4.12.2 de-bugging

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Woke Up Dead

You guys remember "the bar" in the 190? I think other cockpits may also be suffering from the bar, particularly the Yak 9.

I think you're right. Just about all the cockpit models in IL2 fail to take the refractive properties of armor glass into account. I didn't realize exactly what was going on myself until I saw the video.

Just about any cockpit with a thick bottom portion of the armor glass frame, or where armor glass is faired into the aircraft's fuselage, is going to have some degree of refraction which reduces the apparent size of the frame or fairing.

Realistically, though, this also means that any damage to the armor glass that destroys the refractive properties is also going to make the "bar" (i.e., fairing or frame) suddenly appear, as well as making any image seen through the armor glass appear is if it were reflected in a cracked mirror.

Also, the refractive properties of the glass will be obvious as a "step down" between the view in the armor glass and the view through the unarmored adjacent canopy areas.

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Just about all the cockpit models in IL2 fail to take the refractive properties of armor glass into account.

Yep, but to correct this, all cockpits should be re-coded in a way that each armour glass is dealt with as a 'forward' mirror reflecting a computed image just as 'backward' mirrors do in some planes. Seems near hopeless...

[KG26_Alpha]

Ye gads ..............not the FW190 bar...........again

Along with ".50 cals won the war" its been done to death.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...07&postcount=4

Simply removing the frame render would be a solution from inside the cockpit.

And gun-sights have the "3d" effect removed from the edges.

No complicated stuff needs to be done, but the time and effort to re-work all the pits is going to be the problem.

[Janosch]

So, the bar on Yak-9 is basically solid, as in you can't see through it. In A6M5c, there's transparency - I'm assuming that's the armor glass I'm looking at...

Could the bars be, in theory, result of poor cutting or handling of the glass during plane assembly or manufacturing the parts themselves?

[Woke Up Dead]

Originally Posted by Janosch

So, the bar on Yak-9 is basically solid, as in you can't see through it. In A6M5c, there's transparency - I'm assuming that's the armor glass I'm looking at...

Could the bars be, in theory, result of poor cutting or handling of the glass during plane assembly or manufacturing the parts themselves?

I don't think so. Why realistically represent one element whose faultiness was caused by bad manufacturing, while so many other elements on Soviet and other planes known not to be manufactured well are represented in the game as working just fine? Also, I don't think refractive properties of glass can change because of bad cutting technique of its edges.

Within the Yak family it's only the Yak-9 series that have this problem with the armored glass (they all have it with the top of the gunsight). The very similar Yak-1B does not, the fairly similar Yak-7 and 1 do not either. Was the Yak-9 the first Yak in game?

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by Woke Up Dead

I don't think so. Why realistically represent one element whose faultiness was caused by bad manufacturing, while so many other elements on Soviet and other planes known not to be manufactured well are represented in the game as working just fine? Also, I don't think refractive properties of glass can change because of bad cutting technique of its edges.

Within the Yak family it's only the Yak-9 series that have this problem with the armored glass (they all have it with the top of the gunsight). The very similar Yak-1B does not, the fairly similar Yak-7 and 1 do not either. Was the Yak-9 the first Yak in game?

I think the Yak 9 is the earliest plane in the game to have armoured glass windscreens, despite Hurricanes, Wildcats, P40s having them earlier in real life.

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

Simply removing the frame render would be a solution from inside the cockpit.

It's not that simple, I'm afraid. Refraction works here like a sort of periscope: looking through a thick glass, the pilot sees on its lower surface what he would see through its upper surface if his eye level was a few centimeters higher. The pilot can see the engine cowling slightly from above even when his eye level is slightly below that. Simply removing the frame render would be only a partial solution as it wouldn't restore realistic forward visibility (the 'periscope effect'). No offense, just some thoughts.

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by sniperton

It's not that simple, I'm afraid. Refraction works here like a sort of periscope: looking through a thick glass, the pilot sees on its lower surface what he would see through its upper surface if his eye level was a few centimeters higher. The pilot can see the engine cowling slightly from above even when his eye level is slightly below that. Simply removing the frame render would be only a partial solution as it wouldn't restore realistic forward visibility (the 'periscope effect'). No offense, just some thoughts.

The bottom of the armoured glass is below the engine cowling so removing the frame and transposing the forward view above the cowling fixes the problem.

[sniperton]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'transposing the forward view above the cowling'. If you raise the camera/head position, it will affect side and rear view as well.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

The bottom of the armoured glass is below the engine cowling so removing the frame and transposing the forward view above the cowling fixes the problem.

Thanks for that picture. In addition to showing exactly how the armor glass is faired into the canopy and how the pilot's sight line shouldn't include the "bar," it also demonstrates how there was no gap between the armor glass and the forward armor plate for many fighters.

In my experiments so far with the Arcade view and taking on bombers from the rear, I've noticed that there's often a gap between the armor glass and the forward firewall which lets the occasional bullet through when fired from 12 o'clock high, with disastrous results for the pilot. While that's realistic for some planes, for others, it's bad damage modeling.