Taking off in IL2 I never had a problem ever. Even with no engine and serious battle damage you can land a plane missing half its parts, most of a wing, a stabilizer, and roll to a safe stop without a sweat.
Does anybody really need to post pics of shot-to-hell SBDs missing half a wing coming in to safe landings in AH?
In AH I crashed repeatedly when I first started the game up and tried to take off. I moved in from WB, as well, which was fairly close to AH1. Flying in AH induces stalls, snap stalls, sudden wing drops, side skids, accelerated stalls, and many other things, on top of which each plane has different characteristics as to when it will snap stall or dip. 190 wings will snap before they'll mush, for example. You get a real sense for when a plane is bleeding E vs retaining E.
In IL2, the most you get is mush stalls and some accelerated stalls (more like accelerated mushes).
You, sir, are absolutely insane, or you're flying on baby difficulty, or perhaps your default stick settings are not giving you full control authority. I once ticked off my roomie because I erupted in a sudden blue streak of swearing so incensed and inspired it rivaled the eloquence of Homeric verse- all because I had ALMOST had a shot on a Zero in a high speed, hard turn right on the deck when my F4F Wildcat abruptly pushed a hair beyond her performance envelope and suffered a snap roll right into the #@^!*&$ waves. (My roomie had his prim Christian girlfriend over; but I've always maintained his irritability during that incident was due in part to other issues.
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As I said, I even TRIED by executing a snap-roll (in an F4U, which should snap-roll like freakin' crazy). The thing just wouldn't kick over. She kind of mushed a bit, then nothing.
I have to echo Anax here in saying that you're playing a completely different game. When I first decided to experiment with snap-rolls, I read up on how to do them, (stick all the way back and hard right or left rudder,) started IL-2, hauled back on the stick while giving it hard right rudder, and promptly got a snap roll. The stall behavior of the P-39 is especially nasty, vis a vis historical examples; the snap roll becomes a flat spin in short order and you're boned. The one thing I DON'T like about that is that eventually they figured out why they P-39 did the flat spin (improper weight balancing in the forward gun compartment,) so it vexes me that later P-39 models still do that.
The IL-2 flight model is superb, and you people trying to insist that it's extremely sub-par to AH just mystify me.
But IL-2 does piss me off sometimes:
Problems with Il2:
1. The viewing system is the worst. The snap-views are awkward, the "head" moves slowly, and you basically don't have rearward views.
THIS. TEN THOUSAND TIMES.The "rear views" have you looking at an angle on the side you're looking back at- which irritates me immensely because even a pilot strapped in his seat should be able to rubberneck enough for a straight-back view of his six. Turning on snap-view solves the slow head problem, but the padlock system will murder you, because when enemies are near the centerline of your plane the view will start flipping out back and forth like you're spastic or something; which makes me auger in when I'm locked in the scissors. TIR is indeed required to get any use out of it.
2. I find the nose of the planes unstable and bouncy no matter what I do with trim and joystick adjustments.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one experiencing this. Some ships can be very stable right UNTIL you get ready to take your shot, at which point they start bouncing or fishtailing, making the shot with IL-2s realistic gunnery %^&@!# impossible.
3. Oleg has a beef with .50 cals apparently. The .50s are about as effective as the .30s in Il2. Its ridiculous. You can hose down Ki-43s and watch them fly on unharmed. OTOH, you DO get to shoot at a Ki-43...
My bugaboo is the KI-27 for some reason. For some reason, that HATEFUL ship is 1. seemingly impossible to get a steady bead on and 2. capable of soaking up way too much damage for an early war Japanese bird. I just hate it so much.
.50 caliber damage seems to be fine to me though. What I hate is that Russian aircraft are overmodeled, and the P-51 turns like a ruptured elephant on roller skates. (IL-2 shares ground with AH in this respect.) I am so fed up with this new "LOL MUSTANG CAN'T TURN" vibe going around with the sim developers. It makes me rage.
In short Oleg models the planes from the viewpoint of the russian's historical views of the planes named, with predictable results.
4. The engine modeling is wonky. Let me put it this way...a P&W R-2800 ain't gonna fail after 15 minutes of balls-to-the-wall. Period.
Did you open your radiator?
Having it do so is unrealistic. Hitech's solution is technically speaking, also "unrealistic"...limiting WEP usage to book limits, shutting it off automatically. Realistic engine modeling OTOH would effectively mean unlimited WEP for most powerplants.
Actually, "most" powerplants did use water- or water-methnohol- injection to increase engine power. The water supplies carried on board were finite.
Early war birds tended to have the "boost" option as "redlining the throttle," i.e. pushing it past the safe "military power" settings for an extra ten pounds of boost, and the accompanying power.
One last gripe about IL-2- I've noticed that for some reason it's detection and calibration of my stick is random. I start the game, and enter the hardware menu to look at the joystick readouts. Half the time my rudder or aerilons detected position is way the heck out there from it's actual position. I have to restart the game once or twice till it detects it properly. I think that has caused me lots of problems with aiming instability; once I caught on my gunnery issues declined quite a bit.
