Gun Convergence

Its early for a wish list but for the love of all things holy please make it possible to adjust the gun convergence on aircraft somewhere in the mission editor. Not being able to do so is not realistic: once over seas officers asked/told their ground crews to reset them to their personal preferences and they did it (I remember seeing it in a documentary (probably Wings)).

I'm not sure that any of those really cool things that we have in Cliffs of Dover will be possible...time/budget constraints

It's been debated before. Yes, convergences were customized, but it's not as simple as saying I want 200 instead of 300 yards.

This is a study sim after all, and setting the convergence is a diligent task best not left to every individual pilot. That would cause more harm than good.

If I understood correctly, pilots didn't set convergences for themselves. Most rookies had the default settings, and those with experience had their ground crew set it up for them. And it took complex charts and boring in and whatnot.

Having it as 'oh give 100 yards, give 300 yards' would be an arcade style

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=102702

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=95689

It's called harmonization, not convergence. The guns are set to provide an optimum hit pattern for a variety of ranges and the task is indeed complicated. Yo-Yo wrote a few posts about the subject, you should look those up. See the links provided by Nirvi.

Yes, but having no accurate calculation and without careful investigation what pattern you want to have at the whole range of fire this option is almost useless.

I know that "custom convergence" is a bad habit gone from "Il-2" having simplified ballistics and the wrong idea that all borelines must be CONVERGED in one point instead of be HARMONISED as it was in real world.

I wouldn't argue with him. :D

As of when pilots got personal aircraft? So when that pilot is DNIF, that means aircraft grounded as well? Sounds like an awesome idea....

As of when pilots got personal aircraft? So when that pilot is DNIF, that means aircraft grounded as well? Sounds like an awesome idea....

The most successful aces probably got what ever they wanted. With 20,50, 300 kills you're pretty much your own boss.

And as every sim pilot thinks he's an ace... you get the point :music_whistling:

Its early for a wish list but for the love of all things holy please make it possible to adjust the gun convergence on aircraft somewhere in the mission editor. Not being able to do so is not realistic: once over seas officers asked/told their ground crews to reset them to their personal preferences and they did it (I remember seeing it in a documentary (probably Wings)).

I'm generally in favor, but for the sake of historical accuracy, I will point out that convergence/harmonization settings depended on whose air arm you were in, and often whose group or squadron. Most of the Allied air forces had enough airplanes to give everyone an assigned aircraft, but a cursory glance at the captions of photos of various aces' aircraft will tell you that an awful lot of those aircraft were lost or destroyed with somebody else in the cockpit.

Generally US units tended to settle for a common setting for 1000', or close to 305m; in the USN and USMC, this was rarely deviated from, since all gunnery training was based on that distance from Day One. Naval aviators were already accustomed to that range, and few if any wanted to change something that clearly worked.

US Army air forces tended to be more individualistic, and most of the time, discretion was given to group commanders. The USAAC did not have the intensive prewar gunnery training and gunnery doctrine that the Navy had, so some free-lancing was bound to occur. Some groups had a common setting, some allowed (productive) individuals to choose for themselves.

The RAF and associated Commonwealth air arms originally started with a 400 yard/365m official range, but that was found to be ineffective with the standard 8 X .303" armament of the Hurricane and Spitfire early in the war. Pilots and Squadron Leaders quickly adjusted harmonization ranges down to as little as 100 yds with or without official blessing in order to obtain maximum effect from their rifle caliber armament. I suspect (don't know for sure, but the Brits tended to operate this way) that once a standoff weapon like the Hispano 20mm was added that the boffins got to work with their sliderules and figured out the most effective ranges for sighting and hitting your target and the official information reached squadron level a week or two before VE Day, or three years or so after the pilots learned about it at their favorite pubs.

In practice, I suspect that RAF allowed Squadron or Wing Commanders to set the standard harmonization for their aircraft for most of the war.

I cannot speak to German or Japanese practices in this area, but having most of your armament on or near your nose must have simplified things for them...

cheers

horseback

I can see this being an important issue early in the war but I'm not really sure why so many people want convergence settings so badly. Even if you can prove that there were pilots in 1944 that were able to request a change in the boresighting of their guns, it's very hard to argue with the results of pattern harmonization (even better when paired up with a gyro gunsight). If you are looking to always shoot at very close range and beat up on a sitting duck target, then you are set. If your priority is to get kills, preserve your life, your buddies and those bombers you are escorting you benefit from having Pattern Harmonization. And the myth that you can't inflict significant damage from close range with the current DCS P-51D setup is pure malarky. I have plenty of tracks that show otherwise.

Now that being said, I think the ability to change would be a good way to settle this debate. If it is not too much of a difficulty, I think RRG should give the option...then the proof will be in the lead pudding.:D

im kind of hestitant when its about guns convergence this time...

ive learnt from clod, that if not implemented correctly, options, can hurt more than do good...

what did we have in clod?

adjustable convergence settings for each gun,horizontally and vertically...

adjustable gun belts for each gun, where we could literally place every single bullet in our prefered row.different bomb racks, bombs and fuzes to choose, and a loadout section...if implemented correctly and comprehensive, this could already lead to lots of confusion...

but we had a GUI that confused even veterans in clod more than a year after its release.

on top of it, we had convergence settings, which were mixed up in the gui, and only trial and error lead a few pilots to the assumption, that the devs had indeed mixed those two options...

we had obsolete fuzes which never worked...

with patches, certain bullet types became obsolete and non working, which worked historically correct beforehand, others were soon to be found as beeing suddenly overy effective, without a single word from the devs...

what i learnt from DCS? a realistically implemented loadout with historical convergence settings combined with a working gunsight works like a charm with a bit of training...

Good post David and I agree...it can still be added down the road, if that's what's wanted

im kind of hestitant when its about guns convergence this time...

 

ive learnt from clod, that if not implemented correctly, options, can hurt more than do good...

what did we have in clod?

adjustable convergence settings for each gun,horizontally and vertically...

adjustable gun belts for each gun, where we could literally place every single bullet in our prefered row.different bomb racks, bombs and fuzes to choose, and a loadout section...if implemented correctly and comprehensive, this could already lead to lots of confusion...

but we had a GUI that confused even veterans in clod more than a year after its release.

on top of it, we had convergence settings, which were mixed up in the gui, and only trial and error lead a few pilots to the assumption, that the devs had indeed mixed those two options...

we had obsolete fuzes which never worked...

with patches, certain bullet types became obsolete and non working, which worked historically correct beforehand, others were soon to be found as beeing suddenly overy effective, without a single word from the devs...

 

what i learnt from DCS? a realistically implemented loadout with historical convergence settings combined with a working gunsight works like a charm with a bit of training...

What I ONLY learnt in DCS is that we can't set a custom convergence.

What I ONLY learnt in DCS is that we can't set a custom convergence.

Can you show proof that after the introduction of gyro gunsights and calculated harmonisation patterns that pilots still tinkered with convergence settings? I'm sure it happened earlier in the war - I can find plenty of evidence for that but nothing after.

Once we move onto an earlier timeframe in the war with fixed gun sights I think having adjustable harmonisation should be there. What would be really nifty would be a GUI that showed the effect of your changes. With CloD people make all sorts of changes and there's no end of confusion about the effects of these changes - I just set all mine to 200 and left it.

I may be wrong, but Yo-Yo's comments were about the P-51D, perhaps it will be different for different aircraft... just a quick search found this:

 

http://www.combatsim.com/review.php?id=430

 

 

 

So maybe Yo-Yo will comment, or someone from RRG, that certain aircraft will have different options based on operational history?

Yes I totally agree. Hopefully the final result will follow with the known gun setup of each aircraft at that timeframe. Good or bad I'm just hoping for the devotion to historical accuracy that we have seen from ED.

Can you show proof that after the introduction of gyro gunsights and calculated harmonisation patterns that pilots still tinkered with convergence settings? I'm sure it happened earlier in the war - I can find plenty of evidence for that but nothing after.

 

Once we move onto an earlier timeframe in the war with fixed gun sights I think having adjustable harmonisation should be there. What would be really nifty would be a GUI that showed the effect of your changes. With CloD people make all sorts of changes and there's no end of confusion about the effects of these changes - I just set all mine to 200 and left it.

I believe DCS has a correct historical setting. But in real world, you can set guns with not only the correct convergence, but a incorrect one as well.

The problem here is the limit of the system, and the cost of changing it. With the P-51D, it's not very important yet. But I really wish the custom convergence can be added in DCS.

IL-2: 1946 has the ability to set gun convergence.... But I never messed with that stuff... I assumed default was good enough and learned how to fly and fight accordingly.

I imagine I'll do the same when DCS: WWII comes out... Whether it has the ability or not.

Yes I totally agree. Hopefully the final result will follow with the known gun setup of each aircraft at that timeframe. Good or bad I'm just hoping for the devotion to historical accuracy that we have seen from ED.

Then we could be in for something. The difference between a mk IX with .303s and a mk IX with the universal wing that carried .50s was monumental. And 120 20mm rpg (rounds per gun)is nice as well.

Then we could be in for something. The difference between a mk IX with .303s and a mk IX with the universal wing that carried .50s was monumental. And 120 20mm rpg (rounds per gun)is nice as well.

If those were both in regular use in 1944 then I'd imagine you could have your ground crew set up your plane with whichever munitions you choose... like the current implementation allows.