The German K98 Mausers(7.92x57mm) have settings on their iron sights for up to 2000 meters.

Yeah, back then, jams were harder to clear than the game gives us the impression of. So mostly they would wait until they got really close, and simply pull the triggers and hope the guns didnt jam.
Rickenbacker himself states (In writing.) That he started firing whilst slowly closing on a Pfalz D.III, at about 300 yards distance and kept trashing it until it lost control.

Indeed, but this involves the spinning of the earth, on top of that, wind affects the bullets flight path. Without a scope and because of bad eyesight, no sniper training, and because I`d like to keep my shoulder intact, with such a rifle I`d hold my horses until about 800 meters.

You compare max effective range between ground MG fire, that was primarily one of supression, to air to air combat gunnery. The setting of 2000 meters is not used for anything but supression fire, if at all. Realistic ranges for 7.92x57 ammo are between 400, for direct shooting, to a max of ~800/1200 m for supression. Even German snipers said that sure shots were achievable only below 600 m...

The maximum zoom in RoF probably equates to something like 20x or so magnification and will present a more detailed picture of the target than what the human eye can perceive at greater distance, therefore increasing accuracy. If in RoF one uses max zoom out when aiming the resulting engagement ranges are much more realistic and it is still possible to shoot out to 400 m with some hopes of hits. With max zoom available in RoF one can easily achieve good shots on target from 400 m, which is simply not reflecting the real life situation.

Aside from the magnification, in the actual combat the pilot has to use some strength to move the aircraft about, fighting the wind and the natural instability of the aircraft, which by itself adds to the difficulty of getting good shots at a distance.

If that was not enough, aiming through the gunsight is not as easy as on the ground and aiming with tracers at a distance will produce misses because of the different ballistics of the tracers. Unlike real life, in RoF aiming with tracers works too well and there's no problem whatsoever in aiming your guns because everything on the screen is always in focus and perfectly stable...

This is a good point. We dont get "hard jams" in rof currently. In fact with a quick press of a button on my joystick any jam is cleared instantly.

Now if i knew i ran the risk of my guns permanently jamming (regardless of how unlikely) id certainly choose my shots more cautiously.

Ive spent a lot of time spectating in MP due to my own demise, and I cant honestly say ive noticed these long range potshots accomplishing anything. Given their overall ineffectiveness, perhaps a deterant of hard jams would put a stop to the practice.

All good points. Real pilots operated under pressures that don't impact a sim player. I guess these include:

1. Hard jams. We can clear our guns every time, even while while pulling 3g and inverted. So there's no disincentive to taking long range low-odds pot shots.

2. Many real-life attacks were on an unsuspecting opponent - why give away surprise by firing from long range? In RoF MP games, you know the bad guys are about and surprise is difficult to achieve (they can also hear you coming, which can't be right). In RoF single player, you can't surprise the AI at all, so why not blast away?

3. Our combats are short and we can respawn, so no need to preserve ammo for self-defense on the way home.

4. RoF engines seem very fragile (shades of IL-2 Bf-109 engine syndrome). Even one bullet at long range seems to be able to knacker the engine, so why not pelt the enemy from a distance?

5. Our gunsight views are very stable - no bouncing around to put our aim off.

6. Experienced sim players have probably experienced hundreds or even thousands of air-to-air shooting matches to learn from. Real pilots had far fewer. We have had far more practice at shhoting in our sims than they had in shooting in real life.

Squid and Red are right. RoF would change sigificantly and for the better if hard jams were introduced.

Cheers,

RD.

A-ha, so this is why this thread exists:

http://riseofflight.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=129&t=4311&start=0

One bullet in real life to the engine can bring a plane down. The Albatros in the NASM is proof of that.

Busted!

TBH Its something Ive wanted to see for a while, and this tread bumped it subject into the forfront of my confused mind

Okay, many people seems to become "fans" of this ever more increasing belief that a well-proven (Besides the jams.) and accurate (Compared to others of the time.) ground-ground weapons system became so inaccurate that one, to quote the exact words of the myth "had to get as close as 50 meters to the foe before firing." Just because it was fitted with air cooling jacket and screwed onto a aircraft..

This escalating matter intrigues and annoys me a bit, (No offense.) mainly because that over the years in which I repeatedly heard the myth, except quoting MvR who says to hold fire until 50 meters, nobody has actually presented the scientific and definite wrap-up proof on this.

I guess most of us are experienced in deflection shooting because we do it in sims on a day to day basis, but back then, as mentioned, there werent many second chances, we can afford to experiment around in a pretty much state of the art ww1 simulator, but these fellows would do what they were told and get close for the kill for efficiency and surprise, and this is where I think actual accuracy vs advices for greenhorns chance to get air-air kill anno 1915-1918 collides big time, and heres why:

Most of us seems to agree that our particular weapon system "of choice" is not the most accurate during sustained fire from a vibrating and moving platform to a likewise target, agreed, accuracy would decrease by (Undocumented so I cant say.)

Recoil Jump? The barrel jumps because of the recoil when a round fired, and does prove long range long burst accuracy a tad harder, seeing as one has to compensate for the recoil. But I don`t think it would make or even contribute in any particular sort to as immense inaccuracy as in the myth, or NeoQB would have modeled in this inaccuracy, right?
In fact, I believe the interrupting gear and propeller slowing down the rate of fire a notch or two helps a bit

Barrel fouling? Firing a weapon means microscopic bullet and cartridge fragments sticks onto the walls of and edges of the rifling inside a barrel, at first this increases and settles accuracy at a certain point unless, if barrel is not cleaned at a regular basis, fouls the barrel to such an extent that accuracy decreases and cannot be maintained even if one starts cleaning it once one notices considerable drop in accuracy, I averagely fire a few hundred bullets during each dogfight, 1000 rounds fired within a few minutes way up in the freezing air might or might not make this an apparent problem, so maybe it depends on the user and the lifetime of his/her aircraft vs maintenance?

In any case it has ?(Dont know.)? been modeled in yet, realistically one would have to fire quite the amount bullets from the same MG`s on the same plane before theres any noticeable difference on the relatively short range we are talking about (500 meters.) I doubt Rickenbacker or MvR fired millions of bullets with the same MG`s, on top of that they switched aircraft (And MG`s accordingly.) quite a few times, besides, even if the barrel started fouling for the worse, all you need to do is replace it...


I have never read the books or diaries of any ww1 pilot actually say the bullet spread is so large that one must get so close, but rather for their subordinates to have the chance to, even if not being the greatest of marksmen, to land max amount of lead put on target before weapon jam, as well as giving the element of surprise. I think we can agree, scientifically, that this is completely different?

Engine vibration and fluttering? All though your body can feel the vibrations as if they were pretty intense, I thought people who already flew prop planes gave their blessing to the feel and vibrations of the aircraft in RoF, assuming they are modeled correctly, they certainly don`t seem to contribute to an inaccuracy so immense that one cant hit anything at over 50 meters, heck, if they were, we could assume it would have to vibrate something fierce, I`d go as far as to say that plane ought to be grounded



Bottom lines:
Most of us feel more confident of making a kill the closer the distance (Naturally.)
I can certainly hit at 4-500 yards if given enough time to aim and consolidate my groupings, but if the weapons were to hard jam I would certainly make sure to get a bit closer, however, with the facts one often hear that people use to prove this myth, I refuse to believe that a MG 08 or Vickers or Maxim with a rifled barrel and rifle ammunition, fitted with air cooling jacket and put on an airplane, all though accuracy definitely suffering as a consequence of such, would have trouble cutting up an aircraft at about same range as a 1700`s flintlock smoothbore musket would start to have trouble hitting a man sized target...
All though I gladly welcome anyone from anywhere to prove NeoQB and OFF team wrong, I`d happily participate in trying to convince NeoQB into modeling it into the game. Until I`m proven wrong I still think Neoqb, and OFF team (Pretty much same accuracy except the AI hit consistently at 1000 meters.. now thats a problem!) did a great job on this