did it. His tailgunner was shooting at the hurricane below me off to my right hand side and he missed but the single stray incendiary or tracer bullet hit my fueltank and set it on fire..

WHAT ARE THE ODDS!? of course for some stupid reason it's all corrupted since the latest patch. Like old times in IL-2. My plane just shoots thin air and crashes into the ocean way too early.. weird.

[nodlew]

To be quite fair I havn't seen tons of guncam clips where wings have been BLOWN off...

Agreed, there's that famous one with the Bf-109 hit in the left wing producing a very violent explosion--appears to be ammo--which instantly detaches the wing and the plane goes into an super-fast counter-clockwise rotation.

There are various films of all kinds of aircraft blowing up in every way possible--I'm sure Oleg's team has studied them all and could tell us what part failed as a result of what kind of ammo strike.

I am thinking that, perhaps, there is a finer physical modeling at work here than I expected. I was surprised that firing at bombers with multiple leaks in their wing-tanks streaming fuel almost never sets them on fire. But then, usually, those planes are going pretty fast, which prevents evaporated fuel from building up in the air around and within them. I have experimented myself, and it is pretty impossible to ignite gasoline in its liquid state. Only the fumes are combustible--volatility refers to the tendency of a liquid to produce combustible/explosive FUMES. When I achieved the kill on the 110 in the screens above, it was moving pretty slow in a climbing turn. If you look at the screens you can see a gray "mist" shrouding the wing. Fuel vapors? So perhaps in order to fully appreciate the damage model of the game, I'm going to have to remember some basic chemistry and physics. If so, consider me VERY impressed.

Some befuddling things are beginning to make sense to me--like the time I hit the elevator of a 110 and set it on fire, causing the crew to instantly bail. It was a tiny little orange spot on the elevator of the plane. I was thinking, "What is back there that could catch fire?" Answer? Hydraulic lines.

I think the AI has been tweaked to good effect in the last patch, and the previous one. There seems to be more variety. I shot a 109 and set its engine completely ablaze. The cockpit was completely engulfed, but the pilot continued to pursue his target and attack. It was something to see, that one plane, looking lie a meteor, pressing his attack. Can't remember what happened next. Did he finally bail? Burn to death and crash? Didn't pay attention. But where another might say "Dude, the AI is retarded! The guy didn't bail and his plane was totally on fire!" I say, "Dude, very cool! I just shot down an extremely dedicated National Socialist!"

Maybe one of the things we have to overcome, is that over the years playing other flight sims, we have come to take certain kinds of events and AI behaviors as "right" which aren't necessarily so. Just because a pilot will bail out 100% of the time when his plane is completely on fire in Il-2, doesn't mean that in reality all pilots instantly bailed out if their planes were on fire. People do crazy things.

I was using default convergence (anyone know what range it is by the way?)

Blackdog, I believe the default convergence for all planes is ~ 338 meters both vertical and horizontal, which my conversion calculator says is about 370 yds. I'm certain at this point that the game takes conversion in metric units, which is no problem in a German plane. There is a thread here that shows how to change the default convergence of the planes, and how to save custom loadouts etc for particular missions. I will find it and provide a link. Setting my own gun convergence has really helped me a lot. I like 300 yds since it is historical (for the Americans anyway, probably the Brits too) and I enjoy practicing deflection shooting. Yes, I could set my guns to 200 or 150 yds, and close to point-blank range and chop up planes like celery, but that seems a little cheesy to me, although it was the preferred tactic of the highest scoring aces of the war. They were mere killers with no sense of sportsmanship, says I. I will provide a link to the relevant thread. I hope the next patch fixes this bug that won't let us save custom gun configs in the normal way.

Here is the link to the ammo-loadout, gun convergence information: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...un+convergence

[Strike]

Originally Posted by nodlew

I am thinking that, perhaps, there is a finer physical modeling at work here than I expected. I was surprised that firing at bombers with multiple leaks in their wing-tanks streaming fuel almost never sets them on fire. But then, usually, those planes are going pretty fast, which prevents evaporated fuel from building up in the air around and within them.

You may very well be on to something here, never thought it could be that detailed, but I know fire can be spread at low airspeeds and I know they are put out at higher airspeeds.

Originally Posted by nodlew

Some befuddling things are beginning to make sense to me--like the time I hit the elevator of a 110 and set it on fire, causing the crew to instantly bail. It was a tiny little orange spot on the elevator of the plane. I was thinking, "What is back there that could catch fire?" Answer? Hydraulic lines.

Now luftwhiners, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the 110 did not have hydraulic elevators or rudders. The simpler, the better for warmachines I think, until speeds grew a lot during the late part of the war. However, the fabric or some internal structure shielded from the wind may indeed catch fire from the tracer rounds. Paint, lubricants and even metal itself can catch fire if superheated

Originally Posted by nodlew

"Dude, very cool! I just shot down an extremely dedicated National Socialist!"

That sentance just made my day! ROFL! Thank you!

[nodlew]

I believe the 110 did not have hydraulic elevators or rudders...

Learn something new every day. We're talking about a pretty realistic sim when to understand events in the game we need to understand the mechanical make-up of the target and the physical properties of those parts.

I'm gonna go and study-up on the 110, 109, Spit, and Hurricane to start--find out where the fuel tanks are, whatever else I can find out--maybe read some real life accounts if I can find them of how real Luftwaffe and British pilots achieved their kills, and try to apply it in-game.

Glad I gave you a laugh, Strike. I meant that in all seriousness, but reading it over, it is a pretty good joke.