charon

I agree this should be a high priority feature. As I understand it, Japanese ships maneuvered more aggressively, which meant destroyer screens had a harder time staying in close. Whereas American doctrine called for less radical maneuvers, but keeping the destroyers tighter to provide AA fire. It would be really great if this distinction made it into the sim.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing, and I think hand tracking is too niche for most sims right now. Not everyone is using VR and not all VR supports hand tracking, right? Maybe in 10 years. I do think that hardware demands are a problem for any high-fidelity sim that wants to expand its market; no developer wants to limit themselves to customers with high-end kit; that's true of VR kit as well as button boxes. I think what's more achievable now would be making head-tracking the primary means of interaction. Head-tracking is more accessible than ever now, so the effort to support this would pay off for more users than hand-tracking. One HOTAS button to drop head-movement into 1-1 mode for accurate pointing and display a pointer, and one button to actuate the clicky cockpit. You could even combine this with complex flows/prompting, so that the user can first express what they want to achieve in broad strokes, and so help the sim figure out what they're trying to actuate and how (one problem with clicky pits in my experience is that they're prone to dexterity errors).

There are a bunch of minor adjustments that might be made on a real plane. For example: Convergence of guns. Bendable trim tabs that can only be adjusted by a mechanic on the ground. Mirrors might be adjusted. For instance, a quick glance at a real Spitfire mirror will reveal holes on the side of the faring so that it can be loosened and adjusted. Convergence will no doubt be configurable in game, but for the others, sim developers typically just pick a value. But sometimes these values aren't what the player wants: for example, the new IAR 80 in BoX feels heavy on one wing, and the mirror feels too low. In real life, I'd tell my crew chief to fix both. I suggest making this sort of parameter configurable. It can be as simple as a .INI file with a section for each plane.

Also from https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2013/may/rear-seat-gunners-midway: "Moore had never heard of a rear gunner attempting to belly-land or water-ditch an SBD, but thinks it could have been done." And "He said he always paid attention to the course heading, because if Carter was disabled, he wanted to be able to fly back to the carrier. Edit: Another mention of these controls: Lloyd Edens, https://airgroup4.com/edens.htm

The goal wasn't to land it on the carrier. Just get it back to the fleet or to a friendly shore and ditch. Sid Zimmerman, Memoirs of a WWII Marine Dive Bomber Gunner https://www.wwiiexperience.com/pacific-theater/ewExternalFiles/Sid_zimman.pdf I'm also aware of (unfortunately anonymous) second-hand accounts of bf 110 radio operators crawling forward to fly the plane: https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-messerschmitt-bf-110-from-under-the-canopy/3/

I've never quite understood the need for these on the HUD. How about external views, on your own plane only, and only on the ground? The only bummer about disabling external views is that sometimes I bring a plane back all shot up and I want to do a walkaround to see how bad it is. There should probably be a few things on a HUD even on this setting. I don't want to see "1st engine combat mode" or anything like that, but a lot of people are controlling RPM or radiators with a pair of buttons. IMO it's reasonable for the HUD to display "RPM: 100%" or "Oil Radiator: 60%" or something to that effect: most of these controls would give the pilot tactile feedback in real life, and so the player can get some feedback of the position of the lever, too. Not everyone can afford or has space for a big multi-axis quadrant setup. Likewise, if there's some sort of engine selection like in BoX, there ought to be some visual indicator of which engine is active. ---- Regarding air starts, that seems more a question for the server operators. ---- Otherwise I pretty much agree with your comments.

Most Douglas airplanes, including the A-20 and the SBD, which I expect you'll model, had some some basic flight controls for the gunner in the rear seat. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2011/january/pilot/flying-a-national-treasure-the-sbd-dauntless I hope you'll consider making these functional in Combat Pilot. It would be unbelievably cool if, in multiplayer, a human gunner could take over and fly their plane back to the carrier after the pilot is killed, rather than just bailing out. Having the technical ability for multiple players to command the plane would also be good future-proofing for when you do implement your first plane with a co-pilot (the PBY, or the G4M?).

There ought to be some easy way, when starting a mission, to get a list of commands, used with that plane, that are unbound. Maybe some of them could be tagged as 'important' and a warning displayed if the player has any 'important' commands unbound. I suggest this because I see newbies in BoX making the same mistakes again and again. "Why doesn't my trim work in the Fw 190!?" A simple warning that important commands are unbound would make the sim so much more accessible.

In the Great Battles series, many planes have some sort of safety wire to gate high power settings (P-39, P-51D), and many have some sort of dogleg that requires a different motion for the pilot to advance the throttle beyond a certain point (Typhoon, Tempest). But these are only cosmetic, and so the physical feedback the real pilot would have gotten is lost on the player. I hope that Combat Pilot models these guards in an interactive way, where appropriate. There are a variety of ways this could be done: the traditional WEP button could be overloaded to unlock full use of the throttle range you could implement the wire such that it is only broken if the throttle is pushed into it with sufficient speed. you could allow the player to set a fixed point on their throttle (i.e. a detent), and pushing the physical throttle to that point would push the in-game throttle to the appropriate stop, in planes so equipped. Or some combination of the above.

I've never liked needing to look at subtitles to understand what my wingmen are saying. It's immersion breaking, and makes me feel like I'm roleplaying as an American somehow thrown into a foreign squadron with no understanding of the language, rather than roleplaying as a pilot really of that country. I know it's an uncommon feature in simulators, but I think it would be great if we had the option of localization. Especially for radio calls, but cockpit localization would be a wonderful option too, if it's not too difficult.

I disagree with you and @Gambit21 both. For me at least, the fair AI was a big selling point compared to DCS, and most (not all, but most) of the issues I have with the BoX AI are targeting problems that appear to have nothing to do with the fact that the AI uses the same flight model as the player. Take the ground attack AI, for instance. In BoX, ground attackers will often just trundle slowly to their target. Sometimes they'll let you fly formation with them. Sometimes I've even seen them continue unperturbed towards their target after being shot. No sense of self preservation at all... but what does that have to do with them using the same flight model? Often you'll see a gaggle of three or four AI fighters chasing the same enemy. That's not a question of flight model physics, that's a question of making sure the AI divides up up its targeting priorities. Or how about the fact that, once the AI has chosen a target, it will ignore clouds while pursuing and shooting at it? What does that have to do with the AI flight model physics? Or the fact that AI fighters will happily accept a fight in which they're badly disadvantaged, rather than turning tail and climbing for altitude when they spot you in the distance? What the AI needs is good tactical sense. Making a fair AI that can win 1:1 duels against top players will likely take a monumental development effort. Making a fair AI that can fight competently, not suicidally, in a sky full of 20 planes, that is far more important. How the AI performs in a white-room duel shouldn't be the measure of a sim. Now, I haven't worked on their code base, maybe I'm mistaken and Jason will show up and tell us that there is some fundamental reason why a fair AI can't have the tactical sense to disengage from a losing fight. But I doubt it.

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