3. Mouse controls. There was a long time dilemma in simulation genre caused by the fact that realistic flight physics mean that a newcomer should have a certain level of initial knowledge and skills (understanding basic principles like 'flight is speed', 'don't turn the flight stick to its limit', 'be more attentive at lower altitudes', etc.) and have controller equipment of a certain level (namely a joystick that is much less widespread gaming device today than it was ten years ago). This sets a pretty high entry barrier for newcomers who want to try the sim genre.
On the other hand, adding simplified flight physics (where a plane can be flown using just cursor keys on the keyboard and where it can't enter uncontrollable spin caused by rough handling for example) to accommodate new players leads to unsolvable problem - this won't give a player the feeling of realistic flight at all, robbing him or her of the very reason of simulation. Is there any point in playing a simplified physics flight in a sim which is all about realistic flight? In addition, this divides the community between those who fly using simplified and full physics modeling since they can't fly the same multiplayer mission.
The answer to this dilemma is a special 'advanced helper' that receives 'I want to do this but I don't know how to' commands from a player and translates them to real plane controls input, not touching physics level at all. This comes with a price however, as everything in life - the helper chooses optimal 'right' trajectories, which simultaneously prevents a player from critical errors and limits the extreme maneuvers the plane can perform like Barrel roll, Snap roll, Hummerhead, Sideslip and others. This enables players who use a mouse and players who use a joystick to fly together and don't have a clear advantage caused by their control device. Winning a fight requires tactical positioning and understanding the composition of air fight, what, we feel, is the goal in this situation.
To make this 'advanced helper' we chose a mouse pointing control, where you tell it 'I want to fly or shoot there' by moving the mouse cursor to that direction. This principle is fairly common in modern aviation games, our team wea one of pioneers of this feature when in 2008 in Rise of Flight sim we have developed plane turrets with complex kinematic mounts and controls where controlled by the helper that translated a simple pointing of mouse cursor to movement of various elements of a turret assembly, pointing the gun to the direction in 3D space designated by player. This principle allowed to model realistic handling and angle limits of gunner turrets in a simple way for a user; it is used for IL-2 turrets as well.
It is important to note that mouse control helper governs only pitch, roll and yaw. Controlling engine, flaps, brakes, armament and everything else is the same as on joystick. This allows mouse controls to be used in Normal and Expert modes just like joystick - differences (and difficulties) are the same. Here are general mouse controls:
"Mouse movement" - Aiming the 'advanced helper' pointer
"Mouse wheel" - All engines throttle
"Left mouse button" - All guns fire
"Right mouse button" - Hold it to look around without changing the direction of the flight
"F1" - Default view from cockpit
"F4" - External view with mouse controls (available only at Normal difficulty since external views are disabled on Expert)
"LShift + mouse wheel" - Zoom view or sight
Please note that several commands will be automatically remapped when you switch from joystick to mouse and vice versa:
Zoom is either "Mouse Wheel" or "LShift + Mouse Wheel"
Chase view - "F4" or "LCtrl-F4"
Furthermore, in case a part of the community feels they want to play only with players who use a joystick, we added a special option to dedicated server configuration that allows a server owner to restrict the control scheme to joystick. However we hope that thanks to the approach described above such restrictions will be enforced by hosters only in limited cases. Why?
To finalize our announce, we need to explain why we introduced this feature in the first place and what hopes we have for it. We hope that adding this basic control method that is available to anyone regardless of special equipment or skills will allow to taste the aviation sim for all these people who stopped at the doorstep before, realizing that they need to buy a special equipment just to take off and fly around the airfield. With this barrier gone, they can try the flight, the feel of the sim and play single player modes like scenarios, quick missions and campaign. When they learn a bit, these new players will try multiplayer. And finally, a part of them (hopefully a major one) will decide that 'it's worth it' and will buy a joystick to feel the joy of flight as close to real life as possible. Like you already do.
https://youtu.be/feFX8xkC8Lg
To end our today's diary, I want to show you the list of the new additions and fixes that are ready for 1.105, so you won't think that we 'burn our time for ridiculous tanks and mouse' :) Work is progressing at the same rate as before, we prepared player controlled tanks and mouse controls for a long time, so these new additions did not affect the project plan for Battle of Moscow and improvements for Battle of Stalingrad.
You can find full patch notes here: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/168-developer-diary/page-3#entry305444