Hello!
So I got around to playing airSB at last and it’s been a good bit of fun. However, I ran into issues when it came to air superiority objectives and assisting my teammates: If I wanted to keep my altitude advantage - I had absolutely no idea what was going on under me!
So I’m here to ask for advice on how to try and keep track of things below you in tier 3 american props. The one time I did find a plane, it almost turned blue-on-blue but fortunately, there was a plane I didn’t see chasing him that was perfectly lined up for getting my first kill (and then i crashed into his wreckage).
Usually what I try to do (I’m on mouse joystick) is to put my plane into a gentle circling motion that maintains speed and altitude while banking heavily and looking down my wing.
I really enjoy airSB, so I’m glad you are having fun with it.
I play on console with a controller, so my control recommendation is more general. You will need a control setup that allows for looking around while flying. This is a YouTube video from Hunter with a setup for MKB for sim: https://youtu.be/fOHy1BOBbls?si=_hggcej0I25_iQKa
Spotting may also change under zoom so change to zoomed in versus zoomed out to help. Looking down I find it generally easier to spot a dark dot/silhouette against light colored terrain, so I watch those areas preferentially.
For identifying enemies, use the follow me command to help find friendly planes and try to spot them as practice when you know where they are. Watch the progress bar to determine if there are any enemies in the zone. Also, since you should have an energy advantage over lower enemies, you can try to lure planes up, so check behind and below you regularly. If you’re flying a plane with good energy retention, you can yo-yo your altitude doing lower altitude passes to search for enemies as well. I find that low level flyers often follow terrain , so you can watch choke points, valleys, etc. Finally, reverse your circle direction or do figure eights or cloverleaf patterns to change up where your location may be relative to an enemy that is just circling at low level.
Hope some of this helps, and keep enjoying airSB!