Wings falling off

[TWC_TWC_SLAG]

I’ve watched a lot of vids of BOX, and can’t believe how often a wing comes off of a plane that’s been shot up.  Does anyone else think it is overdone?  Real gun camera films don’t seem to show so many.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Were those gun camera films from US fighters firing .50cal machine guns? I'll admit that most of the gun camera shots that I've seen are either from US fighters or from German fighters attacking heavy bombers and n both cases I expect fewer de-wing situations than when 20mm and 37mm cannons are used on aircraft. I've seen very little in the way of Eastern Front gun camera footage.

 

I wouldn't necessarily go by limited gun camera reels unless you were able to produce a statistically significant number of instances to do a comparison by. Anything else is too easily prone to selection bias.

[TWC_TWC_SLAG]

You have a good point.  I still think the number of incidents in BOX is too high, though.  Either way, it’s not a big deal, just an observation.

[Legioneod]

I've seen German aircraft lose wings in US guncam footage but not often. I don't think I've ever seen a US fighter lose a wing in German guncam but I'm sure it happened a bit.

One thing that bugs me is that both wings can't be shot off, I've always wanted to fold some wings but never could.

I do agree that it is a bit high in game imo.

 

One thing that is incredible to me is the accuracy of the pilots, my gunnery is not even on the same level as these men and I just fly in a game. I can't imagine how difficult it was irl.

 

 

Edited September 10, 2018 by Legioneod

[DD_Perfesser]

Quote

One thing that bugs me is that both wings can't be shot off, I've always wanted to fold some wings but never could.

 

The wing isn't cut off by bullets.

When its flying the wing is trying to bend upwards. When pulling G's it want to bends upwards a lot. 

If the plane is built to handle a 9g turn and you're already putting 3 g's load in a turn you don't have to damage much of the structure for the wing to be torn off from flight loads.

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, SLAG said:

I’ve watched a lot of vids of BOX, and can’t believe how often a wing comes off of a plane that’s been shot up.

 

Confirmation bias - you've seen "lots of vids" showing dramatic footage of wings falling off, and so you've concluded that there's a problem in the game. Unless you're seeing this consistently when you are playing the game, your observations are flawed.

[DD_Perfesser]

What doesn't make sense is the times that you shoot and the wing stays on for 30 seconds or a minute, then falls off like damage is accumulating.

 

[Legioneod]

52 minutes ago, DD_Perfesser said:

 

The wing isn't cut off by bullets.

When its flying the wing is trying to bend upwards. When pulling G's it want to bends upwards a lot. 

If the plane is built to handle a 9g turn and you're already putting 3 g's load in a turn you don't have to damage much of the structure for the wing to be torn off from flight loads.

When a wing fails due to damage from bullets or cannon rounds I'd consider that being shot off. Regardless, both wings can't come completely off in this game.

[Finkeren]

Some planes do have a bit of a “glass wing”. At different points in the history of the sim’s development, it has applied to different aircraft. For instance when the Yak-1’s.69 was first released, its wings were very prone to breaking off. 

 

At the moment the fighter that seems to have the weakest wings is the 109. I fly the MiG-3 a lot in career mode and usually use the standard armament of 2xShKAS 1xUBS (even though the game tries to force the 2xUBS) and roughly 1/3 of my kills against 109s is a wing coming off, which quite frankly seems a bit much for such a weak armament.

 

However, the worst offender in my opinion is the A-20. It should really be very structurally strong, yet it loses a wing to even light cannon fire very easily. 

 

Still, it is only a few aircraft, where I think it’s a problem, and not a very big problem at that. Apart from the A-20, wings generally only fall off aircraft that have received enough damage, that you’d expect them to go down anyway.

 

And that might be where the issue really lies: In our combat-sim way of fighting, we might create a bias towards wings coming off. A wing breaking off an aircraft is the strongest visual confirmation of a guaranteed kill. Once the wing is off, we know that out target is going down immediately. Few other visual clues can give us this assurance. Therefore we might have a tendency to fire at a target right up ‘till the point where it disintegrates in mid-air, even though we probably dealt it fatal damage several seconds ago, just to be sure of that kill. The moment the wing comes off is the moment we stop shooting, and that creates a bias. 

Edited September 10, 2018 by Finkeren

[Willy__]

9 minutes ago, Finkeren said:

However, the worst offender in my opinion is the A-20.

 

You should try the duck, that thing has basically the resistance that the 110 had when released: none. 

 

I honestly dont think that 109s were that flimsy irl.... in game you just need a single shot to either dewing or de-tail it.

 

1 hour ago, Legioneod said:

One thing that bugs me is that both wings can't be shot off, I've always wanted to fold some wings but never could.

 

I did that to a p39, but it was a rare occasion, I was flying a G6 with the 30mm and was able to shoot both his wings off. Besides that one odd time, I cant remember seeing planes losing both wings.... 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Most my kills are wing cut. Very often when enemy is pulling high G after receiving damage to the wing. Sometimes when enemy plane takes enough rounds without excessive Gs.  In the past  frequency of wings falling off was smaller. It look little out of proportion but that not necessarily mean is wrong, this could be that other hotboxes are  not  so easy to aim for or do not have high fidelity dm model.

Any way I would like to see more  variety of enemy fatal end. 

Bigger problem for me are Spad13 paper wings...

Edited September 10, 2018 by 307_Tomcat

[-TBC-AeroAce]

When I use the spit 20mm I will take a wing off more than 50% of the time.

[-SF-Disarray]

2 hours ago, DD_Perfesser said:

What doesn't make sense is the times that you shoot and the wing stays on for 30 seconds or a minute, then falls off like damage is accumulating.

 

 

In a way that might be exactly what happened, damage accumulating. As I'm sure you are aware wings, well the whole plane but the wing particularly, is under load. The wing spars, the main structural support for the wing, are holding much that force. When a bullet or cannon shell hits these spars they will be damaged, weakening them. The initial damage may not be enough to sever the wing instantly but that pressure is still being applied. As the spar flexes under this force the damage, perhaps a crack or hole, will expand or widen. Eventually this can progress to the point where the member can no longer hold the force and POP. No more wing. This is why you see wings come off a plane when it pulls high G maneuvers after taking damage that was survived initially. There is probably a lot more intricate detail to this that someone better educated on the subject could elaborate on, but that is the basics of it.

[-TBC-AeroAce]

2 minutes ago, Disarray said:

 

In a way that might be exactly what happened, damage accumulating. As I'm sure you are aware wings, well the whole plane but the wing particularly, is under load. The wing spars, the main structural support for the wing, are holding much that force. When a bullet or cannon shell hits these spars they will be damaged, weakening them. The initial damage may not be enough to sever the wing instantly but that pressure is still being applied. As the spar flexes under this force the damage, perhaps a crack or hole, will expand or widen. Eventually this can progress to the point where the member can no longer hold the force and POP. No more wing. This is why you see wings come off a plane when it pulls high G maneuvers after taking damage that was survived initially. There is probably a lot more intricate detail to this that someone better educated on the subject could elaborate on, but that is the basics of it.

 

That is exactly what is modelled in game.

[Haza]

Although not wings off, I was watching the Bodenplatte battle and during the interview, the P-51 pilot mentioned how a FW190s wings both folded up together above the canopy (27.30 onwards). 

Now simulating that in game would be interesting.

 

 

 

Regards

Edited September 10, 2018 by Haza

[-TBC-AeroAce]

2 minutes ago, Haza said:

Although not wings off, I was watching the Bodenplatte battle and during the interview, the P-51 pilot mentioned how a FW190s wings both folded up together above the canopy (27.30 on-wards). 

Now simulating that in game would be interesting.

 

 

 

Regards

 

 

That would be cool.

 

A little off topic and I don't have a video but the other day I has a mid air and I lost both wings and the tail. The plane was then put into a spin that kept on accelerating until it was literally spinning at 1000s of rpm to the point my pilot died of over g. It may have been a been a bug or is fuselage drag  modelled?

[Legioneod]

34 minutes ago, Haza said:

Although not wings off, I was watching the Bodenplatte battle and during the interview, the P-51 pilot mentioned how a FW190s wings both folded up together above the canopy (27.30 onwards). 

Now simulating that in game would be interesting.

 

 

 

Regards

Very cool. 

OT question but I wonder if those slag heaps will be modeled in Bodenplatte? 

[JaffaCake]

6 hours ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

Were those gun camera films from US fighters firing .50cal machine guns? I'll admit that most of the gun camera shots that I've seen are either from US fighters or from German fighters attacking heavy bombers and n both cases I expect fewer de-wing situations than when 20mm and 37mm cannons are used on aircraft. I've seen very little in the way of Eastern Front gun camera footage.

 

I wouldn't necessarily go by limited gun camera reels unless you were able to produce a statistically significant number of instances to do a comparison by. Anything else is too easily prone to selection bias.

 

 

Have you tried the UBS HMG? It rips wings off just as well...

[SaturnV]

In the hours of gun camera footage I've watched, it seems that the Fw190 was more prone to losing a wing than the Bf109. I've often thought this could be due to the large loadouts of cannon ammunition in the wings.

[Heckpupper]

The guncam footage is few and far between. A good example of judging how overdone the effect is in the game are the actual combat reports. There's plenty available online and very, very very few of them mention wings coming off regardless of weapons used. 

Control surfaces, bits and pieces, yes those are mentioned. But recollections of entire wings coming off are hard to come by.

[CrazyDuck]

Judging solely by feeling (based on guncam footage and books I've read), IMO planes going down should be burning more often and loose their wings less often.

 

However, that's just a feeling, nothing to back it up, might very well be wrong.

[Finkeren]

1 hour ago, CrazyDuck said:

Judging solely by feeling (based on guncam footage and books I've read), IMO planes going down should be burning more often and loose their wings less often.

 

However, that's just a feeling, nothing to back it up, might very well be wrong.

 

Based on litterature and combat reports, kills should probably rank something like this (from most common to least common)

 

1. Pilot bailing out from damaged but still technically airworthy aircraft

 

2. Pilot dead or wounded

 

3. Plane flying into the ground by accident

 

4. Fuel or engine fire

 

5. Loss of control rods or control surfaces

 

6. Engine losing power or stopping entirely

 

7. On-board explosion

 

8. Complete structural failure (including loss of wing)

 

Still, as I said, there might be a bias in the way we fight in a sim that isn’t directly tied to the DM, that’s leading to more torn wings.

 

 

[Mauf]

I agree with Finkeren on this one. Most sim pilots are quite the butchers when it comes to dogfights and continue hammering a target until it either burns or a wing is shot off. IRL, I would say chasing a damaged but still operational opponent that is running for his life was not a common (yes, it likely still happened) thing since it would cause units to be easily separated and often didn't serve the objective of securing air superiority. The guy is running and out of the fight, makes no sense to thin out your strength or give up your hard fought superior position just to finish him off after a long chase, likely into enemy territory. It makes little sense tactics wise.

 

On the flipside: There are some questionable occurances of de-winging in the game and it warrants a look into for improvements. Smaller calibers in particular seem way too good at doing it.

 

On the topic of guncam footage: One cannot say whether the footage that survives to this day is representative of any rate of anything. Same goes for AARs, one never knows what they reported and how. So they can only act as qualitative information, namely: There is footage of wings being shot off, so it was technically possible. There's still the debate about whether it's all ammo-cookoffs on 190s thought. Somebody got footage of a de-winged 109 without gunpods? That would be an interesting piece of info.

[Legioneod]

4 minutes ago, Mauf said:

There's still the debate about whether it's all ammo-cookoffs on 190s thought. Somebody got footage of a de-winged 109 without gunpods? That would be an interesting piece of info.

I would say its the ammo a majority of the time. Every guncam I've seen shows an ammo explosion. I know the wing could come off without an explosion just due to structural failure but I'd say the ammo is a main factor in most (not all) cases.

[Mauf]

5 minutes ago, Legioneod said:

I would say its the ammo a majority of the time. Every guncam I've seen shows an ammo explosion. I know the wing could come off without an explosion just due to structural failure but I'd say the ammo is a main factor in most (not all) cases.

 

If that's the case, wouldn't that be quite a design flaw for a ground attack plane? I mean, surely you could provide your AA small calibers with incendiary ammo. Then all the armor plates on a ground attacker would be for nought if one hit on the unarmored ammo storages will tear their wings off. Food for thought.

 

In any case, a de-winged 109 would be interesting to see. So far, I only saw 190s with the suspicious big flashes (aka ammo cookoffs) sending their wings flying.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Mauf

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

What i have seen on that guncam footage in most cases heavy caliber rounds tear up or tear out pieces of sheet metal from wings. But they don't pull much  Gs afterwards. The game is missing some common  hit effects seen in those videos.

[Diggun]

Both Spits' wings have a tendancy to sever right at the wingroot. Same was true in legacy il2. I don't have a problem with it, just commenting. 

 

It's a point made before, but worth repeating. I think that the reason some of the DM stuff looks strange to us is because we see it many hundreds of times more often than the average ww2 pilot ever would.

 

I do have one DM wish though - I do wish we had more obvious damage to hydraulics systems - wheels flopping down on a striken bird is something that you see very frequently on guncam footage and I've never seen that happen in game. Fall off yes, flop around uselessly, no.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Diggun

[Legioneod]

15 minutes ago, Diggun said:

I do have one DM wish though - I do wish we had more obvious damage to hydraulics systems - wheels flopping down on a striken bird is something that you see very frequently on guncam footage and I've never seen that happen in game. Fall off yes, fop around uselessly, no.

This is something I've always wanted but have never seen. Hopefully it is implemented one day.

[=TBAS=Sshadow14]

BoX Engine and planes ingame have nice damage models with many places to crack and bend wings ?

Nothing A Little DuctTape Won't Fix! (all crew survived )

Edited September 10, 2018 by =TBAS=Sshadow14

[Finkeren]

1 hour ago, Mauf said:

 

On the flipside: There are some questionable occurances of de-winging in the game and it warrants a look into for improvements. Smaller calibers in particular seem way too good at doing it.

 

 

I agree. As a MiG pilot it is simply too easy to get a fighter to shed its wings with the ShKAS. The ShKAS should be good at one thing: Making a lot of holes and cause the plane to leak all kinds of fluids - which it also does quite well.

BTW, just be clear: Overall I friggin’ love the DM in this sim. It is by far the best of any combat flight sim, even if it is currently missing a few details that other sims might have. On the whole it is very believable, so the structural fragility is really a minor issue.

[EAF19_Marsh]

10 hours ago, DD_Perfesser said:

 

The wing isn't cut off by bullets.

When its flying the wing is trying to bend upwards. When pulling G's it want to bends upwards a lot. 

If the plane is built to handle a 9g turn and you're already putting 3 g's load in a turn you don't have to damage much of the structure for the wing to be torn off from flight loads.

 

I would argue to some degree the opposite. While tensile strength does not necessarily equal damage resistance, a 4 tonne (for example Spit or 109) wing spar is stressed for (in your case) 360 tonnes of weight, so is very 'strong' in the vertical plane. Accounts from surviving pilots rarely mention wings separating (but then, this was likely difficult to survive). Finkeren's list of loss causes appears to be supported by many accounts both from the victor and victims' perspectives.

 

Not that wings did not fail completely, of course but their structure is arguably the strongest part of the aircraft.

[Cpt_Siddy]

Many wing failures in BoX is due the fact that we abuse our planes at the limit of G tolerance far FAR more often than real pilots did. 

 

Go get in real plane that is capable of doing ACM from WW2, and see how long will you cope in the seat when SOMEONE else is flying the plane. Then imagine how often planes were exposed to such extremes as we do in game. 

 

So yeah, 20mm ++ caliber rounds do a number on your wing spar, and adding loading to it will make it crack. It is just more obvious in game, where we go full HAM on the stick while shooting or being shot at. 

 

I have many times flown home on a damaged wing that would probably not hold more than 3g loading. Getting same damage while doing said 3-4g loading will just cut it off. 

Edited September 10, 2018 by Cpt_Siddy

[Mauf]

I personally attribute the wing lossiness to a lack of differentiation of damage types from the different bullet calibers in the game. Everything seems to do damage to structure (in different quantities). So a 8mm can de-wing just as a 30mm, difference being just the speed with which they do it.

 

Theoretically even 8mms should be able to damage a wing spar to a degree where it should structurally fail and take the wing with it. That you would have to literally saw your way through it over what would probably be several seconds of concentrated fire on a specific spot is a different story (nothing you would see happen in reality). I surmise that in game, as long as your bullets hit the spar hitbox, it'll degrade in general. It probably doesn't reflect inherent damage resilience of the structural components. CloD for example suffered from the same problem.

 

Just to be clear: Getting this to "realistic" modelling (let alone to determine what "realistic" actually is) is FAR from trivial and will in all likelihood require a lot more workhours than the devs have available. Personally, I would call it a worthwhile thing to go for though (within reason). All flight sims in the past have come short on the DM department, probably due to the complexity involved in getting it right.

[-TBC-AeroAce]

6 hours ago, Legioneod said:

Very cool. 

OT question but I wonder if those slag heaps will be modeled in Bodenplatte? 

 

I was also wondering if they will be modelled and if the Devs know about them.

[peregrine7]

9 hours ago, AeroAce said:

 

 

That would be cool.

 

A little off topic and I don't have a video but the other day I has a mid air and I lost both wings and the tail. The plane was then put into a spin that kept on accelerating until it was literally spinning at 1000s of rpm to the point my pilot died of over g. It may have been a been a bug or is fuselage drag  modelled?

 

FW190? I've seen this too. It was hilarious.

[=EXPEND=Tripwire]

In my opinion, I see far to many planes go down due to missing a wing. A significant percentage of my kills are for this reason, and the overwhelming majority of the times I am shot down this is also due to flying minus a wing or tail.

[-TBC-AeroAce]

19 minutes ago, =EXPEND=Tripwire said:

In my opinion, I see far to many planes go down due to missing a wing. A significant percentage of my kills are for this reason, and the overwhelming majority of the times I am shot down this is also due to flying minus a wing or tail.

 

Not that I mind it or know if it is realistic but I also find the majority of planes I tag with cannon lose their wing. To me it's good because they don't end up chasing me around unrealistically with a broken engine for 10 mins.

[JonRedcorn]

One thing to keep in mind here. Pilots in real life being shot at in gun cam footage seem to make very little maneuvers or if they do they aren't like the ones you will find online in Il2. Somebody getting shot at in this sim is usually last ditch efforting a high G maneuver leading to way high G's being placed on the damaged wing.

[Cpt_Siddy]

2 hours ago, 15th_JonRedcorn said:

One thing to keep in mind here. Pilots in real life being shot at in gun cam footage seem to make very little maneuvers or if they do they aren't like the ones you will find online in Il2. Somebody getting shot at in this sim is usually last ditch efforting a high G maneuver leading to way high G's being placed on the damaged wing.

 

 

Planes being shot at that evade are shot at high lead angle, where camera cant see anything. You can see some gun cam flicks that shoot at "nothing" and then little bit later there is a few frames of smoke or broken, downed plane.

[Heckpupper]

This is a video I've taken a few months back you guys might find interesting.