- Yes
- No
As you know helicopters get a keybind named “Manual roll control mode” which forces the helicopter (or the “Mouse aim instructor”) to hold a specific roll angle while flying.
When this mode is enabled, the “mouse aim instructor” tries to maintain the set roll angle, which you can change by pressing whichever keys you have bound to your “Roll axis”. All other axes of control (Pitch and Yaw) behave as normal and can be controlled with either pressing the keys you have bound to them or by moving your mouse aim cursor.
I.e. the instructor tries to fly toward the direction that the mouse pointer is pointing at, using only Pitch and Yaw axes, while maintaining the set roll angle.
But unfortunately this keybind is only available to helicopters and not fixed-wing aircrafts. Even though it will be even more useful to fixed-wing aircrafts, especially at high tiers, than it is useful to helicopters.
This will be particularly useful when trying to guide-in laser-guided weapons, using targeting pods.
As it will allow you to continue to paint the target with the laser designator, while flying away or perpendicular to the target.
This is because usually the targeting pods have greater angular limits in the pitch axis than they do in the yaw axis. I.e. they can be tilted down (and behind the aircraft) a lot more than they can be tilted side to side.
For example Litening II (available on some NATO aircrafts in the game) can see only 90 deg to the side, but can see 155 deg below the nose.
Or MiG-27K’s targeting optics can see only 35 deg to the side, but can see 160 deg below the nose.
So you can point your flight direction further away from the target and the battlefield, if you keep the target underneath the belly of the aircraft, rather than to fly level with the horizon and keep the target to you side.
But the problem is that because the “Manual roll control mode” keybind is only available to helicopters but not fixed-wing aircrafts, the instructor will always try to get the aircraft level with the horizon.
But allowing the fixed wing aircrafts to use this mechanic and keybind (which is already in the game for helicopters) will allow you to set a roll angle that the instructor will try to maintain (rather than always trying to get the aircraft level with the horizon), which will allow you to keep the target/battlefield underneath the belly of your aircraft, and thus allows you to fly perpendicular or away from the battlefield, while continuing to paint the target with the laser designator.
This is currently “somewhat” possible to do by constantly tapping your roll keys at a particular rate and “duty cycle”, but obviously it’s quite difficult and inconsistent to do in this manner.
As far as realism goes, this shouldn’t be considered unrealistic, since in mouse aim mode, the “virtual instructor” is the one who’s flying the plane, towards where you point your mouse at. So being able to tell the “virtual instructor” to maintain a particular roll angle while trying to fly the plane towards that point shouldn’t be too unrealistic. Not to mention that this is already available for helicopters anyways.
Would you like to see this implemented?