Russian compass

[Barnacles]

In the Russian aircraft the compass repeat is labled N,E,S and W. Does anyone know why it isn't C,В,Ю and З?  

[Herne]

4 minutes ago, 71st_AH_Barnacles said:

In the Russian aircraft the compass repeat is labled N,E,S and W. Does anyone know why it isn't C,В,Ю and З?  

 

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure if it was then I would always be lost.

[Frenchy56]

17 minutes ago, =FEW=Herne said:

 

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure if it was then I would always be lost.

Learn Cyrillic my friend.

[303_Bies]

Strange thing is why even in expert mode when all hud is hidden the white artificiall compass is still there (you can turn in off manually) when all planes present in the game have compasses in their cockpits?

cheers

[Herne]

1 minute ago, bies said:

Strange thing is why even in expert mode when all hud is hidden the white artificiall compass is still there (you can turn in off manually) when all planes present in the game have compasses in their cockpits?

cheers

 

yes you can set the default to off, I think its in gui options under hud instruments or something like that. Almost landed at an enemy AF in my Spit because the compass locks up in hard manoeuvres and I was disorientated and heading the wrong way lol.  

[303_Bies]

1 minute ago, =FEW=Herne said:

Almost landed at an enemy AF in my Spit because the compass locks up in hard manoeuvres and I was disorientated and heading the wrong way lol.  

Me also, but this should be the beauty of the game in expert mode, i'm i right?

[klebor]

Yes, it was so irritating in old IL2 you don't use the compass inside the cockpit but some artificial GUI. It breaks the immersion, i think it should be locked like speed, alt and the rest and not visible in expert. It makes the navigation only a tiny bit harder and a ton more fun and immersive.

And people which don't like looking at the compass in the cockpit are playing with GPS anyway so noone would be upset.

[Brano]

My wild guess it has smtg to do with international agreements in seafaring navigation and comms. Having so many nations,languages,alphabets etc. it was only logical to have common system when sailing in international/foreign waters.

[Barnacles]

6 minutes ago, Brano said:

My wild guess it has smtg to do with international agreements in seafaring navigation and comms. Having so many nations,languages,alphabets etc. it was only logical to have common system when sailing in international/foreign waters.

Sounds legit. I was looking at pictures of Mig 3 cockpits and it looks 'correct' in game. The i16 was exported too so that makes sense.

[Dakpilot]

I was 'trolled' by one of my lecturers at flight school who carefully explained to us that Russian aircraft had compasses that  had 400 degrees and used a different system...

 

true story

 

Having since flown a lot of Russian aircraft types and often struggled a bit with cyrillic placards and instruments my memory tells me that compass and nav instruments were always western style (Mil and civ)

 

Cheers, Dakpilot

[TP_Silk]

Could also be because the compass units themselves were imported from Western sources. I emphasise that this is purely a guess and not based on any fact.

[-SF-Disarray]

I don't see why the compasses would have to be imported by the Soviets, they aren't that hard to build. If Soviet manufactures could figure out how to make a whole airplane I should think a compass wouldn't be beyond them. It also clashes with Soviet doctrine concerning the skill and craftsmanship of the Soviet people, "We are the best at everything etc."

 

I did some research on why compasses are done this way and I wasn't able to pin down the answer exactly. I think it has to do with foreign traditions being adopted after Peter's Grand Embassy in the 18th century. A lot of foreign practices and vocabulary were brought into the Empire and adopted wholesale. A lot of Russian military terms, the older ones especially, can be seen to have German and French roots like ranks or classifications of soldiers. Compasses may have been one of these things that were adopted in this way back then and the tradition of using Western style compasses just stuck. This isn't explicitly stated in any source I can find, English or Russian language, but it fits with what I could find and historic trends.

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, TP_Silk said:

Could also be because the compass units themselves were imported from Western sources. I emphasise that this is purely a guess and not based on any fact.

 

They weren't.

[69th_chuter]

Why is magnetic North 0 (or 360) degrees?  On these maps in WW2 it should be between five and seven degrees East.

[Wolferl_1791]

 

15 hours ago, 71st_AH_Barnacles said:

In the Russian aircraft the compass repeat is labled N,E,S and W. Does anyone know why it isn't C,В,Ю and З?  

 

North : Sever (written as Cевер)

East: Vostok (written as Bосток)

South: Yug (witten as юг)

West: Zapad (written as запад)

[LukeFF]

1 hour ago, chuter said:

Why is magnetic North 0 (or 360) degrees?  On these maps in WW2 it should be between five and seven degrees East.

 

Declination isn't modeled.

[-SF-Disarray]

Even on modern military maps declination isn't accounted for in the cartography. They are just printed with north being the top of the sheet and a declination notation is put at the bottom with all the other info.

[unreasonable]

In BoS maps the compass N points directly at the map north.  You can make a mission with the plane on the ground oriented with a heading of zero, the compass will be exactly at N. (I only checked Lapino).  Ie magnetic heading = true heading.

 

So either the magnetic heading has been set to match a true north, or (less likely and a pain to check) the maps have been drawn with magnetic north at the top. Either way, you do not have to make the adjustments that actual navigators have to using real maps.

Edited June 30, 2018 by unreasonable

[69th_chuter]

5 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Declination isn't modeled.

 

 

I get that, and to actually vary the declination by each specific location and date would be ridiculous.  On the other hand, how hard would it be to, say, pick the center of the map as the location and pick a date, say, Oct 1943, and simply "twist" the compass texture that number of degrees.  Perfect, no but incredibly good enough.  Each map would be slightly different and you wouldn't have that exceedingly rare perfect alignment of magnetic and true North that just feels goofy ... at least to me - lol.  

[unreasonable]

I agree - the data is easy enough to find, from this nice interactive map for instance.  https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/

 

The BoX maps are small so you could use the same number for the whole map and never be more than fractions of a degree out, certainly far less than your measurement error looking at an in-flight compass.  (Which also has a huge chunk of iron a few feet away). 

 

But then there are other instrument errors that are not modeled such as PECs, which are very significant at low speeds. I would prefer to have them all modeled, but the developers are just dealing with the reality that this would all be far too confusing for a large portion of their customer base.

[-SF-Disarray]

I think it is more an issue of little game play effect for the effect of modeling the given reality. At the end of the day skewing the compasses for magnetic offset would have far less impact than other things they could be spending time on, like flight modeling or damage modeling or 3D modeling of various things in the game world. Also I wouldn't classify magnetic declination as 'far too confusing' for a lot of people. I have brought people up to speed with the concept in a matter of minutes who have never heard of such a thing before. It isn't exactly rocket science, now is it.

[unreasonable]

45 minutes ago, Disarray said:

I think it is more an issue of little game play effect for the effect of modeling the given reality. At the end of the day skewing the compasses for magnetic offset would have far less impact than other things they could be spending time on, like flight modeling or damage modeling or 3D modeling of various things in the game world. Also I wouldn't classify magnetic declination as 'far too confusing' for a lot of people. I have brought people up to speed with the concept in a matter of minutes who have never heard of such a thing before. It isn't exactly rocket science, now is it.

 

No, but neither is PEC: which was modeled in the game in the very beginning but was removed because too many people found it confusing. If the team had wanted to simulate navigation accurately they could have done so trivially easily: it is just a single number adjustment for each map.    

 

    I am sticking with H.L.Mencken's view with this one. 

Edited June 30, 2018 by unreasonable

[Inkophile]

On 6/29/2018 at 11:07 AM, bies said:

Strange thing is why even in expert mode when all hud is hidden the white artificiall compass is still there (you can turn in off manually) when all planes present in the game have compasses in their cockpits?

cheers

 

There are individual options to set for the server, but this far all (or at least 99%) have not disabled the compass.

 

 

On 6/29/2018 at 4:05 PM, Dakpilot said:

I was 'trolled' by one of my lecturers at flight school who carefully explained to us that Russian aircraft had compasses that  had 400 degrees and used a different system...

 

 

The Russians do have their own mils-system though which has higher ceiling than standard and NATO mils, but that's hardly relevant for navigation.

[303_Bies]

6 minutes ago, Inkoslav said:

There are individual options to set for the server, but this far all (or at least 99%) have not disabled the compass.

 

I couldn't find this option in server setup. Ill check again. Thanks.

[Inkophile]

19 minutes ago, bies said:

 

I couldn't find this option in server setup. Ill check again. Thanks.

 

I'm pretty sure I've seen it, but I may very well be wrong.

[-TBC-AeroAce]

So a site I just looked at says mag declination is 9 degrees east for Stalingrad.  Although it literally would take 1 line of code to add this it is not really important as you only need to pay attention to it of your flight is of such a distance that the declination changes.

 

In any case we would need adjustable directional gyros to play around with this.

Edited July 4, 2018 by AeroAce

[unreasonable]

A degree is just under 18 mils, so 7 degrees (which is what the interactive maps says for 1942) is almost 126 mils.  1 mil is 1m at 1,000m.  That means that after 1,000m you would be (nearly)126 m off line compared to true north, after 100km (ie 15 minutes flying) you would be 12.6km off line. This is quite enough to get you lost especially in poor visibility over unfamiliar terrain. No change in declination is needed -  just the difference between map bearings and magnetic bearings: a 7 degree error is huge. 

 

I agree it is just a little thing and nothing to lose any sleep over: would have been a neat addition though, helping people to understand a little more about navigation.

[danielprates]

1 hour ago, AeroAce said:

In any case we would need adjustable directional gyros to play around with this.

 

Which are already there btw,  whenever the RL plane had them. Only,  they are tied to the compass,  serving no purpose. 

[-TBC-AeroAce]

40 minutes ago, danielprates said:

 

Which are already there btw,  whenever the RL plane had them. Only,  they are tied to the compass,  serving no purpose. 

 

I know they are there the key word was adjustable. 

[Sgt_Joch]

On ‎6‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 5:07 AM, bies said:

Strange thing is why even in expert mode when all hud is hidden the white artificiall compass is still there (you can turn in off manually) when all planes present in the game have compasses in their cockpits?

cheers

 

That is a holdover from BoS. As I recall, the reason given is that in the Yak-1 and Il-2, the compass is hidden by the gunsight and not every player, especially in Russia, is using "fancy" flying gear like Track-ir.

[danielprates]

3 hours ago, AeroAce said:

 

I know they are there the key word was adjustable. 

 

My dude .... ? I was agreeing with you,  not saying that you didnt know they were there. My gist was: since they are there anyway,  it would probably only take some lines of code to get them to work properly,  with a simple key binding.

[LukeFF]

Guys, just assume the compasses have already been adjusted for declination, and be done with it. That, and IMO, being able to set a desired compass heading with the outer ring on German compasses and with American compasses would be far more useful.

Edited July 4, 2018 by LukeFF

[69th_chuter]

20 hours ago, AeroAce said:

So a site I just looked at says mag declination is 9 degrees east for Stalingrad.  ...

 

 

Just for the record, in 1943 it was a bit less than 7°. 

 

Yeah, that's the way I am ... and I have to live with myself around the clock.

[unreasonable]

2 hours ago, chuter said:

 

 

Just for the record, in 1943 it was a bit less than 7°. 

 

Yeah, that's the way I am ... and I have to live with myself around the clock.

 

Most of Battle of Stalingrad was in 1942, when it was almost exactly 7 degrees. See site I linked earlier.

 

(That is the way I am too  ) 

[J2_Trupobaw]

I suppose N-S-W-E was an international standard that Soviets carried over from seaborne navigation into aviation. I know that even back when I went to school, with Poland still firmly under Soviet thumb, Polish maps used N-S-W-E  as directions.

[Barnacles]

14 minutes ago, LsV_Trupobaw said:

I suppose N-S-W-E was an international standard that Soviets carried over from seaborne navigation into aviation. I know that even back when I went to school, with Poland still firmly under Soviet thumb, Polish maps used N-S-W-E  as directions.

I think it must be, however if you look at antique soviet compasses they have the cyrillic lables, to they did use them, just not in their warplanes it seems.

[JonRedcorn]

On 6/30/2018 at 5:10 AM, unreasonable said:

 

No, but neither is PEC: which was modeled in the game in the very beginning but was removed because too many people found it confusing. If the team had wanted to simulate navigation accurately they could have done so trivially easily: it is just a single number adjustment for each map.    

 

    I am sticking with H.L.Mencken's view with this one. 

What does PEC stand for?

[unreasonable]

PEC = Pressure Error Correction, or Position Error Correction. I have seen both used, not sure which is "official" - I think Position.  This is the error due to the imperfect nature of the pitot-static instrument that is used to estimate speed that you read as Indicated Air Speed in the cockpit.  You can get an error in this reading that is related to your speed and another related to your AoA. Especially at low speeds and high AoA, your IAS can be significantly off what it would be if the instrument was perfect.  In the game our instruments are perfect - that is why almost all the BoS planes have stall speeds in the tech specs that are a few mph/kph higher than the figures given in manuals.   

[JonRedcorn]

Thank you for the explanation.