@swiss
for a pilot in command the usual way to communicate his orders to another crew-member
is by using the so called INTERCOM, short for "INTERnal COMmunication".
That is also used by the radio-man to communicate external communications to the pilot in command.

Clever way of playing with words, but I do believe you know what I meant.

In short - special features and a video would "qualify" as the shortest answer. :D

I don't have historical records for all kinds of bombers, i was just giving an example as to what constitutes a "drooling" example of game mechanics that doesn't have to do with graphics. It's just an example of things that people would go "ooh....ahhh....niiiice" if they saw the new engine able to do ;)

What few things i do know about commanding a crew has to do with the B-17. Correct me if i'm wrong but most of the multi-crewed planes like bombers had separate channels for voice communication and i can't imagine a 1940s era bomber without at least an intercomm.
For example, on the B-17 the radio operator would set a frequency to talk with the rest of the flight/bomber group, or anything else the captain ordered him to do (eg, talk to the escort fighter leader, home base and so on).

I think that only the pilots and radio operator could talk on that frequency, or maybe the bombardier too (ie, radioman and officers only). There is a switch in the B-17 cockpit that toggles between intercomm and radio, so that if the pilot wanted his microphone output to be directed to the bomber group he would switch to radio, but if he wanted to talk to the crew he would switch to intercomm.

I guess that gunners couldn't talk to other bombers and they only had intercomm output. As for incoming sound, i don't know for sure. What is almost certain is that the gunners could certainly hear the intercomm of their own plane all of the time, as they used it out to call out contacts and coordinate their defence. For example, a fighter moving from left to right aft of the bomber's wing line...the left waist gunner would call it out and shoot at it, but he would also alert the tail gunner that the fighter is about to enter his field of fire so that he could fire at it too. Maybe they could also hear radio calls from the captains/radiomen of other bombers as well, maybe not, or maybe the radioman could control what the non-officer members of the crew would hear, but intercomm sound was on 100% of the time between all crew members to help them defend their aircraft and coordinate in the mission.

So, in that sense, all it took to command a gunner 30 yards away (for example, if the pilot wanted to talk to the tail gunner), is flicking the switch to intercomm and speaking on the microphone.

I know of at least one case where a frustrated Lancaster pilot dove to attack an anti-aircraft battery and ordered his gunners to start strafing via the intercom.

Similarly, in night-ops it was the gunners who gave the order on when to initiate or halt evasive maneuvers (as it was the gunner who could see the enemy after all).

I suspect that most aircraft had considerably co-ordination between pilot and gunners (and navigators who would spot enemies and keep track of them etc. etc.)

Absolutely agreed!
This is not a ground-based FPS sim, it's a flight sim. If compromises have to be made in the visual eye-candy to protect the overall quality and the delivery of decent frame rates, let them be made in some ground details.

Great work, Luthier and team!

They are using special software that can animate trees and grass, no photoshop textures!

The game is really nicely comming together.

Yep, never fails.

Luthier and Oleg are tough skinned. They'll do with it as they will and we will all love it when it is released.

For the record, I've checked out the pics on my home PC monitor (Samsung 2232BW) and the trees in Pic 1 look fine.

Of course, the rest of you already knew that :(

Strange, viewed on 15" bog standard monitor earlier, the foreground trees at bottom of Pic 1 really did look like they were floating 'magic carpet'-like 50 feet above the ground :???:

Very excited about the work being done with crew animations. Can't wait to see the videos.

Have to respectfully disagree with those who voice the opinion that graphics don't matter too much, or matter less than FM, DM, AI, etc, etc. For me graphics are just as important in creating a realistic and believable experience.

Il2 already does a pretty good job in FM, DM, AI and is being improved again in 4.10 (and beyond). Where it falls down (by 2010 standards) is graphics.

Also - at the risk of reigniting a recent discussion/argument - SOW will not be fulfilling the same function as a military-grade training simulator, where the trainee's appreciation of the environment's graphical quality is not an important issue. Let the die-hards scoff, but I and many others 'play' flight-sims and computer games primarily for enjoyment and relaxation and only secondarily as a 'serious' learning tool, though that is a great aspect of the experience as well.

To release a technically superb but graphically compromised game/sim in 2010 is commercial suicide and a mistake that the developers will not make.

we talk about last LOD3 size 1000 to 10000m
not LOD1 the 3D Tree

i think he will make 3 LODs for the Tree


close LOD1 ca. 100 polygones
medium LOD2 ca. 20 polygones
far LOD3 ca. 4 polygones

for LOD3 i think Storm of War have no more than 4 poly`s, the point is the Texture, it must look like a Big Tree.

sorry for my bad english

In IL-2 I liked a lot how you can feel the ground, mountain, distance...

I'm sure & hape they will find again right way to tune the game for high end optic users, and people like me who dont care about trees. Beatween fps and threes I wil allways chooze fps...