but it's not the 1990s, for games to be taken serious these days they need to have robust lifelike graphics. Which I have no doubt this game will and does already have. But when I hear people say, "it doesn't need such and such because it's just a flight sim" it makes me happy they aren't the ones designing the game, seems like they would be happy with this:

https://www.adbusters.org/files/flag...et_horizon.jpg
"But the FM is awesome!!"


wake up people, it's 2010, play any other top-selling game of another genre and realize what SOW has to compete with

As always there is not only black and white but also many shades of grey!

First priority are the aircraft with their fm and dm!

second comes, imo, the targets for those aircraft.

third is the terrain and the sea

forth is buildings, trees, scrubs....

fifth is, also imho, the ai. (incl. ai traffic and map population.)

sixth is the variancy of trees, buildings and so on

everything after 5th is "nice to have, maybe later, third party" stuff

But the FM was awesome. I remember that it was (almost!) the Domark MiG 29, the graphics were pretty atrocious, the trees looked like inverted umbrellas with panels missing, but if you played it from a RAM disk, it was actually fun to fly, and it did sideslips which you wouldn't get in Falcon or Combat Pilot.

Thanks Oleg.

I just can't wait to see an actual landscape. So far what we have is individually modeled objects, it will depend on how those objects are arranged to create a convincing landscape.

I wasn't being serious about having these features included.

there's only one WW2 flight sim out there that has any competition with SoW, and that's IL2... all others at the moment have the same or worse graphics than IL2, and/or crappier flight models, and/or no real multiplayer, and/or are too buggy to even play...

just seeing the WiP screenshots should be enough evidence to say there's never been anything even close to what SoW will be.

the fact is that the majority of people like super easy button bashing games that are super fast paced and don't require any practice or technical skill, so this game falls under a niche category, therefore it HAS to be the best, so that there's no real competition, just to make it worth making...

also SoW game will uses specifically directX, unlike IL2 wich only uses openGL (directX mode is still openGL, just with a wrapper) so it won't suffer from the problems ATI cards have with memory leaks with openGL

Those two pics look very different to me:

Oleg's sky is a desaturated winter sky.

Oleg's tree color is much darker.

Oleg's grass is much brighter, so are houses.

All in all, despite the high detail quality, screenshot is much unbalanced in terms of saturation/brightness compared to RL pic. Since it's WIP, no distress, but i think it must still be mentioned. IL2's terrain had great qualities for its time, but suffered of the same saturation/brightness unbalance ("tractor green" grass, purple high altitude sky anyone ?), this should be worked NOW, not years after release by modders.

Great spot Andy, you Tree Geek! :grin::grin: Well before my time, (child of 1976 lol) I don't think I have ever seen an Elm in my life. Was it mass Elm Tree Genocide? Those bloody Yanks, its all their fault :grin:.

There again, I might have walked past one yesterday....its not like I pay much attention, lol. *Note to self, must pay heed to all the wondrous Flora and Fauna of this Green and Pleasant Land *TM* :grin:

10/10 Inspector Clouseu!! Bring back the Elm!! 1c games could be the Resurrection, and the Life..... :grin:

Actually, I'm not much of a tree geek, Orville, but the list of British species reminded me of the loss. If you want to know more, Wikipedia, as always, is a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm

Personally, I'm not to bothered about getting the precise tree species right, I think it is more important in a CG landscape to get variation in fauna than worry about minor details.

I suspect Oleg may be tearing his hair out at the details we are nit-picking over, and possibly considering setting the next SoW in antartica - penguins have no internet access. ;)