Question for Tony Williams

[Creamo]

Great film. It seemed to me that more of what I didn't like in IL-2 is pry right. I'm thinking it was a real sumsqueak to hit anything, and when you did they were tougher than I'd expect at least.

And I also agree that the B17 gunners were dead or shatting themselves so bad they couldn't fire or aim which would stand to reason. AH also allows a very liberal zoom view for the gunners, and that would be a suicide 6 attack on a buff in the game, but they seemed common in those clips.

[Pongo]

Most of the guys that tried that dead 6 attack scheme didnt return with film I bet.

[RRAM]

THanks everyone for your input! I didn't know Aces high portrayed "hit bubbles" for damage modelling. Is quite dissapointing imo, but I guess it will stay that way .

Originally posted by Pongo
Most of the guys that tried that dead 6 attack scheme didnt return with film I bet.

Yah. I guess most of them didn't return home,  So the rest of the guys were short-minded and kept on doing that kind of attach scheme anyway, no matter they were 95% dead if they did it, huh? . (in AH that aproach against any buff means 95% probability of dying)


of course. Germans were so stupid

P.S. Many of the shots against bombers are taken with bombers in BOXES. Maybe the targetted buff's gunners were death, but the ones in the rest of the buffs too? .

[Vermillion]

*sigh* Camo please, please.....  until you have some proof, stop stating that AH has hit bubbles as if its a fact.  Thats how these silly bellybutton rumors and myths start.

AH DOES NOT HAVE HIT BUBBLES

In a hit bubble damage system, imagine a 360 degree "bubble" the size of the wingspan of the aircraft all around the plane.  If you hit that, you get a hit on the aircraft.

Its simple to test.  Go out and fire at an aircraft approximately one half a wings distance above the wing. If you see hit flashes, AH has a hit bubble.  If you don't see flashes (which you won't) AH does not have a hit bubble.

In AH you have to hit the polygons of the aircraft.

If you have film or screenshots showing the existence of a hit bubble, just post them, otherwise let it go.  Its really really simple to test.

[LLv34_Snefens]

"Its simple to test. Go out and fire at an aircraft approximately one half a wings distance above the wing. If you see hit flashes, AH has a hit bubble. If you don't see flashes (which you won't) AH does not have a hit bubble."

If I understand you correctly this would only be true if we are talking about hit bubbles that are pure circles. If hit bubbles are really being used it would make more sense to give them a much more elliptical shape, to fit closer to the aircrafts part. (wing, rudder, etc.)
This is how it is done in EAW's hit bubble system.
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[LLv34_Snefens]

Here is a pic from off-line mode. Dead six attack on the p51, with nose MG's of the Emil. One would expect that the center of the hit-sprites would center at the point of impact, which makes at least one of the hits seem a bit "generous".

It doesn't necesarily have to mean that hit bubbles are being used. It could instead be some sort of proximity check (bullet gets within x distance of a polygon, give a hit to that section), or maybe the actual rounds that are given a larger size (tennisballs).

Yet another explaination could be that the hitsprites are wrongfully drawn, and not a 100% accurate way to show the impact. When I was slowing the film down to take this pic, it felt as if the hit sprites where being "quantumnized". As if there only was a certain number of places the hitsprites could be drawn.

Easist way to know for sure off course would be if one of HTC's staff would answer.

[Kirin]

I find Snefens pic quite compelling - seen that several times, especially while shooting with MG (well, cannon blow the parts too quickly). Plus sometimes there are strange damage effects like radiator hits from dead 6 which could not be with a real polygon/structure hit system.

Snefens, what you describe as proximity check equals a (narrow) hit bubble on a section.

Maybe coming off topic but another thing with the dmg system is its on/off algorhythm. Either wing unharmed or (half) wing blown off - either engine going flawless or ded. Doesn't look like AH calculates how much dmg does a bullet/shell on impact or on its way through the plane section but more like a table like system where AH registered how many hits scored on a section (bubble) and flags it damaged if a certain number (of course different numbers for different calibers) has been reached.

Either way long range gunnery seems far to easy in AH. Yah, I know all the we-are-all-aces-better-trained-than-any-real-pilot comments - but still!

[Wotan]

Sturmgruppen


This site is down but during the Big week Scenario I posted numerous quotes of pilot accounts on how the Sturmgruppen flew right up the arse of b17 formations.

If I recall correctly one pilot stated at a certain distance from the bomber pulk it was like running around in the shower trying not to get wet. The closer he got to a specific b17 the harder it was for the pulk to train its guns on the Sturmjaeger. He then killed the a  tail gunner in a b17 from 6 with 20mm and pumped 6 - 10 rounds of 3cm into the right inboard eng of a b17. He described it as "devastating" with huge sheets of medal exploding off the wing. He said the b17s right wing dropped then buckled before entering a spiral. He then killed another in a similar fashion. There was even  frame by frame images from a 190 guncamera showing the damage.

Ths Big week forum has been deleted and the above site has been taken down. But there were numerous accounts and I have read tons where the sturmjaegers went into from 6 or near 6.

On this same page it stated that 3 190s were lost for every 1 b17. This was late in the war but almost all were lost due to escort fighters. B17 gunners in real life no matter how much they trained or were tested could never track a 350mph+ fighter across the sky and hit him at ranges over 1000 yards.

The buff guns in ah have no shake or vibration. The gunners arent rattled about by the guns, they arent freezing, they arent afraid. Buff gun accuracy is a result of this.

Ofcourse gunnery  in  AH is no way  "realistic". The problem is "do you want a sim that has realistic physics" or "do you want a sim that gives you realistic results?" In rl 50 cals can hit and kill at long ranges and they are modelled that way in ah and from the data provided it seems they are right.

But being sniped from ranges 1000 yards to 1600 yards is far from realistic.

What we have with ah buff guns is a gameplay concession. Anyone ever shoot a plane down in il2 while manning a tail gun? or even get good hits?

Heres a view  of a typical Gefechtsverband from the tail gun of a bomber.

[Innominate]

I guarentee you, if you had a formation like that attacking any sized b17 formation in AH, you'd have a lot of burning bombers.  it's easy to train on one target, and kill it, but more than one quickly becomes difficult to deal with.

[Shiva]

That said, it's fair to say that the constant practice which modern sim-players get probably makes their skills much better than most WW2 pilots. OTOH, no sim can replicate the pure terror of real combat, which was bound to have an effect on shooting accuracy.

Given that, IRL, if you survived your first major mistake in air-to-air combat you were extremely lucky, it's easy to see why sim players are so much better at certain things. To start with, you've got a much less physically-demanding environment -- you're not getting rammed down into your seat pulling Gs -- which lets you pay more attention to what you're doing. Second, you can keep making mistakes over and over again until you get it right.

Take attacking bombers. When you can go up dozens of times in an evening and attack bombers, you're getting feedback in a way that RL pilots could never expect to get. Eventually, through sheer trial-and-error, you're going to figure out the best way to do it. RL pilots either get a good approximation of it right the first time, or don't get a second try -- much less a third, fourth, fifteenth, thirtieth, or fiftieth.

It's kind of like going out and getting beat up until you learn how to fight, except that there are no personal consequences for losing.  And it's that lack that makes learning that way practical; it doesn't matter how many times you lose, as long as you learn eventually. And that's going to distort the game.

[Innominate]

BAH, sure you can replicate the terror of flying in the real world.

Rig up some explosives to a random timer(1-5 seconds), when you die, start the timer, run, if you're still able to fly after that you can keep playing!

[Shiva]

Well, yeah, but that's going to really hose the player base for the game; you're not going to be able to recover your development costs that way.

[Pongo]

ram...if we post a film of a 190 losing a wing and spinning out of control due to buff defensive guns does that then disprove your contention?

1100 yard buff guns would not work in ww2. even with the box of bombers. But neither did 800 yard interceptor shots..
Of the multitude of factors that effect air to air gunnery and damage, HT models the ones that he could think of, prove and implement in code. Some combination of the ones that he did not implement leaves us with very long range shooting by ww2 standards. But in the absence of those missing factors what do we do? Arbitrary 500 yard max range...so people only have to seperate x yards and the know they are scott free?
some people would find that very frustrating. allthough it would likely be more realistic then what we have.

[Wotan]

even in them films how do you think the tail gunner was killed or disabled? Hos? that only hsppens in ah

[LLv34_Camouflage]

Originally posted by Vermillion
*sigh* Camo please, please.....  until you have some proof, stop stating that AH has hit bubbles as if its a fact.  Thats how these silly bellybutton rumors and myths start.

You're right, I don't have any "real" proof that there would be hit bubbles in AH.  No-one other than HTC knows, I assume? I'm sorry if I'm causing public restlessness with my comments.

I've done my share of offline gunnery, and like Snef said, the hits seem generous. It seems a bit odd to me that gunnery, especially at long ranges, is so much easier here than in IL2 and SDOE. These 2 sims definately don't have hit bubbles and the gunnery is very difficult.  The FMs of IL2 and SDOE are more twitchy than in AH, however, which makes aiming more difficult. This might partly explain the problem.

Doing gunnery tests with tracers on would probably show how close a bullet can pass to the surface of the plane without hitting. I remember when IL2 first came out, I was amazed to see the tracers whizzing around the enemy, from both sizes of the fuselage, without hitting.

Camo