07.08.2010, 09:11
For what it is worth I just did an experiment comparing the Default MkVIII USN gun sight reticle and the NoWonderdog MkVIII USN gun sight reticle embedded into the History Mod of HSFX.
Here is a quote from 1st Lt. Kenneth Ambrose Walsh of VMF-124 at Guadalcanal which at the time in February 1943 was flying F4U-1 Corsair which used the MkVIII gun sight.
"Being in my seventh consecutive year of frontline flying, I knew how to fire the guns and how to use our Mk 8 gunsight. The guns were boresighted to 1000 ft. The electric sight had rings covering so many mils, 1000 ft equaling one mil. If the Zero covered 40 mils, you knew he was 1000 ft away."
Here is a quote from Lt. Cdr. Roger R. Hedrick, XO of VF-17 which at the time in November 1943 was flying F4U-1A Corsair which used the MkVIII gun sight.
"We had our guns boresighted to 900 ft - at that point the wingspan of the Zero filled the 50 mm ring of our gun sight."
I went into the Quick Mission Builder and selected the Pacific Islands map. I chose the F4U-1A for my plane and I chose an A6M2-21 (12.0 m or 39.37 feet wing span) as a friendly flight so I could fly behind it without the AI pilot trying to evade me. With each version of the gun sight I closed to a range where the wing tips of the zero touched the edges of the inner ring (50mil diameter) and paused the game. I had the range icons turned on and this is the results I got.
NoWonderdog MkVIII Gun Sight:
Range when Zero wing tips touched the 50 mil ring: .12 - .14 km = 120 - 140 meters/393.70079 - 459.31759 feet
Default MkVIII Gun sight:
Range when Zero wing tips touched the 50 mil ring: .27 km = 274.32 meters / 900 feet /300 yards
My convergence for MG is set for 274.32 meters since I mostly fly US aircraft with wing mounted .50 caliber mg. Using the Default / Stock MkVIII gun sight puts me at the convergence point of my guns when the Zero wing tips touch the 50 mil ring.
NoWonderdog's gun sights are brighter and much cleaner than those that came stock with the game, but does not appear as accurate. I don't know what criteria Nowonderdog used to make the size of his USN gun sights especially the MkVIII. Maybe he tried to scale it to the size of the gun sight housing or the reflector glass in the cockpit or maybe he made it so the 50 mil ring matched his choice of mg convergence I don't know. What I do know is that the stock MkVIII sight accurately reflects the range of the Zero when its wing tips touch the 50 mil ring as being 900 feet.
Additionally NoWonderdog's USN gun sights put a MkVIII in the F4F-3 instead of the N3 gun sight and puts the N3 gun sight into both the F4U-1 and Corsair MkI instead of the MkVIII gun sight.
I hope that in the next version of HSFX that either the creators take this into account and make NoWonderdog's USN Gun Sights an optional mod instead of making it part of the History Mod or put the default gun sights as a mod in the generic mod enabler so we can decide which we want to use. Ideally it would be great to have the brightness and clarity of Nowonderdog's USN gunsights, but the accuracy of the default/stock USN gunsights.
There is a defualt mod that is available, but if you choose this you do not get a gun sight if you choose the P-400, P-39D-1, P-39D-2, P-39N-1, P-39Q-1 and P-39Q-10.
-)-MAILMAN-
Here is a quote from 1st Lt. Kenneth Ambrose Walsh of VMF-124 at Guadalcanal which at the time in February 1943 was flying F4U-1 Corsair which used the MkVIII gun sight.
"Being in my seventh consecutive year of frontline flying, I knew how to fire the guns and how to use our Mk 8 gunsight. The guns were boresighted to 1000 ft. The electric sight had rings covering so many mils, 1000 ft equaling one mil. If the Zero covered 40 mils, you knew he was 1000 ft away."
Here is a quote from Lt. Cdr. Roger R. Hedrick, XO of VF-17 which at the time in November 1943 was flying F4U-1A Corsair which used the MkVIII gun sight.
"We had our guns boresighted to 900 ft - at that point the wingspan of the Zero filled the 50 mm ring of our gun sight."
I went into the Quick Mission Builder and selected the Pacific Islands map. I chose the F4U-1A for my plane and I chose an A6M2-21 (12.0 m or 39.37 feet wing span) as a friendly flight so I could fly behind it without the AI pilot trying to evade me. With each version of the gun sight I closed to a range where the wing tips of the zero touched the edges of the inner ring (50mil diameter) and paused the game. I had the range icons turned on and this is the results I got.
NoWonderdog MkVIII Gun Sight:
Range when Zero wing tips touched the 50 mil ring: .12 - .14 km = 120 - 140 meters/393.70079 - 459.31759 feet
Default MkVIII Gun sight:
Range when Zero wing tips touched the 50 mil ring: .27 km = 274.32 meters / 900 feet /300 yards
My convergence for MG is set for 274.32 meters since I mostly fly US aircraft with wing mounted .50 caliber mg. Using the Default / Stock MkVIII gun sight puts me at the convergence point of my guns when the Zero wing tips touch the 50 mil ring.
NoWonderdog's gun sights are brighter and much cleaner than those that came stock with the game, but does not appear as accurate. I don't know what criteria Nowonderdog used to make the size of his USN gun sights especially the MkVIII. Maybe he tried to scale it to the size of the gun sight housing or the reflector glass in the cockpit or maybe he made it so the 50 mil ring matched his choice of mg convergence I don't know. What I do know is that the stock MkVIII sight accurately reflects the range of the Zero when its wing tips touch the 50 mil ring as being 900 feet.
Additionally NoWonderdog's USN gun sights put a MkVIII in the F4F-3 instead of the N3 gun sight and puts the N3 gun sight into both the F4U-1 and Corsair MkI instead of the MkVIII gun sight.
I hope that in the next version of HSFX that either the creators take this into account and make NoWonderdog's USN Gun Sights an optional mod instead of making it part of the History Mod or put the default gun sights as a mod in the generic mod enabler so we can decide which we want to use. Ideally it would be great to have the brightness and clarity of Nowonderdog's USN gunsights, but the accuracy of the default/stock USN gunsights.
There is a defualt mod that is available, but if you choose this you do not get a gun sight if you choose the P-400, P-39D-1, P-39D-2, P-39N-1, P-39Q-1 and P-39Q-10.
-)-MAILMAN-