New weather system = wow!

[Dores]

Please notice that I'm running on very low computer specs here, and I can barely get playable frame rates with everything on lowest, except model detail, decals and effects on medium - which are the settings here. Resolution was at 1280x720, no AA or anything.

Anyways, I decided to play with the new weather functions in the full mission builder, and here is what some of it looked like. Someone with better specs should try this on max graphics! This was a big performance hit, reduced my FPS from somewhere between 25-30 to 10-15, so it's not THAT bad.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578919816088546297/E829E591F303A740D213869D358A65AC7A65ED89/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578919816088545744/79F0511B6A53D219CEFF04CB766F404C847D0458/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578919816088553470/3EBF03C6637AEAE5018C1FEBBEE8EF247566EDE0/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578919816088547013/3E2354B3B73545A4F2DEE61E5093D39DA3BDF4D3/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/578919816088550545/58E7EA148EABC2756119F95E8055FFB727DAFA70/

More pics here: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198023391436/screenshot/578919816088550545/?

[David198502]

that looks promising!!waoh!
i didnt try it yet.but i recognized that in quick mission the clouds are moving too!at least a bit and they change their shape as well.i dont know if that was the case in il2 1946, but i recognized this the first time yesterday.

[Dores]

Its amazing what this game has disabled under the hood I wonder if we will ever get these things in a playable state? It must explain why there are only three setting for clouds - none, light and medium. I would low to see overcast skies because thats what most English weather is like - even in the summer!! I am sure not every day in August 1940 was sunny and clear thats for sure.

I just cannot for the life of me understand why all these things have had to be disabled to get the game working for everyone - I mean even people with high end computers cannot put the detail up. How come the developers were not aware of how slow the game was running when they were designing it? I suppose it just looks like the whole game was completely over designed from the ground up.

Didnt they ever beta test the game at all?


You should try it for yourself. Fire up the FMB and add in some weather! There are options for different kinds of overcast and other cloud types.

[T}{OR]

I just cannot for the life of me understand why all these things have had to be disabled to get the game working for everyone - I mean even people with high end computers cannot put the detail up. How come the developers were not aware of how slow the game was running when they were designing it? I suppose it just looks like the whole game was completely over designed from the ground up. Why didnt they just simplify the clouds a bit to enable an overcast sky?

Didnt they ever beta test the game at all?

Complex weather was announced as an experimental feature from the start. There are plans to have it working some time in the future, it just isn't optimized yet - it is here for you to "try at your own risk".

The whole game was designed "for 2013" and thus has many options "disabled under the hood" as you put it. This is an engine built to last next 10 years, or so we have been told.

So - nothing really to be surprised about.

[Rattlehead]

Damn, you have piqued my curiosity.

I think when I get home today I'll play around with the weather settings, just for fun.

[Echo76]

Woah, absolutely stunning pics!

[FlushMeister]

still needs flushmeister's cloudmod :D

[sigur_ros]

Now THAT'S more like British weather.

[ChrisDNT]

Not bad.
But still not an overcast.
And still no alto-stratus.

[Dores]

Not bad.
But still not an overcast.
And still no alto-stratus.

It is possible to get a full, 100% covering overcast I believe, but the adjustment sliders in the FMB are all messed up in my game, so I´m not able to tweak properly.

[Rattlehead]

How does it work exactly?

When I click on 'weather map', I just get this screen-sized grey texture. (?)

[Dores]

How does it work exactly?

When I click on 'weather map', I just get this screen-sized grey texture. (?)

What you need to do is open the window you use when adding planes and artillery and all that. Then from the objects list, choose Local Weather. Place it where you want it by pressing Insert. Now go to the properties, and enter a much larger radius (I used 55.000 for the screenshots), just to make something more than a single puff of clouds. "Rain" and "Dynamic" can be ticked, but they don't make any difference to me. There are also additional settings, but they are all screwed up in my FMB, don't know how they look in others'. Generally the weather system feels very buggy and experimental at the moment, but it kind of works.

Have fun and post screenshots!

[doghous3]

Great SS's.

It is a performance hit, and I couldn't get the rain to work on the thundercloud, but it's still neat, and fun to mess about creating a weather system.

[Rattlehead]

What you need to do is open the window you use when adding planes and artillery and all that. Then from the objects list, choose Local Weather. Place it where you want it by pressing Insert. Now go to the properties, and enter a much larger radius (I used 55.000 for the screenshots), just to make something more than a single puff of clouds. "Rain" and "Dynamic" can be ticked, but they don't make any difference to me. There are also additional settings, but they are all screwed up in my FMB, don't know how they look in others'. Generally the weather system feels very buggy and experimental at the moment, but it kind of works.

Have fun and post screenshots!

Thanks a lot, I sort of figured it in the meantime. I sometimes get a launcher crash though, once the game had loaded just past the 50% mark.
I also tried the rain option, but I got none. :)

[Buchon]

Posted this in a screenshots thread a wile ago, guess would like view.

They are 1920x1200 (click to enlarge) and have Anti aliasing x4 and Anisotropic x4.

Flying over the storm

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9807/66010745.jpg (http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/5892/11256631.jpg)

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9938/93510989.jpg (http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/241/96647867.jpg)

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6182/66121758.jpg (http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3688/74415528.jpg)

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8918/50765421.jpg (http://i54.tinypic.com/14vph1v.jpg)

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/2971/36201226.jpg (http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4704/88459612.jpg)

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1343/88963769.jpg (http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/6153/14453670.jpg)

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/5703/24298562.jpg (http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/9918/45421675.jpg)

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/5627/21500459.jpg (http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/2144/51762976.jpg)

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/1391/37848503.jpg (http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/6979/17183521.jpg)

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/8507/54218081.jpg (http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9207/60855895.jpg)

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/145/71816774.jpg (http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/7592/75627183.jpg)

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/8641/60000288.jpg (http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/7408/94674497.jpg)

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/5313/39839046.jpg (http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/4537/90533007.jpg)

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6541/18467691.jpg (http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/7909/57957719.jpg)

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/9444/25261061.jpg (http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5098/34465637.jpg)

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2923/87600285.jpg (http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/1471/11011858.jpg)

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4365/68375463.jpg (http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/5373/85275177.jpg)

[Jaws2002]

still needs flushmeister's cloudmod :D

Save your energy for other things.:)
Ilya said all the clouds are redone from scratch, so when this weather engine will be fully suported, it will come with brand new clouds.:grin:

[doghous3]

ye, a lot of the effects don't seem to be implemented yet. Such as the effects of thunderstorms.

[sigur_ros]

Video?

[Frequent_Flyer]

I won't have my copy until the North American release. Are you refering to the " dynamic weather " feature. If so, are there plans to implement this within COD in the future ?

[Rattlehead]

Beautiful screenshots there guys.

[Les]

After some initial testing -

In the 'Type' settings.

*The type of cloud has to be selected before placing the cloud object onto the map, after that it's type can't be changed again.

In the 'Configuration' settings.

*'Ra' is Radius a, which is how far the clouds spread North/South on the map, and is limited to a maximum 100,000 units.

*'Rb' is Radius b, which is how far the clouds spread West/East on the map, and is also limited to a maximum 100,000 units.

*'H' is cloud height, which has a maximum of 10,000 units.

*'Rain' doesn't work.

*'Dynamic' doesn't do anything that I've seen.

In the 'Properties' settings

Edit- I just opened the FMB up again and there are seven more sliders/variables there than before, but I haven't had time to check them out.

*'Thickness' is limited to a maximum of 350 units.

*The two sliders max out to ten but I'm not sure what they do, or even what they're called, it may be a subtle effect related to the clouds sense of solidity and movement.

In general, the advanced clouds aren't an absolute frame-rate killer under all circumstances, and they can actually look pretty good. But I'm not seeing anything much better than what we had in IL-2:1946, and what does look different doesn't seem to be working properly as far as I can tell. Might be good for screenshots or very selective video shots, but a lot of it just doesn't look very good or is outright faulty. That's what we were told before release though, so no surprises there.

In testing with a single Hurricane in the middle of the Channel I've been getting varied but consistent frame rates from in the teens to into the forties with all video settings on full. Would have to look further into though to see if the extra clouds really are playable, some definitely aren't.

In terms of bugs, there's an immersion-killing sort of pop-up/drop-out happening with the clouds when maxed out to a 100,000 unit radius. It's not at the edge of the radius itself, but their viewable distance. Which means they don't provide a solid overcast as far as you can see.

Putting the 'wrong' settings in will cause a crash to desktop when the mission loads.

If anyone can add to this or correct any mistakes in what I've found, please do.

Edit - Here's a short vid showing something that looks like overcast when flying under some low level cloud. Saw some other nice looking clouds while looking into this, but would have to play with it further to show something good that no-one's seen before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPFZ3J1BF2c

Edit2 - Just for reference, here are some more examples of cloud effects using the FMB -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DwZGxbRLIU

[hc_wolf]

Hi guys. I posted this a while ago. Here are some basic mission settings you can use to see the full effects of weather (that is working). Rain etc does not work. But fly through clouds and you will ice up. There is lightning if you look carefully.

Feel free to tinker with wind, direction and could size settings etc. Save it to missions and you can go to FMB also and adjust and fly.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=19993&highlight=weather&page=2

[Dores]

After some initial testing -

In the 'Type' settings.

*Only the 'Thunder' type of cloud works, all other on the list look the same.



You have to set the type before you place them on the map. After they are placed, the type cannot be changed, for some reason. Try to select flat overcast, then put that on the map - then deselect and hover the mouse over the local weather, it should say something like "OvercastGEN" or something.

This way I got overcast and all the other types working.

[Les]

Thanks for that, will edit my post.

[Ataros]

I think you can load weather dynamically in your mission using this script the same way you load a group of aircraft (as a small sub-mission file). This way we can change weather in a mission say every 20-30 minutes.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=21518

[150GCT_Veltro]

You colud have these clouds on IL2 modded two years ago. Nice, but not so good for DX10 i think.

[ChrisDNT]

About the two videos of Les, it shows well, unhappily, that it's the same like in IL2, clouds stay too low, it looks for the moment impossible to have a standard grey sky either with stratus or alto-stratus.

[bDAWg]

I've been wondering if it's possible to create a rougher sea surface with the weather options?...the channel looks way too calm...some choppy waves would add to the realism..and is the weather in the campaign dynamic?

[ChrisDNT]

It would be also nice to be able to change the color of the sea ---> black sea everywhere !