Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: AKDejaVu on August 26, 2001, 01:13:00 PM
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I've logged about 20 hours playing this game... take this for exactly what it is worth... an oppinion from someone with a fixed set of views.
Flight Model:
- Rudders: The rudder authority in the P-39 is way overdone. A slight touch to the rudder gives you 5 degrees of movement on the nose.
- Roll: The roll rates seem a tad bit high.. actually... pretty damn high. Definately needs work.
- Acceleration: If you deem being able to accelerate to 600 mph in a P-39 without using wep excessive... then something is a tad bit wrong here. You can go from 200 at the top of a loop to 400 at the bottom with 0% throttle and constant g's being applied.
- Turning: The seem to have modeled this realistically to a point. The side-slip is noticeable, but I think it is over exagerated. A 720 degree turn at 350 drops you way too much. Seems to me that at the higher speeds, rudder input in the turns is not as prevelant as at lower speeds.
- Stalls: Some stall entrances are very predictable and actually very well modeled. Others are a tad odd. It seems that any stall can result in a flat spin (belly down)... even if the stall occured while you were inverted. Other than that, I think the stalls are modelled quite well (at least as far as departure goes).
- High Speed handling: Way off. There is no difference in a planes handling from 200 to 500. Everything seems the same.
- Low Speed handling: This is a hard one. I am having difficulty getting a feel for the plane going into low speed scenarios. It almost seems like there is some kind of "low speed handling on" switch that occurs... never when I am looking at the digital speed readout.
Graphics:
- Cockpit: One of the best I've seen. The stick in the cockpit responding to your joystick movements is a neat touch. I do find the forward view a bit restricting as far as reading guages goes. The Il-2 makes must have had this come up... for there is a digital speed indicator and altimeter as well as a digital compass to feed you that info. I also think that the cross-supports are too view restrictive in an environment where you aren't allowed to move your head at all.
- Enemy Aircraft: Modeled much larger than I've seen in other sims. I really like this aspect of them. Kudos to the team for this.
- Terrain: This one is very much a mixed bag. I was flying along using the map and decided to check out a nearby town. I flew over it at about 7k and had to rely on the texture mapping looking a tad bit different to tell me it was there. I got below 5k and some structures started to pop into view. The town looked nice, but you had to be right on top of it to see it.
The tree-lines fall into the same category. It is cool, though, to see an enemy bail and his chute disappear into the forrest.- Low level flight: The bitmap overlay really adds to the velocity experience down low. This is quite similar to WW2OL's low level graphics and HTC's beta graphics. That cool feature is more than made up for by the inability to determine your altitude at low speeds in relation to the ground. I find this to be one of the most frustrating aspects of this game.
- Muzzle Flash: This seems to be a sticky point for many.. I don't really have a problem with it. I don't know if it is more or less realistic than any other sim and could simply adjust. The same applies to tracers
- Framerate: Its awesome... but there are problems. When I first loaded the game I went whole hog and set it up for 1600x1200x32 and started to fly. The FPS stayed extremely smooth, but my controller response was abysmal. The plane was virtually uncontrolable. Setting the display to 1024x768x32 solved that problem quickly.
Using the "Quick Mission" planner showed another small issue. The game does not start the mission with all aircraft at once... it ads them. I get a major stutter as it adds each flight. This would suck in multiplayer big time.
Another note here... I have to play the game in OpenGL. If I attempt to play in Direct3d, the framerate is around 1 FPS.[/list]
Damage Model:
- On "The Enemy": Seems there needs to be quite a bit of work here. Maybe the engine cowlings (on bombers) and props were able to withstand several hundred rounds of .50 calibre fire, but I don't think so. Targetting any other part of the bombers issues neat little shrapnel droppings, but little else. The big gun on the P-39 is another story. Anything it hits it tears off. Though, it has the uncanny ability to stop after it hits an elevator and not do any damage to parts on the other side of it.
- In your plane: I'm going to reserve this one for a later time. Right now, this is somewhat of a sore spot with me too. Whatever they are doing here just doesn't seem to be working... but I need to find a way to express that.
Summary:
For a beta, this game is in excellent shape. Hell... this free version kicks bellybutton all over the last WW2 game I bought. The graphics set a new standard in gaming, but they are system tasking.
The flight model sets a new standard in gaming too. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite live up to sim standards. There needs to be major overhauls here to bridge that gap. Unfortunately, in most boxed sims, that gap is usually too big :( I'm hoping that people stop arguing over who's data is right and realize that Il-2 doesn't match any of the numbers. 600 in level flight in a P-39? No compression? Instant acceleration? Sigh.
The gunnery model is a mixed bag. I don't think the tracers are visible enough, but the muzzle flash is too visible. I can deal with this aspect of things though and don't see it as a major issue. I do question the modeling of .50 cal AP rounds, but that's a difficult one to seriously argue so I might as well just leave it at that.
This game really has some things to offer. They've moved some aspects of things far enough ahead that they will be getting my money when the game is released. How long it stays on my hard drive remains to be seen. The Il-2 developers are going to have to put it into HTC development mode to keep me interested. I wonder if they can or will do that?
AKDejaVU
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Im not sure but my guess is those speeds are in Kmh, not Mph.
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What I like is there's no stall-horn. When you stall you better hope you got enough alt. Got some nasty stalls in 109 and P-39...
Take-offs and landings are harder than in AH. In AH you can drop your plane to runway and stop it but in Il-2 I need to land the plane very smoothly and use enginepower and rudder to keep plane in runway. Only way to steer your plane is use rudder and throttle. Not sure if there are brakes for left and right gear ?
Low speed handling looks quite hard: I worked 15 minutes to kill a I-16 rata. That sure was fun :D
Buff guns have quite nice firepower: Il-2's gunners burst from one mg ripped my left wing away. Just like 2-4 .50cals mgs in AH.
Graphics are just great, Lots of little nyances.
Sounds are great; Gotta love that doppler-effect. Sometimes I just cut the throttle to hear that (Blowers?) whistle :)
(Dunno if its accurate but it sure rocks :D)
FM: I'll wait if I see some of those documents from Tsagi etc 'cause I know russians tested planes they captured and if they say plane XX roll-rate was YYY degrees/sec I have no reason not to believe.
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Im not sure but my guess is those speeds are in Kmh, not Mph.
Ah.. ugly American rears its head. This is entirely probable.
Frankly, it hadn't occured to me because when the plane is at 180, it rolls at increadible rates. Pretty amazing when that translates to 120 mph.
AKDejaVu
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p-39 roll rate was too high and will be adjusted from 2,2 secs to 3,9. It was devs mistake. edit: dont remember the altitude of those numbers
But id like to see atleast the low and very high speed rollrates checked. Theres no 50lbs stick force limit on pilot, so expect to have good dive pullouts etc. with planes, that dont do that in AH. Its btw meant to be that way, he (Oleg) explained it very well in simHQ bb.
The 50 cal thing maybe due to the fact, that il-2 simulates hit angles and velocity impact of the bullets versus the armour of spot being hit.
So if you hit something very steep angled surface with lightweight bullet, the bullets can ricochet. My experience is with german MG:s, that if you shoot the enemy with them on good angle, it will deal lots of damage to him.
The buffs overall can take lots of punishment even from 20mm:s in il-2, but the higher calibers have always resulted to critical damage. I see that only as a pro, no 7x50cals=wing removal stuff.. :)
Oh, and the crew abandons their plane if they get too shook up. Eg. il-2:s pilots often bail out if you kill their tail guner, seen samekind of behavior with buffs.
[ 08-26-2001: Message edited by: Tuomio ]
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Staga,
I've noticed that too and also Otto gunner is superb marksman.
I watched my Il-2's gunner once shoot at 109 flying to 8 oclock, heading away and tail gunner just kept hitting it and yet fairly far distance.
but it was dumbfound with another 109 and didn't even consider shooting it.
Another funny thing was that when I throttled to stall speed, another 109 was now aborting its attacks and flying past, then again preparing for new attack.
Power of those peashot otto bullets seems quite good too...
Heh.. they can drop IL-2's fairly easy.
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Heh Airacobra have some nasty tricks to show to the pilot if he don't keep enough speed. I set up a fight against 109s and noticed if I keep speed up its actually quite nice plane in low altitudes (even without using its rollrate).
It looks like 109 AI-pilots are trying to drag fight to higher alts ? If so then it looks like AI-pilots are using the strenghts of their planes like in RL and not like in some other boxed sims.
I can't wait 'till I got a chance to try that I-16; I was having hard time when I chased it about 10-15minutes.I couldn't out-turn it so I had to extend, grab alt and come back with more speed and alt :)
If there's still someone who hasn't download that demo yet go and get it; Its worth of it!
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Finally some one opened their mind. Come one everyone else, just clear your mind of this NASA graphs and go man-o-man vs I-16. Turn everything on max realism and go down low at 750 meters.
:D ;) :p :) :cool:
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I was surprised when I managed to out-turn an "ace" I-16 in a Bf 109G-2, using 80% power and "combat" flap setting... :eek:
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I see what you mean, In that case....... STOP USING FLAPS CHEATER!!! :)
I didn't notice that before. New Demo should be released soon. We'll see what changed in it.
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It looks like 109 AI-pilots are trying to drag fight to higher alts ? If so then it looks like AI-pilots are using the strenghts of their planes like in RL and not like in some other boxed sims.
I thought this too... then noticed that the P-39 AI flies exactly the same way.
AKDejaVu
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I don't know much about rl vs. sim performance (other than that the rudders seem way to strong at slow speed) so I cant argue performance modeling one way or the other.
But the FM is challenging and fun.
And man what a beautiful sim. I love the graphics & sound immersion. I like the dirty and broken glass after hits or near flack hits. I took hits from ack this morning and I had holes through both sides of the cockpit glass, the windshield almost completely covered in oil from the round that tore up the dash and hit the engine.
Personally I wouldn't be able to tell you if a plane was modeled accurately no matter how big the stack of documents you show me is. But I do know what I like and my first impression after 1 day with the demo is this game rocks.
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Originally posted by juzz:
I was surprised when I managed to out-turn an "ace" I-16 in a Bf 109G-2, using 80% power and "combat" flap setting... :eek:
OK try taking 109 on ace vs P39. I can only win if AI crashed into ground. My strutagy is to stay low and when 109 starts climing try to quickly bring him down with cannon. If I stay too long on him I stall and crash...
Any one has better stratagy?
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Deja- one quick question:
Where are you getting a plane with .50 cal AP ammo to shoot at other planes with?
Only calibers that high that I know of as a beta tester are the 12.7mm pods on the Mig-3. The P-39 has a pair? maybe, but also has rifle calibre so it's impossible to tell what is hitting unless you see the tracer colour.
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Juzz- was that in one turn or a sustained turn?
also-I am not sure where the exact beta version the demo came out of but the planes only got propwash figures right for flick rolls recently. In this case the I-16 has a wonderfull turn but the AI tends to be leary of turning to hard in case it snap rolls especially at low speeds. In the 109 I have abused the flaps to crank around at low speeds for kills but usually found it just to hard to hit the bastards at those situations.
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Only calibers that high that I know of as a beta tester are the 12.7mm pods on the Mig-3. The P-39 has a pair? maybe, but also has rifle calibre so it's impossible to tell what is hitting unless you see the tracer colour.
P-39N should have 4 .50's right? And the big gun in the nose.
AKDejaVu
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Besides the .50's... watch what hitting something with the 20mm gun pods on the 109 does. This reminds me of Warbirds on 20% lethality.
Some 10 20mm strikes later... the plane might go down. The fighter.... from directly behind or high deflection.
AKDejaVu
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The P39N has 4 .30 in wings and 2 .50 on cowling.
In the later versions (not included in demo) the low caliber wing guns are replaced with 2 0.50's.
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Sorrow; it was a sustained turn - after alot of circles, the I-16 went from being on my 6 to my 12. I should think the I-16 would have absolutely no trouble out-turning(both rate and radius) the Bf 109G at low speed...
MG 151/20 does seem to be somewhat weak vs fighters - but it works wonders on the Li-2! Just sneak up under one and unload a burst into it's belly - KABOOM! :D
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akdjv
all altitudes speed etc are in meters and kilometers.
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Edit: Deleted this for reasons i wont tell you.. ;)
[ 08-27-2001: Message edited by: Tuomio ]
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Attacking a buff formation with the P39 is just too much fun. One Stuka lost a wing and corkscrewed right into his wingman; I flew straight between the two as they split apart (They didn't just explode, surprisingly). On another occasion a 109 reared up in front of me, I took a shot and removed the entire tail. Fantastic. :)
I only wish the enemy AI was more improved at low level; I try to make enemy junkers crash-land but they tend to bail out at extreme low level. Would be nice too if pilots and gunners slumped when shot; they don't appear to at the moment, and IL-2 is the first sim where I really do think it'd be helpful to see such detail.
Oh, and for some good fun, try ground attack with 'bullet time' - [ slows down time and gives you a great view for some fantastic attacks.
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Il2 simply rocks... no comparison with gunnery to AH
Il2 is superior in this aspect.
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Yes, as snefens pointed out it's only 2x.50 cal. And a message from Oleg awhile ago when I asked during testing revealed that only ball ammo is modelled for the US .50 cal. At the time he couldn't verify if any other type was ever purchased by the soviet union.
About the 20mm, I can plaster quite a few into some planes (depending on how tough the plane is) but getting 20 hits without a kill would require the other guy having a lifeline to god.
Some of the really tough fighters can absorb up to 3 or 4 before suffering catastrophic damage but even 1 is probably knocked all the lift from the wing or tail area it hits.
Sorrow
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It must be my gunnery (http://www.dbstaines.com/Images/3LW.trk)
You have to do a "save as" on the link above. This doesn't have a 20 hit survivor... but it does have 3 aircraft suffering no damage from very close 20mm hits. One even takes 3 into one wing in a 90 degree angle and keeps going.
It seems the only real vulnerable place on these planes is the pilot. Every plane I downed needed rounds to the cockpit to do it.
AKDejaVu
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is there a way to squelch people on the bbs
usually i am pissed off by people who are wrong but at least i can tell they have a brain, they are just misguided and i can converse with them hoping to persuade them that they are incorrect
but this deezcamp guy is just an idiot, which is exponentially more irritating, since there is no way to ever convert him. plzzzzzzzz invent a squelch for the bbs.
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AKDejaVu Give you Email, I'll send you trk. P39 vs 109. One hit, one kill with cannon.
SimFreak777@hotmail.com
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anyone else have a crooked gunsight on the german plane? the russian is ok but the 109 is offset to the left. reinstall & diff settings didn't help...
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AKDejaVu Give you Email, I'll send you trk. P39 vs 109. One hit, one kill with cannon.
SimFreak777@hotmail.com
Were you flying the P-39 or the 109?
I can get 1 ping kills with the nose cannon of the 39 too. Its... what... 37mm? But I've also had it hit aircraft with no effect.
I've also had some low ping kills with a 109. They are just few and far between. And I always fly them with the 20mm gun pods.
Showing me footage of a 1 ping kill does nothing to disuade the fact that often times, the guns don't have much effect on the aircraft.
AKDejaVu
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lol Zigrat. Don't let him get to you, or anyone for that matter.
After trolling/posting around various Usenet/BBS groups for the past 20+ years, I have found people fall into one of the following categories, or close to them.
1) Informative: This person likes to share his/her wealth of knowledge and backs it up with data.
2) Speculative: This person likes to speculate based on data and project into the future.
3) Antagonist: Only looking to irritate or antagonize fellow readers/posters. Sometimes referred to as trolls.
4) Authoratative: A person that posts with great exactness and backed up with data.
5) Opinionated: A person that has a thought about anything posted and feels compelled to regurgitate that thought.
6) Passive: A person that posts with many apologies as to not offend another poster.
7) Aggressive: A person who actively looks to gain attention by flaming/baiting people into a response. These can be trolls as well.
8) Complainer: Someone who feels they must complain about everything or anything that is said. All emotion, no data to back it.
9) Inept: An inability to write what they really mean. This could be a person with good motives, but they lack the ability to translate them into what they really mean via the written word.
These are what I call baseline poster types. Most everyone fits into one or more of the above categories.
Then there is what really drives a poster. Some are purely driven by thier emotions, others are driven by logical thought processes and some mix it up. When these two collide (emotion versus logic), they make for entertaining reading.
DZ is a master of provoking those with some baseline emotional drive. His postings seem to attack the emotions of others and once he gets you hooked into that mode, he appears to continue to provoke as long as the audience responds with like postings.
I have no clue as to whether this is his intention or not, but it does appear that way.
On the other hand, some people make absolute statements only assuming everyone would take them as personal opinion. This could be the case as well.
Just remember Zigrat, the written word can only be inflammatory if you allow it to be that way.
I realize this is off the original topic, but started typing it and found it interesting. lol :D
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Eagler hit Shift F1 or something like that...
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Hmm that was 1)informative or 2)speculative. Dunno which one ;)
Edit: I'll try to wrote a post later containing all Skuzzy's points. Should be fun :D
[ 08-28-2001: Message edited by: Staga ]
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Combination of 1, 2 and 5 :D
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Sorry Nerd but I've never learned to count to more than four (Homelite chainsaw took my index-finger). I've found more fingers from my left hand so looks like later I can count to 9.
btw could you fix your cables, I've seen lots of warps lately. I know your doing your best to give us a good, solid connections and big <S> for that but something is wrong in my connections.
;)
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Originally posted by Staga:
Eagler hit Shift F1 or something like that...
thanks, that worked
has anyone been able to get their peds to work as the rudder? It sees them in the setup but doesn't keep them on the crosshair/slider page nor in the game, it keeps the rocker on the saitek as the rudder...