Brief Room Episode 16: F-86A Sabre

[LukeFF]

In this Brief Room episode, Daniel Tuseev and Viktor Sechnoy discuss the F-86A Sabre. 

 

 

[Avimimus]

I agree with that. I always felt a cluster of three 20mm cannon mounted near the centreline (e.g. in a prop plane), or four 23mm cannon in a jet, should be sufficient. That said, three Mk-103 cannon (e.g. some Do-335 variants) seems to be a bit more ideal for taking on bombers. I wonder how much of this is coloured by our perceptions in simulators though?

 

I often favour greater magazine depth (e.g. more rounds) over a higher volume of fire - but that wasn't the case historically. Perhaps it is because I'm flying more aggressively against more situationally aware AI - which means more turning fights. In contrast, real engagements tended to happen against aircraft that weren't that aware of their surroundings or would involve only a couple of passes per sortie (as both pilots would usually be much more prone to disengage).

 

This makes me think:

 

(1) Are all of the complaints over the years about difficulty spotting opponents incorrect? Perhaps it should be hard to spot enemies, but the AI should be worse at spotting the player as well. Perhaps it is realistic for both the players and the AI to sometimes miss spotting each other? Maybe the solution to those old debates wasn't dots or haze or glint - maybe it was adding AI with worse (or more variable) situational awareness?

 

(2) Perhaps most (but not all AI) should be prone to trying to disengage at some point during the fight (e.g. after a couple of passes)?

 

If these things were the case... then maybe I'd want more weight of fire (instead of the ideal armament being 3x20mm cannon with >450 rpg)?

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

Spotting can vary with settings and hardware, so it's hard to speak about the realism or difficulty of it when people can tune it to such varying levels, and when they have varying eyes. Even if it's theoretically possible to get realistic spotting in IL2, how would I know my settings aren't tuned easier or harder than the realistic tuning? Currently one guy with sexy tuning can say it's fine or too easy, then another with horrible tuning can complain it's too difficult. Some people also just have eyes that are/aren't suited to spotting small moving objects, so there's gonna be all kinds of subjective contradictions there too. We'd need a calibration tool to get useful standardized answers on realism and difficulty. Right now how do we speak of realism or difficulty instead of "I'm OK/not OK with my current setup"? And for online, you'd need some mystery tech to force standardized realistic spotting on people, otherwise people will tune too sexy spotting, or give themselves bad tuning without knowing any better. I don't know if that exists or not.

[Avimimus]

 

29 minutes ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

Spotting can vary with settings and hardware, so it's hard to speak about the realism or difficulty of it when people can tune it to such varying levels, and when they have varying eyes. Even if it's theoretically possible to get realistic spotting in IL2, how would I know my settings aren't tuned easier or harder than the realistic tuning? Currently one guy with sexy tuning can say it's fine or too easy, then another with horrible tuning can complain it's too difficult. Some people also just have eyes that are/aren't suited to spotting small moving objects, so there's gonna be all kinds of subjective contradictions there too. We'd need a calibration tool to get useful standardized answers on realism and difficulty. Right now how do we speak of realism or difficulty instead of "I'm OK/not OK with my current setup"? And for online, you'd need some mystery tech to force standardized realistic spotting on people, otherwise people will tune too sexy spotting, or give themselves bad tuning without knowing any better. I don't know if that exists or not.

 

Well, that is essentially the discussion which has been happening for years.

 

But Viktor Sechnoy's comment about preferring 4x23mm armament got me thinking about why I prefer something similar. This combined with an observation someone made a few weeks ago about a lot of old gun camera footage showing fighters not appearing to take evasive action or even respond to the attack... and I started thinking about after action reports in biographies of fighter pilots (most accounts referring to ambushing a plane or being ambushed - actual prolonged dogfights are usually fairly rare in these accounts).

 

If you read my original post - my point was that our entire discussion about spotting might be missing the point - that in real combat environments pilots often didn't spot the enemy, and the unrealistic thing is actually that the AI is too good at spotting.

 

P.S. This is getting a bit off-topic - so we might split the thread in a bit.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

I hope we'd get a choice of awareness settings then, I'd find it pretty boring if fighters didn't fight a large amount of the time. To bring it back to guns though, I guess the choice of guns and their ammo count matters a lot less when you're expecting a cooperating target, and that could help explain some of the head scratching gun choices the designers made. For virtual fighting I'd agree with you, I'd take 2-3 centerline 20s/23s and a high ammo count. Bigger stuff for fun.

[BlitzPig_EL]

I agree about the armament question of dumping the big cannon for another faster firing one.  I was flying the P39 with the 1943 engine mod when the new patch came out, and I kept telling myself how much better the plane would be with another .50 Browning with a whole lot more ammo, instead of the 37mm.  Not only for duration of fire, but having all the guns with the same trajectory.  That in itself would be a big improvement.

[Gambit21]

I’m sure the team will do a fine job with the F-86. However if I ever do install Korea it will be for that MiG 15bis. Can’t argue with that beast - those guns…

I’ve always had a thing for that plane.

😎

[86Cheese]

Cool, cool, cool...  I love what you guys are doing with these dev logs. Sharing your thoughts process along with some research is a great way to combat some of the weird complaints folks come up with regarding sims.

 

All that being said though, when are we gonna get to see some cockpits?! 

[LukeFF]

7 hours ago, 86Cheese said:

All that being said though, when are we gonna get to see some cockpits?! 

 

I'm not sure of the timeline for that, but rest assured they are being worked on and are looking great. It's just a lot of work taking all the resource material and developing it into a finished cockpit. 

[Avimimus]

There have also been some renders of early WIP cockpits in past development updates or briefing rooms. Mainly geometry without textures... but some pictures do exist.

[Juri_JS]

Any chance to get a Briefing Room episode showing the work of the map team?