B-17 The Mighty 8th - Getting Started Tutorial Video Series - Now Available!!!

[Buddahaid]

Now that I'm getting a lot more comfortable with this sim, I'm finding that the quick start mission number three "Where are the Little Friends" a good mission for practicing both gunnery and bomb aiming. You can start as a gunner for the few minutes it takes to turn onto the bomb run, then assume the bombardier's position for the bomb run, and return to gunnery for several more minutes with ME-262's finishing off the defensive attacks.

I'm also finding the tail gunner is the easiest gun position to get up to speed with because it allows you more time to track targets that are attacking from the rear. Nice to watch one explode when you nail it.

[ikrananka]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Now that I'm getting a lot more comfortable with this sim, I'm finding that the quick start mission number three "Where are the Little Friends" a good mission for practicing both gunnery and bomb aiming. You can start as a gunner for the few minutes it takes to turn onto the bomb run, then assume the bombardier's position for the bomb run, and return to gunnery for several more minutes with ME-262's finishing off the defensive attacks.

I'm also finding the tail gunner is the easiest gun position to get up to speed with because it allows you more time to track targets that are attacking from the rear. Nice to watch one explode when you nail it.

Yes indeed. I'm working on a video for that Quickstart mission right now and will hopefully have it up on YouTube in a day or two.

What I like about this mission is that it let's you practice against three different Axis fighters, i.e. Bf109, FW190 and the jet propelled Me262.

[ikrananka]

The twelfth video in this series is now live on YouTube. In this video I focus on Quickstart Mission #3: Where are the Little Friends? In this mission we use the gun stations of our B-17 to defend against a vicious attack by enemy fighters including Bf 109s, FW 190s and the jet propelled Me 262s. However, this time there are no "little friends" to help us out.

There are some very impressive fighter explosions in this video.

Again, sorry for the delay in getting this video published. I have been having further issues with dropped frames and audio out of sync in my recordings. I have concluded that it is time to do some upgrades to my 6 year old PC. I'll be doing this in stages starting with a new GTX 1070 video card. I'm switching from AMD to Nvidia in the hope that I'll be able to get reliable recordings at 1440p60 with the Nvidia GPU hardware encoding.

[Buddahaid]

Again, thanks for the tutorials. I'm noticing that you are able to get camera views at the 45 degree zones that I can't seem to make happen. What is different in you're install?

[ikrananka]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Again, thanks for the tutorials. I'm noticing that you are able to get camera views at the 45 degree zones that I can't seem to make happen. What is different in you're install?

I use the hat stick on my HOTAS X joystick. Pressing it to a 45° position brings up the 45° views. It's a digital hat stick so I can clearly feel the clicks of the underlying switches so I can feel when both the up AND left switches, for example, have been activated.

Does your hat switch not allow you to access these views?

[Buddahaid]

Oh it has an eight position control. Are you saying that it stops at the 45 when panning left for you? The game doesn't have keyboard commands for those views that I can see, and I should be able to program mine to mimic any function. Right now it is mapped to the keyboard controls.

[ikrananka]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Oh it has an eight position control. Are you saying that it stops at the 45 when panning left for you? The game doesn't have keyboard commands for those views that I can see, and I should be able to program mine to mimic any function. Right now it is mapped to the keyboard controls.

I have not manually setup anything for the hat stick and, as you say, it is not listed in the control options for the game. So, I can only assume that the game is hardcoded to detect a hat switch, and yes, in my case anyway, it allows my 4-way hat switch to access the 8 possible view positions by reading up+left, for example, as a diagonal up and left 45° view.