Well, from what I know and have seen of 3D modeling, the actual polygons that are what the hit calculations etc are based on are independent of the skin. They should match up but with an irregular thing like a broken wingroot I don't know how close to what is displayed it would be.
The floating engine outline would seem to me to possibly indicate a part that stays with the plane that shouldn't.
The other possibility that occurs to me is if the recorder might have a teeny bit of lag compared to what happens in real time in gameplay. A pass that close, being out of sync by a couple hundredths of a second could be the difference between no hit and hit.
Or, perhaps the zones that count for hits are just slightly larger than the planes themselves. I thought I read somewhere they don't use 'hitboxes' like they did in the Other Sim though, so that shouldn't apply.
In any case, a couple of feet is pretty good fidelity for collision modeling when you're talking about closing speeds in the hundreds of mph.
I can hardly wait for the 'ZOMG I saw a video on youtube showing a plane miss a bomber and register a collision! The collision model is useless and shouldn't count against me!' comments to begin.
Wiley.
