How is your deflection shooting ?

[taffy2jeffmorgan]

Hi All. I'm having a mixed success with offline dogfights, and that is simply because of the obstructed view from the cockpit by the nose cowling, I find that the enemy can not be seen when you think you are in a good deflective position to open fire, so you cant see the results of your aiming judgement and with no gun convergence adjustment yet, its a bit tricky.

 

I suppose we have all slipped into Wonder Woman view from time to time flying IL-2 and found deflection a piece of cake ! but that little cheat is not available in BoS !

 

So be honest, how would you rate your deflection shooting, I would like to hear, and also to pass on a couple of tips.

 

 

 

Cheers.   JM.

[MarcoRossolini]

Thoroughly terrible

[SeriousFox]

VVS fighters can easily do the deflection shot. When it come to German fighters, for me I just don't shoot if angle is more than 30 degrees.

[Finkeren]

My experience is much the same as yours, but not really that much different from other WW2 flight sims.

 

One thing I tend to do in planes where the view is obstructed is to pull the sight well ahead of the target, much more than needed, and then levelling out of the bank and have the target move into my sight from the side, where I can see, rather than from below. I then use rudder to keep the target in place for the duration of the (usually) short burst.

[71st_AH_Mastiff]

suxs!

[HagarTheHorrible]

In theory, reality, deflection shooting for the Soviet side should be more difficult. The Soviet sights weren't as good and didn't provide a sufficiently large sight picture for good deflection shooting. Things may have improved later in the war for the VVS. Things may improve for the Germans once adjustable convergence is implemented into the game.

 

At the moment I'm relying on spray and pray, with lots of snap shots, unfortunately the man upstairs deems it unworthy of his attention.

[taffy2jeffmorgan]

Thanks Finkeren.  I shall try that out next time.      

[Finkeren]

It can take awhile getting used to, and will likely be frustrating until you get a feeling for just how much ahead you have to pull the sight and until you learn to ease into the rudder without throwing your aim off. In the end I find that it's worth it though.

[Felix58]

 

 

spray and pray

 

 

The tried and trusted technique!  A personal favourite!

 

On a serious note, search for the British pam "Bag the Hun".  It is straight forward and very effective.  Combine that with stacks of practice.  In the practice missions place your plane higher than the enemy and use your superior energy to go for a deflection shot.  I'm still in the practice stage but I'm certainly getting better.  Thoughtful practice will beat hours of aimless tail chasing online.

[HagarTheHorrible]

A couple tips : When setting your default view, put the crosshair of the revi to align with the top of the glass. When you start pulling on the joystick in a turn the crosshair will be straight in the center and you'll have more room to see the enemy as you pull on the joystick. When tracking someone for a deflection shot, if they are going left to right in front of you, keep their plane to the left of your windshield. As you keep getting closer you will have better vision and angle for the deflection shot. Wheen shooting enemy at 10-20 m put the crosshair slightly in front of their nose, for 20m + half of the crosshair in lead and 30m + about a full crosshair of lead. Typically you should shoot only at targets within 20 ish m.

I trust you mean 100- 200 meters. At 10- 20 meters I could probably open the canopy and throw the bullets at him with some success.

 

Incidentally, Pierre Clostermann thought that snap shooting was a complete waste of time.

Edited August 11, 2014 by HagarTheHorrible

[HagarTheHorrible]

A couple tips : When setting your default view, put the crosshair of the revi to align with the top of the glass. When you start pulling on the joystick in a turn the crosshair will be straight in the center and you'll have more room to see the enemy as you pull on the joystick. When tracking someone for a deflection shot, if they are going left to right in front of you, keep their plane to the left of your windshield. As you keep getting closer you will have better vision and angle for the deflection shot. Wheen shooting enemy at 10-20 m put the crosshair slightly in front of their nose, for 20m + half of the crosshair in lead and 30m + about a full crosshair of lead. Typically you should shoot only at targets within 20 ish m.

Your ideas about putting the cross hairs at the top of the sights, during normal flight, are interesting, firstly because of the technique, which sounds like a good, clever solution but might, by purists, be considered as gaming the game. Secondly it goes against advice from a real fighter pilot (article on SimHQ) that says shots should be taken "unloaded" as in with no control inputs.

[HagarTheHorrible]

 

 

 

 

For the unloaded shots, this is something that really make sense when writing books or flying in real life because if you pull too much G and fire, you will likely jam your cannons. In this game there's no gun jams and everybody is more or less a decent pilot that will pull proper gun defense most of the time. In theorycrafting it makes sense to aim and shoot in an unloaded state but in practice you will pretty much always have to pull at least a little on the joystick to get the lead you need unless you are on somebody's direct 6.

 

I think the reason for the unloaded shot, it being even more important with deflection shooting, is that the aim point, is not, as it were.  You would need to add deflection to the deflection to allow for the, gravitational drop ?, deflection shooting is supposed to be difficult enough without adding additional complexity.  Maybe it makes it more of a question of luck rather than good judgement ? 

[Dakpilot]

 Maybe it makes it more of a question of luck rather than good judgement ? 

 

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/3882-video-mkmrx/

 

Have a look at some (all?) of the vids in the link for some great examples of deflection shooting

 

Just like in real life I believe you will get luckier with more practice

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

 I prefer to get "unloaded" shots on target and attacks from blind spots or when target is hanging in the sky without speed. I am not that good with deflection shots anymore, age does not come alone

[=38=Tatarenko]

Agreed with Dak - in this video the same guy as Dak posted gets 8 kills and 1 shared (and 212 points!) in a single flight/fuel/ammo load on the EU Expert server.

 

Not luck but skill and teamwork. He makes it look SO easy. Everyone he sees falls to his guns and he is never in any danger. Great positioning and shooting and SA.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIC_VxiGBAk&list=UUVsMdMurnST7sH1oo20HcbQ

Edited August 11, 2014 by =38=Tatarenko

[Feathered_IV]

I find I'm good when both aircraft are moving on a straight trajectory. In the turn though I'm pretty rubbish.

[Leaf]

For me it's a combination of luck, knowledge of trajectories and prediction. 

 

a.)You need to know (roughly) your bullet's ballistics. How much they drop, over what distance and how fast they travel. 

 

b.)You need to be able to predict where the enemy plane is going to fly. More often that not, the enemy plane won't be sitting perfectly in your sights; it will be manoeuvring. Being able to predict its flight path and where it is going to fly, combined with your knowledge of trajectories, you will be able to hit targets that aren't even close to your sight. Example: an enemy plane zooms up from underneath you and diagonally across your nose. You turn with it, but it's obscured by your engine. By predicting its vector, and knowing roughly how much to lead it by, you can hit the target. Bear in mind that prediction becomes more important that knowledge of trajectories when you've got a lot of ammunition (FW 190). Aim along the enemy plane's flight path and fire a long-ish burst to let it fly into the bullets. The more ammo you have, the less squeamish you have to be regarding it's use.

 

c.)Luck is the last, and vital element. And it makes prediction either a blessing or a curse. Quite simply, when the enemy is not in view, and you're trying to predict where it's going to fly, it might change course. It's a matter of luck whether it continues on the assumed flight path, or it does not.

 

With practise, you become better at both prediction and learning bullet trajectories. I'm no expert, but I've become somewhat proficient at deflection shooting by learning both.

[HagarTheHorrible]

Practice makes perfect.  Maybe it's also the number of shot opportunities available in games.

 

A loaded shot however should still require either point blank range or luck.  I would think most targets, that are activly manouvering against you, snap shots aside, are going to have the target in the lower half of the reticule already, add in some stick forces and the contact point of target and bullets is going to be hidden below the cowl. In other words your not using the sight at all your simple guessing.  Any non perfect flying, which must be fairly common in flight sims because of a lack of tactile feedback, is going to exagerate any accumulated lead errors and impact points, either drifting left or right of the intended shot point. 

 

Sight pictures, range, offset  etc can help in lining up for a deflection shot, but how do you callculate for the amount of pressure/ "G's" be applied to the stick ?

[SharpeXB]

I notice in BoS I don't have to make as many blind shots as in CoD where almost every shot seems to be like that. Don't know why that is. The solution is just to get closer.

[Finkeren]

I notice in BoS I don't have to make as many blind shots as in CoD where almost every shot seems to be like that. Don't know why that is.

ClOD models head movement from G-force very strongly, that's propably the reason why.

[BeastyBaiter]

Get closer. If doing B&Z, shoot at under 250m. If turn fighting, shoot at less than 100m. My own experience is it is rather difficult to miss when shooting at 20m.

[SharpeXB]

ClOD models head movement from G-force very strongly, that's propably the reason why.

I haven't done CoD in quite a while so I'd have to try it again to figure why. When I was doing CoD it was for a "Dead is Dead" Desastersoft career. Therefore I'm very conservative and don't fire blind in order to save ammo. I also avoid prolonged high G turns in fights cause it makes you vulnerable.

[Leaf]

My own experience is it is rather difficult to miss when shooting at 20m.

 

Wow, really following Hartmann's footsteps there! :D 

[Stallion]

As a 190/109 fanboy (I go RU when the teams are unbalanced) I rarely do deflection shooting, but I'm about 5% success on those blind shots.  Much better to pull the trigger when I know my bullets are going into the crosshair

[76SQN-FatherTed]

I'm absolutely stupendous

[Gambit21]

I would think most targets, that are activly manouvering against you, snap shots aside, are going to have the target in the lower half of the reticule already, add in some stick forces and the contact point of target and bullets is going to be hidden below the cowl. In other words your not using the sight at all your simple guessing.  

Yes and no.

I've made a lot of 'below the nose' kills with very short squirts of ammo - you just get a feel for it.

The brain is quite good at calculating firing solutions with some practice.

 

Same goes with instinctive snap shots when there's no time to think about the site.

[Gambit21]

I don't 'lean' for deflection shooting, and my shooting was just as good using the hat switch to look around.

I only have trackIR now because I needed it for RoF. Changes of direction with those crates just happens too fast.

All those years with the old IL2 though - hat switch.

[Eldur]

My experience is much the same as yours, but not really that much different from other WW2 flight sims.

 

One thing I tend to do in planes where the view is obstructed is to pull the sight well ahead of the target, much more than needed, and then levelling out of the bank and have the target move into my sight from the side, where I can see, rather than from below. I then use rudder to keep the target in place for the duration of the (usually) short burst.

 

That's what I mostly did in the old Il-2 series, especially in FW-190s, as the normal way was essentially comepletely blind. And it had one advantage. Even when the target didn't cross at convergence, the full load hits, nice spread across the whole fuselage, if the aim was good. Much more devastating than anything else this was back then. But it requires lots of practice. And a good roll rate, that's one reason why it is very useful in the 190s.

[Wulf]

id wish i had trackir to be able to lean to a side and look over the nose for deflection shooting

 

 

Yeah, I wouldn't get too concerned about that raaaid.  TIR is great, no doubt about it, but it won't help in the way you suggest.  Things just don't work that way - not at all.

 

Foolishly, I'm always attempting longish high angle-off crossing shots in the game but in most cases these fail.  Largely, I suspect this failure is a product of trajectory - cannon rounds have a very loopy flight path so accurate range estimation (right down to the last few few meters) combined with an accurate understanding of ones harmonization arrangements is going to be critical.  But all that aside, shooting at moving targets is always going to be tough.  The received wisdom is to forget the fancy stuff and just get as close as possible - before you open-up.  This is possibly harder to do in simulated air combat than in RL because online, we are always in a combat zone where high risk (well, suicidal really) 'dog fighting' is the norm as opposed to RL, where most people were probably killed during a high speed bounce and never saw the bloke that got them.  Oh well, such is life I guess ..........

[FlatSpinMan]

Hopeless, bt in my shiny new Wuerger (which i just got to try out for the first time today, finally), it doesn't matter so much because I have ALL THE AMMUNITION!!!!