homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Finally....

Got rid of the overly sensitive rudder effect - one of my main gripes with BoB.

How?

Map the rudder axis to the keyboard rudder keysand uses keyboard sensetivity 2. Now I have a much more progressive effect that reduces that oscillating swings after centreing the rudder.

The deadzones in BoB have allways worked strangely (at one point I get a deadzone no larger than small) with my logitech wingman extreme 3d stick - this "trick" has finally solved things for me.

Now that I'm not fighting continously increasing oscillations, I can actually hit things (when I remember to use the correct defelction!). Surprising how similar the feel of the spit is to FB's - though at least here I can out turn a 109

Now if only we can get the BoB planes to bite a bit harder at the edge of the envelope we'll be sorted.

Oh happy days...

Interesting. Not sure I follow the bit about sensitivity 2, though. How did you do that?


You want BoB's aircraft to stall more viscously? I don't find that to be a problem once I have taken a few bullets, actually

Well W.M.

to liken the Spits in F.B. and BoB is historically and technically impossible. That is a very blunt statemet, I know. But I kind of care to stand by it.

BoB is modelling - or trying to - MK. Is or early IIs. And of course Hurricane MK. Is. These differ radically from the MK Vs and beyond as used in FB. Not only because of engines etc. but because of manouverabilty esp. in roll rates. The roll of a MK V. is about twice the rate of a MK. I/II. - If you do not believe me, read J.E. Johnson, Wing Leader, he relates a story where Bader had a serious talk with the manufacturers to retrofit the Spits of his Wing with metal covered ailerons to replace the fabric covered ones.

Now to "dead zones": Spits are sensitive. All accounts underline the facts. If you just got a cheap stick whithout rudder pedals, you are in for trouble in BoB. If you care, I can give you a quote of an american general evaluating the MK. V. as marginally stable ! (This is why RAF Pilots referred to US fighters as "streamligned bricks", btw. )

Besides some other issues with the FB flight physics - including the utter absence of parasite drag, buffeting, slip stream and the influence of wheather - there is no way to liken a Spit I to a Spit V and later.

Mayby in the "next" BoB we may have to talk again. But I doubt it.

Cheers
vonSchnitter

I thank you for the extremely patronising manner of your reply, von Schnittler, not that I care for it much.

I am fully aware that the mkV (and not the mkIX or later spits), was the more manouverable at higher airspeeds (due to its metal ailerons as opposed to fabric ones) between it and the mkI or II's.

I have read the book in question - the bill for the retrofit turning up when JEJ had command of 616 is quite amusing.

My comment was more of a generalisation and not a statement of fact.

How about a nice cup of tea, gentlemen? The world is much simpler after a nice cuppa.

Tea & a wad would be much appreciated.

Ta, Bader.

LOL
I knew you couldn't let that one slide Marc

SD

Well W.M.

your remark on patronizing is not very well received on my end. Probabaly as antagonizing as my remark on cheap - aka not up to the task Joy sticks - on yours.
Most likely because from my POV you choose to follow the rather generally observed and probably very popular approach in the O.M. universe to exhibit a well, rather condescendig - also ran - habbit on commenting on other simmulations.

Just before we gon on - in my eyes FB etc is some sort of a shooter and an extremely simplistic one at, Falcon 4, MA, BoB and on another pane - RB3d are simulators. You know O.M.s talk about table based flight sims - aka CFS/MSFS - versus one model for about 100 in FB etc. really makes me .... At least the instruments tend to work per model in MS stuff.

What kind of makes me wonder is: Since you know the histrorical and want to appear well read facts, how can you liken BoB and FB ? esp. the Spits.

Do not know what wads are but tea is fine with me.

Cheers
vonSchnitter

I am currently enjoying flying FB, not having flown the original for some time. I started flying the early 109's and was suprised by how tetchy they are to fly, with a high stall tendency.

I was very excited at the prospect of flying the Spit and was amazed at how easy it was to fly in comparison to the Emil. Turning at maximum on the edge of a stall and watching the Emil slowly losing the race behind you is a real buzz. That is how I read it to be and that is what it shows.
My limited reading and recollection is that some Spit pilots were afraid to fly close to the envelope and that was used against them.

So I have neatly dodged the issue here. I have my own opinion of the Spit in BoB vs the later ones in IL-2 and I am not going to wade in to the controversy. Not because I am a wuss, because I still haven't tuned the BoB Spit and my Cougar to my satisfation to give a fair comparison. That is a work in progress.

I think the greatest challenge I have ever undertaken in a sim was mastering the BoB Spit in take off and landings. That was a lot of fun. Maybe mastering is the wrong word. Perhaps surviving on a semi-regular basis.

Historically accurate? I wouldn't have a clue and don't care that much.

One thing I would like to add is that although I am an infrequent visitor here, the thing that separates this board from ALL others is the courtesy and respect usually shown to others opinion and it pains me to see the contrary in this thread.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how rediculous it is. Have a cup of tea and a lie down VS.

vonSchnitter !
Good thing you remembered about the fabric/metal covered control sufaces. Quite a few issues in there
Happy Landings
Benny

Gentlemen,

sorry for making a nuissance of myself. I will not bother you anymore with my rather bothersome/ rude / out of line (your choice) postings.

Have your tea, wads, lay downs and whatanots

Cheers
vonSchnitter

ps. poyumgan: got a cougar myself - heavily modded - if you care for some sort of exchange let me know.

That's very kind of you VS.I would love to see your setup. Which mod do you have?

I was doing a bit more fine tuning of it on the weekend and the two things I am working on are:-

1)Making the left thumb mouse behave at a better speed.

2)Using the ant. dial as a Field_Of_View dial, like I have set up in IL-2.

I have it working, but not to my satisfaction.
The biggest problem is that BoB will crash to desktop or worse, freeze my entire system. This happens regularly if I shift from BoB to Foxy, change settings and retest. It makes testing difficult.

I do have a some simple macros which make takeoff and landing more routine which may be of use to you.

Please don't refrain from constructive comment. That is what this board does best.

Wee Mac, thanks for posting. I too have been plagued by the swaying nose and would dearly love to be rid of it. I've tried to replicate your setup with my CH pedals, but I get the same response with the pedals programmed for KP0 and KP. as I do using the keys themselves--namely a super-sensitive rudder.

What do you mean by setting sensitivity to "2"? Is that in a config file, or maybe something specific to your controls? I don't have an option for sensitivity when programming keypresses to my CH axes--only when analog (and it doesn't reduce the nose swaying).

Hi'
Just remember those big piston-engined don't fly like they "run on rails", they all had a bit of "snaking".
Happy Landings
Benny

Now I too can finally say "Finally..." Very little nose sway after hard rudder movements, and I can actually coordinate my turns without crazy effects now. For me the fix was switching to "Sim" mode for the controls. I suppose it should have been obvious in hindsight, but I've always liked keeping things as authentic as possible and changing that setting never occurred to me. Thankfully 0.98 reset my config and the first thing I noticed was how the Spit was easily controllable. Now I can takeoff and land consistently instead of just on "good" days

The controller settings have a significantly different effect on different hardware, so there is no shame in tweaking it to your preference

Ah, thanks Bader for that justification. I had nearly convinced myself I wasn't cheating and that clinches it

I am no supporter of the sneery "Full Real" crew that suggest that harder=guaranteed_better.

If it feels like you're in a plane and up against it, and you enjoy it and develop a respect for the huge challenges of the real thing 64 years ago, then that's the whole idea.

Considering the limitations of the medium we work with, I might even say harder=worse, unless there's a good reason for it. The best reason in my estimate, would be authenticity (or whatever we want to call it), and I do have trouble justifying the turning off of features like wind/gusts, which is after all, prominent in any pilot's mind during takeoff, landing, and navigation. I had at some point filed the control setting in the same mental category and pressed on. Instead, the "sim" setting seems designed specifically to offset problems of short-throw auto-centering controls. Nice! (And obvious to everyone but me, I'm sure )

BOB is the first combat-oriented sim where I've been able to actually use the Pilot's Manual for the Spitfire, and that alone gives it a special place in history for me. I cannot even describe for you the excitement with which I read Chapter 6 of the BOB Manual.

But as we all know, the relatively accurate flight and control modeling is only one of the many first-rate features of this, the most ambitiously detailed combat simulation (of any type) I've ever encountered. Which is as close to a tribute to Rowan's ambition as I can manage, and as close a thank-you to the BDG as I've been able to spit out (no pun intended). I haven't really gotten over it, but you folks in the BDG are doing a service to the entire genre. Most of all though, you've done a very personally-felt service to me. Thank you.

I was a little reluctant to wade into this thread in the first place, but appreciated Wee Mac's attempt to sort out a problem I was having too. I hope my own woes may help someone else in the future. Now that I've finally gotten the controls worked out, I've been having the time of my life.

Hi' Musk !
On behalf of the BDG i can assure you it took a lot of time and effort to get this far
It is very much a "labour of love"
Your ref. to the manual is very true, when I first came into BoB I had to dig out my note's from my Basic training on tail-wheel 40 years ago.!!
Happy Landings
Benny