38 Damage model question.

[Noir]

ok I may be subjective about 38's, but how many pings can it take from dead 6 before falling to ground ? An A20 would go boom fast, a TBM would loose his taill, a mossie will burn and get pilot wound from first .303 ping but the 38 keeps flyin....only way is it to kill pilot or to literraly cut the plane in 2 pieces from a different angle.

I don't fly 38's I fight 'em

[Kev367th]

Originally posted by Schutt
In modern graphics there are polygons out of bent lines too, so they dont need to be formed with straight lines anymore.

Not strictly true -
A curved line comprises an infinite number of straight lines.

To get a curved line all you do is use a lot of smaller straight lines.

If you split the curved lines in modern graphics progs you'd see they are indeed made up of smaller straight lines.

As an eg - Here is an AI U-2S I am doing for FS2004, I highlighted one of the polys on the wing pods. Each curved pod is a 16 sided (enough for AI, for flyable I would use 32 sides) polygon with straight edges.

[Noir]

Is that a  nurb ?

Well I think the damage model in AH is still made of boxes like in CS and most "damage" 3D games.

Sorry for hijacking the thread )

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Noir
ok I may be subjective about 38's, but how many pings can it take from dead 6 before falling to ground ? An A20 would go boom fast, a TBM would loose his taill, a mossie will burn and get pilot wound from first .303 ping but the 38 keeps flyin....only way is it to kill pilot or to literraly cut the plane in 2 pieces from a different angle.

I don't fly 38's I fight 'em

Atleast you are comparing the P38 to planes of it's size and not spits and p51s. P38 was built rather sturdy, if anything I think our A20/Boston is undermodeled for damage. I've caught them on fire by just short burts (bostons) and a20's tails seem rather weak. Mossie is made out of wood. TBM is a carrier based bomber and does not have all the weight of a P38. Widewing or one of those guys will probably correct me on this statement.

If you shoot at a P38 from the side, only one side of the plane is going to be effectively hit, you can expect some oil, radiator and control surfaces missing from that side. But remember, us P38 pilots need spare parts, so we've got more peices on the other side to lose.

[CAP1]

"""""ok I may be subjective about 38's, but how many pings can it take from dead 6 before falling to ground ? An A20 would go boom fast, a TBM would loose his taill, a mossie will burn and get pilot wound from first .303 ping but the 38 keeps flyin....only way is it to kill pilot or to literraly cut the plane in 2 pieces from a different angle"""""""

 well, luckily, i've never been hit from directly behind, as i DO keep my head on the swivel,,,,,,,i've been hit from angles back there though, and it seems as though the uber-planes(spits) do serious damage in just a few quick bursts....along with n1ki's, and LA7's.........i've recieved pilot wounds in i think at least 3 out of 5 combats, regardles of the angle that i'm being shot at from.......at least 1 engine seems to take hits, mostly from the HO though. i think i've had the #2 engine set on fire once even.........
i've had my tail ripped off compliments of enemy fire from a rear angle, and that happened without me hearing too many hits......

 now with all of that in mind, i DO realize that a lot of the problem is most likely the loose nut behind the controls, but i'm working hard to resolve the loose nut problem.
 those of you that have never flown a 38, should try it. you'll see that its not as easy as many think, and she definitly is nowhere NEAR as rugged as you all think either. i do think it is modeled too fragile in here, but i don't know enough to make a really informed opinion on that..so if anyone wants to set me/us straight on that, please do?

have fun,
1LTCAP

have fun all

[Benny Moore]

Originally posted by CAP1
i do think it is modeled too fragile in here, but i don't know enough to make a really informed opinion on that..so if anyone wants to set me/us straight on that, please do?

It is far too fragile, and I will send you proof of it privately when I get around to it.  I'd post it here, but the 38 haters would just give me grief again.  I've been doing this for years.

[Knegel]

Originally posted by Benny Moore
I'm pretty sure that the hit boxes are larger than they should be on all aircraft, or perhaps the bullets are too wide.  Coming from Lock On: Modern Air Combat (a fine simulator) and Pacific Fighters (terrible game), gunnery in this simulator is incredibly easy.

Hi,

imho with default ammoload its not that easy to get a kill. Of course, if the enemy dont evade and you can sneak in strait from the 6 its easy, or if you have double tripple or unlimited ammo its getting pretty easy and almost impossible to evade.

I dont know lock on, but in IL-2/PF its not the gunnery that make the kill difficult, its more the unstable gun plattforms(feels like AH with a bad adjusted stick or dirty pots), bad visible planes on medium distance(tobe able to calculate a good attacking course) and the particular horrible insight cockpit views(no possibility to move the head up or sideward to keep the awareness).
Most strange on that game i find the pretty easy long distance kills, from very bad positions(not from the 6), its imho simply bad balanced all over.

To compare AH with that(imho) dont say anything.

Take a 109F4 with default ammoload and try to get 4 kills vs fighting enemys, i dont think thats to easy and fit rather good to the real results of the aces.

Dont forget, not many of the real aces had so much shoot-training like we have. They dont had the possibility of endless hours with unlimited ammo, endless numbers of targest and endless number of planes/lifes.

Remember the early day´s of your virtual aircombat day´s!!

After i did play SWOTLE and "their finest hour" (untill i did win every possible mission), i got European Airwar(1998) and my 1st impression was "unplayable difficult"!

After one year playing without stalls and spins and mainly attacking bombers(all this offline), i slowly started to be able to shoot down the incredible good AI´s(so i thought at that time).

That was the time when it started to be easy and later i found that the EAW damagemodel had hitbubbles 3-4 times as big as the plane was.

When i came online, again i was suprised how easy the old hands was able to shoot me down from incredible positions, later i was in the same class and 1000-1500m kills got to be normal vs the nice strait flying rookis, while it still was very difficult vs a good pilot.
Today EAW got a more accurate DM, more similar to the AH DM(in the result, not in the programming).

We are super aces, probably higher skilled than H.J.Marsaille and for him the MG151/15 already was good enough to get some kills per mission.

The P38 simply is a very big plane and rarely it get attacked from an angle where it would be possible to shoot through the empty space between cockpit and tailwing, without to take hit on the tail or cockpit/wing itself.
The big size is a pretty realistic disadvantage and i dont think its to weak.


Greetings,

Knegel

[Billy Joe Bob]

i would like to see the cockpit snap off and have the fuselage keep flying:aok
that would be awesome

[calan]

Originally posted by Benny Moore
... Coming from Lock On: Modern Air Combat (a fine simulator) .... gunnery in this simulator is incredibly easy.

Easier than getting a radar lock and pressing "Fire"?

[Kev367th]

Don't think it's a matter of fragile.

It the result of the over simplistic damage model.

You can't partially damage a flap, aileron, rudder etc etc, it's either all or nothing.
Despite all the additions and eye candy in AH2, the damage model has for a long long time lagged way behind.

Try this -
Grab an F6F and de-ack a field with it, 90+% of the time the first ack hit takes out the same gun on the same wing.

[CAP1]

Originally posted by Knegel
Hi,



Dont forget, not many of the real aces had so much shoot-training like we have. They dont had the possibility of endless hours with unlimited ammo, endless numbers of targest and endless number of planes/lifes.


We are super aces, probably higher skilled than H.J.Marsaille and for him the MG151/15 already was good enough to get some kills per mission.

The P38 simply is a very big plane and rarely it get attacked from an angle where it would be possible to shoot through the empty space between cockpit and tailwing, without to take hit on the tail or cockpit/wing itself.
The big size is a pretty realistic disadvantage and i dont think its to weak.


Greetings,

Knegel [/QUOTE

well........concerning skilled aces.......i don't know who H.J. Marsaille was(probably gonna get a bunch of watermelon about that) but i think the highest scoring aces were mostly the germans.....given the fact they flew till they died, or till the end of the war. if i recall correctly, all that i've read about them, they VERY rarely had actual dogfights as we do in here......they'd watch, drop in on a stray, take their shot, then climb back to safety. i think even richtoffen did this in WW1......untill he broke one of his own rules, and followed a sopwith down to the deck.......

 i understand the 38 is a HUGE plane......and thus much easier to hit than say,.......a 109......i think a 109 was only about 30-35' wingspan? compared to the 38 with almost 55'..........but try to fly and fight in a 38......thats when ya learn that she takes too much damage in too little time.......i mean would it be possible in reality for a zeke to take out BOTH engines in a singel head on pass?

hhmm........now i wonder how much i've stirred up the pot now????


 

[Benny Moore]

Originally posted by Knegel
imho with default ammoload its not that easy to get a kill. Of course, if the enemy dont evade and you can sneak in strait from the 6 its easy, or if you have double tripple or unlimited ammo its getting pretty easy and almost impossible to evade.

Take a 109F4 with default ammoload and try to get 4 kills vs fighting enemys, i dont think thats to easy and fit rather good to the real results of the aces.

It is easy.  I regularly get eight kills per sortie with a realistic ammunition load (and nearly always have a lot of ammunition left over).  I host a server called Blue Sky, and it runs on maximum realism settings.

Originally posted by Knegel
i dont think its to weak.

The average burst required to take out a P-38 (or any plane, even a P-47 or FW-190) in the game is about half of a second.  I cannot remember the last time I heard bullets hitting my airplane for more than that without the plane losing wings and tails and things.  The aircraft are indeed far too weak.  If I thought you were at all interested, I'd send you a ton of diagrams, photographs, and videos, but I already posted just a few of them on another thread and had the naysayers scoff (all while not providing any evidence to the contrary, I might add).  This has been going on for years.  I'm no longer casting pearls before swine.

[Benny Moore]

Originally posted by Knegel
imho with default ammoload its not that easy to get a kill. Of course, if the enemy dont evade and you can sneak in strait from the 6 its easy, or if you have double tripple or unlimited ammo its getting pretty easy and almost impossible to evade.

Take a 109F4 with default ammoload and try to get 4 kills vs fighting enemys, i dont think thats to easy and fit rather good to the real results of the aces.

It is easy.  I regularly get eight kills per sortie with a realistic ammunition load (and nearly always have a lot of ammunition left over).  I host a server called Blue Sky, and it runs on maximum realism settings.

Originally posted by Knegel
i dont think its to weak.

The average burst required to take out a P-38 (or any plane, even a P-47 or FW-190) in the game is about half of a second.  I cannot remember the last time I heard bullets hitting my airplane for more than that without the plane losing wings and tails and things.  The aircraft are indeed far too weak.  If I thought you were at all interested, I'd send you a ton of diagrams, photographs, and videos, but I already posted just a few of them on another thread and had the naysayers scoff (all while not providing any evidence to the contrary, I might add).  This has been going on for years.  I'm no longer casting pearls before swine.

Originally posted by calan
Easier than getting a radar lock and pressing "Fire"?

Missiles are for dweebs.  Manly men like me use guns with the radar off!

[Knegel]

Originally posted by CAP1

Originally posted by Knegel
Hi,



Dont forget, not many of the real aces had so much shoot-training like we have. They dont had the possibility of endless hours with unlimited ammo, endless numbers of targest and endless number of planes/lifes.


We are super aces, probably higher skilled than H.J.Marsaille and for him the MG151/15 already was good enough to get some kills per mission.

The P38 simply is a very big plane and rarely it get attacked from an angle where it would be possible to shoot through the empty space between cockpit and tailwing, without to take hit on the tail or cockpit/wing itself.
The big size is a pretty realistic disadvantage and i dont think its to weak.


Greetings,

Knegel [/QUOTE

well........concerning skilled aces.......i don't know who H.J. Marsaille was(probably gonna get a bunch of watermelon about that) but i think the highest scoring aces were mostly the germans.....given the fact they flew till they died, or till the end of the war. if i recall correctly, all that i've read about them, they VERY rarely had actual dogfights as we do in here......they'd watch, drop in on a stray, take their shot, then climb back to safety. i think even richtoffen did this in WW1......untill he broke one of his own rules, and followed a sopwith down to the deck.......

 i understand the 38 is a HUGE plane......and thus much easier to hit than say,.......a 109......i think a 109 was only about 30-35' wingspan? compared to the 38 with almost 55'..........but try to fly and fight in a 38......thats when ya learn that she takes too much damage in too little time.......i mean would it be possible in reality for a zeke to take out BOTH engines in a singel head on pass?

hhmm........now i wonder how much i've stirred up the pot now????


  [/B]

Hi Cap1,

H.J. Marsaille and also Hermann Graf was known to fight somwhat like we do here, this behaviour particular was disliked by their leaders and specialy by their wingis, but they was going into a tight dogfights comming home often with plenty of holes in their planes.  
They had the luck to get into the war when the enemys mainly shot .30cal´s, so they had time to learn without to take critical damages(even this need much luck). Later young pilots who had to face .50cal or 20mm´s such mistakes wasnt allowed, therefor the learningcurve was much more steep and so mainly pilots like Hartmann(the master of B&Z) survived longer. Neverteless Marsaille and Graf was very effective with their style, once they had a good skill(both did need quiete a time to get the hang on it).



Benny,

you get regulary 8 kills with a 109F4 ammoload?? Then you be a very good shot, very patient or your enemys are bad(bad skill or bad planes).

If your plane get hit by a half sec burst of a 109F, at least 5-6 20mm´s hit you, thats already more than enough to kill your plane.  

Thats the most bad armament of a mid war plane in AH(the 4 x .50cal are similar). When a Spitfire, FW, Lala, P51, P38 or any other plane is behind you, it dont need such a long burst.


Greetings,

Knegel

[Billy Joe Bob]

i still think that the cockpit snapping off would be awesome