On settings and sensitivity

[North_Wolf]

In the last few weeks I have gone through my IL2 setup and made great progress in making the game enjoyable.  Normally I find myself leaving stuff (settings) alone thinking much of it is "good enough" as is.  But now that I have plenty of time to devote to my flight simming then I have forced myself to slowly go over everything.  This has taken a very long time and alot of testing, but I am dedicated to keep at it.

 

Joystick and keybinds - This was a long one, I abandoned my old layout slowly.  This was a battle with my muscle memory, I moved binds that had been around for years in certain places and replaced them with more sensible ones.

 

I also learned this in the process:   For joysticks that let you set key presses as button inputs you can set one of them to shift and double your inputs.  This came after finally trying to use the clutch button and mode switcher on the x52 pro.  Those where a pain to manage, but setting the clutch button to keypress shift doubled my options without any complications!  I even considered setting up a couple of similar keys on the stick itself to allow my throttle to "shift" into different engines.  So far I have not found it justified but I may be wrong.

 

I have a question related to this:  Is there real value to being able to manipulate two engines?  I like flying the Ju52 and HE 111 but so far it never seems really needed to work those engines out of synch with one another.

 

Since I was going over everything, I also forced myself to switch to foot pedals (I owned them, but did not use them for more then toe brakes).  I will admit after a few days of hating it, I am now amazed.  I seriously need to find a way to fix it to the floor better though (it slips).

 

 

The other thing I worked on was my VR settings.  I have a vive pro 2 (I had the first verson in the past).  This is very playable compared to the old one.  I can read the instruments and also over the last few weeks I truely appricate the instruments.  Glanching at my ATA value (now that I actually understand it) feels natural.  I do fine without tecnochat.

 

I had a great time flying with the Flying Circus community last weekend (great to finally have someone on coms), I learned quickly that there was more work for me to do however.

 

My spotting was next to none existant compared to other VR pilots.  I found out that I had landscape on sharp... this made it so that if I took my eye of a plane I would not be able to find it again against the background.   This and a few other settings, and I think I can have some actual situation awareness now.

 

The other thing was controls, I got sniped a couple of times and those where not point blank hits.  It made me realise that my setup was not doing me any favors.

 

I was new to pedals and I had my convergence set to 100 (since fixed and I put in alot of practice with different ranges, finding that 200 works for me in most cases in FC aircraft and in the Bf109 and early soviet planes).  I might fine tune this some more.

 

 

The big one for me right now is the joystick sensitivity setings.  I am using an x52 Pro with throttle and the Pro flight pedals (not combat) from the same company.  I own a Warthog HOTAS as well, I stuck with the x52 due to the amount of buttons (and honestly a reliance on the stick twist that I dont need now).

 

If anyone has experence going from one to the other, I would love to hear about it.

 

On the sensitivity there was a huge change when I put in a small deadzone on all axis and the joystick noise filter to 0.6.  I did not realize how much I was struggling to keep on target before.

 

The big question:

 

I have all the curves at 0 and it feels like I can adjust to it as it is.  Against the AI at least, I can stay stable and on target.  I also know that I am nowhere near being able to use sudden rudder or prop hang to shoot straight at any real distance (like I did in Red Baron 3D ages ago), but I am not sure if thats a sensitivity issue or simply lack of practice.

 

I have time to adjust muscle memory so I am ok with experimenting, I see that very few people seem to use 0 adjustment but that most people talk about moving towards 0 over time while remaining at higher settings.  I tested it with a bf109 and I was not able to get a feel for any real difference at different settings.

 

Are planes in general much to sensitive without adjustment when doing minimal input?

 

My instict is that its better to have a muscle memory for where the stick is actually present.  I could be wrong on this and I would love to hear different takes on it.  If wrong I also dont mind spending time on finding the right groove for myself.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2024 by North_Wolf

[69th_Panp]

On 10/13/2024 at 4:46 AM, North_Wolf said:

Are planes in general much to sensitive without adjustment when doing minimal input?

I would say yes, they are way too sensitive in game.

Most people will just use the in-game adjustments and that will work depending on what stick you are using.

I have found, coming from and old rotor head mind set, that just using in game adjustments only gets you halfway there.

I use a combination of stick software and game adjustments (Tonning down) the curve. and then adjusting a curve in game.

Works for me 😀

You are more stable in flight and less twitchy and your accuracy will increase.

Experiment with your software on the X52 if it allows you to adjust the sensitivity, and then tweak it in the game.

Good luck👍

Edited October 15, 2024 by 69th_Panp