icons in the Map...

[Guest deleted@50488]

Navigating in il2-BoS extensive witness is a pain, and although the scenery looks great, after all the time I've been playing BoS I still have great difficulty finding out where I am...

 

In some Expert online servers I can watch the position of my aircraft with the "O" view for a while after leaving the Base, but as soon as I get a few miles from there, it vanishes....

 

Is there an option to allow, even in expert mode, for the "own aircraft" icon to persist beyond that distance, ven without icons for other aircraft being shown?

 

It would be great - at least for me - to have options to:

 

1) allow for persistent own plane icon to be displayed in the Map or "O" view

2) allow for persistent "team only" icons ( air ) to be displyed in the Map or "O" view

3) further allow, should the mission designer want it that way, to display persistent icons for all (air) objects...

 

 

[71st_AH_Mastiff]

I have over 190 hours in the Stalingrad map, I can get around fine by sight. you just need to practice looking at the landscape and cities they match up on the map.

[OhhhhChihuahua]

I have over 190 hours in the Stalingrad map, I can get around fine by sight. you just need to practice looking at the landscape and cities they match up on the map.

 

That's a bad argument. Sure, there will always be people saying "it's fine the way it is". There's a question of numbers though.

 

IMO, the fact that this icon was removed is a diseaster for online playing. I can get around well too but it doesn't change the fact that now 99% of time people just hang over their airports like vultures  and since the icon was removed the overall gameplay worsened. That's stupid. Most people can only navigate to the nearest enemy AP and GOOD LUCK with people learning considering ULTRA LOW online numbers. It would be much more logical to remove enemy planes showing up on map  GPS style than your posistion. 

 

Servers on which the icon is allowed ironically provide us with much more immerse gameplay, yesterday I saw a formation of bombers and fighters protecting them, going for a very distant target: mostly because they knew where they were going. Yes, you can use a paper map. Yes, you can count how many km you fly in what time and calculate how long and what direction you should be going to reach a certain target. No, it's just not appealing to most players. 

 

I'm not talking about using a GPS-Style mini map. I'm only saying that opening MAP and being able to see where you're headed wasn't a bad idea and in my opinion the quality of MP gameplay went down since that change. 

Edited February 18, 2015 by OhhhhChihuahua

[KoN_]

I have asked for the mini map tobe put back  into the expert servers , but was informed that its not possible , seems really daft to me that this options is not available , as we all know it works fine in ROF , and all other flightsims , il-2 1946 .. DCS ....it seems we have gone backwards and not used the good features from other flight Sims .

 

Like i said the other week you are loosing people and the  servers are nearly always empty 3-4 people flying  .

 

Twice i went to fly online last night to find empty servers at 22:00 gmt . what is going on . ???   should be full to the max .

 

Personaly if you fly  in an expert server there should  NO  icons as that is not a real life situation , it should have a fog of war like real life .

A mini map would help to navergate while you fly , looking out the cockpit and looking at the map at same time if far more realistic .

Edited February 18, 2015 by II./JG77_Con

[wellenbrecher]

 

As long as you remember which side of the Volga you're on, navigating is hella easy.

As a German to find Stalingrad -> go East

As a Russian -> go West

 

Some examples for A/Fs:

Pitomnik is the field with the bright parallel runways directly West from the "dent" in the centre Stalingrad.

Gumrak is a single runway field with a very dark texture directly West of the island at the Nothern part of the city.

Ver*somethingsomething* Akthuba is a single runway field with a light texture you can easy find by going East following the river flowing into the Volga at the Northern island next to the city.

Beketovka is a single runway field with a light texture easily findable by extending the line of perfectly straight trees to the West of Beketvoka, which itself is easy to find as it's a town directly south of Stalingrad on the Volga.

Grishin you can easily find by following the Volga south until you're almost past the huge island south of Stalingrad.

 

And so on. It really is rather easy once you can place a few of the unchanging and obvious landmarks.

 

 

 

Practise is the key.

Finding your way around is piss easy. And if you're not willing to put in the effort needed to learn simple stuff like this then maybe - and this isn't meant as a slight, just for the record - Expert isn't for you.

[OhhhhChihuahua]

 

 

 

 

 

Practise is the key.

Finding your way around is piss easy. And if you're not willing to put in the effort needed to learn simple stuff like this then maybe - and this isn't meant as a slight, just for the record - Expert isn't for you.

 

 

The problem is dropping player numbers and the decision of disabling navigation icon is one of many reasons it's been this way. Soon we'll navigate easily on our own.  Now, you might like playing pseudo campaign, but for me single player doesn't exist in this game and never will. Only thing that makes me play BOS is MP and how it looks now we all know. Just saying. 

Edited February 18, 2015 by OhhhhChihuahua

[wellenbrecher]

When it's optional it will lead to a situation where you effectively be forced to have to use it if you want a level playing field.

Folks use it, other folks use it to stay competitive, which leads to more folks to use it and so on.

 

Honestly, stick with it, the map is reeeeeeeally easy to learn.

 

The problem is dropping player numbers and the decision of disabling navigation icon is one of many reasons it's been this way. Soon we'll navigate easily on our own.  Now, you might like playing pseudo campaign, but for me single player doesn't exist in this game and never will. Only thing that makes me play BOS is MP and how it looks now we all know. Just saying. 

Even giving the option to have GPS like icons for yourself and/or all friendlies on an Expert server is a sure-fire way to kill what remains of the sim community. People will use it to gain and advantage, which then leads to more folks using it to even things out and so on and on.

Heck, the fact that apparently in your experience the current server population is so full of (horribly, disappointingly bad, if I might say so) vulchers and little else should speak volumes by and on its own. And attracting more of that ilk and making it easier for those folks is most decidedly not the way to go, but that might just be me liking a mature-ish, challenging and polite online environment to fly and fight in.

FMB and DServer could help here eventually, I give Bearcat that much in his constant droning how it will save everything and be a divine revelation for flight sims. Assuming the engine will ever be able to handle large amounts of players and AI on top of it, that is.

Creating complex, challenging and interactive online missions a la game we're not allowed to mention is the way forward, not dumbing it down.

 

 

And no, I do not like playing the pseudo campaign. In fact I am pretty sure I am numbered amongst the trolls and haters by the BoS Defence Squad for being bored out of my mind with it and disgusted by everything that it entails.

In fact you shouldn't read anything I ever post because it's all useless trolling or something. It's hard to keep track.

Edited February 18, 2015 by wellenbrecher

[OhhhhChihuahua]

Even giving the option to have GPS like icons for yourself and/or all friendlies on an Expert server is a sure-fire way to kill what remains of the sim community. People will use it to gain and advantage, which then leads to more folks using it to even things out and so on and on.

Heck, the fact that apparently in your experience the current server population is so full of (horribly, disappointingly bad, if I might say so) vulchers and little else should speak volumes by and on its own. And attracting more of that ilk and making it easier for those folks is most decidedly not the way to go, but that might just be me liking a mature-ish, challenging and polite online environment to fly and fight in.

FMB and DServer could help here eventually, I give Bearcat that much in his constant droning how it will save everything and be a divine revelation for flight sims. Assuming the engine will ever be able to handle large amounts of players and AI on top of it, that is.

Creating complex, challenging and interactive online missions a la game we're not allowed to mention is the way forward, not dumbing it down.

 

 

And no, I do not like playing the pseudo campaign. In fact I am pretty sure I am numbered amongst the trolls and haters by the BoS Defence Squad for being bored out of my mind with it and disgusted by everything that it entails.

In fact you shouldn't read anything I ever post because it's all useless trolling or something. It's hard to keep track.

 

Sure thing we need more content for this game to grow and as I said in some other posts the MP system in BOS feels like it's 90s again. We'll have to disagree on the icon thingie though - I don't think people could expoit the fact they saw their location ( only their, not the enemy, not the friendly ) on the map in any way. I think the population would improve, we should encourage people that want to play expert settings and make it a little bit easier for them, not send them away to normal servers which - we all know it - totally suck

Edited February 18, 2015 by OhhhhChihuahua

[Leaf]

Personally I think it's great they removed icons. It's "expert" for a reason. The navigating and spotting is part of the challenge. 

Once the FMB and Dserver are released it would be nice to see a kind of intermediate server. Realistic missions but "normal" difficulty. I'm sure that would be quite popular.

[StG2_zulu354]

It's fine how it is. May the small Minimap should return, but we don't need icons on expert. Where would be the historical correctness with icons, everyone wants to claim in every other topic?

Edited February 18, 2015 by StG2_zulu354

[312_Tygr]

In expert - remove all the icons, remove BS "waypoint guidance", introduce (re-introduce) only the path with distances and times into the map - or possibly give us tools to doodle on the map ourselves before the flight.

 

And get rid of the radar as well.

 

But also make it possible for people to finely tune the experience to their liking in SP (and MP for server admins as well - let them choose how they want to run it, I know I'll always choose a server with as few of those "aids" as possible).

[Geralt]

... well, in many years of flying since the early days of the original IL2-Sturmovik, many years ago, I realized that it is actually useless to argue on forums about this or that issue.

The devs always pretend to listen to what the flightism community wants but they rarely really do, best example is the missing "real campaign" for single-players in this sim.

Everyone could have known before release that it would be appreciated by many pilots to have a "real" single-player campaign but what did they do instead ...

... anyway, for this topic here "icons on the map" I break my rule, never argue on the forum.

 

Not everyone wants to fly arround and navigate with map, watch and compass in order to know where he is, not even on a so called "full real" server.

I´d also prefer to see my plane on the map in order to know where I am, especially on an all white wintermap where you cannot even distinguish frozen rivers from the rest of the landscape. But as it is now, as you mentioned already, the servers are empty. That`s the answer to that issue. The few who dont mind this icon-thing, they can go and fly with themselves on the empty servers, is that the solution .... ?

Edited February 18, 2015 by Geralt

[Sokol1]

 

 

...icon to be displayed

 

(IMO) Allow more visual aids optional in EXPERT mode will dived more the small community, since are players who do not accept this in his "real full" (are people asking for turn off this icon around bases), and the NORMAL mode always have all aids and allow use CEM like in EXPERT (be configuring* the only difference between the two modes became external vision).

 

The high flexible icon system (mp-dotrange) of IL-2 1946 - allow for example the server show only the friend players name over planes under ~1 KM to avoid Mister Magoo's friendly fire and no icons on enemy - never have a consensus...

 

Someone who are used to play offline with visual aids on never will be comfortable in MP servers "Full EXPERT". 

 

* Individuals can make NORMAL mode more "hardcore" instead ask for make "hardcore" more NORMAL to match his preferences.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Sokol1

[-TBC-AeroAce]

This convo is the same as many others I.e personal choice of setting whether sp u set or server administration sets it. We all have our preferred way..... No more said

[Geralt]

This convo is the same as many others I.e personal choice of setting whether sp u set or server administration sets it. We all have our preferred way..... No more said

... you are right ... that`s why I usually only read the forum threads ...