The Void between Machine guns and cannons.

[Mathman]

The effect of recoil on the guns and aiming in AH is there.  Flying a 6 gunned plane, I notice it a lot when a gun or two are damaged on one side of the plane.  When you lose a gun or two or three on one side, there is a definite yaw input into the plane's flight.  It is very apparent when flying straight and level.  However, it is also easy to correct for when fighting.

[Toad]

Nope, no time actually shooting guns in WW2 aircraft. Significant amounts of time manipulating the stick and rudders in them however.

What's a Mustang weigh? What's the total ft/lb recoil of 6 Browning 50's? What's the force exerted on both the top and bottom of the wing of a Mustang doing 250 mph in level flight? (The guns are basically supported by attachment to the wing spar, either directly or indirectly right?) How would this change in say a 2 G pull?

I've talked to a lot of WW2 pilots. Some fighter pilots, some bomber pilots. I've yet to have one tell me the nose wandered or bounced uncontrollably while shooting. Vibration? Yeah? Moving the aircraft all around the sky? No.

My dad flew a B-25C in the Pacific with the 345th Air Apaches. 8 .50 BMG  in the nose, two on each side of the cockpit in blisters. 12 forward firing .50BMG. He strafed A LOT.. that's what they did. Strafe airfields, strafe ships, strafe barges, strafe troops.

It looked something like this



He's never mentioned not being able to control the nose when shooting all 12 .50 BMG doing 280-300 on strafing runs. He did mention sound that would deafen you and some vibration in the airframe.

As for going or staying.. it's always the player's choice. But I think it's pretty obvious that you had an opportunity to  discuss this stuff with HT and your first post was more in a "what the heck do YOU know about it anyway" mode than anything else. I'm not suprised at the results.

Didn't your grandmom tell you that you catch more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar?

Here's another one of granny's sayings... I think you fouled your own nest in this thread.

Good luck.

[Kweassa]

As for going or staying.. it's always the player's choice. But I think it's pretty obvious that you had an opportunity to discuss this stuff with HT and your first post was more in a "what the heck do YOU know about it anyway" mode than anything else. I'm not suprised at the results.

 LOL!

 You should have translated that one more literally, which is also the way which I meant it. I saw HT mentioning something like that twice so far. The first instance, he said:

 "You shouldn't believe all they tell you"

 and the second one was here in this thread.

 ...

 So what does that mean? I truly wonder.

 Does it mean HT's got some other info on how IL-2/FB manages their gunnery aspect? Maybe as a developer, he could instantly recognize something in IL-2/FB gunnery that was used, he decided not to use in AH? Something like maybe neutering bullets? Honking dispersion? Making bullets fade out?

 He really did sound like he knew something what us players didn't know, so I ask "so what do you know that something we don't". If there was some other way to phrase that, sorry I couldn't - English ain't my first language.

 I've seen threads in UBI forums on gunnery - only few were actually confirmed by the 1C crew themselves, but most usually the beta-testers of the game confirmed that individual rounds, ballistics, dispersion is all modelled as they should be, IFRC, the "bullet fade" was distanced, not timed like AH, I think it was 2km.

[Kweassa]

The effect of recoil on the guns and aiming in AH is there. Flying a 6 gunned plane, I notice it a lot when a gun or two are damaged on one side of the plane. When you lose a gun or two or three on one side, there is a definite yaw input into the plane's flight. It is very apparent when flying straight and level. However, it is also easy to correct for when fighting.

I've talked to a lot of WW2 pilots. Some fighter pilots, some bomber pilots. I've yet to have one tell me the nose wandered or bounced uncontrollably while shooting. Vibration? Yeah? Moving the aircraft all around the sky? No.

 Duly noted.... but I was more kind of thinking of effects of recoil in terms of minor control - even when the guns are working perfectly symmetrically. As in the 'archery' or 'shooting rifles' thingy I used as an reference, I also don't think the whole nose of the plane would bounce or yaw around uncontrollably. But wouldn't there still be minor oscillations which would effect the flight of the plane, albeit smally, but also importantly?

 Having it shake around in 'uncontrollable levels' would be fishy, but wouldn't that still mean the pilot needed to assert certain level of minor input and control all during aiming process? Maybe that process feels too easy in AH.

 This is purely empirical, individual opinion, but in AH, let's say when the target is high left side of the gunsight, the pilot can bank left, pull stick, stop it and the ring and dot of the sight would be exactly where he wants it. The aiming process itself is extremely easy, its just where the pilot has to aim, that makes the difference. I don't expect the aiming process via stick control to be inexplicably hard as in nose bobbing up and down, but wouldn't it still need continuous minor control to place it down firm?

 I know some of you have actual flight time in the skies - so if you, perhaps stick a gum in front of you in the windshield, is it possible to make just one input and let the plane hold its exact nose position, where the gum is placed over a certain reference point in the scenery, and it does not move at all?

 If that is so, then I don't think there's anyway to explain the 'target drift' other than continuous wind and turbulence effecting your plane..

[Hooligan]

Unless the shooter and target are going in exactly the same direction, and this has to be extremely rare, then the target will drift in the shooter's gunsight.  I certainly see this in AH and I assume that is what is meant by "target drift".

Hooligan

[Batz]

From an interview with Franz Stigler

Did pilots like the tracers or did some not use them?

Every third round was a tracer round and most pilots he new used them. However they were not used to aim. The tracer round always had less of an arc than the actual bullet. So if the pilot aimed using the tracers the bullets would all miss. A good pilot used the gun sight and always waited till they were at close range.