Grazing bullets

[Pursuivant]

AFAIK, angle at which a bullet strikes an airplane only matters when determining armor penetration and whether you get a "critical hit" by striking some vital part of the aircraft.

IL2 actually has poor damage modeling by modern standards. Airframe damage appears to be handled as "hit points" which trigger increasingly battered-looking skins for a given part of the aircraft, regardless of where and how a particular bullet strikes.

That is, rather than showing where a given bullet hits, damage above X level triggers the D1 texture for a given aircraft part, damage above Y triggers the D2 damage texture, and damage above Z triggers breaking parts/destruction.

Spark/debris effects are triggered regardless of what sort of round hits or where it strikes and have little or nothing to do with levels at which D1, D2 or breaking parts effects are triggered.

The "white rod" you see in Invulnerable mode actually is an arrow which shows exactly where and how a given round hit. It is possible to trigger this effect without being in Invulnerable mode, but I forget the exact command off the top of my head. In the past I've found it very handy for testing damage modeling and for practicing my gunnery offline.

[Ice_Eagle]

Under [GAME] set Arcade=0 to =1 and it will show every hit you make.

[Music]

Yeah, I have flown in Arcade, the arrows are handy, but not the balloon when a pilot says he's going to do something ("I'm RTB"). And the white lights where you hit the ground are handy.

The arrows are not what I mean when referring to the sparks. You can see the sparks when invulnerable, and you are being hammered by 7 or eight A.I. enemy planes all shoulder shooting each other. Saw it on a Il-2 a few days ago as it went into the ground.

Thanks for replies.

[stugumby]

You can see sparks whenever you hit the armor plated areas of an IL-2. if this is what your talking about by grazing, the bullet not being armor piercing is basically disintegrating and metal on metal makes a spark or flash effect.

[Pursuivant]

I think that IL2 handles bullets vs. armor as a simple force vs. resistance calculation.

If the bullet doesn't have enough force to penetrate armor plate it "vanishes" and does no further damage. The armor is undamaged and is "immortal" until the plane itself is destroyed.

If the bullet has enough force to penetrate armor, it continues on its original trajectory, but with reduced force. No bullet deformation, deflection, shrapnel from the armor penetration, etc. Generally, this makes sense for relatively small-caliber AP rounds. Maybe less sense for 20mm+ rounds and non-AP bullets.

[dimlee]

I think that "grazing" theory makes sense. Sometimes I see the same effect on the a/c I fly. It doesn't happen too often (unfortunately!).

And it probably depends on the damage model of particular aircraft.
I experienced the "grazing" on Bf 110 and probably on Hs 129. I'm sure about Bf 110 as I flew it often with recording on and then studied some tracks. Never on Ki-45 or Pe-3bis - once you feel a hit, that means something bad happened even if you see no damage on the plane's skin.

Recently I tried Beau Mk.21 vs Pe-8 on Samara server. 85.113.41.253:21002. There are maps with interesting airplane sets. When I keep at respectful distance from Pe-8 formation, I can get several hits, can feel them - but nothing happens.