Friday Update, June 08, 2012

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by nakedsquirrel

It changed with the most recent build. If you put in IAS and altitude in the bombsight, it will not track correctly, but it will drop on target (you have to force it to stay on target with the raise/lower bombsight button while using bombsight automation You no longer need to convert metric to imperial.


With that... bombsight automation doesn't track correctly, your using IAS instead of TAS, the bombsight is fuzzy, and there is no indication when your bombs have dropped.

To top it off mode 22 has some strange habit of putting your plane into a shallow dive, only leveling out after you fly 100km or so

If it doesn't track correctly then the units (or the tracking code) are probably messed up again. What you describe sounds exactly like one of the methods i was describing before, where the player converts to imperial units for proper release and fights against the wrong tracking, but if i understand you correctly now it happens without even converting to imperial...sounds a bit confusing

I'm not doubting your observations mind you, just thinking out loud to see what the reason behind it might be.

As for the R22 autopilot mode, that is easy. It's probably more of a problem with the 111's engines not producing the expected power settings (they tend to be on the low RPM side, especially noticeable during take-off) than the autopilot itself.

Mode R22 is a wings level function, where the AP turns the aircraft by rudder only. So the general idea is to navigate and roughly line up the target with course steering mode (the one that uses aileron turns), then engage R22 mode from the initial point and fly the bomb run using that one.

I have tried it and it does in fact work quite well, as long as you don't overdo it with the corrections because the rudder will bleed off too much airspeed and you lose even more altitude.

The trick with mode R22 is to get to 300km/h IAS before engaging it, as that seems to be the speed for which it is calibrated. What i usually do is climb an extra 500 - 1000m above my intended altitude, then go into a shallow dive and engage R22. As the aircraft picks up speed and wants to climb i cancel out the tendency with elevator trim, until i'm flying straight and level at 300km/h IAS. Then it's time to enter the speed and altitude values in the sight and make any course corrections.

I have mapped course steering left/right to my < and > keys, so i just look through the bombsight and give it a tap or two to align the target. I let it stabilize between corrections and not overdo it, otherwise it's too aerodynamically inefficient and the speed/altitude drop.

Like i said, the dive probably has more to do with the 111's engines being a bit on the weak side and the fact that it reacts sluggishly to speed/trim changes. I haven't been able to test this in the 88 however, because its gyrocompass doesn't work.

About the bombsight textures now, that is because of the texture loading bug that appeared for most people with the latest test patch. If the PC can't handle loading the textures in one go, it loads lower detail versions of them.

The reason i say "most people" is that i've had this issue since release. I have an Ati 4890 1Gb graphics card and only 3GB of RAM, so i guess it's got something to do with how the textures are managed in terms of available memory.

However, the majority of players with better systems than mine were unaware of this until recently, where apparently the texture loading issue manifested on a wider range of systems. To tell you the truth, i was happy to see it mentioned because now it's a legitimate issue that is going to get looked at, instead of something that only happens at my end

Anyway, here's hoping we have another test patch by this time next week. It will be good to hop on the server and try some bomber sorties with your regular bomber pilots. What i'm expecting to see is a nice group of 5+ Ju88s on a proper high altitude sortie