Navigation?

[skpcarey1]

I absolutely love this sim But I need help in Multiplayer Navigating any and all help will be much appreciated.

[RedKestrel]

2 minutes ago, skpcarey1 said:

I absolutely love this sim But I need help in Multiplayer Navigating any and all help will be much appreciated.

Most people online navigate by pilotage, that is picking out landmarks and flying using them as a reference. With a bit of practice and a rough idea of how fast you’re going for how long, you can learn to navigate pretty easily. Online there is rarely enough cloud to make navigating this way impossible. I use cities, river confluences and bridges as navigation points. And after a whil you can eyeball a course direction on a map pretty easily. Getting to far targets requires more planning and such, but most multiplayer targets are only a ten minute flight away so as long as you’re headed in roughly the right direction and know the landmarks on the way you should be fine. Do some practice in the QMB trying to navigate between cities and airfields.

[Ribbon]

Before flight look at the map and check landmarks you're going to use for orientation such as:

-cities/villages and their shapes

-rivers, river crossings

-lakes

-forrest shapes

-roads/railroads and their crossings

 

Know that map north is the ingame compass north and use that as reference from start.

You can use GUI compass in the down left corner or aircrafts compass that's up to you (for me gui compass is easier to use).

So for example if objective is east from your spawn airfield check for landmarks ypu're going to use as waypoints and rough calculate at what degrees are they from north (compass 0-360°...north=0°, east=90°, south=180°, west=270°) so if landmark or objective are strict north-east your going to fly at 045°.

Every map grid marked with number is 10km so it takes about 1-2min to pass it depending on speed you're flying so you can calculate how much you're going to need time to target.

[Feathered_IV]

Remember too that if you are using prominent features on the landscape as navigation makers, chances are someone on the enemy side is using them as well.   If your objective is to get somewhere without being seen,  plot your course so you pass some distance either side of these landmarks.  Not right over the top of them.

[Lusekofte]

You can always use

 mission planner it will give you bearings and time to target at set speed

If you fly bombers the

wind calculator

might help too

[skpcarey1]

Thanks for the heads up fellas ,Ive also found some youtube vids on the subject .After all these years, I(finally) have the time to really dive into this sim, the depth of which surprises/impresses me( these friggin maps are HUGE) and I do need to read the mission planner more thuroughly .

[ShamrockOneFive]

Spent the last 6 months working hard on my navigation skills without having any helpful aids like an icon on the map. It's really quite an experience and with a little practice you can get pretty good at looking for landmarks and points of interest - roads, towns, a lake, etc. Also strategies like using an easier to find point on a map and then going directly east/west/north/south from that point on something less easy to find.

 

It's a remarkable game within a game if you will. It's worth learning!

[Lusekofte]

I recommend after a while stop using interphase compass and stick with airplanes compass. It is really intuitive getting used to the numbers rather than the needle in allied planes

[Bremspropeller]

17 minutes ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

Spent the last 6 months working hard on my navigation skills without having any helpful aids like an icon on the map. It's really quite an experience and with a little practice you can get pretty good at looking for landmarks and points of interest - roads, towns, a lake, etc. Also strategies like using an easier to find point on a map and then going directly east/west/north/south from that point on something less easy to find.

 

It's a remarkable game within a game if you will. It's worth learning!

 

When I did my FAA-EASA license-conversion, I was on a cross-country flight with my instructor for a familiarisation with the local airspace structure. I got lost, as the sun was getting low, shining directly in my face and I couldn't make out too many landmarks ahead of me. I knew my general position (within a reasonable amount of uncertainty), but I had no grasp of where I was precisely. I knew Berlin was on my 1-2 o'clock at a distance of roughly 20-30 miles and I generally knew where to fly to, in order to pick up more navigation cues, but I didn't want to bust any airspaces (a problem we don't have in the game), so I calmly flew along and was confident I'd gradually pick up enough cues to narrow down my position and regain SA - there HAD to be this Autobahn we'd cross with our general heading westbound...

It took me less than 10 minutes from being in doubt of my precise position to regaining my bearings.

 

Later my instructor noted how much calmness I radiated during the flight, despite my navigational hickup.

 

Little did she know, that I had been lost before - a lot of times in IL-2 and other games - and re-gaining my position had become somewhat of a daily business to me.

No sweat if you're fat on gas anyway... In a warbird, getting lost will be a bit more critical, as your groundspeed is significantly higher - possibly diverging from your desired track at a quicker rate.

 

 

When flying online, make sure you're flying with buddies checking for other airplanes, while you are navigating. I have been shot down too many times, being "heads down", or wingmen trying to look pretty in a tight formation, while somebody sneaked up and had the formation for lunch...

Edited February 10, 2020 by Bremspropeller

[RedKestrel]

6 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

Remember too that if you are using prominent features on the landscape as navigation makers, chances are someone on the enemy side is using them as well.   If your objective is to get somewhere without being seen,  plot your course so you pass some distance either side of these landmarks.  Not right over the top of them.

An added bonus of this strategy is that it's a lot easier to spot a landmark when its off your wingtip than to spot one that's directly underneath your nose

 

[LLv34_Flanker]

S! 

 

Never found navigating in IL-2 hard. Check map, rough route plotting and off you go. Zoom is handy for catching landmarks from distance. Bad weather and/or clouds add a bit more challenge to it. After a while you learn certain landmarks on maps and can use them as bullseye or similar. 

[Lusekofte]

I still srew up looking fir my airfield. Annoying when you need to finnish the days flying

[MikhaVT]

9 hours ago, skpcarey1 said:

I absolutely love this sim But I need help in Multiplayer Navigating any and all help will be much appreciated.

Like many others are saying, pick out big notable landmarks that you can see, then find them on the map. One landmark paired with your heading, and a distance guesstimate is often good-enough to get me heading towards an airfield enough to spot it. Finding more landmarks will help improve your confidence in your location, but will take time. When approaching the airfield, i take care to try to study the map and pick out map features i should be able to spot as i come in so i can guide my view to the airfield more easily. The biggest hurdles for me so far have been learning what kinds of features i can accurately pick out both out the window and in the map. For me, the best landmarks are lakes, cities, airfields, rail depots, rivers with bridges, forests, and rivers with curves. Loosely in the order i prefer to use them. I've seen the more experienced pilots be able to pick out their location really quickly with just forest shapes, but i find i can be looking at the same forest out the window and on the map but not figure out that they're the same...

 

I was surprised to see that this is actually quite a bit easier than landnav since there are more features to make use of, and precisely locating yourself is often not needed since you can see things for very long distances.  

[sonnykims]

Yeah, I can spend a whole nights' flying just practising navigation with these wonderful accurate maps using dead reckoning and yes, I have a stop watch. Just another great aspect to this fantastic sim.

[skpcarey1]

Yes I spent  about 2 days just getting the mapping on my Warthog and 3 MFDs(I dont use Target ever) right just to start the aircraft and taxi ,Navigation on these giant maps is next.

[RedKestrel]

Here is a good, brief video on quick and dirty navigation, which is mostly what I do. Sheriff also has some great tutorials on getting the most out of the planes so his channel is an awesome resource.
 

Some of the more enthusiastic level bomber guys may have some recommendations on dead reckoning and other types of navigation that are more complicated but more precise for long trips in the dark or in poor weather.

[Plurp]

Some servers have the Non Direction Beacons turned on so these can help as well.  Most of the aircraft, when equipped, have at least 1 simple gauge to help you fly to the nearest airfield.  This can be helpful if you are damaged and just need to fly straight to it. 

 

If you are flying to a rear airfield, you know in advance that the needle will point you to the closer airfield, just keep flying past it until it picks up your intended airfield.

 

The next level up are the German aircraft, when equipped, with an AFN-1/AFN-2.  These can give you the range from the beacon as well as pointing to it.  The Pe-2s also have a distance to beacon gauge in the top gunner station.

 

The Bendix equipped A20/P40 and Pe-2s add a basic bearing direction needle also. This just gives you an idea where the beacon is located in relation to your plane.  The US and Soviet gauges are opposite of each other.  US will 0 deg when flying TO a beacon and 180 when flying AWAY from a target.  Soviet is 180 TO/0 AWAY.

 

The 110s (gunner station), 88s, 111s, and Ju-52s have a bearing to the beacon also but it indicates the actual bearing to the beacon.  If I am flying on course 060 TO the beacon, the P end of the needle will point to 060 and the S end of the needle will point AWAY from the beacon at 240.  So this combination with the distance meter gives me the ability to fly a radio signal away from a beacon to a certain distance to reach my intended destination.  This also has the limitation of picking up the closest AF.

[FlyingNutcase]

 

14 hours ago, Plurp said:

...The Pe-2s also have a distance to beacon gauge in the top gunner station.

...

 

I never knew. Thank you!

 

I handy little tip is to know roughly how long it will take to travel 10km (one major map grid). Memorize the time for your common speeds. Generally flying the Pe-2, it's a quick mental calculation to work out the time at the common speeds of 400kph (1.5 mins per grid) and 300kph (high altitude or damaged, 2min/grid):

 

[NiiranenVR]

a little help to you my friend :

https://il2map.info/

[falle96]

One of the advantages of the career mode is that you start to learn your area of operations like the back of your hand.

 

After days at Rzhev (Rjev), I learned the area well enough to where I could consistently bring myself home without much trouble.

 

Not looking forward to restarting the learning process from my regiment's new airfield!

[MikhaVT]

3 minutes ago, FarflungWanderer said:

One of the advantages of the career mode is that you start to learn your area of operations like the back of your hand.

 

After days at Rzhev (Rjev), I learned the area well enough to where I could consistently bring myself home without much trouble.

 

Not looking forward to restarting the learning process from my regiment's new airfield!

Reminds me of switching from ArmA 2's map to ArmA 3's map! It's a lot like playing in your backyard. 

[falle96]

18 hours ago, Kataphrakt said:

Reminds me of switching from ArmA 2's map to ArmA 3's map! It's a lot like playing in your backyard. 

Absolutely. You learn to get a feel for the place, and a kind of affection for it. I think I'd only start feeling relieved after a mission once I knew that I was close to Rzhev.

 

I personally think Moscow is one of the hardest maps to navigate on, in my experience I fly by rivers. I don't have much else to work off of...

[MikhaVT]

1 minute ago, FarflungWanderer said:

I personally think Moscow is one of the hardest maps to navigate on, in my experience I fly by rivers. I don't have much else to work off of...

I've mostly flown only on moscow, and it's the reason why i barely use rivers right now. They all look the same!

[falle96]

37 minutes ago, Kataphrakt said:

I've mostly flown only on moscow, and it's the reason why i barely use rivers right now. They all look the same!

Ditto for what maps to fly on.

 

The rivers look the same, this is true, so the real landmarks are where they branch off or meet. There's one spot not too far from Rzhev where one river moving south splits into (I think) three, and that's a pretty prominent landmark in my mind. You follow that one river northbound and you're on your way to Rzhev.

[Crashbangwallop]

Further to Flying Nutcase's post above featuring a handy Speed/Distance/Time chart, Here's a more precise converter for those 'in between' speeds. Converts both ways - Distance/Speed, and also mph for UK/US metrics. Don't remember what the default significant figures are (may be four) but is easy to click down to 2 or even 1. 

https://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/speed/km_min/km_min-to-km_hr.html?u=km_hr&v=350

 

Have to say, I'm a very bad navigator, and found this in an attempt to improve. It may or may not pay off for me, but for those craving pin-point accuracy it might be useful 

 

 

[6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann]

People always overthink Navigation and make it too complicated, then get lost.

 

My Advice:  KEEP IT SIMPLE, LOOK OUTSIDE

Accurate Calculations are only needed in IFR, Low Vis flying or if you are trying to stay out of Civilian Airspaces that will land you a massive fine if a Tubeliner has his TCAS go off because of you.

In Il-2 you have the Luxury of ignoring all that.

 

For short distances between Waypoints (like 25km, can be more if you are good.) work in 30° increments. So if you look on the Map, and you see the Target in the general North West of where you are going from, fly either 300 and expect the Target on the Starboard Side, or 330 and expect it on Port. Don't fly at things directly, always try to get them on your 1 or 11 O'Clock.

On Maps like Bodenplatte or Kuban this will get you to your Destination quite reliably, as the Landmarks are densly packed and referencing your Position is easy.

 

When looking at your Route, also look to what is to the Left and Right, in case you drift or your desired Waypoint doesn't show up, you have often under or overestimated your Speed, flown the wrong Course or any Number of Mistakes that can happen, like Clouds between you and your Waypoint. And then you essentially just roughly jump from Waypoint to Waypoint looking out and down, not Map and fixated on your Compass.

Many People never get the Hang of it because they focus too much on precise flying and then cannot cope with the inevitable mistakes, forget Shoulder Checking or get lost when the War interferes with Navigation.

 

On Moscow or Stalingrad, it is more Practical to work in 15° Increments and not to fly out into the Nothingness of the Steppes/Forests. Always keep over important Corridors, like Road/Railroad Combinations and Rivers. Use large and distinctive Cities as References, but not for primary Navigation, more as "Ah, good, I am where I should be"

[Gretsch_Man]

On 2/10/2020 at 8:50 PM, LuseKofte said:

You can always use

 mission planner it will give you bearings and time to target at set speed

If you fly bombers the

wind calculator

might help too

Really wish there would be some in-game tools like these available for us VR users.

[Georgio]

I always look for prominent forest shapes and orientation, plus flying along railway lines is always useful.

In real life people have been known to fly low enough to read directions off signs in the country...?

[6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann]

4 hours ago, Georgio said:

I always look for prominent forest shapes and orientation, plus flying along railway lines is always useful.

In real life people have been known to fly low enough to read directions off signs in the country...?

Tried it IRL, and that is just BS. And we tried it with an Autogyro at 80km/h. Out of a Moving Aircraft you won't be able to read Shit.

And at least in Germany you will find that there are an awful lot of Places called Amtsgericht, Finanzamt or Hauptbahnhof.

Edited February 17, 2020 by 6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann

[Bremspropeller]

People used to read the station-names on train-platforms. It works.

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, Bremspropeller said:

People used to read the station-names on train-platforms. It works.

 

Yes, in Axel Urbanke's book on III./JG 54, pilots referred to that sort of method as "buying a ticket." 

Edited February 17, 2020 by LukeFF

[Bremspropeller]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

Yes, in Axel Urbanke's book on III./JG 54, pilots referred to that sort of method as "buying a ticket." 

 

It's one of the best Luftwaffe books out there - I cannot recommend it highly enough.

If you only want one book about a late-war Luftwaffe fighter unit (with all the troubles and little side-anecdotes that do a lot to provide a deeper perspective), look no further.

This is your book!

 

[busdriver]

8 hours ago, 6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann said:

And at least in Germany you will find that there are an awful lot of Places called Amtsgericht, Finanzamt or Hauptbahnhof.

 

We had a saying in my squadron, "All roads lead to Ausfahrt!" 

 

And the British MOD (Ministry of Defence) maps are so freaking accurate that I frequently used the shape of forests and treelines to navigate...at 500 feet AGL and 480 KIAS.

Edited February 18, 2020 by busdriver

[Georgio]

16 hours ago, 6./ZG26_Klaus_Mann said:

Tried it IRL, and that is just BS. And we tried it with an Autogyro at 80km/h. Out of a Moving Aircraft you won't be able to read Shit.

And at least in Germany you will find that there are an awful lot of Places called Amtsgericht, Finanzamt or Hauptbahnhof.

 

Place names in Britain tend to be a bit shorter so can be read at a glance...?

[Babayega]

also remember good ol pythagorean theorem....a2 + b2 = c2 when flying diagonally across a grid. since each grid is 10 x 10 a perfect diagonal across is ~14.14 km. since we dont really fly perfect diagonals most of the time, this is just a rough estimate to use. Your diagonal can be anymore from 3 km to 14.14km depending on the angle you are flying through. Also remember if you are flying US/Brit planes, 1 mile = 1.61 km. So a 10 km grid is only 6.2 miles. Traveling at 250 mph, it would only take you about 1 and 1/2 min to do. 

Like the previous posters said, pick landmarks. Look for them. and online,for gods sake, dont fly right along the rivers. A lot of people use rivers as guidance and enemies love to circle the rivers and bounce them. Its best to stay about 10 km away from the river.