30.12.2010, 12:06
This is annoying. I just found the new site, and everything here is wrong.
I scaled the reticles using the cockpit measurements and some simple trigonometry, not by choosing my favorite conversion range and eyeballing it. All the reticles should be correctly scaled (within 1-2%, at least) for "gunsight view." Since they're not actually projected at infinity they will change size a bit as you move forward and backward, but the stock game had this problem too. There's also a bit of a question of how to measure the radius -- I think the army measured to the inside of the ring while the navy measured to the outside of the ring, or something like that. Maybe it was the other way around, but it was all within the (considerable) margin of error.
In any case, the navy reticle is absolutely correctly scaled. As said, the ladder marks 10 mil increments. There are five marks per ring radius, giving us a ring radius of 50 mils. This is verified by gunsight manuals, gunnery manuals, plane manuals, photos looking through the gunsights, absolutely everything you can think of. The default reticle was too small. A lot of this mod is guesswork, but this I'm absolutely sure of.
I've actually never seen diameter used in a period source for WWII gunsights, army or navy. In modern stuff the word diameter is often said by a pilot or inserted by an editor, but I can't find it in anything actually from the war. All the period training manuals tell you to use the radius to measure distances. They even abbreviate it as "rad." They tell you to measure lead in rads. They give you tables for distances of various planes in rads. When your quote says "the wingspan of the Zero filled the 50 mil ring of our gun sight," he's saying that it filled the 50 mil radius from pipper to ring (or he's forgotten in the intervening 50 years; I give pilot quotes about small technical details exactly zero merit).
The sights on the bomber defensive guns are definitely wrong in this mod, though. I didn't have a source, so I just threw in some 50 mil sights. It turns out that all defensive guns are based on 35 mil rings (with additional 70 and 105 mil rings for some sights) instead. I'd found manuals with all the data and sight pictures, but I never got around to fixing them. Since I never reinstalled IL-2 after my OS upgrade, they're not likely to get done. The army MkVIII on the P-47 might have the wrong reticle, too; I don't think I ever found a source.
As for me changing gunsights, I just matched the reticle to the 3d model of the sight. If the British Corsair had an N-3 installed, I gave it an N-3 reticle. I had planned to change a couple of these, but oh well.
I scaled the reticles using the cockpit measurements and some simple trigonometry, not by choosing my favorite conversion range and eyeballing it. All the reticles should be correctly scaled (within 1-2%, at least) for "gunsight view." Since they're not actually projected at infinity they will change size a bit as you move forward and backward, but the stock game had this problem too. There's also a bit of a question of how to measure the radius -- I think the army measured to the inside of the ring while the navy measured to the outside of the ring, or something like that. Maybe it was the other way around, but it was all within the (considerable) margin of error.
In any case, the navy reticle is absolutely correctly scaled. As said, the ladder marks 10 mil increments. There are five marks per ring radius, giving us a ring radius of 50 mils. This is verified by gunsight manuals, gunnery manuals, plane manuals, photos looking through the gunsights, absolutely everything you can think of. The default reticle was too small. A lot of this mod is guesswork, but this I'm absolutely sure of.
I've actually never seen diameter used in a period source for WWII gunsights, army or navy. In modern stuff the word diameter is often said by a pilot or inserted by an editor, but I can't find it in anything actually from the war. All the period training manuals tell you to use the radius to measure distances. They even abbreviate it as "rad." They tell you to measure lead in rads. They give you tables for distances of various planes in rads. When your quote says "the wingspan of the Zero filled the 50 mil ring of our gun sight," he's saying that it filled the 50 mil radius from pipper to ring (or he's forgotten in the intervening 50 years; I give pilot quotes about small technical details exactly zero merit).
The sights on the bomber defensive guns are definitely wrong in this mod, though. I didn't have a source, so I just threw in some 50 mil sights. It turns out that all defensive guns are based on 35 mil rings (with additional 70 and 105 mil rings for some sights) instead. I'd found manuals with all the data and sight pictures, but I never got around to fixing them. Since I never reinstalled IL-2 after my OS upgrade, they're not likely to get done. The army MkVIII on the P-47 might have the wrong reticle, too; I don't think I ever found a source.
As for me changing gunsights, I just matched the reticle to the 3d model of the sight. If the British Corsair had an N-3 installed, I gave it an N-3 reticle. I had planned to change a couple of these, but oh well.