Frustrations as a Beginner in IL-2 Multiplayer

[fergal69]

Yup - first time on line shot down a friendly. 

 

So easy to do & makes you appreciate what pilots in WWII went through in deciding to shot at a plane or not

[Sonko]

Go for ground attack. Those targets can't run away and when they're shooting at you you're in the right spot.

[Ace_Pilto]

Frustrated? Good!

 

You're frustrated because you are new. You will be reminded that you are new every single time you get the shit kicked out of you. If you have the heart and brains to stick with it after being punished you will start to learn how to turn the tables. You will start to think! Your brain, the big thing inside your head will turn on and look for ways to stop you from getting murdered with casual ease by every enemy you meet.

 

Get on voice comms

Follow

Listen

Learn

Observe

 

If you haven't died 1,000 times you have no right to complain.

Edited April 2 by Ace_Pilto

[R33GZ]

12 hours ago, Ace_Pilto said:

Frustrated? Good!

 

You're frustrated because you are new. You will be reminded that you are new every single time you get the shit kicked out of you. If you have the heart and brains to stick with it after being punished you will start to learn how to turn the tables. You will start to think! Your brain, the big thing inside your head will turn on and look for ways to stop you from getting murdered with casual ease by every enemy you meet.

 

Get on voice comms

Follow

Listen

Learn

Observe

 

If you haven't died 1,000 times you have no right to complain.

Harsh. Good thing you weren't condescending about it. Im sure a high and mighty approach will really help him along 🙄

[Ace_Pilto]

It's not condescension, it's reality.

 

Playing in flight sims in PvP is one of the hardest things you can do in a video game. As a new player, the sooner you get out of "main character" mode and realise that you are completely helpless against highly competitive and skillful players, the sooner you can begin to put aside your ego and your unrealistic expectations to start learning how to survive and understand what is happening. I'm just reporting the facts with accuracy, if you're new then you're going to have days where you absolutely hate flying and you will feel like you're absolutely useless and that you are never going to get anywhere. Getting a harsh reality check early on might be just the thing to encourage a mentality that helps to avoid some of that frustration. 

 

I'm just saying that failure is perfectly normal and something you'll have to suffer through if you want to eventually get good. That should be reassuring for anyone who is feeling the helplessness of getting started, having an experienced person tell them that it's not them as an individual who is having a hard time, but, rather, it is the nature of the game.

[MaxPower]

The original post was talking about some that jerk that lost his mind because TOP misidentified him and shot him down when they were on the same team.  It has nothing to do with competitive skill levels.

[=OT=Rollie]

Go to the Quick Start menu and select opponents that are hard for you do identify. Set up engagements further and further apart. Practice, Practice, Practice. 

And get a bigger screen. The immersion of a triple screen 65" setup is awesome. Rivals even VR.

[SupremeLoser]

To the OP, I read through this thread and many other longer ones about this topic.  I will sum it as follows:  DON'T TAKE THIS GAME TOO SERIOUSLY!

 

Consider the number of hours the ace players in this game have invested into it, not to mention the financial cost for the type of equipment they have, which will also give them an advantage against the more casual players like myself and probably you too.  To put it simply, you and I will never beat them at this game.  And... does it really matter???

 

I have been flying flight simulators since 1980, and I enjoy them and love the technical part of it and learning how to fly.  It is really fascinating stuff.  With VR in IL-2, it is really something to enjoy.  And that is just it, just enjoy it.  Perhaps don't even bother with multiplayer, just do some single player missions and even free flight and enjoy the great job done by the people who designed this simulator.  It never gets old to me to feel like I am sitting in the cockpit of a P-51, like I can reach out and touch the gauges, look at the beautiful shape of the plane around me, hear that glorious sound of the Merlin engine and actually "feel" it (thanks to a 20+ year old MS FF joystick) during flight.

 

But at the same time, the multiplayer stuff really turns it into just a game IMHO.  It isn't ever going to be like real combat, nor would you want it to.  If we were actually flying in WW2, I think we would all be EXTREMELY careful in what we engaged in.  Every engagement could be a life/death situation and you would certainly depend on team work.  The greenhorns would be protected by the veteran pilots in any decent squadron and things would be strategically planned out.  You would simply do the minimum to complete your mission and GET HOME ALIVE.  GETTING HOME ALIVE is what it was all about.  No fancy flying, no showoff tactics, no crazy engagements.  And even with all that, look at the attrition rate of the fighter pilots during WW2.  Stuff happens in combat.  Simple as that.  It often isn't about who is "better".  It is really to do with careful strategic planning before the mission even started, and then some luck.  Consider this, most of the ace/veteran pilots of the Luftwaffe was wipe out by mid 1944.  So it didn't really matter how "good" they were.  Most of those great pilots didn't live to see 1945.  There were just a few strangler ace pilots that survived WW2.  The USA did better in this respect because rather than the Luftwaffe policy of having the pilots keep flying missions until either they were dead or the war was over, the USA would rotate pilots through 25 to 30 missions as their "tour of duty".  Then when they returned, they would train the new pilots back home with what they learned.  The result is that technically, the ace pilots from the USA may not have reached the technical skill level some of the long surviving German ace pilots, but... they more often than not lived to tell about it all.  And that knowledge could be passed on to the next wave of pilots.  The result was that the new pilots from the USA were quite good out of the gate with the strategy in combat part.  And I am sure they, and especially the ace pilots could hand all of us our "you know what" in combat.  This is meant as no disrespect to the German pilots.  They were in a different situation that caused a different strategy being necessary.  It must have been extremely difficult to be in that situation and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.  It is summed up as follows "war is hell".  If you got home alive while doing your duty, to me, that's "winning".

 

Getting back to the IL-2 multiplayer game... well, it is more a matter of learning how to exploit the physics as it is modelled to "win".  But that brings me back to the point of "does it matter"?  Bear in mind, that some of us casual flyers may have 1000-2000 hours flying time in the game... which is still a lot of time invested.  I got mistakenly thinking I was really great at the game when after playing single player against "ace" level AI and could soundly beat them going 4 of them against one of me and various planes.  To make the odds as difficult as possible against me, I would start off on the runway and they would be airborne over my base at various altitudes. Boy was I mistaken when I engaged in actual multiplayer.  Win some and lose many is the key in that.  Boom and zoom works the best for me.  The element of surprise is about the only way to win against a reasonably good human player.

 

But there are some that can do some crazy stuff with their planes and I just think it isn't a reasonable goal to try and beat them.  Why?  They have 10-20x the flight hours of your or me, take this "game" waaaayyyy too seriously IMHO and probably have sacrificed either their job, family or social life to achieve it.  How else can they invest that much time in a single PC game?  Not meant as an insult, but rather, as a reality check of what you are going to get yourself into if you decide to "get serious" about this game and really try and win in multiplayer.  Yes, I think it is possible, but I think you will have to invest so much time in this that it will be very similar to someone with a drinking problem.  Job, family and social life will suffer drastically.  Unless of course, you really want to do this professionally.  In that case I would suggest why not train to be a real pilot and if you are young enough, perhaps join the Air Force?  I am about 99.999999% sure that those Air Force guys would give even the best "ace" pilots here a rude awakening.  And certainly the rest of us.

[BlitzPig_EL]

1 hour ago, CaptainBill said:

I am about 99.999999% sure that those Air Force guys would give even the best "ace" pilots here a rude awakening.  And certainly the rest of us.

One of our guys was a Marine Aviator, a jet jock, with all the bravado that goes along with that.  I repeatedly handed him his butt one on one.  He in a Corsair, me in an A6M5.

Why?  He couldn't unlearn his jet training.  There is no afterburner button to push and get out of trouble, which was his most used tactic.  He tried to instantaneously out climb my Zero and just didn't understand that my light aircraft had better initial acceleration.  Just another view point.  

 

By and large though you are right, have fun, play for fun, relax and roll with whatever happens.  You will improve over time, and the new guys coming in will be meat on your table.

[SupremeLoser]

That is another angle I should have mentioned.  Going the other way, there isn't a correlation that a great real world pilot would be great in IL-2 multiplayer.  Sim vs real life.  I think a lot of the real physical and mental demands they go through in real life would cause most of us to "wash out" if we tried it.

 

Definitely just enjoy it but just wanted the OP to feel some support.  To the OP, don't take it hard (or even be bothered by it) when you get shot down by other players in multiplayer.  It doesn't mean anything correlating in any way to real life.  It is just that they have had more hours invested in a video game.

Edited June 3 by CaptainBill

[MaxPower]

I mean, the original topic does correlate to real life, right.  It relates to the health of the online sim community.  When some sweaty online player is acting like a jackhole to the point that this new player feels like he is unwelcome for a simple mistake, it's a bad representation of the community.  Misidentifying targets is not unheard of.  But, being a belligerent douche-nozzle about it should be.  It's a net loss.

[LukeFF]

Alright, let's watch the name-calling.

[IckyATLAS]

11 hours ago, CaptainBill said:

And that is just it, just enjoy it.  Perhaps don't even bother with multiplayer, just do some single player missions and even free flight and enjoy the great job done by the people who designed this simulator.  It never gets old to me to feel like I am sitting in the cockpit of a P-51, like I can reach out and touch the gauges, look at the beautiful shape of the plane around me, hear that glorious sound of the Merlin engine and actually "feel" it (thanks to a 20+ year old MS FF joystick) during flight.

I would agree to this. Never played multiplayer, enjoyed flying single player missions, building missions and a campaign with the editor and enjoy the simulator.

The very rare cases I did try the multiplayer (on a pretty crowded server) a few years ago I did not survive more than a minute or so. 

There are multiplayer missions custom built by players on proprietary servers which are more in the sense of flying with a human team, where the rookie could be supported by more veteran wingmen, but you have to be a squadron member to participate. That is probably the best of both worlds (I mean solo and multiplayer) compared to public open servers.

 

11 hours ago, CaptainBill said:

Getting back to the IL-2 multiplayer game... well, it is more a matter of learning how to exploit the physics as it is modelled to "win".

I would say like in the real world. The best fighter pilots in real life were those that could master the physics of their planes, in addition to other skills like shooting, split-second decision taking, eagle eye and I mean really that,  etc.

 

However there are major differences that I can easily put forward:

The gravity effects on your body. When you take high positive g (say 6) and sometimes negative g (some plane engines did not like negative g's) forces on your body in a furball type or  combat to outturn your opponent, the intense muscular effort that can be quickly exhausting, sweating in a crammed cockpit.

The sound, vibrations and heat, with a 1000 horsepower engine roaring in front of you just behind the firewall of your instrument panel, all that maybe with frantic calls on the radio, added to that vibrations and mechanical effects of all your guns blazing.

The metallic fuselage which is an excellent sound amplifier of all vibrations and internal sounds like engine etc.

The long hours of flight (with above conditions) to go and come from the combat area, this means also fighting the tiredness, sleepiness etc.

All this cannot be duplicated in our type of sim.

 

If this can be of comfort to you, all these effects would also have also made a strong selection on some excellent super aces in multiplayer who would not stand a chance if immersed in all the conditions above. 

 

 

 

 

[Aapje]

2 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

The best fighter pilots in real life were those that could master the physics of their planes, in addition to other skills like shooting, split-second decision taking, eagle eye and I mean really that,  etc.

 

I actually think that good habits were much more important. An eagle eye doesn't help if you fail to look behind frequently and someone sneaks onto your tail.  And the best aces didn't seem to be experts in sniping from long distance, but got to point blank range. And the most important is of course to only engage with an advantage, when possible.

 

Note that Adolf Galland famously had limited eye sight, and still managed to become a high scoring ace. Probably most importantly, he was taught by another ace about what tactics to use.

 

I think that the best modern simmers would actually do quite well if put into a real aircraft. In general, I think that across a variety of skill-based professions, the quality of modern people increased a lot. For example, I used to be into poker, and old-school poker pros would base their tactics on gossip, informal teaching, and experience. But they wouldn't actually play that many poker hands, because playing poker required a lot of travel, and real life play was slow. Modern pros have access to advanced theoretical texts, and can even measure their own performance for various opening hands to see what their win percentages are for that opening hand. And very importantly, they tend to have way more experience, since they often play multiple tables at the same time, online.

 

Real WW 2 pilots would get relatively little training, and would fly many sorties without a dogfight, and when they got into a fight, they couldn't record the fight, to later analyze things. And they couldn't learn from fatal mistakes. The main change that modern pilots would have to adapt to do well in the past is probably to be more disciplined, because as you say, in real life you don't respawn, so getting back alive is most important.

 

13 hours ago, CaptainBill said:

If we were actually flying in WW2, I think we would all be EXTREMELY careful in what we engaged in.  Every engagement could be a life/death situation and you would certainly depend on team work.

 

Contemporary reports suggest that team work went out of the window fast in most cases, and the best WW 2 team work was actually very simple, with two pairs of fighters flying in a formation, where the leaders would look forward and the wing men would scan the rear. And by having different elevation for each pair, they would reduce the blind spot issue. Attempts to use more complicated formations typically failed. And once in combat, it would often just become chaos.

[SupremeLoser]

I think the real world situation would make the comparison of flying in a simulation/game (no matter how accurate), not terribly predictable.  The problem is in real flight there are forces that the pilot is subjected to that would completely change the ability of a person to fly vs in a video game.  And also the feel of the controls and how the plane reacts is quite a bit different.  I recall a real pilot here talking about how some gamer he knew, that flew excellent in the video game, flew a real plane and was all over the place.  And that was a basic plane like a Cessna.  Couple that to the actual mental and physical demands in combat, which I think would be extreme for pretty much any sane person, and it really doesn't hold any sort of correlation between a video game and being a real combat pilot.  The IL-2 simulation/game would probably be good to give one at least a cursory understanding of how a plane works and some basic strategies, but that's about it.  As great of a simulation available for PC that it is.  It really wouldn't give one trying to be a real pilot any advantage over ones who never "flew" in IL-2 or even tried it and sucked at it.

 

So, what's my point?  To the OP, don't get so frustrated with IL-2.  It is a cool video game, but I wouldn't invest too much time, energy or mental energy into it.  No more than those guys playing world of warcraft. Just enjoy it and have fun! To me the best part is "flying" in VR and enjoying the excellent sound and graphics while having a nice historical tour of the various WW2 (and WW1) aircraft.  For this, all you need to do is the single player missions or even my favorite, the "quick start", and just take up a plane in the air and have fun with it against AI opponents or no opponents.  The multiplayer can be fun, try your best is all, but worrying about how you rank against others, well, IMHO is taking this game WAAAAYYYY too seriously and investing way too much time into it.  That is, for those of us with full time jobs and other responsibilities/aspirations in daily real world life.

Edited June 5 by CaptainBill

[R33GZ]

1 hour ago, CaptainBill said:

It really wouldn't give one trying to be a real pilot any advantage over ones who never "flew" in IL-2 or even tried it and sucked at it.

I don't know that I would agree with that.

 

I've been lucky to have some free time in a little Tecnam over the years. The 'instructor' was surprised at how quickly i picked up control. Within the first hour I was doing touch and goes under his guidance. He was amazed that I understood how to recover a spin and had a basic understanding of cross checking gauges. When I explained that I probably had a few thousand hours 'flying' simulators, he cracked up laughing.

 

Having said all that, it should be noted that my first few hours were, terrifying to say the least. Sweated my own body weight and nearly squeezed the black out of the stick

 

The part that I find incredibly difficult and I guess comes with study and rote learning, is navigation and communication - what radio frequencies, what altitudes and airspaces your allowed/not allowed in, route planning, dealing with a busy airfield... basically everything outside the stick wiggling 😆

 

Flight sims don't make you a pilot, but I do think it gives you an initial head start in basic training

[BlitzPig_EL]

1 hour ago, R33GZ said:

 

Flight sims don't make you a pilot, but I do think it gives you an initial head start in basic training

Agree 100%

In my years I've flown several real aircraft, all but one some sort of boring civilian thing.   Had good pilots in the seat next to me which helped.  The last thing I had a little time is was a WW2 US Navy Stearman.  It was my first biplane, my first open cockpit, and my first aircraft with a joystick instead of a yoke.  The owner got us off the ground  and up to altitude, then let me take over for a bit.  He asked me how long it was since I last flew, and was surprised at the number of years it had been.  I did some coordinated turns, held a compass heading well, and didn't do anything rash.  I credit my sim flying with that.  After he took control back, he did a couple 2.25G banked turns,  WHEEEEE!

I do miss flying the real thing, but on a cost to benefit ratio, it's hard to beat flying on the computer.

[Trooper117]

Without a doubt, (for me at least) my time in flight sims was a great help and insight before I started flying for real... in fact, it's what made me want to fly in the first place.

On my first ever real flying lesson, I told the Chief Instructor I had done quite a bit of sim flying and that I wanted to see if it translated in any way to the real thing... his response, ''Let's see'' and under his guidance I took off, flew around and even did a decent landing.

Looking back now, (this was in the 90's) it didn't take long before after yet more touch and go's, we landed and instead of heading back in, we pulled off the runway and John the instructor got out and simply said, ''take it up yourself now, you know what you're doing, keep at the touch and go's, and when you get bored, land and I'll met you in the club house, and oh, don't break it''... and that was one of my proudest achievements, me, actually flying solo for the first time!

[SupremeLoser]

I wouldn't doubt that this flying sim, and many others, would give you a head start with the basics of flying a real plane.  Maybe I didn't say things clearly.  What I meant was that in becoming a combat pilot I think that advantage would quickly disintegrate when put in actual real combat.  I think that the real world of the extreme mental and physical demand along with the specific real world skills these pilots go through in actual combat would make the flying skills learned in thousands of hours in IL-2 not very applicable.  Maybe I'm wrong?  But I think that they have much more specific maneuvers for the particular theatre, plane and frankly "what works" that is much more important and overrides the various maneuvers learned in the IL-2 sim.  In fact, in WW2 they would often change up tactics (meaning what maneuvers they would respond with) month to month and keeping ahead of the enemy on this was critical. Sure, I understand that the physics of each plane has been modelled quite well in IL-2 and we have figured out maneuvers that work well for each plane, in various situation and various planes... in the sim.  But that is probably different than what you would end up learning (to save your life) in real combat.  I haven't flown in actual combat, so I can't speak from personal experience, but base it on things I have read and learned about WW2 combat pilot experiences.  The autobiography of Pappy Boyington is a good place to start.  What you think would pan out in the real world in combat wouldn't nine times out of ten.  Often the ones that end up being the "heroes" or ones that become real world aces are not the ones you would expect.  Gabby Gabreski for example, the top american WW2 ace, actually was told that he would never make a good pilot, let alone a combat fighter pilot, after going through instruction in his early days in the military.  And apparently, when he did finally make it where he could fly in combat, becoming a great... or even good fighter pilot, didn't come easy for him.  It took him a bit of time to figure it out... but when he did, look out!  Going from the other direction, in Pappy's autobiography he mentioned of certain pilots that he felt were better pilots than himself, but they ended up getting KIA.  Stuff happens.  Pappy himself ended up getting shot down in 1944, but luckily he lived through it... though he suffered over a year in Japanese prisons (but wasn't marked as a prisoner of war so that they didn't have to report about him to the red cross... thus, everyone thought he was dead until WW2 ended).  I'll wrap this up with what I read I believe here a while back, that a man who was very, very enthusiastic and talked about all his hours flying a combat sim (I think it was IL-2) tried out for the Air Force.  He ended up being one of the ones that washed out.  Nothing against him, just that my point that doing great in this combat sim doesn't correlate to being a great combat pilot.  But again, no doubt that the familiarity you get with aircraft operation is helpful in flying a civilian aircraft and getting started.  But I think combat is another story.  Can you take the Gs?  Do you have the stamina?  How about the mental anguish when being shot at?  Heck, I think I would wash out too... must of us would.  Actually, I know I would due to my age... maybe I had a chance when I was in my 20s, though even there I read that being a fit distance runner like myself is actually a detriment.  There are a select few that would make it.  Being good at a combat flying sim would be very low in the priority of things that matter to make it as a combat pilot IMHO.

 

Well, anyway, I don't mean to get carried away with this LOL.  To me, as cool as IL-2 is, especially in VR... it is still just a game.

 

I would be curious to hear from any pilots here that have served in combat.  What is your take on this?  Does flying in IL-2 correlate to what you have experienced in real combat?

Edited June 6 by CaptainBill

[Trooper117]

31 minutes ago, CaptainBill said:

To me, as cool as IL-2 is, especially in VR... it is still just a game.

 

Absolutely right, it's a flight sim 'game' when all said and done... however, on my 50th birthday, I was bought an hours session with an ex RAF pilot in an Extra 200.

He asked me what I would like to do, so I said can we go up and do some WWII type combat flying, boom and zoom, split S, turn fighting etc, so he took me through the lot...

When I asked him how many G's we were pulling, he reckoned between 6-7, and I was chuffed I didn't grey or black out... but I'll tell you this, when I climbed out of that cockpit, I was soaked in sweat, and felt liked I had just run a 10 miler!

[R33GZ]

6 hours ago, CaptainBill said:

I think that advantage would quickly disintegrate when put in actual real combat.

For sure man, I reckon it would be nighty night for me around the 4g mark 😅 

 

I also don't have a great survival rate in air combat on MP, maybe a 30% chance of survival IF I see the enemy coming 

[ST_Catchov]

9 hours ago, CaptainBill said:

I would be curious to hear from any pilots here that have served in combat.  What is your take on this?  Does flying in IL-2 correlate to what you have experienced in real combat?

 

Not many I suspect, if any. Maybe jet jocks, but that's a whole different ball game to WWII which you are primarily focused on.

 

Besides, the memories of real-life fear and anxiety may be too much for some to bear as well as potential electrocution.

 

 

 

[IckyATLAS]

On 6/4/2025 at 1:02 PM, Aapje said:

An eagle eye doesn't help if you fail to look behind frequently and someone sneaks onto your tail

An eagle eye does allow you to spot the enemy before it spots you which is an advantage as it gives you some additional time to get into a good attack position.  Now this does not mean you must not continuously scan all the sky around you an mostly behind you. 

 

On 6/4/2025 at 1:02 PM, Aapje said:

And the best aces didn't seem to be experts in sniping from long distance, but got to point blank range

Correct. Eagle eye does not mean shooting from a great distance. Same comment as above

 

On 6/4/2025 at 1:02 PM, Aapje said:

I think that the best modern simmers would actually do quite well if put into a real aircraft.

I doubt that. The physical and mental condition (in extremely stressful conditions) necessary will make that many will just not make it. Now how many it is difficult to say, but I bet that at least 50% would not make it, but this is my personal guess. There is also an effect that never appears in our sims, all too clean. Lacks blood spattered all over the cockpit when wounded and partly charred bodies from fire. This again will eliminate some simmers. It was a different world out there which is difficult for us to really get immersed. Our cockpit has nobody in. It is empty, clean. There should be a pilot body controlling the plane. Being wounded then would be different thing. But if you want the sim to be for everybody and very age then you must make it clean and tidy without the consequences of war.

 

Edited June 11 by IckyATLAS

[Aapje]

8 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

The physical and mental condition (in extremely stressful conditions) necessary will make that many will just not make it.

 

Of course many of the people here are older and out of shape, but I'm assuming that we train those that can be gotten fit and exclude the rest.

 

8 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

Now how many it is difficult to say, but I bet that at least 50% would not make it, but this is my personal guess.

 

What do you mean by 'make it'? In WW 2, losses during training were very high, and I would think that simmers would have a big advantage in surviving the (expedited) training phase.

 

Once in combat, Luftwaffe aces had about a 50% survival rate, but the survival rates differed a lot based on the country and situation. Also, it appears that at least the Luftwaffe aces took quite a bit more risk than the lower scoring pilots, having lower survival rates, even though they surely were more talented, so should have substantially lower death rates, given equal risk taking.

 

8 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

Lacks blood spattered all over the cockpit when wounded and partly charred bodies from fire. This again will eliminate some simmers.

 

Pilots tend to be far less likely to see the destruction they cause than infantry, are less likely to see the death bodies of their colleagues, and also far less likely to experience trauma-inducing events like heavy shelling. When it comes to combat roles in WW 2, being a fighter pilot seems like a pretty nice job.

 

Also, how would this impact simmers differently than the regular recruits? Or is the argument that modern people are pampered?

[[CPT]Crunch]

Perspective is everything, try being a fighter pilot in New Guinea and see how much fun it is losing fifty pounds and flying chronically exhausted with a touch of malaria.  Sounds like a swell time compared 

[IckyATLAS]

7 hours ago, Aapje said:

Or is the argument that modern people are pampered?

At least in some countries for sure. In others no problem.

[Aapje]

5 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

Perspective is everything, try being a fighter pilot in New Guinea and see how much fun it is losing fifty pounds and flying chronically exhausted with a touch of malaria.  Sounds like a swell time compared 

 

But again that is just a 'real war is not that fun'-argument, but countries/people don't fight wars because it is fun.

[ST_Catchov]

13 hours ago, Aapje said:

Of course many of the people here are older and out of shape,

 

If I was younger I'd be the supreme fighter pilot. Skillful, deadly, unstoppable .... chick magnet. No doubt about it. But not jets. No no. Real aeroplanes. Know what I'm sayin' 

 

But I'm old innit ....

 

It's not all bad but. When me mates get together we talk about the diseases, afflictions and maladies affecting us. One'll say yeah, had the gall bladder out, fulla stones. That's nothin' another'll say, had the angiogram and they couldn't put the bloody stent in. Dead muscle! Yeah well I got an aortic aneurism the size of yer house says another. Get f**kd shrieks someone else, you oughta try alzheimer's, I don't know where I am or why I'm here? Who are you anyway and where's Mary?

 

It's hours of fun. And then the sun goes down and we all go to bed. Not together but. It's not like that.

 

             ========================================================================================

 

Yeah It's about as silly as comparing online flight simmers with real combat pilots in a real war.  You know, where people die. Not some fat dude eating pizza.

[MaxPower]

I think if you were in 1940, were drafted into the armed forces as a young adult, were chosen to be an officer and a pilot, trained properly, and were deployed- but you somehow had a billion hours of bfm practice on a computer- you would do better than average if you were ever engaged in a dog fight.

The air forces of the time had mechanical simulators for training all kinds of skills.  Obviously, simulation training does work.  Being a 'real pilot' in the air forces of WW2 had other requirements.  And, I'm willing to bet that we would all have really bad habits that are incompatible with military aviation that we would have to try to break.

[[CPT]Crunch]

No, they used LINK trainers which are more a medical qualification, guess what, they still are.  It weeds out guys who are going to kill themselves due to easy spatial disorientation, their inner ears simply don't meet the medical standard.

[BraveSirRobin]

I’ve had 2 chances to “fly” in a C-5 simulator. I landed a sim C-5 (with a C-5 instructor pilot sitting next to me working the throttles).  Could I land a real C-5? Sure(with a C-5 instructor pilot sitting next to me working the throttles and telling me if something was really going bad).  
 

 

[MaxPower]

1 hour ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

No, they used LINK trainers which are more a medical qualification, guess what, they still are.  It weeds out guys who are going to kill themselves due to easy spatial disorientation, their inner ears simply don't meet the medical standard.

Yes.  Looks like the Link trainers were for instrument flight.  Not sure how that's related to medical.  Air Marshall Robert Leckie (wartime RAF Chief of Staff) said “The Luftwaffe met its Waterloo on all the training fields of the free world where there was a battery of Link Trainers.”  Do you think he was saying that the Luftwaffe were medical wash outs when he said that?  Seems unlikely.  Anyways, I was referring to other trainers as well.  The Norden Bomb Sight had a mechanical trainer.  Actually I think they had various level bombing simulators.  They had mechanical aircraft gunner turret simulators they mounted on the backs of trucks.  They had spherical movie theatres with machines to help gunners practice. The point, which is pretty uncontroversial, is that simulation was used back then- which it was- and that simulation helps teach skills.

Edited June 12 by MaxPower

[Aapje]

21 hours ago, MaxPower said:

I think if you were in 1940, were drafted into the armed forces as a young adult, were chosen to be an officer and a pilot, trained properly, and were deployed- but you somehow had a billion hours of bfm practice on a computer- you would do better than average if you were ever engaged in a dog fight.

 

 

My thinking exactly.

 

21 hours ago, MaxPower said:

The air forces of the time had mechanical simulators for training all kinds of skills.  Obviously, simulation training does work.  Being a 'real pilot' in the air forces of WW2 had other requirements.

 

 

The main simulator, the Link trainer, merely taught basic flying skills.

 

AFAIK, all the actual combat training machines were relatively simple and primarily for bombardiers and bomber gunners. A modern flight simmer has got all kinds of experience that a WW 2 fighter pilot would at best learn in the class room, like energy management, proper deflection shooting, as well as experiencing the limits of the planes in ways that pilots of the day wouldn't dare.

 

21 hours ago, MaxPower said:

And, I'm willing to bet that we would all have really bad habits that are incompatible with military aviation that we would have to try to break.

 

The experienced pilots were constantly complained about the bad habits of the pilots that came out of training, so would a flight simmer really be worse?

[MaxPower]

16 minutes ago, Aapje said:

The experienced pilots were constantly complained about the bad habits of the pilots that came out of training, so would a flight simmer really be worse?

I guess it depends on how you fly in the simulator.  What I was talking about specifically is the discipline required to be a military aviator and the things that aren't really a factor in the video game.  For me, even in the career mode, flying like it's air quake is really fun- and often is a good way to actually survive a scenario.  But, for example, in the early war in the RAF, flying tight formations for hours in a combat zone would be a total drag at best.  That's all I meant about that.  There's degrees of freedom in the videogame that would get you fired in the air force.

 

22 minutes ago, Aapje said:

The main simulator, the Link trainer, merely taught basic flying skills.

I just want to take this opportunity to make it clear that I never claimed anything different.  I'm just bringing it up again because it's starting to seem like part of the interpretation of what I said was that they had advanced flight simulators in the 1940s.  The idea they had simulations to help with skills was just to support the premise that even back then, the value of simulation was recognized.  This was a premise in the conclusion that this particular simulation probably would have helped.  For the sims back then, they actually had a training curriculum to go along with it, and support from the system designers and other experts.

[[CPT]Crunch]

19 hours ago, MaxPower said:

Yes.  Looks like the Link trainers were for instrument flight.  Not sure how that's related to medical.  Air Marshall Robert Leckie (wartime RAF Chief of Staff) said “The Luftwaffe met its Waterloo on all the training fields of the free world where there was a battery of Link Trainers.”  Do you think he was saying that the Luftwaffe were medical wash outs when he said that?  Seems unlikely.  Anyways, I was referring to other trainers as well.  The Norden Bomb Sight had a mechanical trainer.  Actually I think they had various level bombing simulators.  They had mechanical aircraft gunner turret simulators they mounted on the backs of trucks.  They had spherical movie theatres with machines to help gunners practice. The point, which is pretty uncontroversial, is that simulation was used back then- which it was- and that simulation helps teach skills.

They were still mounted in the USAF altitude chamber training facilities and used for bi-annual physiological required training, at least through the 90's when I quit flying.  Every rated pilot had to hop in and be checked before leaving and passing the chamber course.  So it was part of physiological training and screening, thus medical.  I always wanted to try it but being a minority as non-pilot aircrew there simply wasn't any time to get an open slot.  Most hopped in during break times during and between the classroom and altitude chamber, it was an all day affair.  The ones I saw were 40's built originals.  The purpose was checking the inner ear and balance, they'd start you out in a spin, your not recovering easily without your inner ear working properly.  Once recovered to level flight you were out for the next guy, if you didn't pass you could hop in and do it again later, but had to pass it before the end of day.

[Aapje]

1 hour ago, MaxPower said:

But, for example, in the early war in the RAF, flying tight formations for hours in a combat zone would be a total drag at best.

 

True for bombers, although one of my lesser AI gripes with IL-2 is that the fighter formations seem a lot more tight than in reality. The sources seem to suggest that once they got radio and no longer required hand signals, the formations loosened up a lot, for safety, but also because a concentrated formation is easier to spot at distance.

 

I think that air shows also contribute to this false perception, as those pilots like to show off for a bunch of reasons, but it's about as realistic as going to a tractor-pulling event and then imaging that real farmers spend their days pulling immensely heavy trailers short distances with immensely delicate tractors that are tuned to within an inch/cm of their life.

 

1 hour ago, MaxPower said:

That's all I meant about that.  There's degrees of freedom in the videogame that would get you fired in the air force.

 

The military have their ways to correct bad behavior without firing people, especially in wartime.

 

 

1 hour ago, MaxPower said:

I just want to take this opportunity to make it clear that I never claimed anything different.

 

My response wasn't meant to counter you, but to add to the discussion. It was also aimed at other comments as well.

[BlitzPig_EL]

The flight training program at my local university used to have an original Link Trainer.  I had the chance to try it out on a visit many years ago. (a friend was on staff there).

It would be impossible to use it to train ACM.  It was fun though as my partner on the outside kept dialing in more and more bad weather effects to try to throw me off.

This was well before I ever had a computer, much less a flight sim.  I managed to keep on a given heading and altitude (more or less), but it was a lot of work.

[=CFC=Conky]

Hello all,

 

@OP,

 

At what ranges were you shooting? In most cases, if a single-engine kite’s wingtips are touching the edge of your reticle, they’ll be about 100m away, and much easier to identify, and hit. Granted, against experienced opponents it will be hard to get in this close. As Erich Hartmann used to say, if you think you’re too close, get closer (or something to that effect). 
 

Good hunting,

CFC Conky

Edited June 17 by =CFC=Conky

[friendlybeard]

Oh my gosh, I've been off this for a while and amazed that this post is still going! Only came back on the forum because my Force Feedback's playing up. 

 I decided not to play multiplayer anymore. The reasons are:

 

1. It just felt unwlecoming and a very steep learning curve.

2. I feel my lack of technology makes it not only difficult for myself, but also much more likely that I'll misidentify and hit a friendly, which I feel is unfair on other players. 

 

It's a shame because the AI in IL-2 I find too easy to beat, so it's gets pretty boring. I should probably try some of more of the missions. It' also a shame because I wanted to meet some like minded people i.e. friends! 

 

Anyway, thanks for all the replies, I'll try to read them all!

 

Happy flying,

 

Rob

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 21 by friendlybeard

[TCW_Brzi_Joe]

2 hours ago, friendlybeard said:

...but also much more likely that I'll misidentify and hit a friendly...

This may help, you can use it anywhere: 

The ww2 combat aviation had special deck of cards with plane shapes; solders were crazy about playing cards, and they learned all planes with no effort. This is kinda similar.