Whats more important ?

[HagarTheHorrible]

What's more important ?

 

Accurate aircraft or accurate combat ?

 

Clod tried to better limit the manipulation of several controls at once to try and stop simmers "gaming the game" by using flaps to gain a turn advantage (If I remember correctly).  If all it takes to use flaps in-game is the not so taxing pushing a button with your finger, it is tempting to use them frequently, is it not ?.  If really using them meant cranking a stiff hand wheel it might have been less tempting to use them quite so frequently.  So do you have the flaps work as they would in the real aircraft despite the fact that they will be abused in game because it requires no effort or concentration to do so or do you have it that the combat is actually more important and introduce a penalty for doing something that real pilots wouldn't have ?

[Lord_Haw-Haw]

I would say both are important. But you will always have some smart alexs who will

game the game. Just need to think of those air to ground missels in IL2 that where almost

more used for air to air situations. Or the people, the moment they spawn hit full trottel

and just race reguardless of where they are on the airfield across, often in the process

smashing into other aircraft, or anti aircraft guns. That was very often seen in IL2.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

Anthromorphic controls was a good idea but impractical and everyone hated it.

 

Flaps were used in combat by pilots of certain aircraft.

 

Accuracy is subjective, we aren't subjected to the physical effects of flying acrobatics for 10 minutes and so we can pull high G turns over and over again without a second though. In real life you'd run out of strength.

I would say both are important. But you will always have some smart alexs who will

game the game. Just need to think of those air to ground missels in IL2 that where almost

more used for air to air situations. Or the people, the moment they spawn hit full trottel

and just race reguardless of where they are on the airfield across, often in the process

smashing into other aircraft, or anti aircraft guns. That was very often seen in IL2.

 

Which is exactly why CO-OP mode and having a chat function so you can find good oponents is so important.

 

You only get that stupid behavior in DF servers.

[Finkeren]

I value "accurate combat" over most other things, but not in the sense, you're talking about. To me it's all about realistic portrayal of situational awareness, communication and psychological aspects like self-preservation, all of which I hope to see built into AI one day. What human players do in multiplayer doesn't really concern me. It's not that I don't play online, I do, but I don't consider even the most hardcore "historical" online missions a realistic portrayal of historical air combat. Human players are going to "game the game" no matter what you do, and that's going to spill into even the most historical online setting.

 

Concerning the idea of anthropomorphic controls: I like the idea, but it has proven very hard to do right, and it's propably not worth the effort. 

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

I think a big chunk of that is aircraft dependent. When I was learning to fly, I flew a few different airplanes - all had electric flaps, but the newer ones you basically set the flap switch and the flaps would run to that position.  You could knock it down to 30 degrees, or knock it up to 0, and the flaps would keep going until they got there.  I liked manual flaps, because they were easy and immediate.  Most of the systems I flew with worked kind of like the parking brake in a car.  Push a button and move the lever to whatever position you like very quickly.

 

On the older plane you had to hold the flap switch in position until they ran to the position you wanted, which took a heck of a lot more attention, and you could not make power adjustments, turn on or off carb heat, etc while you were doing it.

 

Basically, what you can and can not do in the cockpit is determined very much by the designers, and should vary from aircraft to aircraft.

[FuriousMeow]

Yeah, there are planes that have combat flaps and other planes that didn't but the pilots would still deploy ~15deg for a brief few seconds to get the nose up just a little bit more for a quick burst.

 

I don't like artificially handicapping just because it might have not been possible, or it very well could have been for some people and not others, etc. As long as the flaps have realistic deployment times, they won't have the "pop out" advantage of just clicking the button as it will still take time to deploy.

[SKG51_robtek]

I think when the aircraft and their behaviour is modelled correctly, a accurate combat is the result.

Accurate combat in the sense that the human pilot can't make his ride do things that in RL were impossible.

That with hindsight, unrealistic balance of powers. etc the battles will differ from reality then, must be taken as a given.

You just can't bring the mass of players to use inferior tactics or inferior numbers to simulate reality then.

[leitmotiv]

Not having anthropomorphic controls, that makes bad or good designs of airplane controls also key part of airplane handling abillity, is same as having automatic pitch control or automatic radiators for all airplane types even the ones that didnt have it

 

regarding acurate combat missions the closest i get to play is in SEOW campaigns, nothing beats 20-40 people playing for mission objective, and i like to read mission briefings and debriefings after the missions by players and planers, always interesting read. 

Edited September 27, 2013 by Yaklover

[Mmaruda]

Anthromorphic controls was a good idea but impractical and everyone hated it.

 

Flaps were used in combat by pilots of certain aircraft.

 

Accuracy is subjective, we aren't subjected to the physical effects of flying acrobatics for 10 minutes and so we can pull high G turns over and over again without a second though. In real life you'd run out of strength.

 

Which is exactly why CO-OP mode and having a chat function so you can find good oponents is so important.

 

You only get that stupid behavior in DF servers.

 

I could not agree more with what you said.

 

Personally I feel BOS should focus on realistic combat. I am fairly confident the team will provide us with as much realism as possible for the resources they have. However, I think few flight sims actually tried to focus on giving the player a proper combat feel. If BOS manages to provide us with a system that would reflect the pilot's fatigue with high G combat and accurately depict the dogfights of WWII that would be something truly unique and a good selling point.

 

As for the flaps thing the OP mentioned - I have played the hell out of IL-2 1946 and I can say I rarely use flaps. Speed is life and you don't want to drop your flaps at 450 KPH. Also, taking your hand of the throttle for a second to move a lever is actually easier and less of an effort that doing anything in a clickable pit - yes they do simulate aircraft operation, but not really pilot's workload and efficiency (you have to take into account the FOV and peripheral vison that eneabled operating stuff in the plane and still keeping good situational awareness, which is not possible in sims like DCS). Anthromorphic controls always felt like a gimmick to me. Interesting but just a gimmick.

 

There will always be those that will try to exploit the game mechanics to win - it's called competitive attitude and cannot be avoided.

[Spag]

Hello Everybody,

 

Cheating should be stopped if at all possible, the realism of operating the aircraft must be kept as accurate as possible.

But having said that, my experience (very limited) of RoF's Multi-Player was that there are a lot of shoot 'em up flyers around.

There are servers who frown upon this sort of cheating, but I noticed that the shoot 'em up servers were the most populated.

I guess we will have to wait and see how serious we are about keeping it like the way it actually was.

 

Cheers,

Spag.

[Bearcat]

What's more important ?

 

Accurate aircraft or accurate combat ?

 

Clod tried to better limit the manipulation of several controls at once to try and stop simmers "gaming the game" by using flaps to gain a turn advantage (If I remember correctly).  If all it takes to use flaps in-game is the not so taxing pushing a button with your finger, it is tempting to use them frequently, is it not ?.  If really using them meant cranking a stiff hand wheel it might have been less tempting to use them quite so frequently.  So do you have the flaps work as they would in the real aircraft despite the fact that they will be abused in game because it requires no effort or concentration to do so or do you have it that the combat is actually more important and introduce a penalty for doing something that real pilots wouldn't have ?

 

Both... but to a degree.. let's face it.. no matter how accurate it gets in a sim it will still be just a sim.. Emil mentioned the physical stress of combat .. but you can't model that fairly.. each person was different.. and if there is a scalable setting you can bet that everyone will select the strongest one.. That's why you see so many guys flying the fastest plane with the biggest guns on DF servers where every plane is available.. and even on COOPs ususally the uber planes go first..

 

Hello Everybody,

 

Cheating should be stopped if at all possible, the realism of operating the aircraft must be kept as accurate as possible.

But having said that, my experience (very limited) of RoF's Multi-Player was that there are a lot of shoot 'em up flyers around.

There are servers who frown upon this sort of cheating, but I noticed that the shoot 'em up servers were the most populated.

I guess we will have to wait and see how serious we are about keeping it like the way it actually was.

 

Cheers,

Spag.

 

Cheating is very subjective ... case in point .. the "trim cheat" if everyone had a HOTAS would it still have been a cheat or wold it have just been another feature that everyone could use.. ? By the standards some use unless everyone has exactly the same hardware those with inferior hardware are victims of "cheats".. On the other hand if a person finds a way to say .. have invulnerability or unlimited ammo regardless to server setting.. that to me is a cheat.. if a person finds a way to spot the enemy sooner than anyone else .. and no ome else has access to that feature but that one person.. that is a cheat ... and by it's nature true cheating is hared to detect. Gaming the game is the virtual equivalent to what every pilot did in real life.. Regardless to what a given feature on any aircraft was intended for if a pilot could exploit it to get more performance in a critical life and death situation they would ... If pi$$ing out of the cockpit could give a pilot a tactical advantage over another one all of them would have been doing it for sure to stay alive..

[HagarTheHorrible]

Cheating is, you are right, subjective.

 

Would the misuse of features on an aircraft in a sim, or to put it another way, using things that were available to the real pilot, and thus simulated in the game, for something that real pilots didn't do, in order to gain an advantage, because the consequences aren't the same cheating ? Should game developers consider this in their depictions of aircraft in order to better conform to reality or should developers model the aircraft as was and just accept that it will probably be exploited and therefore change historic advantages/disadvantages, possibly nullifying all the hard work that goes into making as accurate a representation of an aircrafts FM as possible ?

[FuriousMeow]

But having said that, my experience (very limited) of RoF's Multi-Player was that there are a lot of shoot 'em up flyers around.

There are servers who frown upon this sort of cheating, but I noticed that the shoot 'em up servers were the most populated.

 

I don't even know what this means. Shoot 'em up, cheating, are we in the wild west playing poker in a saloon?

[DD_bongodriver]

Would the misuse of features on an aircraft in a sim, or to put it another way, using things that were available to the real pilot, and thus simulated in the game, for something that real pilots didn't do, in order to gain an advantage, because the consequences aren't the same cheating ?

 

 

People like to play out a little fantasy in computer games, if they are within the bounds of realism then I don't see a problem.

[FuriousMeow]

Taking screenshots online to induce warping when a player is on your tail is taking advantage of a technological limitation with the intent of utilizing that limitation to that individual's advantage - that's cheating.

 

In the past stick stirring used to be a big thing, back when everyone was on modems and online only combat sims utilized a positioning algorithm to guess where the plane would be next based on current flight path and stick motions - this caused severe warping/aircraft impossible to hit and gave the person doing the stick stirring an advantage - cheating.

 

 

Using flaps in combat (historically used), intentionally entering a spin (historically used manuever), dropping landing gear to induce drag (historically used at least for the F4U, and should break off/jam above certain speeds in most aircraft anyway), are not cheating.

[Heywooood]

threads like this one go a long way toward explaining why most flight simmers fly offline...

 

"stick stirring" "trim on a slider" "screenshot warping" "low resolution LOD" "vulching" the list is long and distinguished

 

and the demands put on developers by this vocal minority to tweak or design the simulation around curtailing the hijinks regardless of what it does to historical realism and documanted control surface behavior flies in the face of this groups simultaneous demands for 'realism'

 

...the chasm between real and real"ism" is widening

[DD_bongodriver]

Trim on a slider.....I heard about this, but don't understand it, what is the concept? in my mind there is not much difference between a slider and a rotary control so haven't quite understood this one.

[FuriousMeow]

threads like this one go a long way toward explaining why most flight simmers fly offline...

 

"stick stirring" "trim on a slider" "screenshot warping" "low resolution LOD" "vulching" the list is long and distinguished

 

and the demands put on developers by this vocal minority to tweak or design the simulation around curtailing the hijinks regardless of what it does to historical realism and documanted control surface behavior flies in the face of this groups simultaneous demands for 'realism'

 

...the chasm between real and real"ism" is widening

 

I fly online because I like to fly against people. AI will never be the same. Not only that, you can somewhat socialize online. It's fun, I hate offline. I'll play with stick stirrers, slide trimmers, screenshot warpers, low resolution LOD (what?), vulchers (actually happened in real world wars, so the complaint there is by people who lack the mental capacity to change to another field after being strafed on take off the first time, and also AI do it too) because it's WAY more fun and exhillirating than combating artificial intelligence.

 

The demands to place resolutions on this are very much a vocal minority, even fewer than most online players. They are the ones who think they are insta-aces, could never be shot down, because they fly a superior plane and manage their E the best, waiting for the perfect jump to down their target. They get flabbergasted when the tables are turned and from their superior position they are now damaged and wondering how that happened. Certainly not their flying skills, no must have been something else!

 

Anyway, those types of people are even less than the "vocal minority" of the online crowd. And I'm sorry, offline players are just as vocal in their demands. AI that has to return to base if he's damaged, and must understand every facet of damage that has occured to know that certain damages are less than others so it should remain fighting. AI coding takes so much time and effort that to expect it to be anything other than it currently is, is simply dumbfounding - which is why online is better, no AI coding and surprisingly - the planes are flown like a real human is controlling them! Not to mention demanding a true dynamic offline campaign that requires thousands of hours of research to create units in their appropriate areas, appropriate ground numbers, correct squadrons, OOBs, etc. That in itself is a project that takes so much effort that it still hasn't been done by any flight sim developer.

Trim on a slider.....I heard about this, but don't understand it, what is the concept? in my mind there is not much difference between a slider and a rotary control so haven't quite understood this one.

 

In most titles, trim has an inherent delay. Not so with the old Il-2 series, trim was instantaneous - and so trim would be applied to an axis and upon movement of an axis the trim would be able to go to max giving above max deflection for control surfaces. Additionally the trim didn't appear to have real aerodynamic penalties, so the trim effectively allow the plane's to exceed their aerodynamic capabilities (such as stalls/spins) with near instantaneous control deflection beyond 100%.

 

Of course in most other titles, this does not exist - Il2 just had quite a few holes in it's ground handling/modelling and flight modelling. Slider/rotary/additional axis - same thing as far as HOTAS are concerned.

Edited September 28, 2013 by FuriousMeow

[Furio]

Yeah, there are planes that have combat flaps and other planes that didn't but the pilots would still deploy ~15deg for a brief few seconds to get the nose up just a little bit more for a quick burst.

 

I don't like artificially handicapping just because it might have not been possible, or it very well could have been for some people and not others, etc. As long as the flaps have realistic deployment times, they won't have the "pop out" advantage of just clicking the button as it will still take time to deploy.

 

 

Odd. All real life planes I've flown got the nose down with flaps, which is one of the main reasons they are there...

Flaps apart, unrealistic trim is one of things I appreciate the least in old Il2... And I'm hoping BoS will come up with something better!

[FuriousMeow]

Flaps deploy, aircraft goes up, nose goes down, but stall speed goes down so you now have the opportunity to pull further back at low speeds rather than stall out.

[Crow]

Odd. All real life planes I've flown got the nose down with flaps, which is one of the main reasons they are there...

Flaps apart, unrealistic trim is one of things I appreciate the least in old Il2... And I'm hoping BoS will come up with something better!

Well, the pitching moment of flaps depends on the where they are in relation to the C.G., but I wouldn't worry about their accuracy or the accuracy of the trim. RoF's flight model is very different from the old IL-2 parametrized model. I'm sure that we'll see properly modeled hinge moments and such.

 

As for the OP's question, I think I'm like others in the thread when I say that a good engine with accurate models will lead to accurate combat. If I had to choose between accurate combat vs. accurate aircraft (and keeping in mind that 95% of my flying is online in Dead-is-Dead campaigns or dogfight servers) I'd choose combat. I'm really not sure what kinds of concessions would be made in favor of it, but if it really was a thing, that's what I would choose.

 

If we're worried about "gaming the game," I think that most of the old IL-2 issues will largely be solved in BoS. There were only a couple really bad "exploits" and they aren't present in the RoF engine. Perhaps RoF has exploits of its own, but I've never heard anyone talk about them.

Edited September 28, 2013 by Crow