A flyable GST?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Verdun1916

Yes, I read that! And I do know very well what an amphibious aircraft is. But I was hoping for a more in deapth aswner to my question. In what way does the game lack the capacity to handle aircraft that can land and take off on both land and water. Is it the AI that can't handle both options for one and the same aircraft? Or is it some limitation on the aircraft themself that makes it impossible to have a workable landing gear on an aircraft with a shiplike hull?

My apologies for the confusion.

I'm not a programmer either, but my understanding is that amphibious landing capacity wasn't built into the game, but could easily be added.

Currently, there's nothing preventing the addition of amphibious planes in land-only or sea-only versions, but that's just "clunky" and not realistic or fun either, since the whole point of having amphibious planes is their land/sea operations potential. It also requires 2 "slots" for the same aircraft, which is wasteful.

Therefore, the only real option is to do some programming work to allow amphibious ops.

AI would have to be slightly modified to make sure that AI planes keep their wheels retracted when making a water landing/take-off, and extended for land take-offs/landings, and that retractable sponsons/wing floats get extended/retracted as necesssary. (Unless you want to introduce pilot error into the game!)

A new key would need to be bound to allow player-flyable planes to extend or retract sponsons or wing-tip floats (not just for amphibious planes, for but any flying boat which had these features).

But, FWIW, IL2 can't and doesn't model water behavior, much less the interaction of water, wind, and objects in the game world. That would require massive amounts of new programming, essentially making a new sim. That makes truly realistic seaplane ops impossible, although I don't think it would be that hard to "fake" certain wind and wave effects by increasing or decreasing water or wind effects when you're within X distance of a certain object or if you're flying at Y angle compared to wind direction. "Bobbing" effects for aircraft on water could also be made more severe as wind speed increases, but there would be no corresponding animations in the game to show the heavier seas.