Flying Circus AI...

[Slo-Mo]

Stock IL-2 career, Germany, late summer 1917, Albatross DVa, all settings/options to hard and not favourable so to say. 2 missions, 19 kills. And it goes on like that. And I am pretty ring-rusty (~1,5y since last time) and not even that good at this. 

Anything one can do to enhance AI (except playing WOFF instead...) ?

Cheers

Edited December 24, 2025 by Slo-Mo

[MajorMagee]

There is no better AI than WOFF.

[AlexandreCosta]

What is WOFF?

[kraut1]

10 hours ago, Slo-Mo said:

Stock IL-2 career, Germany, late summer 1917, Albatross DVa, all settings/options to hard and not favourable so to say. 2 missions, 19 kills. And it goes on like that. And I am pretty ring-rusty (~1,5y since last time) and not even that good at this. 

Anything one can do to enhance AI (expect paying WOFF instead...) ?

Cheers

I think in reality the accuracy of the machine guns, installed in the vibrating planes, was not the best.
It is possible to increase the dispersion of the machine gun fire by creating a small mod, so it could be less effective, especially on medium / high ranges.
By doing this it would be more difficult for you (and all other German planes with the MG08/15) to hit the enemy.

And I would check in the career mission files which ailevel the AI planes have. 
If the enemy planes in career mission have only moderate AI levels and their shooting abilities are too harmless from your point of view the AI files of the planes could be adjusted by copying the high accuracy of ailevel ace to maybe ailevel high or normal and maybe the engage / attack distances could be adjusted in a similar way too.

example weapon accuracy:

mg_rof_lmg_08_15.txt
the red marked value (for cold weapon) could be increased for example for lower accuracy, the 0.6 is for the hot weapon

Sopwith Camel AI file:

Edited December 16, 2025 by kraut1

[MajorMagee]

WOFF = Wings Over Flanders Fields

Edited December 16, 2025 by MajorMagee

[Stonehouse]

Perhaps try the AI Gunnery mod and see if it helps any. It does change quite a few things. It was mainly aimed at WW2 but did get expanded to WW1.

 

 

[cmbishop]

15 hours ago, kraut1 said:

I think in reality the accuracy of the machine guns, installed in the vibrating planes, was not the best.
It is possible to increase the dispersion of the machine gun fire by creating a small mod, so it could be less effective, especially on medium / high ranges.
By doing this it would be more difficult for you (and all other German planes with the MG08/15) to hit the enemy.

And I would check in the career mission files which ailevel the AI planes have. 
If the enemy planes in career mission have only moderate AI levels and their shooting abilities are too harmless from your point of view the AI files of the planes could be adjusted by copying the high accuracy of ailevel ace to maybe ailevel high or normal and maybe the engage / attack distances could be adjusted in a similar way too.

example weapon accuracy:

mg_rof_lmg_08_15.txt
the red marked value (for cold weapon) could be increased for example for lower accuracy, the 0.6 is for the hot weapon

Sopwith Camel AI file:

 

15 hours ago, kraut1 said:

I think in reality the accuracy of the machine guns, installed in the vibrating planes, was not the best.
It is possible to increase the dispersion of the machine gun fire by creating a small mod, so it could be less effective, especially on medium / high ranges.
By doing this it would be more difficult for you (and all other German planes with the MG08/15) to hit the enemy.

And I would check in the career mission files which ailevel the AI planes have. 
If the enemy planes in career mission have only moderate AI levels and their shooting abilities are too harmless from your point of view the AI files of the planes could be adjusted by copying the high accuracy of ailevel ace to maybe ailevel high or normal and maybe the engage / attack distances could be adjusted in a similar way too.

example weapon accuracy:

mg_rof_lmg_08_15.txt
the red marked value (for cold weapon) could be increased for example for lower accuracy, the 0.6 is for the hot weapon

Sopwith Camel AI file:

Hi Kraut,
Thanks for clarifying that!
Do you think it would be possible to create these two mods as you suggest, to reduce the effectiveness of machine guns and to make all AI aircraft ace-ranked in the career mod?
Best regards 

[kraut1]

5 hours ago, cmbishop said:

 

Hi Kraut,
Thanks for clarifying that!
Do you think it would be possible to create these two mods as you suggest, to reduce the effectiveness of machine guns and to make all AI aircraft ace-ranked in the career mod?
Best regards 

I will create a small test mod with the weapons and some planes for 1917.

This mod can be tested and adjusted by the players. And if it works other planes can be modified in the same way.

But additionally You could try the mod by @Stonehouse 

 

[Flashy]

The AI in FC has always been pretty bad, and although I agree that the accuracy of the guns is one of the issues, its nowhere near the top of the list. The main issue IMO is the generally dumb and suicidal behaviour of the AI i.e.:

• They dont evaluate the odds when engaging, and attack even when there is no chance of survival, or they are at a massive disadvantage
• They fight to the death, and dont attempt to disengage or run away when things arent going their way (even if badly damaged/wounded)
• They get target fixated to the extent that they will literally ignore someone shooting at them (and killing them) when they are trying to catch an enemy (no awareness of their surroundings) 
• They cant do emergency landings properly - when their engine is dead, they will literally fly over a friendly airfield and try to land in a forest or river or field.. with predicable results
• When they run out of ammo, they continue to "fight", eventually getting shot down by ground fire or another plane
• They will fly into other aircraft who arent part of their flight (i.e. two planes going to the same waypoint who arent TL to each other will slowly drift towards each other and collide, even though they had ages to "see" it was coming - again, no situational awareness)
• When attacking two-seaters, they will just sit at the 6 o'clock position and get shot to pieces by the rear gunner - sometimes they do seem to know how to attack a two-seater (dive underneath the tail), but they will randomly just "forget" this and sit there and allow a gunner to kill them

Those are the main issues as I see them. There are other problems which are very annoying as well:

• The fluttering ailerons of AI controlled aircraft  - total immersion breaker.. why do they do this!? 
• Planes and gunners will engage at long distances, wasting all their ammo (this can maybe be fixed by the above mod?)
• Only Ace AI seems to use combat maneuvers like split-S, Immelmann turns etc..  The rest seem to mostly just get stuck in the right-hand turn of doom..

Anyway, enough for now.. there are other issues I'm sure, but I cant think of them all now 😄 I really wish 1C would prioritise the AI issue and realise its ruining the game to a large extent.. 

[kraut1]

4 hours ago, Flashy said:

The AI in FC has always been pretty bad, and although I agree that the accuracy of the guns is one of the issues, its nowhere near the top of the list. The main issue IMO is the generally dumb and suicidal behaviour of the AI i.e.:

• They dont evaluate the odds when engaging, and attack even when there is no chance of survival, or they are at a massive disadvantage
• They fight to the death, and dont attempt to disengage or run away when things arent going their way (even if badly damaged/wounded)
• They get target fixated to the extent that they will literally ignore someone shooting at them (and killing them) when they are trying to catch an enemy (no awareness of their surroundings) 
• They cant do emergency landings properly - when their engine is dead, they will literally fly over a friendly airfield and try to land in a forest or river or field.. with predicable results
• When they run out of ammo, they continue to "fight", eventually getting shot down by ground fire or another plane
• They will fly into other aircraft who arent part of their flight (i.e. two planes going to the same waypoint who arent TL to each other will slowly drift towards each other and collide, even though they had ages to "see" it was coming - again, no situational awareness)
• When attacking two-seaters, they will just sit at the 6 o'clock position and get shot to pieces by the rear gunner - sometimes they do seem to know how to attack a two-seater (dive underneath the tail), but they will randomly just "forget" this and sit there and allow a gunner to kill them

Those are the main issues as I see them. There are other problems which are very annoying as well:

• The fluttering ailerons of AI controlled aircraft  - total immersion breaker.. why do they do this!? 
• Planes and gunners will engage at long distances, wasting all their ammo (this can maybe be fixed by the above mod?)
• Only Ace AI seems to use combat maneuvers like split-S, Immelmann turns etc..  The rest seem to mostly just get stuck in the right-hand turn of doom..

Anyway, enough for now.. there are other issues I'm sure, but I cant think of them all now 😄 I really wish 1C would prioritise the AI issue and realise its ruining the game to a large extent.. 

-if the gun is too accurate it is possible to reduce the accuracy, regardless if player or AI controlled.
-if they continue fighting with badly damaged planes you could check in the mission if for the planes this is set to 1: AiRTBDecision = 1,

Planes and gunners will engage at long distances, wasting all their ammo (this can maybe be fixed by the above mod?)
-For the fighter planes the open fire distance can be adjusted easily and this works well, at least from my experiences with WW2 planes.
-For the gunners there is a general bot with some basic settings, e.g.: accuracy, fire back distances and there are individual bots for each plane type / fire position too.
In respect of the gunners I adjust the settings always only simplified with the general gunner bot.
@Stonehouse does this very detailed in his AI gunnery  by analizing and adjusting the individual gunner bots.

But additionally for AI you have always to consider the mission design too!
I am not a real expert of this but there are big differences.
-In some missions maybe the opposing forces are directly ordered to attack each other by using e.g.: MCU Command:Attack linked to the target planes
-or alternatively just an MCU Command:AttackArea with the general option Attack air targets is used
-or sometimes for example the planes are just flying from wp to wp (with priority low) and shall engage nearby enemies by their own initiative (sorry, a bit directly translated from german)

And for each of the 3 mentioned examples you have to consider that for the MCUs are always priority options available:

just an example: for MCU Cover (for escort flights):
-high means that only very close attacking interceptors are attacked, but the escort fighters will not defend theirselfes when being attack (immersion killer)
when I noticed this in an old EMG version I changed the priority to medium in the template mission:
-medium: additionally here the escorts are reacting when beeing attacked and try to defend theirselfes.
This behaviour could be used maybe for January 1944 US escort fighters who acted In this time period more defensivly.
-low: here the escorts act very aggresively and attack indepedently enemy fighters that are in some bigger distances.
Could be used e.g.: for March /April...1944 US escorts.

So this means altogether seen:
-Weapon modifications are not AI related, if you have for example a problem with sniper gunners you could increase the dispersion of the weapon to reduce the probability of head shots.
https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/92101-question-accuracy-of-typical-ww2-plane-armament-machine-guns-automatic-cannons/

-Issues with AI could be related to:
-Missions design
-AI with accessable parameters that can be modded.
-AI without any access for modding.
 

I will create a small mod for testing that can be adjusted by everyone who is interested.

Edited December 17, 2025 by kraut1

[Flashy]

1 hour ago, kraut1 said:

-if the gun is too accurate it is possible to reduce the accuracy, regardless if player or AI controlled.
-if they continue fighting with badly damaged planes you could check in the mission if for the planes this is set to 1: AiRTBDecision = 1,

Planes and gunners will engage at long distances, wasting all their ammo (this can maybe be fixed by the above mod?)
-For the fighter planes the open fire distance can be adjusted easily and this works well, at least from my experiences with WW2 planes.
-For the gunners there is a general bot with some basic settings, e.g.: accuracy, fire back distances and there are individual bots for each plane type / fire position too.
In respect of the gunners I adjust the settings always only simplified with the general gunner bot.
@Stonehouse does this very detailed in his AI gunnery  by analizing and adjusting the individual gunner bots.

But additionally for AI you have always to consider the mission design too!
I am not a real expert of this but there are big differences.
-In some missions maybe the opposing forces are directly ordered to attack each other by using e.g.: MCU Command:Attack linked to the target planes
-or alternatively just an MCU Command:AttackArea with the general option Attack air targets is used
-or sometimes for example the planes are just flying from wp to wp (with priority low) and shall engage nearby enemies by their own initiative (sorry, a bit directly translated from german)

And for each of the 3 mentioned examples you have to consider that for the MCUs are always priority options available:

just an example: for MCU Cover (for escort flights):
-high means that only very close attacking interceptors are attacked, but the escort fighters will not defend theirselfes when being attack (immersion killer)
when I noticed this in an old EMG version I changed the priority to medium:
-medium: additionally here the escorts are reacting when beeing attacked and try to defend theirselfes.
This behaviour could be used maybe for January 1944 US escort fighters who acted I this time period more defensivly.
-low: here the escorts act very aggresively and attack indepedently enemy fighters that are in some bigger distances.
Could be used e.g.: for March /April...1944 US escorts.

So this means altogether seen:
-Weapon modifications are not AI related, if you have for example a problem with sniper gunners you could increase the dispersion of the weapon to reduce the probability of head shots.

-Issues with AI could be related to:
-Missions design
-AI with accessable parameters that can be modded.
-AI without any access for modding.
 

I will create small mod for testing that can be adjusted by everyone who is interested.

Yeah I know its possible to use mission logic to make the AI behave somewhat convincingly, I use all this in my missions using RTB decision checkbox and the OnWounded, OnBingoAmmo and OnPlaneCriticallyDamaged events, plus waypoint priority etc. But we shouldnt have to do this! The AI should have strong self-preservation behaviour by default, and we should then have to use the mission editor to make  them suicidal, not the other way around! 

There are also other problems with having to do this manually in the ME. Firstly, the default single player missions which come with the game, and which the game generates as part of the career mode dont seem to do this, so the AI is dumb and suicidal in every mission other than custom missions, and there is no way I am going to edit every career mission the game generates to add all these events to every plane for every mission! 😄 

Second, if you wanted to actually do this, you have to manually set where you want to planes to try to land when damaged - they dont just pick the nearest friendly airfield. This has to be edited for every flight, otherwise they will try to fly back to their home base which could be far away (resulting in crashing and death). This also doesnt fix the dead-stick landing problem btw, they wont even try to make it to the airfield I specified in the logic if the engine is dead, they will just revert to the default glide down and try to land in a forest or on a hill etc (more crashing and death).

Also, how do you code logic like this in the ME: Attack enemy planes unless: the enemy is higher than me, or there are more of them than us, or they have a vastly superior plane, or they are too far over their own lines, or I have low ammo/fuel? I certainly dont know how to code this up in the editor! 🤪

TL/DR, the point is the AI needs to have basic self-preservation behaviour which it sticks to without being told to!  It shouldnt require the mission designer to specifically have to tell every plane in the mission what he must do if wounded, what he must do if out of ammo, what he must do when outnumbered, that he shouldnt sit in a 2-seaters arc of fire and get shot, etc. 

Btw, I appreciate the work you are doing on trying to fix the accuracy and engagement range problems, so dont think I am ungrateful for that. I just wanted to highlight that there are other (more serious IMO) issues which have nothing to do with the gunners per se.

[Stonehouse]

2 hours ago, kraut1 said:

Planes and gunners will engage at long distances, wasting all their ammo (this can maybe be fixed by the above mod?)
-For the fighter planes the open fire distance can be adjusted easily and this works well, at least from my experiences with WW2 planes.
-For the gunners there is a general bot with some basic settings, e.g.: accuracy, fire back distances and there are individual bots for each plane type / fire position too.

AI Gunnery addresses these issues as best it can within the framework available.

The distance fighters open fire at is dependent on skill. In the stock game Aces fire accurately at long range and low skill novices fire at close range inaccurately - for Ace in FC this is 400m and a novice in FC is 200m. The mod tries to approximate comments in numerous references in that novices very often misjudged the range and believed they were close when in fact they were not in range at all, and aces tended to wait until they were very close before firing. Essentially in general terms, the mod reverses the stock game open fire ranges for the stock skills and aces wait until closer to fire while novices spray and pray at long range.

Unfortunately, since fighters also have to work with gunners in 2 seaters and bombers life gets complicated. The fighter pilot max open fire range is regardless of target type. So, they will use the same open fire range against bombers. Therefore, it takes some juggling of parameters for both fighters and gunners to arrive at a workable setup that gives a more realistic feel. You can't just say that ace pilots wait until 50 or 100m range before firing because this will mean they die before firing when attacking aircraft with a gunner. Likewise, you can't make gunners so inaccurate they are no threat as you get ridiculous turkey shoots - particularly for player flown aircraft - where bombers are shot down in unrealistic numbers by single aircraft.

As far as gunners go, I have altered the burst length and wait time between bursts for all gunners based on the amount of ammo each position has and the temperature characteristics of the weapon (ie how firing overheats the barrel leading to increased dispersion and inaccuracy). In the stock game a gunner will open fire at 3 times normal range if they have more than a certain amount of ammo - this leads to being out of ammo for a lot of gunners very quickly without getting a result as range is a multiplier in the error calc for a gunner. The 3x range feature is removed by the mod and the gunners are limited to the effective range of their weapon.

The mod also makes G loading a bigger factor for gunners than stock. For WW1 gunners stop firing at over 2G (stock is 5) and the G related error has been increased by a factor of 4. There are many more tweaks relating to searching for targets and how fast different skills level gunners and pilots react. It has been a work of a bit over 3 years now to get the mod to where it is and there are too many things to cover in a brief summary.

I haven't tried to change weapon dispersion for a few reasons. One the changes are universal, if you change a weapon dispersion then all instances of the weapon on all aircraft and potentially other units are impacted. Two I don't have sufficient reference material to be able to say the dev teams settings are incorrect nor do I know how they arrived at the numbers they have. IE was it based on a ground mount test? was it based on air firing? Guessing it is the former, but I don't know. Ditto to the temperature-based dispersion. Finally, testing tweaks to gunners and fighters is a very large exercise and usually can take me weeks to get something reasonable if the change is large. It took several months getting the temperature based burst lengths to work reasonably well. If I add weapon dispersion changes it is another complete layer to deal with.

All the above said, it is all a set of compromises and the actual logic under the covers is not accessible. Personally, I don't think skill levels should have hard coded open fire ranges but somehow have a sort of decision matrix and higher skill makes available more factors allowing better decisions as to when to fire and when not to. A simulation of experienced based judgment if you will. Lack of proper defensive formations by bombers also is a factor. As Flashy points out the lack AI self-preservation response is a big thing too. In addition to the ones mentioned I would add lack of flak avoidance maneuvers is a real issue. Even in WW1 pilots would maneuver around their base course, changing height or weaving to avoid flak.  I'm hoping Korea will have a revamp of AI rather than just porting over what we have with a few tweaks.

Edited December 17, 2025 by Stonehouse

[kraut1]

1 hour ago, Flashy said:

Yeah I know its possible to use mission logic to make the AI behave somewhat convincingly, I use all this in my missions using RTB decision checkbox and the OnWounded, OnBingoAmmo and OnPlaneCriticallyDamaged events, plus waypoint priority etc. But we shouldnt have to do this! The AI should have strong self-preservation behaviour by default, and we should then have to use the mission editor to make  them suicidal, not the other way around! 

There are also other problems with having to do this manually in the ME. Firstly, the default single player missions which come with the game, and which the game generates as part of the career mode dont seem to do this, so the AI is dumb and suicidal in every mission other than custom missions, and there is no way I am going to edit every career mission the game generates to add all these events to every plane for every mission! 😄 

Second, if you wanted to actually do this, you have to manually set where you want to planes to try to land when damaged - they dont just pick the nearest friendly airfield. This has to be edited for every flight, otherwise they will try to fly back to their home base which could be far away (resulting in crashing and death). This also doesnt fix the dead-stick landing problem btw, they wont even try to make it to the airfield I specified in the logic if the engine is dead, they will just revert to the default glide down and try to land in a forest or on a hill etc (more crashing and death).

Also, how do you code logic like this in the ME: Attack enemy planes unless: the enemy is higher than me, or there are more of them than us, or they have a vastly superior plane, or they are too far over their own lines, or I have low ammo/fuel? I certainly dont know how to code this up in the editor! 🤪

TL/DR, the point is the AI needs to have basic self-preservation behaviour which it sticks to without being told to!  It shouldnt require the mission designer to specifically have to tell every plane in the mission what he must do if wounded, what he must do if out of ammo, what he must do when outnumbered, that he shouldnt sit in a 2-seaters arc of fire and get shot, etc. 

Btw, I appreciate the work you are doing on trying to fix the accuracy and engagement range problems, so dont think I am ungrateful for that. I just wanted to highlight that there are other (more serious IMO) issues which have nothing to do with the gunners per se.

Hi Flashy,

I agree with you in all points and of course it is not possible fix all the issues with modifications and by changing the mission design.

Concerning the mission generation maybe the usage of EMG by Vander could be interesting too, because in EMG some settings can be modified already in the Template files.

But it's always interesting for me try to find some makeshift solutions for at least some of the issues...

 

 

[Catch]

16 hours ago, Flashy said:

 

• The fluttering ailerons of AI controlled aircraft  - total immersion breaker.. why do they do this!? 

And the fluttering elevators. I expect it's the constant over-correcting based on the computational algorithms designed to always fly perfectly coordinated. Or something like that.

I agree that it looks naff and very uncool. I honestly think that 'fake AI' would work better and with less stress on the cpu leading to probably better outcomes. This business of AI flying allegedly like a real aircraft is rubbish and obviously doesn't work. 

[kraut1]

I have tested a first mod:

for all ailevels Ace settings:

This seems to be not effective, the pilots are shooting very accuarately but they have problems to get the enemy plane into the sight. Because of this only from time to time well aimed short bursts. When they fly with normal / veteran settings they are shooting more effectively.

I will try out some other settings next week.

And I have increased the dispersion for all WW1 weapons...

And of course as already mentioned please try the AI Gunnery mod by Stonehouse!

[kraut1]

On 12/15/2025 at 11:20 PM, Slo-Mo said:

Stock IL-2 career, Germany, late summer 1917, Albatross DVa, all settings/options to hard and not favourable so to say. 2 missions, 19 kills. And it goes on like that. And I am pretty ring-rusty (~1,5y since last time) and not even that good at this. 

Anything one can do to enhance AI (except paying WOFF instead...) ?

Cheers

Today I made some tests with the default Flying Circus without Mods.
I created a similar career as you, Albatross DVa, late June 1917, realistic settings, enemy superior and high density of planes.
I flew the first tests with Monitor:
1. Mission: escort - no enemy contact.
2.) Mission: intercept / air superiority: My flight had contact with Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutters escorted by Nieuport17 that had a advantage in altitude. The escort came diving  from above but were not able to attack directly while diving, after a circle they had lost their advantage in respect of speed. When I closed to the 2 seaters the defensive fire was dangerous so I had to close from below. When I was close to one he flew an evasive action, left the formation and I was able to shoot him down. 
(I had my Joystick centered for targeting with the iron sight of the right machine gun.)
After the Sopwith went down followed the formation and I noticed that the Nieuports tried to follow the bombers but they were a bit to slow.
So it was easy for me to shoot down some of them. Altogther seen it was a total German Success.
 
For further tests I saved the mission as a SP mission and for test I exchanged the Nieuports 17 by Spad VII.
After this modification the escorts worked much more better and when I flew  towards the bombers I was attacked by 3 times by the Spads and wounded.

for this mission the choice of the Escort fighter type was the reson for the issue.

After this I flew many quick missions, dog fights. From my point of view the AI in dog fights is acceptable.

One reason that it was comparable easy to hit and to shoot down enemies with Monitor was that I could center my view directly in the line of the rear / front sight of the iron sight.

Because of this I flew my last test with my old Oculus Rift-S.
This was quite impressive (first time WW1 with VR since many years). Now it was more difficult to aim at the targets because I had for medium to high ranges to aim with one closed eye, correctly aligned behind the front and rear sight, what is not so easy during air combat. At very close distances it was sufficient just to look straight ahead over the motor and to press the trigger when the enemy was more or less in the center.

So for today one time the reason for the harmless enemy was the wrong, too slow escort plane type.
And when flying with monitor it was too easy aim with the iron sight.
With VR it was more challenging and I suppose with head tracking it could be similar difficult.

For Monitor gaming maybe the in reality more difficult aiming could be simulated by increasing the dispersion of the machine guns. This works well.

 

Edited December 21, 2025 by kraut1

[Slo-Mo]

21 hours ago, kraut1 said:

Today I made some tests with the default Flying Circus without Mods.
I created a similar career as you, Albatross DVa, late June 1917, realistic settings, enemy superior and high density of planes.
I flew the first tests with Monitor:
1. Mission: escort - no enemy contact.
2.) Mission: intercept / air superiority: My flight had contact with Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutters escorted by Nieuport17 that had a advantage in altitude. The escort came diving  from above but were not able to attack directly while diving, after a circle they had lost their advantage in respect of speed. When I closed to the 2 seaters the defensive fire was dangerous so I had to close from below. When I was close to one he flew an evasive action, left the formation and I was able to shoot him down. 
(I had my Joystick centered for targeting with the iron sight of the right machine gun.)
After the Sopwith went down followed the formation and I noticed that the Nieuports tried to follow the bombers but they were a bit to slow.
So it was easy for me to shoot down some of them. Altogther seen it was a total German Success.
 
For further tests I saved the mission as a SP mission and for test I exchanged the Nieuports 17 by Spad VII.
After this modification the escorts worked much more better and when I flew  towards the bombers I was attacked by 3 times by the Spads and wounded.

for this mission the choice of the Escort fighter type was the reson for the issue.

After this I flew many quick missions, dog fights. From my point of view the AI in dog fights is acceptable.

One reason that it was comparable easy to hit and to shoot down enemies with Monitor was that I could center my view directly in the line of the rear / front sight of the iron sight.

Because of this I flew my last test with my old Oculus Rift-S.
This was quite impressive (first time WW1 with VR since many years). Now it was more difficult to aim at the targets because I had for medium to high ranges to aim with one closed eye, correctly aligned behind the front and rear sight, what is not so easy during air combat. At very close distances it was sufficient just to look straight ahead over the motor and to press the trigger when the enemy was more or less in the center.

So for today one time the reason for the harmless enemy was the wrong, too slow escort plane type.
And when flying with monitor it was too easy aim with the iron sight.
With VR it was more challenging and I suppose with head tracking it could be similar difficult.

For Monitor gaming maybe the in reality more difficult aiming could be simulated by increasing the dispersion of the machine guns. This works well.

 

Thanks for testing this scenario m8, explains a lot - appreciate it 🙏

I do however think that the AI in general is to weak in IL-2 Great Battles (ww1 & ww2). I hope that they make alternatives in IL-2 Korea where one can set AI as more challenging.

In Wings over Flanders Field, with AI Enhanced Skill Levels, I often get attacked by 2 or more fighters at the same time in the dogfights and genuinly have a hard time surviving the missions. Very immersive and feels like I really have to fight for the kills and the wins which is engaging. I wish IL-2 GB would feel the same.

Cheers

Edited December 22, 2025 by Slo-Mo

[BladeMeister]

On 12/17/2025 at 1:36 AM, Flashy said:

 I really wish 1C would prioritise the AI issue and realise its ruining the game to a large extent.. 

I have said that on these forums since ROF first entered the flight sim genre, then when Stalingrad appeared and all throughout the GBS. To be fair the AI has improved a small amount over the years in the GBS, but not in any really meaningful amount. The argument has always been, 'well go online and dogfight a real human, it is much better'. The problem with that for me is that unless I spend countless hours practicing and perfecting learning gaming the game, I am simply cannon fodder for those that have become that efficient. Good on them for becoming that proficient, but I simply don't have the time or desire to commit that much if my life to achieving that level of expertise anymore. The reality is that neither 1C nor 777, back in the day, have taken the single player or AI seriously. SPers comprise a majority of their customers and yet still a crappy AI exists. I still go to IL2 1946, WOFF & WOTR and to some extent DCS for the best AI dogfights and immersion. Team Daidalos has produced a damn convincing AI experience, but Old Brown Dog, OBD have and are still offering and evolving the best AI of any Combat Flight Sim other than BOB II WOV. 1C could certainly stand to take note of and probably contact the engineers of the AI from these 3 sims for methods to improve their own, mediocre at best, AI. If 1C trys to ramrod the same old AI B___Sh__ down my throat again, I will be one less customer until IL 2 Korea hits the lowest bargain bin.  

S!Blade<><

Edited Tuesday at 06:37 PM by BladeMeister

[Catch]

Ye of little faith Blade. I don't like this negative talk particularly in this time where we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus. Let us all reflect and endeavor to put aside our grievances, prejudices and petty gripes and instead focus, not on war games, but on peace and love to all humankind. Let's face it, we've made a mess of it. We can do better. In the grand scheme of things, AI doesn't matter. 1C understand that. The word is love. And the word is good. Let the light shine.

[MaxPower]

So anyways...

On 12/25/2025 at 6:23 AM, BladeMeister said:

 1C could certainly stand to take note of and probably contact the engineers of the AI from these 3 sims for methods to improve their own, mediocre at best, AI.

I don't think it's wise to share your trade secrets with your competitors... but other sectors of the video game industry do share novel solutions to problems in a broad sense at trade shows. 

On 12/25/2025 at 6:23 AM, BladeMeister said:

If 1C trys to ramrod the same old AI B___Sh__ down my throat again, I will be one less customer until IL 2 Korea hits the lowest bargain bin.

Most people just call this 'being unsatisfied with my purchase', but sure.  Ramrod.  You do you, buddy.