Ri com o ataque ao He 111.
E o cara nem abateu um "non AI"...I came to IL2 CloD from War Thunder.
My was a pilot in the Navy and is still an avid pilot to this day (he has an RV6 he's teaching me to fly as we speak). In my youth I played a lot of Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator. As I grew older my interest waned as things like Counter-Strike, Starcraft, and other avenues of multiplayer gaming became my focus. Years passed.
Fast forward to "adulthood". This year, War Thunder was released on PC. I became wholly addicted to the nostalgia of air combat. I began reading books about WW2 fighter pilots and learning extensive ACM. I moved from "Arcade Battle" to "Historical Battle" mode in War Thunder for the more realistic flight models. Still, it wasn't enough. I flirted with the idea of "Full Realism Battle" and finally bought a joystick. As soon as the joystick arrived and I made one test flight, I immediately ordered TrackIR. After the first test flight with TrackIR I immediately ordered rudder pedals. I jumped into FRB and discovered that it was still severely lacking something that I couldn't put my finger on; it felt hollow, lacking teamwork and lacking scale.
I had heard of IL2 CloD, about the awful initial launch and the saving grace that was Fusion Mod in the eleventh hour. I had watched a few videos, all from the ATAG server. Rather than taking the plunge immediately, I chose to try out Rise of Flight, another great game. After a few days I sank fifteen bucks into it to purchase some additional aircraft. On my first flight someone pulled me aside and showed me the the basics of engine management. Navigation was still completely foreign to me though, so I strayed from the 100% realism servers with large, sprawling maps and complex objectives, instead choosing to fly on a dogfight server with spotting assistance and no objectives outside of simply finding and shooting down the other team, all the while still watching ATAG CloD videos, researching ACM and reading my books.
After a few weeks of Rise of Flight I began to yearn for something more once again. Rise of Flight was a hell of a lot of fun, but after reading about Franz Stigler's encounter with the lone B-17 ("A Higher Call") and Johannes Steinhoff's personal accounts of the defense of the Italian Peninsula ("Messerschmidts over Sicily") I was starving for a gritty, realistic simulation to experience the struggles of the Luftwaffe first hand. I finally took the plunge. I bought CloD and spent an entire day setting it up and getting my bearings in the 109's cockpit -- installing Fusion Mod, finding out what buttons were important to me, what graphical settings worked best, and how exactly to get off the ground (the wiki's flight manuals were very helpful). On days 2, 3 and 4, after being able to successfully take off and land, I tackled the behemoth that was navigation, floating along the coastline and memorizing its contours and important airfields, looking back and forth between the coast, my compass, and my map, trying to match up my location. Occasionally I would get abruptly shot down out of nowhere, or -- if I was lucky that day -- stumble upon a bomber formation. The first time I saw a bomber formation I hastily lined up a high speed guns pass which resulted in diving on, firing on, and colliding with a friendly HE 111. I was more careful from then on. Naz and Torien gave me my first tour of London and lessons in the Spitfire one of those nights, and KushViper gave me a few LoD tweaks and tips that helped immensely. I began flying with a few of the guys on Teamspeak and managed to get in a couple spats of trouble here and there over the English Bay, though I had yet to down an enemy aircraft. Even if I was helping to maintain tally on targets in dogfights and acting as another set of eyes for the group (and another target for the enemy!), I yearned for my first real victory.
By yesterday, day 5, I had put it all together. Navigating is fairly straight forward, engine maintenance is slowly becoming second nature, and my spatial awareness is rapidly improving. I've learned the "hot spots" on the map, how to reliably find bomber formations, and to always keep one eye on my six. Yesterday in the wee hours of a near-abandoned server I was practicing high speed mock-passes on my own bomber formation while escorting them over the channel when I got wind of an enemy formation crossing mid channel. I immediately intercepted and put my recent, impeccably timed practice to use. I whittled a formation of eight down to a formation of six, then four, then one, then none, pass after pass. During that time another new player in a Spitfire was harassing me and we briefly tangled on and off as I picked bomber after bomber out of the formation. Eventually, after the last bomber fell, my Spitfire opponent stalled and spun out onto the deck when he tried to follow me into the vertical and we lost tally on one another. Aloft at 6 thousand meters with nothing left to pursue, I tapped my fuel gauge and decided it was time to fly back home. As my wheels touched down in France, I felt very accomplished. My first successful sortie! After nearly a week of throwing myself at the simulation, I had become competent. I can take off, land, reliably fly a heading, navigate, locate, and engage with a basic level of efficiency then make it home in time for schnitzel.
But it all started with War Thunder, flying with a mouse, shooting at boldly highlighted, respawning aircraft, all dogpiling on one another in a ridiculously small map with unrealistic flight models, unlimited ammunition and pointless fuel values. While War Thunder may be overly arcadey and look laughable to a seasoned sim pilot, it serves the purpose of an appetizer in a four course flight sim meal, enticing new, soon-to-be sim pilots where the main course is Cliffs of Dover and dessert is your first real victory on the ATAG server. War Thunder is actually very, very good for IL2 and other flight sims.
Sokol1