Belly landings with fighters and bombers are acceptable but must be improved!

[Stonehouse]

Just curious - does altering the terrain roughness setting make any difference to people's experiences with this?

[oc2209]

1 minute ago, Stonehouse said:

Just curious - does altering the terrain roughness setting make any difference to people's experiences with this?

 

I was under the impression the setting was strictly visual, and wouldn't impact the actual terrain evenness.

 

 

[Stonehouse]

Ok I thought it actually made a difference but could easily be wrong. Sitting here at work and unable to try still wonder if it makes any difference.

 

For what it's worth - quote from dev blog and vid link - to me it impacts ground handling from what I see

 

Another of the many questions we got recently after showing the video of the new terrain effect on the vehicles, is how the new detailed terrain roughness will affect the aircraft outside the prepared airfields when making an emergency landing for instance or taking off from a field (which is an even more difficult task naturally). We think the best answer would be another short video:

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Stonehouse

[Charon]

27 minutes ago, Stonehouse said:

Just curious - does altering the terrain roughness setting make any difference to people's experiences with this?

No. I have roughness at off (because VR) and still have pilots die while sliding smoothly across the ground.

 

There's a clear difference in roughness (from a physics point of view) when rolling across the landscape, vs an airfield. The graphics setting affects the displacement map effect, which is separate.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Charon

[oc2209]

1 minute ago, Charon said:

No. I have roughness at off (because VR) and still have pilots die while sliding smoothly across the ground.

 

I had it on low always, and visually, I can't tell the difference after I turned it to high just now.

 

In any event, something that's purely a graphics setting (as in, it's listed in the game as such) can't have any bearing on physics or terrain mapping. That would be much more fitting in the realism part of the menu.

 

Here's an example of yet another Pe-2 bloodbath, this time with the roughness on high settings:

 

Spoiler

 

 

And, just for fun, I thought I'd pair the above abomination with another Me-262 touchdown at record speed. I combined the 262 with an ice landing. The results were what I expected.

 

I also left my realism settings visible at the end of the recording. It's the same settings I use for every test.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[oc2209]

The He-111's navigator is very difficult to keep alive (on regular terrain). Even when I try to land by the book (full flap).

 

Spoiler

 

 

When we're doing Ice Capades, his survival rate is predictably much higher:

 

Spoiler

 

 

After the 165 MPH mark or so, I'm not sure what's going on. I'm no longer flying the plane aside from applying rudder to avoid the treeline, but the plane's clearly not 'digging in' to the ice. It's floating/skating on some part of the underside. You can hear the 'digging in' sound nearer to the 100 MPH mark.

[firdimigdi]

1 hour ago, oc2209 said:

I was under the impression the setting was strictly visual, and wouldn't impact the actual terrain evenness.

 

Yes, it's the visual representation; the collision model should be the same. IIRC you get a more or less detailed LOD of it from a distance based on the terrain roughness graphical setting.

[oc2209]

40 minutes ago, Firdimigdi said:

Yes, it's the visual representation; the collision model should be the same. IIRC you get a more or less detailed LOD of it from a distance based on the terrain roughness graphical setting.

 

Right, and it seems like a pretty minor detail difference to me.

 

The collision model, I assume, can't be turned off by any settings, in realism or elsewhere. I figure the simplest fix for all of this would be to reduce the terrain bump size variations. It's probably the higher bumps that are impacting a sliding plane, and causing the crew casualties. There must be some bumps clearly, or my 300 MPH landings will be possible anywhere. But, perhaps, gentler terrain undulations are in order.

 

Anyway, as part of my final testing phase (I feel like I've said this before), I wanted to land on some concrete runways. To differentiate between the 'slipperiness' of ice landings. It turns out that concrete is just as forgiving and pillowy as ice. It's like landing on a cloud compared to dirt/snow touchdowns.

 

Also, I intentionally failed to jettison my two giant (SC 2000, 2500?) bombs slung under the Heinkel in the following recording. You know, for science. Just to see what would happen, if anything.

 

Spoiler

 

 

So after doing that successfully, I felt pretty bold with the Pe-2:

 

Spoiler

 

 

You will notice the huge pitch forward in the Pe-2, yet without an accompanying large G spike. Go figure.

[IckyATLAS]

7 hours ago, Luftschiff said:

Just made an emergency belly landing in a 110 on an airfield, came in too fast because I couldn't use flaps - but landed perfectly at below 120 km/h, slid to a halt, without injury, and once the plane had almost stopped moving, I suddenly died.

 

This is the extremely realistic part of the sim. You died by a heart attack. It's part of the physiological model we have in the sim.

The incredible emotion of having succeeded the landing and still being alive and unhurt stopped your hart. A hart probably already bruised by the terrible life during this war, and all the g's positive and negative you experienced for months, terrible stress, lack of good food, to much smoke etc. etc.  ?.

[Luftschiff]

19 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

 

This is the extremely realistic part of the sim. You died by a heart attack. It's part of the physiological model we have in the sim.

 

Darn it, that must be it, I simply have to git good at not having virtual emotions!

 

48 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

I take it this was online?

 

Indeed, the airfield was  a proper one, though not active on the map at the time.

I feel like the belly landing frustration must be related to the same bug that's killing tank crews when going fast over open ground, or when slowly touching invisible objects.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 4/11/2022 at 2:39 AM, oc2209 said:

I beg to differ, in the cases where I'm landing planes under almost identical conditions and have vastly different outcomes. I'm the same person, with the same handling behaviors, the same stick, the same computer, on the same map, etc, etc, everything else being equal. I should not be able to demonstrate the disparities that I have, in a logical system.

The problem though, is that not every person reports the same problems. Some people report dying when smoothly bellylanding a fighter, or even when driving a tank across rough ground. Others report no trouble at all. You report some problems with some aircraft.

 

What you're doing may help to explain why things are the way they are on *your* system. But it doesn't help to explain why I have no issues at all (as I said in my last post, I even crashlanded a Bf-110. It was a veritable crash, wing first, yet I survived. Just like I survived really every belly landing that I think was survivable ever since the complaints started.) It also doesn't help to explain why some people report even more issues and in different circumstances than you. The key to finding out what's wrong is not to find out what happens on *your* system, but to find out what's the difference between the system/settings/flying/whatever of someone who does report problems, vs. that of someone who doesn't.

 

(Actually, the key to finding out what's wrong is to simply wait until the Devs come up with a bugfix since only they know the ins and outs of their physics/pilot physiology system.)

[IckyATLAS]

2 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

(Actually, the key to finding out what's wrong is to simply wait until the Devs come up with a bugfix since only they know the ins and outs of their physics/pilot physiology system.)

 

Amen.?

[oc2209]

9 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

What you're doing may help to explain why things are the way they are on *your* system. But it doesn't help to explain why I have no issues at all (as I said in my last post, I even crashlanded a Bf-110. It was a veritable crash, wing first, yet I survived. Just like I survived really every belly landing that I think was survivable ever since the complaints started.) It also doesn't help to explain why some people report even more issues and in different circumstances than you. The key to finding out what's wrong is not to find out what happens on *your* system, but to find out what's the difference between the system/settings/flying/whatever of someone who does report problems, vs. that of someone who doesn't.

 

No, I really must disagree. You're making this more complicated than it needs to be. If you turn this into a settings/personal hardware issue, that creates an explosion of variables for the devs to test, and I firmly believe it'd be a waste of effort.

 

It's as simple as I've demonstrated. It's the terrain bumps.

 

I can land on concrete and ice at higher than recommended speeds, because, presumably, there is little/no terrain bumps being modelled. I can land a smooth-bottomed plane like the Me-262 on regular (bumpy) terrain because it doesn't 'catch' the bumps. I can't land bombers on regular bumpy terrain because they catch too many bumps in the process.

 

When some people are flying online, there's a desync issue or whatever, which causes their planes to register a bump collision as lasting a fraction of a second longer than it really did, thus imparting a greater force to the plane/pilot than should be naturally occurring.

 

If you really want to decisively prove that you have no issues at all, you can take a Pe-2 87, with half fuel and the turret mod* and land it 20-30 times in the dirt or snow beside the Lapino airfield. That would be comparing apples and apples to my testing. If you can belly land on perfectly flat terrain at speeds under 110 MPH, without incurring any mysterious injuries or deaths in that entire span of landings, then you don't have a problem at all, and then you'd be partially invalidating my argument.

 

Until you can clearly establish that you don't suffer the same random injuries/deaths under the same landing conditions, then I don't believe my tests are only pertinent to me alone.

 

Even IckyATLAS mentioned the propensity of the Pe-2 radioman to suffer casualties for no apparent reason, and I've noted the phenomenon as well.

 

*Edit: forgot to mention the turret, and even though it shouldn't matter at all, I do test with that selected.

Edited April 13, 2022 by oc2209

[oc2209]

9 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

The problem though, is that not every person reports the same problems. Some people report dying when smoothly bellylanding a fighter, or even when driving a tank across rough ground. Others report no trouble at all. You report some problems with some aircraft.

 

Consider these representative of the overall problem shared by everyone who's ever had a landing/driving complaint:

 

Good result:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Bad result:

 

Spoiler

 

 

People speculated that there was an RNG aspect to these injuries/deaths. I contend that the terrain bumps are the RNG. They are what is most responsible for the apparent randomness of crew casualties while landing certain planes in certain locations.

 

Eliminate the bumps, eliminate most of the random outcomes. Not that I'm advocating the total elimination of terrain irregularity; I'm saying that adjusting the terrain bumps would be an easier fix--and one that would not radically change other aspects of the sim--than adjusting pilot physiology or the damage model or the physics systems.

 

There will still be oddities with collisions and such, but far and away, the greatest complaint people have is in not being able to reliably survive what should be simple landings.

 

[Charon]

Another account, this time into a tree while maneuvering:

 

Quote

Maneuvering literally between the treetops, I desperately tried to hide from them. The Messers were firing blindly but with long spiteful bursts. I threw my plane [a U-2] left and right... "When will they finally leave me alone?.." And suddenly... My machine smashed its wing into a tree. A heavy blow... A crack... Another blow! When I came to my senses I couldn't understand at all where I was. My legs and arms were sore, my chest was constricted, it was hard to breath. Stirring a little I understood nothing was broken. But where was my plane? I looked around and saw it just nearby: it lay completely destroyed. The engine was stuck into the ground, the propeller (more precisely, fragments of it) was scattered around, the ailerons were hanging on the trees with some other parts.

Over Fields of Fire, Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

[IckyATLAS]

12 hours ago, Charon said:

Another account, this time into a tree while maneuvering:

 

Over Fields of Fire, Anna Timofeeva-Egorova

She had the luck of being ejected from her plane otherwise she would be killed. An the plane was indeed destroyed. So contact with tree branches is deadly.

Unfortunately in this sim we cannot be ejected out of the plane on impact ?

 

[PB0_Roll]

On 4/13/2022 at 10:22 PM, oc2209 said:

 

Consider these representative of the overall problem shared by everyone who's ever had a landing/driving complaint:

 

People speculated that there was an RNG aspect to these injuries/deaths. I contend that the terrain bumps are the RNG. They are what is most responsible for the apparent randomness of crew casualties while landing certain planes in certain locations.

 

Eliminate the bumps, eliminate most of the random outcomes. Not that I'm advocating the total elimination of terrain irregularity; I'm saying that adjusting the terrain bumps would be an easier fix--and one that would not radically change other aspects of the sim--than adjusting pilot physiology or the damage model or the physics systems.

 

There will still be oddities with collisions and such, but far and away, the greatest complaint people have is in not being able to reliably survive what should be simple landings.

 

As you perfectly desmonstrated in your Pe-2 vs Me262 demo earlier, the absurdity of the current system is very much pitch related. Eliminating bumps and make the world perectly flat has little appeal. Increasing pilot's suvivability in case of high pitch variation has more, at least to me. Injured in case of high pitch variation with plane intact would be OK, as long as plane doesn't get destroyed on impact or instant deceleration doesn't exceed 75G. Dead is too frustrating.

Edited May 12, 2022 by PB0_Roll

[oc2209]

14 hours ago, PB0_Roll said:

As you perfectly desmonstrated in your Pe-2 vs Me262 demo earlier, the absurdity of the current system is very much pitch related. Eliminating bumps and make the world perectly flat has little appeal. Increasing pilot's suvivability in case of high pitch variation has more, at least to me.

 

Nah, I don't want ground to be as perfectly flat as a concrete runway. I think making the terrain bumps more gradual, and maybe reducing their density, would lower the death/injury rate simply by affecting probabilities. Right now, the terrain is almost lunar looking:

 

Spoiler

 

If the actual bump density is a reflection of the visual density, it's pretty extreme.

[PB0_Roll]

Ah ok got it.

 

Indeed, pretty extreme.

[JG7_RudeRaptor]

On 4/8/2022 at 7:12 PM, CUJO_1970 said:

Was this "good technique" ?

 

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/small-plane-crashes-on-cobb-parkway-highway-blocked

 

This happened today - dude walked away. It would be a fatality in the sim, 100% of the time.

 

Exactly. Any cart wheel in this sim and it's death. 

[6./ZG26_Loke]

06 / 11-91 T-17, T-412.

The plane had engine problems during a training flight for the local air force on AFB Aalborg, and the pilot had to make an emergency landing on a field 1.8 km northeast of Vadum. The plane cut some tree tops in a lip belt before it landed on the field, which unfortunately was so soft that the nose wheel sank in and the plane tipped around on its back. Pilots, C.I. Andersen escaped unharmed while the plane was badly damaged. The aircraft was later repaired and used again.

Edited May 14, 2022 by 6./ZG26_Loke

[KevPBur]

On 5/14/2022 at 12:09 PM, 6./ZG26_Loke said:

06 / 11-91 T-17, T-412.

The plane had engine problems during a training flight for the local air force on AFB Aalborg, and the pilot had to make an emergency landing on a field 1.8 km northeast of Vadum. The plane cut some tree tops in a lip belt before it landed on the field, which unfortunately was so soft that the nose wheel sank in and the plane tipped around on its back. Pilots, C.I. Andersen escaped unharmed while the plane was badly damaged. The aircraft was later repaired and used again.

Last night my career mission ended just like that in an LA5. Trying evade the 4 109's persuing me to my home field I tried a very hot landing and laid on the brakes somewhat too hard trying to stop before the trees. Forward rolled onto the roof. AND survived. Pilot uninjured. Not sure the ground crew were too happy though. Maybe key here is that I was on a dirt runway?

[6./ZG26_Loke]

7 hours ago, KevPBur said:

Last night my career mission ended just like that in an LA5. Trying evade the 4 109's persuing me to my home field I tried a very hot landing and laid on the brakes somewhat too hard trying to stop before the trees. Forward rolled onto the roof. AND survived. Pilot uninjured. Not sure the ground crew were too happy though. Maybe key here is that I was on a dirt runway?

Then it is maybe a result of a dice. Made a gentle landing on an airfield, but span around, broke a landinggear and died. 

[Youtch]

Personnally i have almost never experienced death upon crash landing.

 

I have at least 95% survival rate on belly landing with german, british and italian ww2 fighter planes, even from times to times to my biggest surprise. But, I cannot speak for russian or american, and bombers.

 

When the pilot die, it is always because i hit something on the terrain that was not flat enough. 

 

Slowing the plane down to stall speed just before belly landing with full flap extended and no gear seems to work quite well.

[KevPBur]

On 5/19/2022 at 12:32 PM, Youtch said:

Personnally i have almost never experienced death upon crash landing.

 

I have at least 95% survival rate on belly landing with german, british and italian ww2 fighter planes, even from times to times to my biggest surprise. But, I cannot speak for russian or american, and bombers.

 

When the pilot die, it is always because i hit something on the terrain that was not flat enough. 

 

Slowing the plane down to stall speed just before belly landing with full flap extended and no gear seems to work quite well.

 

Me too, I've made several recently in the La5 in addition to the forward roll mentioned above.

The only time it goes wrong is when you land tail first, then the nose gets forced down with a big hit so no surprise the pilot is injured or killed. A lot of fuel makes the plane heavier less reliable to belly land but I would expect that to be the case in the real world too.