Calculating Shooting Deflection

[Robotic Pope]

Originally Posted by bobbysocks

i dont know what its called but for the k14 it was called a pipper. in virtual cockpit (Xbox in all 3 modes) you have basically an artificial horizon guage....2 vertical lines set in + or - degrees connected with a horizonal at "0" or level flight. this guage remains consistent in relation to the ground. in the middle of it is a large circle with a dot in it...which shows AoA and straight ahead direction. then there is a smaller floating circle...pipper which looks like it compensates for pos or neg Gs. the B!t<# is they are hard to see against the clouds or sky so i really cant tell if the pipper is off or by how much. it would be better if you could set the contrast on that...but anyways. thats what i am talking about. i dont remember seeing a pipper on the gunsite in the regular cockpit mode.

Yes its a velocity vector symbol. It tells you the path the plane is flying in. A gun pipper looks simarlar but is different, it uses a targeting computer to predict the path of the bullets. They usually move around the HUD pretty much together, but if your angle of attack goes up your Vector symbol drops so you can see your real degree of climb/decent but the gun pipper would stay around the middle or even move up the HUD if you were decending.

I don't think radar gun pippers existed in WWII. I belive the F86 Sabre was the one of the first to have one.

[SEE]

Originally Posted by mikeklim

Thanks, that's what I thought. I'm also reminded of your earlier post where you said default convergence isn't really known in BOP. Isn't that an important detail to leave out by the makers?

Meaning, I can gauge the lead of my target by using my sight, but doesn't it help to know convergence distance, particularly if targeting smaller targets on the ground, for example? Or is that one of the reasons why practice makes perfect?

The FM for BOP is dumbed down from IL1946 and integrated to the graphics engine developed by Gaigin. All I can tell you is that the default in IL1946 is 500m but the player can of course alter that. It doessn't really matter that the convergence isn't stated since .303 machine guns have exactly the same damage ability as cannons at whatever range you fire them in BOP, in reality .303 Machine guns were pretty useless at anything over 250ft away. Just practice and get a feel for what works best, as I said in an ealier post, game lag (even slight levels) will mean you will have to adjust your deflection angle!