Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jenato]

Hello,

after a long brake I took up IL-2 1946 again. Reinstalled everything from notch. Went through all the stages including the entire CUP mod! All went well, without any problems and that, I think is an achievement on its own. As I created many missions in the past, I started to do it all over again and amazed by all the possibilities CUP offers… waw! Taxiing, take offs in pairs, patrolling a certain zone in triangle or hexagonal pattern… really. For all those who created this stuff… respect and gratitude! The problem I encountered in creating a static campaign for myself I cannot solve on my own.
The issue is this: I created missions in which player and AI planes take off after taxiing. As long as the player has not the lead of the flight, enabling Autopilot after taking off is no problem at all. Climbing up the ranks in the campaign makes player inevitably leader after some time and there my problem begins. Taking off with three fellow AI planes makes it impossible to activate the Autopilot, except after flying a few times over the airfield with the AI planes closing up on the tail of the player. This can only be done when the Minimap path and the Players icon is visible. Checking out these options makes it difficult to see the path you are flying and almost impossible to guess when Autopilot can be put on or not. With a visible path, the line of the followed track switches from certain points on the airfield to the first waypoint – which is in fact not a true WP, but the first point the plane is leaving the runway (in FMB the end of the taxi-line marked as “normal”) – and this is the exact spot where Autopilot can be activated, after one or two more or less circular patterns flown above the airfield.
Is this something that can be avoided in FMB by an option I don’t know the existence off or is it a normal behaviour of the sim? Can anyone help me out with this issue?
I downloaded a campaing (CUP and static) to “spy” and try to figure out how it can be done, and though the one I installed (France-1940_MB153_v2-1) learned me a lot about spawning points and so on, but seem to have the same problem with the Autopilot.

Greetings,

Jenato

[Plowshare]

Jenato:

First off I don't use CUP but I see that a mod called "Stabs4all" is included. There have been many discussions about autopilot and taxi-to-take off and, like your experience, none of them end well.

Stabs4all works very well for me. The only problem, if you want to call it that, is that you must get up altitude on your own and trim the aircraft for yaw. Since you are the lead you set the pace for the climb and there shouldn't be any problems in that regard.

Hope this helps.

Bob

[Zoran395]

I use only CUP and I saw the same behaviour. I am pretty sure this is not CUP specific but related to the way taxi-to-take-off is coded versus AI behaviour. Your finding about "...is the exact spot where Autopilot can be activated" could indicate this.

I love the taxi feature and would always try to use it but ... I found that I cannot be lazy as much as I would want to be (and use the autopilot...), I have to start the plane, fly it around the airfield and wait for my charges to catch up.

It makes sense historically I guess, I think about how stream of bombers used to form (RAF stories I read) and how take-off procedures got amended during the war to limit the number of planes loosing formation right after take-off.

[Jenato]

Bob and Zoran395,

thanks for your advice, the both of you. Indeed, Stabs4all is worth considering to use, but as you mentioned, it can give some problems, certainly with many WP's and drastically changing altitudes. And if you keep in mind how “more realistic” the sim has become over the years – I started with the simple IL-2 1946 CD (4.07 I believe it’s called ) – and what it all the different mods are offering now… simply amazing! May be I must keep in mind that a pilot, right after taking off back in the days of WW1 and 2, hadn’t the option to choose Autopilot too. So… we keep on going the way it is. Better to be happy with what we have and not to grumble about things we don’t…
Thanks guys!

Jenato