Probably a lot of time spent on the bombing features that were heavily requested. Not as many people think about the gunnery.

There's still the issue of a half dozen weapons not actually having been modeled. The Japanese aircraft are the worst in this respect... the two very different Type 99 cannons (99-1 and 99-2) are both represented by the MG-FF/M in code. The Type 89 machine guns are either a Vickers K or a MG17 depending on the aircraft. It's not even consistent... for the longest time the Ki-43-II had Browning .50cals with yellow tracers instead of the very same Ho-103 machine gun that the earlier Ki-43 and other Japanese Army aircraft had.

That all blows my mind :) They really coded Pacific Fighters in a hurry with little research. Some Russian types were badly setup too... those have been fixed thankfully.

One item that just came to me while playing.

There is no axis control for "Left engines" and "right engines"
I can control each engine separately - that is fine in 2-engin birds but in PE-8 i cannot really trim yaw by putting slight difference in power to one side.

I can do this by mapping "select lef/right/all engines" to buttons/keys and I do so. Beacuse of this inability to control left/right power via axis multi throttle controls is useless for me and I do not plan to invest in throttle quadrant just to be used on 1-2 planes (+B24 in future).

I prefer to keep second throttle to set pitch insetad.

Is this what you're looking for?

Great - that is exactly what I was looking for. I must have missed it :)

It's been and still is a mess, I concur. To mention one more glaring inaccuracy - Ki-45 historically carried a Ho-3 20mm cannon, but in the sim Ho-5 is modelled in its place. The difference between the two is something like the difference between Mk108 and 103: 20 x 94 (84.5 g) vs 20 x 125 (164 g).

Luckily a fix for this is mentioned in 4.13.

The main concerns with prolonged bursts aren't barrel damage (although dumping the entire belt isn't great for the barrel), it's runaway guns in closed-bolt weapons like the M2. The chamber heats up enough that when the next cartridge is fed into place, it overheats and fires without the hammer dropping, which cycles the weapon and causes another round to feed, which fires... you get the idea.

The Korean-era P-51 pilots manual explains burst lengths and runaway gun heat issues.

Good catch. I didn't know about that one but I'm sure the guy who put together the Ki-45 clearly did but it took some extra time to get the gun sources into place I imagine.

I've been hunting for reliable information on the Type 99-1 and 99-2 but no luck.

Actually, I'm quite sure that the IL-4 and PE-8 cockpits were from a 3rd party. Or maybe I'm getting mixed up with a mod that made it compatible with 4.09. But I hate the 100A with the dumb bare metal. I want powerful inlines and real camo!

Lots of third parties worked with TD directly to get their stuff included. The IL-4 cockpit was from an artist and the Pe-8 was a bunch of paid artists plus a dedicated researcher who collected community donations to pay the artists to do the job.

Both SB-2s are great inclusions into the game. The inline version will be nice to add as a feature. Any famous SB-2 missions I can build? I was thinking of trying to do something with the M-103.

The big reason was to prevent jams, for the reasons that others have mentioned. The other big issue was conservation of ammunition - since planes never carried enough of it.

My guess is that preserving the life of the gun was less important, since even if you fry an entire machine gun, it's a trivial expense compared to the cost of an airplane.