Author Topic: FM - IL-2 vs AH (Read 1126 times)

Andy Bush · « **on:** February 13, 2002, 06:55:51 PM »

Lately, I've been doing a lot of work with both sims. Each has its strong and not-so-strong points...

But I sure like the "feel' of the AH aircraft better than the IL-2 planes.

HiTech folks...good on ya!

Andy

Animal · « **Reply #1 on:** February 13, 2002, 06:57:40 PM »

And since you are an experienced pilot, no one can say you are full of toejam

So elaborate on the tests and why you reached the conclusion?

funkedup · « **Reply #2 on:** February 13, 2002, 07:00:04 PM »

Well I gotta admit I like the feel of the Il-2 planes better, other than the "grabby" ailerons. I'm not a pilot though.

But there are some performance oddities, and some strange holes in the FM, like stable flight at ludicrous AoA with flaps and gear down.

If they made the AI planes conform to the human flight model I would play it more often.

Yeager · « **Reply #3 on:** February 13, 2002, 07:14:30 PM »

Overall my preference is towards the IL2 FMs but with some misgivings.

Ive noticed a strong tendency for stick inputs to lose effectiveness at high speed without concurrent buffeting. The buffeting in IL2 begins after the onset of control loss. In AH we have buffeting leading to control loss. This seems correct in my mind.

As for high AoA oddities I agree, odd but my feeling is that this behavior is not as consistently repeatable as one would expect it to be.

My impression of the AI performance, when set at highest skill, is good.

The only other comments I would make regarding AH vrs IL2 is how aged AH terrain and atmosphere appears in comparrison.
It begs me to wonder how much longer the current build of AH
can remain current in comparrison. The sun effect is stunning as are the clouds and weather. The hit signs and susbequent debri are totally believable.

Y

Wotan · « **Reply #4 on:** February 13, 2002, 07:44:07 PM »

i like il2 as well but im not a pilot......

also I am one to always like the newer things better. Maybe because they are different and theres a whole new challenge to learning them.

how ever there are things in both games that make ya say wtf was that...........

but I sure enjoy reading and learning from the stuff you write Andy..........

S!

Animal · « **Reply #5 on:** February 13, 2002, 08:06:18 PM »

Well I can call myself a pilot, but I just cant associate the feelings of real controlled flight with these simulators.
If I try hard enough, I lean towards AH.
Though I play it because its more fun, not because of realism.

Andy Bush · « **Reply #6 on:** February 13, 2002, 08:17:44 PM »

Well...my comment was meant to be a pat on the back for AH...and not a stab in the back for IL-2!

I like both sims...as I said, each has its good and not-so-good points.

I'm doing a series of articles on rudder, trim, and flaps. I fire up various sims and use them as a basis for my discussion. Since much of what I'm talking about deals with WW2 sims, AH and Il-2 are my choices (no offense to CFS or EAW, etc).

What do I like about the AH FM? The stable feel, for one thing. My experience in flying fighters is that the aircraft have a solid feel and are steady platforms. One major aspect of the IL-2 FM is its tendency to have all of their aircraft roll out of a bank...it takes constant aileron input to hold an IL-2 aircraft in a given bank angle. Maybe this was the way these aircraft flew...but no plane I have ever flown, from fighters to airliners, flys this way...none! This roll out tendency makes gun tracking somewhat erratic since the pilot has to fight the plane's attempt to roll wings level.

Overall, I think the pitch feel in AH is more like what I expect out of a fighter...solid, not "twitchy". Gun tracking in AH is easier...more like what I saw in RL.

Aside from the FM, IL-2 is a clear winner in the graphics department.

So...my idea was not to put down IL-2...but was to praise AH.

Andy

Nath[BDP] · « **Reply #7 on:** February 13, 2002, 08:19:25 PM »

Sentiently, the Il-2 and AH FM are identical for me. The only thing that I have trouble with is taking down planes with 109F2 15mm and MG pea shooters.

The odd useage of flaps to gain angles in Il-2 also takes some time to get use to. As well as the lack of negative-G pitch response in planes.

Many low-e scissor techniques I use in AH get me killed in Il-2 nicely. The ground seems to have been my biggest enemy in Il-2.

Animal · « **Reply #8 on:** February 13, 2002, 08:23:51 PM »

Andy,

I also noticed the sense of stability in real life compared to sims. I dismissed it in IL2 and blamed it on not putting enough effort to configure my joystick well on the game settings.

The aircraft Ive flown, though they dont exactly feel like they fly on rails, are very steady in flight.
Much faster planes such as WWII fighters should need even less input if my logic is right.

Have you flown WWII, or old military prop aicraft? or just modern jets?

Wlfgng · « **Reply #9 on:** February 13, 2002, 08:47:26 PM »

I've been in IL2 a lot lately and I've noticed the same 'wandering' feeling in IL2 compared to AH.

I tweaked, tweaked and re-tweaked my joystick settings and it finally made worlds of difference. It took forever but it's worth it. Much more stable.
I still have a tendancy to drive it into the ground though !

Zigrat · « **Reply #10 on:** February 13, 2002, 08:49:06 PM »

andy you make good points. here is how i would rate the fms..

bad points of il2

1) roll stability in il2. it does feel kinda wierd but it really should depend largely on dihedral. i do not know if any of these planes were stable in roll.

2) pitch stability in il2. in il2 it is impossible to trim to a given AOA and i am not talking about PIO. trim your plane up perfect, and it will still porpose.

3) i think acceleration is kinda wacky in il2, especially at takeoff. there seems to be a 170 km/h barrier. try sometime to takeoff, notice how you are like a crack monkey till 170 km/h in any plane then suddently you run into sticky glue.

4) stupid trim model. in a way aces high shares this. in il2 if you trim poorly it actually severely limits control authority, even at low dynamic pressures. this is just goofy. i think this also happens to a lesser extent in aces high (not as bad tho)

5) funny prop model. i cant get maximum rpm out of any of the planes.

6) being able to deploy flaps/gear at high speeds. just leads to gamey top gun stuff.

good points of il2:

1) well graphics. obviously aces high graphics are pretty fricking old, and while not related to the FM it certainly impacts immersion. its just more fun to blow up tanks in il2 when you see the cool pyrotechnics, rather than some cheesy 3 frame sprite a la air warrior dos.

2) some cool fm effects. like buffeting when you go through clouds. variable drag based on pylons or no pylons (ie bring bombs on your 190 and your 190 still performs like toejam after you drop your eggs due to extra drag/weight)

3) aces high stall model is kinda stupid imo. you can never get a plane to clean stall even at idle, they always do that artificial floip on your back and insta recover thing.

abviously i think aces high wins in the FM category. especially with regards to accuracy. but i cant help it, i like pretty graphics.

Weave · « **Reply #11 on:** February 13, 2002, 09:02:54 PM »

Like Nath, I found the flight models very simular.
The biggest variance to me was the ground handling aspect. Finding that happy medium of rudder position on rollout was impossible. I couldn't stay centered on the runway to save my life. Also, I found that when I tried to taxi back to a staging area after a mission, the rudder had very little effect on the direction stability. Factor in no differential braking in IL2, and maintaining control while rolling was dicy.

I found the IL2 graphics marginally better in appearance, but AH gets my vote overall for ease of depth perception on my part. I can easily tell how close I am to the ground visually in AH. I can't count the number of times I've augered in IL2 thinking I still had at least a hundred feet of altitude AGL.

Il2 is a good box game, but for overall enjoyment, AH gets my vote.

AKSWulfe · « **Reply #12 on:** February 13, 2002, 10:10:32 PM »

Wolfgang, did you have your joystick on ID1 or ID2 when you configured it in Il-2? I have both a MS FF Wheel (with brake/gas pedals) and USB Saitek X36/35 gear... the MS FF Wheel takes ID1, no matter what. I can't force it to anything else (inside of windows game controllers)... this of course leads to me not being able to set the scaling and such... I can, but it only applies it to ID#1 and thus I am stuck with whatever scaling is applied to any secondary joysticks.

I like both Il-2 and AH, but for two entirely different reasons. I like Il-2, because it is a good offline game. I can "believe" what's going on offline and have fun with it. Unlike other games where it was kind of a hit and miss (EAW), Il-2 does what it's supposed to and does it fairly well- like RBII/3D which stayed on my HDD for 2+ years.

Online, it simply does not perform as I believe it should. Atleast not on my system. This is where I prefer AH, that and the fact that I can fly with my squad of 30+ people and still have a great connection and go up against other large squads/countries and it's not so limited as Il-2 is in the online department.

BUT, I have some gripes with Il-2. The mushy input for one, it just doesn't have the responsiveness of the planes I've flown in RL. An airplane is an airplane when it comes to control responses, unless they changed the physics of how an elevator grabs the wind... the only time I have experienced a plane bouncing up on me is when I hit a thermal... and I don't believe those are modelled in Il-2, so the entire sliding effect kind of puts me off. (have to stay on the controls the whole time to keep on target- even when the target is flying level)

And the damage model..... sure, it's great when it comes down to it, but it just isn't believable. I don't have anymore drag for huge gaping holes in my wing where my virtual pilot could crawl through than I do with no damage. And if it's there, it's not noticeable at all. It only appears to model a loss of lift to damaged wings, and I'm not even sure about the horiz or vert stab. Shoot, I've knocked the entire vert stab off of a Lagg-3 offline and watched it turn without any problems! Okay, sure, there was the leading edge of the vert stab left, but that won't do much more than act as a spear when it crashes into the ground below. Basically I get the feeling it's just an AH damage model with a little more physics detail added into the inner wings and some flashy damage model graphics.

Both are great, but at this time I believe AH does a better job at representing real world flight while Il-2 is a composite of the developers idea of flight and the beta testers.
-SW

Andy Bush · « **Reply #13 on:** February 13, 2002, 10:43:25 PM »

Animal

My only prop time is a few hours in a C-172 and Piper Cub.

You mentioned the phrase "fly on rails"...I've heard this before, usually as a complaint or negative remark about a sim's FM. I admit I've never really understood what the person meant. All of the fighters I flew in RL were rock solid aircraft when flown within their operating envelope...no instability or "twitchiness" at all. Sometimes I get the impression that some simmers think that a fighter was supposed to feel unstable...not so, just the opposite, in fact.

Zigrat

I'm not sure about the magnitude of what appears to be dihedral effect in IL-2. It almost seems like the developers knew about this concept and then over-modeled it. The airliner I fly today has dihedral and it will not roll out when placed into a bank.

I agree about the trim and flaps...I'll be talking about these in my next article.

Andy

Tumor · « **Reply #14 on:** February 13, 2002, 11:43:16 PM »

Guys, remember that I haven't been online with IL-2 yet. But, sheesh... other than some cool new planes to look at, I just can't get into this flight-sim. Honestly, offline it's alright. I'd hate to see terrain graphics like IL-2 in Aces High, or any online sim really, the "realness" makes it all look ..fake?..and harder to see anything. I dunno, I've seen LOTS of stuff from MANY differen't real-life aircraft at various altitudes..but in IL-2 I can't tell a tank from an outhouse until I'm on top of it. Personally, I think online flightsims need to keep simple terrain graphics in order to maintain realistic clarity, and hey, I have 20/15 corrected vision so don't tell me I'm blind lol (running IL-2 at 1600x1200 don't make a difference either).

The flight modeling in IL-2 seems ok, AH feels alot more "solid" but I think thats mostly because the Force Feedback in IL-2 ...sucks, limp as hell in comparison. The WORST thing about IL-2 (0ffline) is the freekin blabbermouths on the radio lol, I'll be turning that off right away.