Air to Air gunnery advice AGAIN...circa August2021

[timdickson]

Hi folks,

 

Just getting into the F86, my prefered combination of (relatively) simple to get into but hard to master. Reading back through the forum I understand there has been some debate about M3 ballistic modelling and A4 sight modelling. I also understand there have been a number of significant uodates to the game in the last 18 months or so. In order to get a reasonably realistic approximation circa 2021:

 

Is it still advised to alter the M3 .LUA files , muzzle velocity, dispersion, heating ?

Is it still advised to ignore the A4 sight and stick with fixed reticle and "cerebral" lead pursuit ?

How do you setup your seat height / forward view ?    I find the sight takes up the lower half to lower third of the forward view and if the target is straight ahead I can barely see half the pipper.

 

Many thanks for any advice,

 

Tim

[2alpha-down0]

The situation is pretty much unchanged.  Outside of some changed gun sounds, the F-86 hasn't seen any updates or bug fixes to the M3s.

 

Despite the incorrect lead it calculates, I still use the radar gunsight.  It gets you close enough that you just aim a bit in front of the target and you hit.  Much easier than shooting with a fixed sight.

 

I've never edited the .lua, but entering the proper ballistic data should still fix the issue.  If you don't care about multiplayer integrity check, go for it.

 

Default head position in VR is fine for me.  I turned off the automatic landing/bombing seat height adjustment.

 

 

[timdickson]

Thanks for your reply. I am trying the "F86_Mods_gun_heat_elevation_APIT" mod with the fixed 100mil reticule as per "squigy".

 

I might retry the radar gunsight again with the new ballistics as per your advice. Having eventually sorted out an appropriate (for me, my eyes, my monitor) dot label I can now see targets with enough warning / difficulty to manoeuvre on them.(Thanks to the Airgoons Site for its' detailed explanation of the labels.lua ) I can now appreciate just how bad I am at air to air gunnery in early jet era combat.

 

It is slightly weird that developers  go to such great lengths to provide us with incredible environments and detailed aircraft but slip up providing us with the ability to see and shot down enemy aircraft IN A COMBAT SIMULATOR !!

It would be like spending years constructing a detailed model of a historic World War 2 fighter bomber and then failing to get the bomb ballistics correct.

 

Cheers Tim

[Squiffy]

Just a rant, but notice which fighter is effected and in what way. In the one precise way that air superiority was achieved in the last of the gunfighters, with high speed jet envelopes and ballistics, or the lack thereof.  All the while the MiG has Sputnik like thrust and "lift" at Mach = 0.0 in the SFM. "Put that sucker in a 4G turn and keep it there. I'm on my way."

[timdickson]

Apologises..."Squiffy" and DEFINATELY NOT..."Squigy". In the modern vernacular...."my bad".

 

I am happy to turn a blind eye to the over-reaching communist conspiracy and just be happy with a return of (in western eyes) the second greatest aerial face-off after the Spitifire /Me109.

A fact not lost on software developer Rowan and its' two classic air combat simulations, Battle of Britain and Mig Alley.

 

Cheers Tim

 

[timdickson]

On thinking about it (which I try very hard not to do... thinking that is) the reason why Korean era Jet warfare (in the form of DCS and Mig Alley) holds the same great attraction as "67" era Grand Prix (in the form of Grand Prix Legends) is that they represent a high point in the convergence of interest and technology. Afterwards the technology continued to rise and the interest started to wane; primarily due to the dominance of aerodynamics in racing car design and UAV's (aka AIM9, 7, 120) in aerial combat....IMHO.....

 

Cheers Tim

 

 

[Squiffy]

Crank your seat position (camera) as far up as you can to see over the nose, and then use your tracers. The pipper is a good estimate but once you can see the hits from your tracers you will be in good shape. Fight in the vertical but don't commit to a full follow climb. Peel off, or climb more slowly below the bandit and keep him above your canopy rail. Wait till he turns back down, and then cut him off and hose him. Follow him down, pop your speed brakes and get more hits. After a couple loops like this you should be able to splash him pretty consistently. If you crank your muzzle velocity up even higher in the shell.lua, you can cut through them like a laser.  

[Gunfreak]

Where and what should you edit in the Lua?

[Gunfreak]

OK, so apparently,  you can't edit the appropriate .lua anymore. So you're stuck..

[[MVP] Mugga]

I have simply refined my aiming to allow a little more lead on the target, which results in sure kills.  Any number of our pilots would be more than happy to spend some time helping you out if you would like?  Jump into the KOREA 1952 Combat Server discord and introduce yourself.

MVP KOREA 1952 Discord:   https://discord.gg/frKCh9PGCN

[Squiffy]

Sorry Gunfreak, been away a while. And I had to rebuild my joystick maps too!  You want to edit the shell.lua in the scripts/database folders. Also, in the F86.lua, edit the barell warp main numbers down to near 1.0 or 2.0 to get a more realistic grouping. Your barrels have ice cold cooling at angels 20 and 300 kts.

[Gunfreak]

On 11/23/2021 at 12:53 AM, Squiffy said:

Sorry Gunfreak, been away a while. And I had to rebuild my joystick maps too!  You want to edit the shell.lua in the scripts/database folders. Also, in the F86.lua, edit the barell warp main numbers down to near 1.0 or 2.0 to get a more realistic grouping. Your barrels have ice cold cooling at angels 20 and 300 kts.

none of these .lua appears to be avalable anymore.

[Squiffy]

Hmmm, I need to catch up with things since digging into Age of Empire II DE these past couple months. I will look and see.

 

[Squiffy]

A couple things while I'm at work... shell.lua is in the scripts/database/weapons folder

You want to find a open source editor that can handle .lua files without corrupting them. I have one called note gecko or something I can loo for that too.  [The app is Notepad++]

DCS will check your folders during compatibility tests so it's good to have a backup of your originals. I normally add a suffix to my file names to make them different. Like SQ for Squiffy. There was some back and forth last year about .luas with ED. They re-allowed editing and substituting so long as you were not using them online. I have not heard if this was eliminated since.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Squiffy

[Squiffy]

Well after a couple frustrating days of dogfighting and editing, I am back to a workable mod state. My DCS beta version is 2.7... something. I do not get prompted to update it when I launch now, but when I went to clear out some freebie module notifications like the AV-8B, it looked like it tried to update. I stopped it. I think it was going to 2.9 or later. 

The new effects are cool. The jaggy cloud box is not too bad but I am getting hangs at times. Sometimes they clear others not. So I turned down my settings and shut off some other apps.

I am pretty sure the Ai modelling has changed. The 15s are a lot better at fighting in the vertical and I think I had to restore my edits at some point. Not sure what kinda sneaky stuff is going on but I did update a few months ago when I was using the Raptor, Su-57 and J-11 mods. I backed up my Korean .lua mods but who knows? And I notice a funny effect where setting Ai to Rookie. It can mean 3 things... it high tails and runs making for boring pursuits, or it fights like an Ace with perfect zoom climbs, even when shot up, only to fold a wing and auger in without landing another round on him because the once ace pilot who's supposed to be a rookie turned into a dunce.

So I am still able to mod and play in the Beta but I am pretty sure I am a few versions old at this point. The Sabre seemed fail happy too with frequent gun jams, unstarts and power output sags like dropping to 70% randomly at full throttle and requiring a restart. The Sabre is so nerfed anyway, who thought it needed any more 'breakage?"

Gunfreak, did you find the Mig, Sabre and weapons .lua files?

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Squiffy