AH Gunnery compared to WW2 gun camera footage

[Naudet]

OK i got a nice video of the FW190, ad there was lots of gun camera footage from WW2. The gun camera was both from axis and allied birds.

And what i asked my self when looking at the film was: "Hey those real fighter jockeys really suck at shooting"

There were couple of instances, were the chasing fighter fired and fired for seconds while his traces passed behind the enemy all the time, and that at distances of 120 yrds or closer.

What is the reason for this huge discrepancy to AH, here we usually fire up to 400 yrds without a problem and the average pilots hit % is around 5-7%. Which is about 2-3 times as high as that in WW2 (according to a LW examination, were the average pilot hit % was just 2% against buffs).


And another notable thing was, that you could ony see hits fro cannons, cause they had explosive ordance. They gave hits similar to our hit sprites.
If a US fighter used his 0.5 cal, you could only see the tracers and than suddenly a part would come of its target or it starts smoking. But you never saw the actual hits.

And what i would also like to see is the corkscrew shape of the tracers. Looks funny.

[Duedel]

Originally posted by Naudet

There were couple of instances, were the chasing fighter fired and fired for seconds while his traces passed behind the enemy all the time, and that at distances of 120 yrds or closer.

Hmmm.... can't see the difference between RL pilots and me

Naudet

[snafu]

I think the thing to remember here is how accurate you were before your 1st death. Most of the pilots in AH have died once of twice. (A luxury not afforded to your average fighter Jock in WWII). Doing it for real gave you one chance and one chance only. Once your Kill streak was ended by death you didn't get another chance to "Improve" on your gunnery.

TTFN
snafu

[Vermillion]

Basically because even "newbie" AH pilots have literally tens to hundreds of times the "combat hours"  that real life pilots had, and veteran pilots have literally thousands of times the combat experience of even Eric Hartmann.

Remember in real life you didn't take off from a base and engage in combat within 5 minutes for hours and  hours straight, having the luxury of getting shot down, dieing, and then being able to come back with all that experience intact. And then doing that 20-50 times a day.

For example there are many pilots in AH that have more combat kills in a single tour (a month) than Eric Hartmann had over the entire war.

Aerial gunnery is like any other type of gunnery.  The more you do it, the better you are.

And we don't have that nasty permanent "death" penalty for screwing up that the real life pilots had.

[aGirl]

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i've read a couple of times in interviews with Luftwaffe aces that tracers had a different trajectory to the other rounds loaded, and that they therefore did not use them to aim.

Ah, found a link to a site with an interview with Franz Stigler here : http://www.bf109.com/frameset.html

It may be that this was what you were seeing, or maybe it was just lousy deflection shooting, which does take awhile to learn.

[Makofan]

Also, in AH we have nice laser sighting information down to the yard to tell us what distance we are at.  No neon ranging icons in real life

[Yeager]

This is a game.

In fairness, AH does a good job balancing gameplay with credible (ie believable) ballistics.  Still, Ive always been of the opinion that guns in AH were too potent (ie lethal) but hey, Its fun and that will always be the bottom line.

[Puck]

As for the corkscrew tracers, out in the real world tracers don't fly the same path as the "real" bullets.  You had to know the difference and aim accordingly; you didn't aim the tracers at the target...if you did all the rest of your shells would miss.

This was due to the phosphorus burning and the weight of the bullet changing in flight.

I rather like the way AH ignores that little factoid.

[Vector]

I'd add that at least those gun cam clips I've seen in the net are slow-motion films, so it may seems that they are shooting for several seconds while IRL it was only short burst.

[Wilbus]

Yup, most films you see are slow motion, not all though.

One thing is of course, as pointed out by most others in here, experience. We have far more flight hours then most of the R/L pilots did.
We have laser range icons, big red letters that says "here I am, shoot me please". Flew with them off in a snapshot once, both sides surviving pilots agreed to turning them off and so we did, WHEEEE, TONS more fun and you saw people miss alot more.

Don't know how good IL2 (yeah yeah comparing it again) gunnery is realism wise but when I fly it, it FEELS EXTREMELY realistic and much more real life like then AH's gunnery and dammage modell.

[mrsid2]

Real life pilots have something we dont though..

And that's training.

Maybe they didn't have combat experience, yet they could do training shots on targets quite a lot. Nobody got sent out to fight without some kind of training.


What comes to IL-2 gunnery, I can't really say anything about that since it's very hard to aim playing it.

The plane feels like you're balancing it on a ball bearing, any small adjustment tips the nose off track.. It only starts flying straight again if there's no control input at all. Only way to get a proper solution there seems to be hands off stick and hope the paths cross somewhere lol.

I don't know if that's realistic - I've heard that the fighter planes flew very steady and did not have the AoA wave all over the horizon after a small stick input.

[Furious]

From this thread:  http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5824

Here's a way to play with this to get a quick ballpark feel of the differences. Use this ballistic calculator: http://internet.cybermesa.com/~jbm/.../traj/traj.html

In Tony Williams' book, Rapid Fire, there is a reprint of a trajectory chart for a Me 410. There are similar ones in a number of other books as well. Set up the same installation with regards to sightline, weapon offset, and zero range. Take the weight and muzzle velocity from that book and adjust BC to match trajectory. I'll make it easy for you.

Muzzle Velocity: 2592.0 ft/sec
Chronograph Distance: 0.000 feet
Ballistic Coefficient: 0.270
Drag Function: G1
Bullet Weight: 525 grains
Sight Height: 35.40 inches
Sight Offset: 0.00 inches
Wind Range Speed: 0 mph
Wind Vertical Speed: 0 mph
Wind Cross Speed: 0 mph
LOS Angle: 0 degrees
Cant Angle: 0 degrees
Target Speed: 0 mph
Target Angle: 90 degrees
Zero Range: 547 yards
Zero Height: 0 inches
Zero Offset: 0 inches
Temperature: 59.6 °F
Barometric Pressure: 29.92 in Hg
Relative Humidity: 0.0 %
Altitude: 0 feet
Air Density: 100 % of Sea Level

Copy off the results and do it again for the .50 fired from the same installation. I posted a velocity chart in the AC forum awhile back. You can use that to adjust BC to match the chart since bullet weight and MV are known.

Muzzle Velocity: 2845.0 ft/sec
Chronograph Distance: 0.000 feet
Ballistic Coefficient: 0.700
Drag Function: G1
Bullet Weight: 708 grains
Sight Height: 35.40 inches
Sight Offset: 0.00 inches
Wind Range Speed: 0 mph
Wind Vertical Speed: 0 mph
Wind Cross Speed: 0 mph
LOS Angle: 0 degrees
Cant Angle: 0 degrees
Target Speed: 0 mph
Target Angle: 90 degrees
Zero Range: 547 yards
Zero Height: 0 inches
Zero Offset: 0 inches
Temperature: 59.6 °F
Barometric Pressure: 29.92 in Hg
Relative Humidity: 0.0 %
Altitude: 0 feet
Air Density: 100 % of Sea Level

The results of this setup:

At 1000 yards, the .50 is pushing a 708 grain bullet at 1670 fps, generating 4382 ft-lbs of energy. It's taken 1.38 seconds to travel that distance and it's dropped 11.6 feet below the sightline.(I have an ammunition manual that gives a 1000 yard time of flight of 1.32 seconds with the 45" barrel. Using the same setup but plugging in the higher 2935 fps MV of the 45" barrel, I get 1.333 seconds at 1000 yards.)

At 1000 yards, the 131 is pushing a 525 grain bullet at 838 fps, generating 818 ft-lbs of energy. It's taken 2.37 seconds to travel that distance and it's dropped 42.6 feet below the sightline.

You can build a more precise model or quibble over the details, but that won't show the two rounds to be similar because they're not. 131 has better performance in AH than the above comparison anyway. A lot better
__________________
Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

F.

[Eagler]

I always thought the tracer corkscrew dance was from the gun camera getting shook to death from the vibration of the wing caused by the guns firing .... actually they were flying as straight as the rest of the rounds.

[BGBMAW]

well the bullets are spining so a certain amount of cork screw smoke is acceptable..it would be sweet to see that much deatil in it....but so would all the damage models too(see the parachute come off the pilot as he bails out of his FW 190)...(have you guys seen that ??? It breaks your heart ).....The Movie is Called "No Easy Days -AERIAL DOG FIGHT CAMERA FOOTAGE WW2-..brutal-brutal- very brutal footage


I love progression..its getting better and bettr..U guys at HTC...thank you....This is my only Long term relationship at the moment...ill never cheat on you:)lololo

BGBMAW>>>>>>>>>>>1st  Marine Air Wing

[Puck]

Originally posted by Eagler
I always thought the tracer corkscrew dance was from the gun camera getting shook to death from the vibration of the wing caused by the guns firing .... actually they were flying as straight as the rest of the rounds.

5.56mm and 50 cal tracers (the only ones I've seen first hand) fly straight, they just don't fly the same as all the ball rounds.  You have to be able to correct for the odd flight path.

One 4th of July I loaded up a box of 5.56mm tracers at a friend's farm and we had a bit of a show.  About gave his mother-in-law a fit; seems she still had nighmares about riding her bicycle in rural Germany and being strafed by allied aircraft.  The sight of those tracers about did her in.  Made me feel horrible.