Flying as a Wingman

[pagsab]

As I explain in my video at https://youtu.be/i4NyOMsilsY, my enjoyment of FE2 and SF2 has been increased enormously over the past year by discovering how to fly as a wingman, just like in the old European Air War.  I laid out in https://combatace.com/forums/topic/100072-following-your-leader-through-the-low-european-clouds/ the simple text edits to the mission file needed to allow this in single missions.  Jockeying stick and throttle to maintain close formations like those in WW1 makes flying a constant challenge, and gives a perfect marriage between the immersivity of cockpit views and the beauty of close-up external views of the classic planes concerned.  FE2 does not have the benefit of the mission editor available in SF2, but by opening the terrain in Gerwin's TFD editor, one can find the coordinates needed to edit saved mission files manually to modify or delete flights and to shift bases and waypoints to whatever one desires.  I often set up 'Recon' flights with no opposition except AAA fire, for the sheer pleasure of 40 minutes or so of atmospheric formation flying from takeoff to landing, as shown in the picture below of our pair of closely grouped Nieuport 17s over the mountains in the Vosges 2 terrain.

Applying my mission cloning trick in FE2 has the rather disconcerting initial result that your leader starts superimposed with you on the airfield.  This is not a problem unless you have Collisions set to Hard, but I now add some simple extra tweaks so that my leader starts flying above me instead, as in SF2.  Just ensure that AdjustStartPosition and AdjustBaseWaypoint in the Mission Data section and  StartOnGround in your leader's mission entry are all set to FALSE, and then boost his initial height to 50 and speed to 30 and the height of his first waypoint to 100.  I boost LOD ranges in planes' ini files to stop details distractingly popping on and off, and I adjust CruiseSpeed in certain planes' data.inis to stop my leader flying too quickly or slowly for comfortable formation keeping.  I also finally stopped towns in FE2 shimmering distractingly, by increasing the ExternalClipDistMin value in my planes' cockpit.inis from around 0.04 to 0.15 as diagnosed by Mue a decade ago in https://combatace.com/forums/topic/85970-shimmering-tods-and-target-objects/#comment-692525.  These various tweaks have given FE2 a whole new lease of life for me, and allowed me to enjoy the cornucopia of user-created add-ons with renewed vigour.

 

[pagsab]

It is easy to use the manual editing techniques I have described to set up missions which involve air combat as well as formation flying.  My favourite part of the Western Front air war is the early period, when aircraft often flew singly rather than with others of the same type.  The picture below shows a mission I just flew set in late 1915, in which my Vickers Gunbus was tasked to protect an equally torpid BE2c assigned to photograph the Marcoing bridge south of Cambrai.  A patrolling Fokker Eindecker tried to attack the BE2 using its interrupter gear, but my gunner and I diverted its attention in a swirling dogfight while our colleagues completed their mission.  We eventually shook off the Fokker and gradually caught up with the BE2 thanks to our resumed padlock, accompanying it to a safe landing after an eventful 50 minute flight.  I reduce planes' ammo levels in the mission file as a way of making such combats less ahistorically bloody.

[potentesciamano]

 

 

Hello,

we advise to take a look at the YAP Revamp Works project, a free fan made remake of Yankee Air Pirate:

https://www.yap-revamp-works.com/

there are a lot of mission to be played as wingman, with planes often starting from the ramp or apron in different positions.

Here is the promo video of Phase One. Phase two is coming soon.

PS

 

[pagsab]

This looks great for fans of the Vietnam war, and shows what is available for those who prefer their mods and missions ready made instead of editing files for themselves.

[VonS]

Some good info. in this thread - I especially like the tip about the ExternalClipDistMin tweak in the cockpit.ini files - an obscurity dating back to that old Mue post. Haven't had any need for that tweak but a nice one to remember.

In terms of ammo. level reduction -- that's certainly one way of introducing historical flying -- the other way is to reduce the max no. of pilots and/or aircraft in the MissionControl ini file (works wonders for early war scenarios; see my "FE2 FM & Realism Pack" for all relevant files, of course).

And yes, properly tweaked - FE2 keeps renewing its lease on life - I'd say it has more long-term value, all things considered, than the other WWI flight sim offerings that are out there (with all due respect to the hard work put into those other sims too). There's something fundamentally modular, transportable, hardware-friendly, and unbreakable about FE2 - characteristics that all come together and give it its special charm.

For clips of extensively modded FE2, feel free to have a gander at FE2 on a Mac. Clip below of the unexciting but functional B.E.12 doing a recon. run in the middle eastern theatre. Many thanks to all FE2 modders -- to quote the Young Mr. Grace from Are You Being Served? -- "you've all done very well."

Cheers all & good flying,

 

Edited Thursday at 11:20 PM by VonS
Embedded link.

[pagsab]

Thanks for that.  Your YouTube site has lots of videos which allow comparison of FE2 with other WW1 air sims like WOFF.  I too especially like the 'moddability' of FE2 and SF2.  The more comfortable one gets with tweaking the sims, the more that they offer a flexible 'sandbox' which one can customise to one's heart's content.  Besides discovering my wingman trick, I am particularly pleased with my compact bespoke tileset as shown below, which uses artwork by Gepard and others in a completely new system with just 3 types of tile edges (land, sea or a 50:50 split) to allow much more flexible and detailed hand-tiled terrain than that created automatically using standard tile layouts.  See https://combatace.com/forums/topic/101404-spain-and-seaplanes for my latest endeavours with this tile system.

 

 

[JulioJunqueira]

I'm using your manual editing procedure to fly as a wingman. It's really fun.

By the way, have you tried the Nippy's editor (Dogfight)? It can help you to edit missions for FE1 & FE2. It is very easy to install and use. It is compatible with all the aircraft found here on CombatAce.I use it regularly in all my FE2 installations.