newbie, which plane is easiest to master and is there a cfg file for my warthog?

[jozeff]

Hello all,

 

I'm completely new to il2 BOS. Perhapsy questions are answered already many times but I find it hard to get a good answer. So here you go!

 

Which plane is easiest to start with? I use Oculus VR?

 

I have thrustmaster warthog and throttle. Is there a config file I can use for the plane I will be advised to go flying? I have used TARGET in the past but found it too complicated for my needs.

 

I have voiceattack installed, maybe that will be of use in VR?

 

 

Thanks for your thoughts!! Appreciate it.

 

Jozeff

 

 

 

 

[ShamrockOneFive]

There's going to be a thousand different answers on which is best to start with. I'll give you four options depending on the type of pilot you are/typically want to be.

 

First, there's the fighter pilot and so I think the two easiest options are the Bf109 (typically the F-4 but the G-2, G-4 are all similar depending on what you own) and the Yak-1/7. The reason I say these is because their handling is easy enough for newer pilots but potent enough that the veterans fly them too. The Yak's have more manual controls but they don't take much to master and engine settings are very easy with the M-105 being able to run at near 100% throttle most of the time (it doesn't have an emergency mode like the 109s do that give those more punch). So both are good at cutting your teeth on these types.

 

Second, some people are better at being attack pilots and here I recommend the Bf110 (either E-2 or G-2) and the IL-2. A little bit more engine management but really these are fairly straightforward to fly, have good performance and punch, and after a little adjustment you'll be doing great in these.

 

All of them take time to master. Any Bf109 is going to be near the top of the pile in terms of combat performance and potential but it takes a skilled pilot and sound tactics to make it into the legend that it was. Until then, just keep learning!

[NiiranenVR]

???? What is voice attack ????? ?

[Ehret]

Just fly what you like (no matter for what reasons - good looks are fine too)... the beginning will be hard no matter what. (all imho)

Edited September 2, 2018 by Ehret

[JonRedcorn]

Don't believe there is a config, you will have to setup yourself. Make sure you bind all stabalizer and pitch settings to the same key since they all do the same thing but for different planes, I'd suggest binding everything essential to your hotas since in VR it will be more difficult to reach for the keyboard, trust me on that one. Things like RPM, Pitch, (can be bound to the same keys as well) Flaps, Gear, cockpit open close, and depending on if your flying bombers or not bomb dropping specific keys, I have everything almost mapped to my t16000 hotas without the need for the keyboard or modifiers. Miracle truly. I'd suggest heading over to the VR subforum and getting acquainted with the 3dmigoto mod to help with spotting if you plan on playing online.

 

Also, VVS is sorely lacking pilots 75% of the time online, I'd suggest flying a yak 1b or the yak 1 69, or a spit if it's available. Otherwise if you have a hardon for Hartmen fly the 109..

Edited September 2, 2018 by 15th_JonRedcorn

[dburne]

3 hours ago, Sire said:

???? What is voice attack ????? ?

 

Voice Activation software that can be used to send commands in game. Great software , well worth the price of admission. Especially helpful in VR.

I use it for radio commands, however you can use it for about anything.

 

https://voiceattack.com/Default.aspx

 

To the OP - Yak-7 is a great plane to cut one's teeth on.

Edited September 2, 2018 by dburne

[Mauf]

Instead of suggesting a particular plane, I would suggest a different take (this assumes no previous experience with combat flight simming):

 

Try to pick a combat style and stick to that until you're proficient with it. With that I mean: Choose either turnfighters or boom&zoom style planes.

Classic turnfighters are the Yaks, Spitfires, I-16. Boom&Zoom style planes are the likes of LA-5s, FW190, BF109 (mostly, there are cases where turning is an option but that's for people who know what they're doing) and Mig3.

When it comes to managing the planes, that's often just plain repetition and studying the manual with German planes having alot more automatisation and russian planes being more hands-on with more levers to handle. It's combat where things get complicated and sticking to a style for the beginning allows you to keep your thoughts straight instead of having to constantly switch between a plane that has to turn hard to defend itself or a runner that has to work with speed and distance for securing their arse.

[Wolferl_1791]

For VR...

Single-player career : MIG 3.

Multi-player: PE 2.

 

Or, if you prefer German planes:

Single-player career : MiG Drei.

Multi-player: Pe Zwei.

 

As for the other issue, learn how to use TARGET, it will be time well spent. You have a Warthog, so you have a responsibility to achieve that which us mortals i.e. 16000M FCS users barely dare to dream about. 

Edited September 2, 2018 by Wolferl_1791

[Finkeren]

The MiG-3 is a really great fighter, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry-level aircraft. It has a few too many quirks and too narrow a speed range where it’s actually good. 

 

I’d pick any of the Yaks: Extremely forgiving, all-round good, easy engine management that isn’t fully automated (meaning you actually learn something from flying it) and the Yak-1b has awesome field of vision.

[Kandiru]

Joytokey is essential for VR, a haptic feedback glove with 3D desktop would be phenomenal:)

 

Just make sure you program the mouse into four coolie hat buttons, choosing the button, then picking "MOUSE" and moving the slider to about 25, this will give you a good combo between rapid cursor movement and precision, program the red button next to the coolie hat to L-button.

 

Good luck with VR, I am waiting for a few more years after a month with the Odyssey and Vive Pro, sptting and identification were a total bxxxxx for me, furball servers like WOL were fun, above all loved how real the cockpit felt.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Kandiru

[Mauf]

19 minutes ago, Finkeren said:

The MiG-3 is a really great fighter, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry-level aircraft. It has a few too many quirks and too narrow a speed range where it’s actually good. 

 

I’d pick any of the Yaks: Extremely forgiving, all-round good, easy engine management that isn’t fully automated (meaning you actually learn something from flying it) and the Yak-1b has awesome field of vision.

 

But the Mig3 is the best looking of them all. If you go out, go out in style:D

Edited September 2, 2018 by Mauf

[Finkeren]

2 minutes ago, Mauf said:

 

But the Mig3 is the best looking of them all. If you go out, go out in style:D

 

Trust me: You’ll hear NO objection from me on that point. 

 

I’m probably the biggest MiG fanboi on this forum.

[CrazyDuck]

Easiest plane to master - hmm, I'd say an IL-2. Very stable in flight, stable gun platform, easy engine management, sturdy engine. Deadly ground attacker, and murderous vs low and slow early bombers (their puny defensive guns can only scratch the paint of you, nothing more).

 

If you were asking about easiest fighter to master, than that's another story. I guess Yak-7 (which actually was a double seater trainer version of Yak-1 initially) and a 109F/G would be my picks.

Edited September 2, 2018 by CrazyDuck

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

The Yak-7 will be easy to fly while first learning, and continue to serve you well, remaining competitive, as you progress.

[D3adCZE]

I think @Mauf said it perfectly. 

I'd like to add my personal experience of a mediocre pilot.Depends on your experience with air combat. Firstly I would choose mentality "I want to survive" over "I want to kill everything that moves". With the first one, you will get fewer kills, but you will survive for longer period of time, remember, disengaging from a fight is not cowardice. The latter one might give you alot of kills, but you will be nice pancake near Karpovka rather early. Now to the question:

 

a) If you like the idea of easy defense, stick to Yaks and Spitfires. Due to their turn rate they are easy to fight in and defend in. With very potent guns. However it is VERY EASY to turn yourself to death. Due to it's turn rate it is very easy to burn your energy until you are a sitting duck on deck waiting for somebody to pick you off. These types of planes are more natural to newcomers. However it is hard to be offensive because you lack the energy retention to pull you through some maneuvers successfully. 

 

b) However, if you want to learn something about energy management, I would recommend sticking to La5, 190 and 109, where IMHO 109G-6 would be the best trainer, since it has worse power/weight ratio compared to it's predecessors and is also heavier. With these kind of planes you will have to eat discipline for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as they require a lot of it. They are generally faster(except G6), climb about same as it's contemporaries, they turn worse, but have insane energy retention which you can utilize in shallow maneuvers to energy trap your opponents. Once you gain some experience, you will see that these aircraft are superior in combat, because, with properly applied discipline, they can dictate the course of the fight and they are better suited for pair tactics as well. However you will have to fight with your brain, not your muscles. Your only defense in these aircraft is it's speed, and in 190 or La5 speed with roll rate. Utilizing these properties of the aircraft takes lot of skill. If you go this way, you will be better pilot(IMHO), since planes in paragraph a) have potential to teach you a lot of bad habits that will kill you as you progress to more advanced planes. On the other hand, you must account for the fact, that your ass will be handed to you on a silver plate in every sortie, until you learn how to do it properly. Frankly, the thrill of killing more agile enemy because you outsmarted him is addictive.

 

And reading something about Basic Fighter Maneuvers(BFM) and Advanced Fighter Maneuvers(AFM) will help too.

See you in the sky.

Happy hunting.

[III/JG52_Al-Azraq]

18 hours ago, 15th_JonRedcorn said:

 

 

Also, VVS is sorely lacking pilots 75% of the time online, I'd suggest flying a yak 1b or the yak 1 69, or a spit if it's available. Otherwise if you have a hardon for Hartmen fly the 109..

I agree about this, I only have been playing the game for about a couple of months and played exclusively VSS. I would like to fly germans as well but every time I joined a game there is a very high lack of team balance in favour of blues so I end up with my Yak 1/7 or Mig 3.

 

Join VSS! We need you!

Edited September 3, 2018 by Al-Azraq

[ST_ami7b5]

14 hours ago, Finkeren said:

 

Trust me: You’ll hear NO objection from me on that point. 

 

I’m probably the biggest MiG fanboi on this forum.

 

Your avatar should be banned, Finkie :-D

[Ehret]

There two kinds of turns - the continuous turning and the instantaneous turning. The Spit (or the Yak) is very good at the former but for the latter... you might want the FW-190 or (imho even better at this) the P-39.

 

I've found that as long you have good (+500km/h) velocity and some altitude to accelerate afterwards, it's possible to evade almost every bounce.

Sometimes you can reverse in this way too - try to get as fast as possible, turn full WEP, then do instantaneous turn riding on the edge of a blackout. You may not only gain an angle but the enemy (if did not realize the trap) could end withing reach of your guns, too.

 

[Herne]

16 hours ago, Finkeren said:

 

Trust me: You’ll hear NO objection from me on that point. 

 

I’m probably the biggest MiG fanboi on this forum.

 

What's going on with your profile pic ? it doesn't seem to be ageing very well

[Wulfen]

I find the 109 rock solid, with the Spitfire close behind. The majority of the aircraft are fine, with the 190 I find keenest to get into a a spin.

[Blackhawk_FR]

I would suggest the Spitfire (even if it's not the easiest in engine management), but it's such a baby plane that you wouldn't learn a lot...

 

It also depends which "way of fighting" you are looking for. 

 

- If you prefer energy fighting, situation awareness to get the kill before being seen, in other words: fighting with your brain instead of your stick, then 109 will fit perfectly. 

 

- If you prefer the "art of dogfight", smart fighting maneuvers to return the advantage in your favor, in other words: fighting with your instinct and your stick, then Yak will fit perfectly. Spitfire also, but it's terribly easy and so, boring as hell to fly.

[jozeff]

Wow thank you guys!

 

What a wonderful community here!

So many answers and fanatic il2 fans. More information than I could have hoped for.

 

I'll give the yak 1 a go I think. Does it matter which yak I choose?

 

Is there an English translation of the cockpit like in DCS somewhere?

 

Tnx!!

 

Jozeff

[Blackhawk_FR]

All Yaks have almost the same behavior so it doesn't matter. 

 

To get used to cockpit, Requiem's videos are really good ("Learn to fly the...").

https://www.youtube.com/user/RequiemBoS/playlists

[ShamrockOneFive]

6 hours ago, jozeff said:

Wow thank you guys!

 

What a wonderful community here!

So many answers and fanatic il2 fans. More information than I could have hoped for.

 

I'll give the yak 1 a go I think. Does it matter which yak I choose?

 

Is there an English translation of the cockpit like in DCS somewhere?

 

Tnx!!

 

Jozeff

 

Yep, it's a great bunch here!?

 

The Yak-1 S.69, Yak-1B S.127 and Yak-7B S.36 are all pretty similar types to each other. The Yak-1B has the highest performance followed closely by the Yak-7B and then the Yak-1 but all three are fairly effective and you can mostly fight toe to toe with a Bf109 under 3000-4000 meters. They have their quirks and we could probably do a whole thread on flying the Yak. It won't take too long to learn on them as they are fairly forgiving.

[=X51=VC_]

Don't be put off by the number of levers in a Yak cockpit, nearly all of the engine management is "set and forget". So while there is room to optimise, it's also possible while learning to do an entire flight without touching a single engine control, and nothing will go spectacularly wrong.

 

I think you've made a good choice. Energy fighting requires a lot of practice and discipline and is not necessarily intuitive to a new player just looking to shoot at something. It's the more advanced and effective tactic so you should learn it eventually, but the planes that are best suited to it might frustrate you early on. The Yak is fun because it can just be thrown around in a knife-fight.

[E4GLEyE]

If I can add my 2 cents (or Garas/Garases in my case) I would also recommend the Ju 87, great divebomber, and is very forgiving on the controls side, It and the Il2 were my two first planes to play around, they are great "little" aircraft. For fighters, the usual bf109 f4 and yak series.

Edited September 4, 2018 by E4GLEyE

[III/JG52_Al-Azraq]

17 hours ago, E4GLEyE said:

If I can add my 2 cents (or Garas/Garases in my case) I would also recommend the Ju 87, great divebomber, and is very forgiving on the controls side, It and the Il2 were my two first planes to play around, they are great "little" aircraft. For fighters, the usual bf109 f4 and yak series.

 

The problem is that dive bombing is not that easy and those planes are not suited for dogfighting in my opinion.

 

By the way, any guide on how to divebomb?