Flying He 111 in VR

[Slotermeyer]

I have some general questions concerning operating the He 111, is it possible to manage this plane completely in VR? I have a honeycomb flight yoke, can this be used in this sim? I didn't do much bombing stuff in IL2 so far, but there seems to be a special "bombing sight" for this plane and there are the various gunner positions, can they all be operated in VR? Have to say I fly only single player, so how can one fly the plane when using bomb sight, or is there a way AI is doing the bombing while I'm only piloting the plane? Or AI is flying and I do the bombing? There seems to be some autopilot option, never used it so far.

 

Flying this thing seems to be a lot of fun, have a lot to learn still but it would be a blast if I would be able one day to do a whole career in this plane with all the bombing stuff and so on.

[Riderocket]

You can push "V" to open bombsight, when you do this the plane turns on autopilot level and flies itself, but you can change the course in the bombsight left and right.

[Skycat1969]

You can operate any of the gun positions in VR. The AI pilot takes over when you switch to a gun.

 

Not having a throttle quadrant, I created a VoiceAttack profile that allows me to perform *almost* all of the functions associated with any aircraft or vehicle by using speech commands instead of my keyboard. It took a lot of reassigning default keybinds though. Here is the link to my VAP if you'd like to see how I (and others) have applied VoiceAttack to this sim:

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Bombing works the same as in 2D; i.e. the level autopilot takes over (flies the plane straight and level) as soon as you use the bombsight. Note that the bombsight is 2D and it'll show up on a "screen" in front of you.

 

7 hours ago, Skycat1969 said:

You can operate any of the gun positions in VR. The AI pilot takes over when you switch to a gun.

 

Well yes, but there's a bug where your head position slowly drifts towards the default position when in the "shift-T" mode, which makes gunnery practically unusable in VR. @LukeFF I've never seen any of the Devs respond to such reports; you happen to know if there are any plans to fix this? ?

[Sandmarken]

3 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Well yes, but there's a bug where your head position slowly drifts towards the default position when in the "shift-T" mode, which makes gunnery practically unusable in VR. @LukeFF I've never seen any of the Devs respond to such reports; you happen to know if there are any plans to fix this? ?

I dont think im having this bug, but im not often a gunner so not 100% sure. 

[kestrel79]

Yes you can use any of the stations on bombers in VR. I think that flight yoke works with IL2?

 

I always freak out in VR in bombers when I look to the right and see this full size pilot dude staring blankly at me sitting right next to me in actual human size. 

[LukeFF]

7 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Bombing works the same as in 2D; i.e. the level autopilot takes over (flies the plane straight and level) as soon as you use the bombsight. Note that the bombsight is 2D and it'll show up on a "screen" in front of you.

 

Well yes, but there's a bug where your head position slowly drifts towards the default position when in the "shift-T" mode, which makes gunnery practically unusable in VR. @LukeFF I've never seen any of the Devs respond to such reports; you happen to know if there are any plans to fix this? ?

 

This is the first I've heard of this. So what exactly does happen?

[Skycat1969]

There are two parts to using a machine gun at a bomber station:

1. Take control of the gun. Your virtual head will stay stationary in a locked view, but you'll be able to swivel the gun and fire. Basically it's the 'fire from the hip' option. You may see an an animation of the gun being unstowed when you first take control.

2. Nestle to the gunsight. This allows your eye to stay on the aiming point and use the iron sights or reflector sight as designed. It isn't always implemented perfectly, but mostly it works about as well as you'd expect.

 

There is also a change firing position command that is necessary to toggle between the two stances in the M4 Sherman commander's hatch when firing the .50 BMG. I think this may also the command for switching between the two waist guns in the He-111 but I need to test this theory.

[Slotermeyer]

15 hours ago, Skycat1969 said:

There are two parts to using a machine gun at a bomber station:

1. Take control of the gun. Your virtual head will stay stationary in a locked view, but you'll be able to swivel the gun and fire. Basically it's the 'fire from the hip' option. You may see an an animation of the gun being unstowed when you first take control.

2. Nestle to the gunsight. This allows your eye to stay on the aiming point and use the iron sights or reflector sight as designed. It isn't always implemented perfectly, but mostly it works about as well as you'd expect.

 

There is also a change firing position command that is necessary to toggle between the two stances in the M4 Sherman commander's hatch when firing the .50 BMG. I think this may also the command for switching between the two waist guns in the He-111 but I need to test this theory.

Okay thank you for all the replies. 

 

My next question would be: is it possible to bind the control of the gun of a gunner station to a joystick or the analog stick of a joypad? I remember trying this a few years ago in this sim and for some reason there was mouse control only which is a bit tricky in VR. 

[firdimigdi]

19 minutes ago, Slotermeyer said:

Okay thank you for all the replies. 

 

My next question would be: is it possible to bind the control of the gun of a gunner station to a joystick or the analog stick of a joypad? I remember trying this a few years ago in this sim and for some reason there was mouse control only which is a bit tricky in VR. 

Sadly it still applies and you also likely get this bug if you do bind the appropriate controls to the mouse:

 

 

And when you do finally get it working with the mouse you find that it's pretty horrible as you move your view with the mouse if you nestle to the gunsight and if you don't you can't aim and eventually the position drifts as well.

[LukeFF]

16 hours ago, Skycat1969 said:

There is also a change firing position command that is necessary to toggle between the two stances in the M4 Sherman commander's hatch when firing the .50 BMG. I think this may also the command for switching between the two waist guns in the He-111 but I need to test this theory.

 

Yes, there are a number of planes that use the change firing position command, including both He 111s, both Ju 88s, the Li-2, both Pe-2s, and the Handley Page.

[Slotermeyer]

2 hours ago, firdimigdi said:

Sadly it still applies and you also likely get this bug if you do bind the appropriate controls to the mouse:

 

 

And when you do finally get it working with the mouse you find that it's pretty horrible as you move your view with the mouse if you nestle to the gunsight and if you don't you can't aim and eventually the position drifts as well.

Okay thanks, I think I remember this issue when I tried this a few years ago, it was very annoying. Sad, that there is still no improvement for gunnery in VR. So, only AI Gunmen for me

[kestrel79]

18 hours ago, Skycat1969 said:

There are two parts to using a machine gun at a bomber station:

1. Take control of the gun. Your virtual head will stay stationary in a locked view, but you'll be able to swivel the gun and fire. Basically it's the 'fire from the hip' option. You may see an an animation of the gun being unstowed when you first take control.

2. Nestle to the gunsight. This allows your eye to stay on the aiming point and use the iron sights or reflector sight as designed. It isn't always implemented perfectly, but mostly it works about as well as you'd expect.

 

There is also a change firing position command that is necessary to toggle between the two stances in the M4 Sherman commander's hatch when firing the .50 BMG. I think this may also the command for switching between the two waist guns in the He-111 but I need to test this theory.

 

What I do is I have most of those keys binded to my Logitech 502 gaming mouse buttons. Really handy having all the gunner buttons right there on the mouse. I have one for taking control of the gun, one for nestle to gunsight, one for reloading, and one for changing the firing position. It works pretty good in the heat of battle.