I tried manning the rear gun on the bristol, and wow, unless I'm missing something, the system is terrible. All that cnrl T and C and the view swooping up and down and in and out. I could never get a clean look down the sites, nor a clean shot at anything. I realise there's a case for absolute authenticity, but this system, while perhaps more authentic, is unusable, and what't the point in having them if you can't really use them. I used to enjoy playing the gunnery position, but not here.

Please tell me I'm missing something.

Did you use Shift-T after you grabbed the gun, to align your view to the gunsights?

Mine has some sort of arcade HUD crosshair. I haven't been able to figure out how to make it go away. Any ideas? I'd prefer iron sights if possible.

The weird, floaty lag delay between moving the mouse and the gun actually moving makes the gunner position virtually impossible to use in my opinion. You're playing an unending guessing game. You move the mouse and guess where the gun will stop. If it doesn't stop in the right position, you move the mouse again and guess/hope/pray that the gun stops somewhere near where the bad guy is at that moment.

As the poster above suggested, I understand the desire for realism, and the fact that the gun didn't move instantly. However, if it's not usable, there's no point in making the gunner position man-able in the first place.

And I know Jason 777 refuses to acknlowledge the comparison, but Oleg figured out how to do it 10 years ago, so it must be possible. Even if it's not 100% 'realistic,' gunner positions in the IL2 franchise are functional, intuitive, easy to man, and even work with TrackIR. (How 'realistic' can it ever be when you're aiming & firing a machine gun with a computer mouse, anyway? Is 'realism' even a meaningful goal for the gunner positions?)

Another fun issue I discovered (at least in the Breguet) is that if I fling the mouse around too fast while I'm trying to gun a harassing bandit, somehow the rear gun gets stuck in a forward facing 180 arc instead of rearward facing. This makes my pilot rather nervous and anxious. I can't clear the condition unless I jump back into the pilot's seat, and then back to the gunner's seat.

[Note: no need to suggest that I report this on the RoF forum. I am not looking for a solution or 'bug fix.' Simply sharing an observation. Besides, if I want to be completely ignored while discussing a flight sim problem, I can just explain it to my wife.]

Disable mouse acceleration in-game, it was reported on the RoF forums (...) that this virtually solves your issue.

@Hedgehog

When the rear gunner was introduced, i read on the blog that the idea was to model the inertia of the gun, exactly not to make this gunning unrealistically EASY. Of course you can complain that it isn't easy, but why don't you simply say so? Perhaps because it's easier to blame the sim. Comparing with other sims, i could say equally well: ah but it was so easy to fly in Red Baron, why did RoF had the need to change those flight models? Basically if something 'just' works, it isn't necessarily enough.

It's easy to say 'why RoF does not do this and that? Advanced AI, landscape with cows and infantry etc. They want to do that, and in time, with enough support, they will hopefully be able to do this, but it's a small team which doesn't yet have funding for the whole next year, so before you complain and accuse of bad intentions, or compare RoF with sims that had a lot of money thrown into it (e.g. MS, CFS series), stay a bit and ponder about what you complain and what your tone is. Perhaps you imagine 'enemies' where you don't have any.

There are issues with the turret controls, Jason has said that they need a complete re-work though so it's not an easy fix.

There are some workarounds like switching your TIR off while in a turret and pressing the centre key, 5 on the keypad, if you get stuck facing the wrong direction. Pressing 5 re-sets your gun to the rear.

I don't use the gunsight view. I just watch the tracers and adjust my view accordingly. Manning the gun and flying at the same time is fun and it makes the F2B the best scout in RoF!

I'm not necessarily looking for an arcade solution, and I appreciate the work the guys put in, but I just find it unusable, which is a shame, because everything else, while difficult, is really well worked out.
Hopefully they'll fix it, and I'll wait with anticipation, but accusing me or other people who find it frustrating to the point of abandonment misses the point. I bought the planes with rear guns because I was under the impression they'd be usable, which I find, mainly because of the swooping view point, they are not, and while I appreciate it's a labour of love, probably with very little financial reward, I did pay for them with my hard earned money.

Right mouse click to bring up the menu along the top, one of the options is 'aiming help'. I think thats it.

Made some tests myself, just to be completely sure. If i set in-game mouse acceleration to 0, and mouse sensitivity to 1 (not 0), i have a good control of the gunsight. With TrackIR enabled. If the view gets stuck (but it actually happened before adjusting acc&sens), i quickly hit Numpad 5.