@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...

That's because the trees are casting a shadow, hence they appear to be floating in space...Especially from that height.

They are using speedtrees for the tree and grass animations, if i recall correctly.

http://www.speedtree.com/

Absolutely, yes. It's just that on one screen it looks believable and realistic, while viewed on another it looked really off and bad.

May have hit on a reason for some of the disagreements going on around here - ie people viewing the same shots on different quality monitors

Quoting myself here :rolleyes: , but wanted to make an overlooked point: the people on this forum may not be representative of the average punter who will buy SOW - in fact who will HAVE to buy SOW if it is to be a commercial success.

For many of us enthusiasts - those who actually know (or care about :)) the difference between the E3 and and E4 sub-variants of the 109, or what kind of propellors the Hurricane used, or the precise layout of the instrument panel in a Spitfire Mk 1 - there will be many more (hopefully !) buyers who don't know and don't care (at least initially). They may buy the game because of a general interest in the Battle Of Britain; they may not know or care that it is Part 1 in the new, state of the art flight-sim series.

For these people what will matter is the BOB gameplay experience and graphical quality.

Maybe we overlook the importance of the standalone aspect of this game? I, and I'm sure most here, are firmly fixed on SOW as being PART 1 in the great new flight-sim scheme - we are already casting our eyes excitedly to the North Africa / Korea follow-ups and thinking about the improvements that Oleg will add as it progresses.

An overlooked question? - will SOW:BOB cut it as a standalone gaming experience? Will it recreate the Battle of Britain experience in an exciting, fun way or will it be mainly of interest to diehard, technical afficionados?

Landscape looking better, but and i know its WIP but the colours still look nothing like england to me...too bright, too much yellow and vivid green... to me when you look into the distance in england the colours seem to blur into dark green, brown and purple...here the look all wrong....too light and bright....esp at the horizon.

people have been saying just this about the colours for ages and we keep getting told its WIP dont worry...but ive not seen one pic yet of a english coloured landscape...just hope they will get the colours spot on for release.

planes, cockpits and other details looking fantastic as normal :)

Are those also speedtree?

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-conten...009/03/021.jpg

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-conten...0/grab_011.jpg

Look like the perfect flight-sim trees if you ask me!

I may be wrong but I dont think they are using these Trees anymore, these were the good tress.

My 2c worth:
The foreground trees in pic 1 look strange because the position of the shadow relative to the tree gives the impression of a flat plane of branches/leaves suspended with a large gap to the ground. (most) Real trees have greenery with a larger vertical aspect than horizontal .
Also the trees at near to medium distance appear to have a dark outline. This makes them look hand outlined and coloured in, giving ,I think, the impression some have of "cartoonishness".
I guess at these distances each tree is only a few pixels, so the complexity of speedtree offers little advantage over a simple 2d shape, for, you have to think, quite a big performance hit.
Exactly.


The trees in the second picture look strange NOT because of their height, but because the size of the leaves (look close to (1/2m2) makes them look scaled up relative to everything else.
I probably wouldn't notice the height, but definitely would notice the enormous leaves.

Things looked a whole lot better here:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...3&d=1274690360
Sorry for what seems like a terribly negative post.
Cockpit interiors look fantastic. Everything looks fantastic.
Except the trees.

Communication is not the problem - the different sight is.

The gunner would have to describe the situation to the captain.
Now Imagine 4+ gunners simultaneously ... :confused:

I hope the captain was female, talk of multitasking.


I'm still referring to the fire at will thing...

Things have a pretty surface but seem to be made out of empty paper..1. 'Floating trees' in the foreground explained.

• The sun is shining.
• Buildings cast shadows on other buildings.
• Trees do not fully cast shadows. They seem to cast something but seems to be the center trunk + something thin.

Ground objects lacking shadows in a sunny environment gives impression that they are not standing anchored on the ground. EDIT: Can see in the other screens posted above that they fully cast shadows, so certainly it is just a graphic setting.

2. The cockpit in the Heinkel and the Beufighter(?).

The reflections on the fancy instrument dials appear to be missing so it is probably a lower graphical setting.


3. Crew animated.

Exciting! Makes a large difference for me in the appeal for flying non-fighter planes. Physics and animations is what is missing more than anything else in 3D games since a very long time ago. Hope to see this sort of effect on the own body rendered in first person view at some point.

>>I may be wrong but I dont think they are using these Trees anymore, these were the good tress.


If that's the case then it's a great shame. The colour and density of these trees is very good indeed.

Great update by the way Luthier. The landscape is looking nicely populated and very interesting...varied patches of woodland and irregular fields etc.
It's great to see trees way off in the distance now. Also notice how the trees border the fields - no random placement here.

In response to the earlier comment regarding field sizes...they're spot on for this period. It was only post war that hedges started to be ripped out on a grand scale to produce the machine friendly large fields we're accustomed to seeing today.

I think this level of ground detail will make ground attack very exciting and real. Just think of the feeling of speed you'll get as all those features zip by. Much easier to gauge height too.

The aircraft of course are absolutely superb in every way. I've got a good feeling about this product. I think we'll be in for a real treat.

Please don't let the whining get in the way of the regular updates. You know we're all addicted to them.:grin:

For a pint, i will fly with a ruler in my cockpit and mesure even the size of the leafs :grin::grin::grin:

The terrain is becoming very believable, and much better than anything I've seen so far in a combat flight sim. Terrain graphics are very important for my immersion level as its something your looking at 90% of the time your flying. We know the aircraft and cockpits are beautiful. The DM will also be far more complex than IL-2.
The elephant in the room is the AI, and it can't be shown in screenshots. Oleg has suggested that the AI will be much better, and if thats the case, this sim is shaping up just fine.

~Salute~

In the example i was talking about a blenheim wich has a single gunner. However, even with more gunners it's no different that a squadron of 20 or so fighters that are tuned into the same frequency during a dogfight. They too have this problem of having to know when to talk and that's the reason for brevity codes and teaching radio discipline.

In any case, on youtube you can find clips of both the memphis belle hollywood movie and wartime footage of the real memphis belle crew and hear how they are talking to each other. They are all on the intercomm at the same time. In the movie this is touched upon sometimes when they make a fuss and the captain tells them to keep it short and precise. In the films of the real crew that i saw, they talk like nothing's happening...totally calm and composed, in short precise sentences:

"109 coming in, 9 o'clock...he's moving towards the tail"
Simple stuff like that...the waist gunner is telling the crew he's tracking a bandit and that the tail gunner is about to see him in his field of fire. That's all the information everyone in the crew needs. The rotating top and belly turrets can try to shoot at the 109 and the tail gunner will definitely do so, but nobody is asking "hey, can i shoot him too from the top turret?". It's just the information passed on to the crew and each man knows what to do because they are trained for it. There's no case in such a scenario that the nose or right waist gunners would talk at the same time, they heard that the bandit is not in the quarter they are covering so they don't bother with it, they scan for other threats.



No disresspect to the casual crowd, but the right way to make a flight sim is to make it as technically rich as possible and then include difficutly options that the casual players can switch off, this keeps both ends of the potential customer spectrum happy.

If it's done the other way around and the technical details are overlooked, there is no way to please both ends and the game becomes an arcade game with aircraft instead of a flight simulator game.

Maybe i'll be swamped with the new FM and engine management and not use it, or i'll start using it after i buy better peripherals, but that's not a reason to ommit these features. It's evolution and since the game is tailored for a long life, much of the added difficulty and control schemes used to manage it will gradually become a standard during its life.

As an example, how many years have you guys had TrackIR sets? I used to fly with a hat-switch up until 2 years ago and i've been flight simming for 18 years. Just because i didn't have a TrackIR didn't mean that IL2 should cater to me as the lowest common denominator and force automatic padlock views on everyone, don't you think? ;)

In a similar fashion, if time, money and PC processing limits permit it, then flying SoW should be as exerting and mentally straining as flying a real aircraft (well, minus the G loads and detrimental effects from combat i guess). Just because some people won't use the option to fly this way doesn't mean we should deny it to those who will, as long as it's possible to do it of course. It's not a question of wether to include the technical aspect. If the difficult things can be switched off the casual gamers will be able to enjoy it just fine. If they don't exist however, it's only the casual gamers that will, the others will not. I think this is not even a dilemma :grin:

This, many times over.

The shot of the Hurri over the city is simply stunning on my monitor (Samsung PX2370). Not only is it verging on the photoreal, it almost gave me vertigo.

SoW is going to raise the bar much higher than the whiners on this board can possibly conceive of.

Kudos Oleg and Luthier.

My system is state of the art. The photos are awesome on 1920x1200 resolution x 24 inch monitor.

Nothing disappointing about them AFAICT.

They can stop now for my part, release the SOW and refine the scenery later.

My opinion of course ;)

Thx so much for the update. Nice historical reference in the first image:

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/327...CFB0318981C9EF

I really like the planes and the detail in them. Cant wait to take a first flight :) But im not happy where you guys are going when it comes to the ground textures and landscape details.

Oh,the Blenheim cockpit,you beauty!!

Very nice update.:grin:

I think the terrain is looking great.
Is it perfect ? No. But with the power of current computers there is bound to be limits.
Perhaps in 10 years time when we have 512 core cpu's, multi terrabytes of ram, etc then we can have "perfect" terrain, clouds and trees.:rolleyes: But it looks good enough to me at the moment.

I would love to see a movie of the crew animations though.
This sounds like it will be a real jaw dropper.:cool:

Thanks for the update, and keep up the good work.

+1

The textures on the houses look kind of blurry and the windows in the red house just look flat out bad. They are too big, and look like headlights.

I think this update looks flat out "fantastic"...

By far, this is looking like it will be the best flight combat sim to date. I'm simply flabbergast at the shear amount of detail in these maps. With all the included citys and villages in this full scale map, it is simply an astonishing feat...I dont think that, some of the, people here understand what an immense undertaking this really project is.

Thank you...

I agree....many of us don't understand just how much work this map is and the corners that have to be cut to allow playable frame rates. This latest update is very impressive. :)

Agreed. These old trees look a lot better that the current ones at this distance. Perhaps they were too compute intensive or didn't degrade well to lower LODs for longer view distances.

It.

is.

WIP.

Why is that so hard to understand?

Surprised more people haven't picked up on this.

The crew reacting to maneuvers makes me suspect their movements aren't simple canned animations. Fingers crossed that it turns out to be something similar to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi5adyccoKI

Wearing seat belts will be a must. Wonder if sudden negative g's will result in unbelted crew lifting up off their seats.

Please give it a rest. Telling people it's WIP repeatedly is even more annoying.

In this case, I doubt the textures will suddenly become more detailed and less blurry close to release considering that artists create all textures in much higher resolutions than they end up being used in the game. The developers seem to have chosen the level of detail they want in these ground objects to balance rendering speed/resources used. If you recall, the same objects displayed outside of the game engine had higher resolution textures.

2x or 4x aa will fix most of the problems, id say about 20% smaller for all trees would be good

i guess the indiscretion is understandable although i do wonder if Olegs team is working inside the Chernobyl with mutant trees
http://lifewithoutbuildings.net/chernobyl.jpg

I like that. It doesn't look right just perfectly clear. Even now the 109 windscreens are pretty dirty witch a lot of people have raised a fuss about...not me... so I'm sure this will be looked at.

Just adding my two pence, I'd rather see fewer trees in towns and cities than in that second shot. It detracts from the sleepy little village feel that you got (and in fact still get today) when flying over towns and villages the south of England. Reminds me more of Milton Keynes, a new town (or is it a city nowadays...?) just north of London where they seem to have tried to plant one tree for every building there! Whereas the more established towns and villages of England are mainly concentrations of old buildings with parks and avenues etc elsewhere where trees are permitted to grow.

Fantastic screen shots, looking at those pics, just amazing.

I know my old computer would struggle with this, but one day!

I've been flying sims for a while, and trees are <still> a bonus for me.

Screenshots look great!

And yet we saw nothing from the German side...The undertaking for the French(German) side will be no less immense...the airfields alone are so utterly different from the english ones that I really would like one of those soon...no to mention capes Griz-Nez and Blanc-Nez!!!

JV

I think it's not so much a matter of trees, but a matter of lighting...
The trees are the same, but lighting is different...

Remember that the summer of '40 was very hot and thus much lighter then usual...Lots of sun.

Jeez , all this talk about trees like its the main thing of the game...

im surprised noone has brought up why cant we see the individual leaves moving in perfect unison with the atmospheric effects?

or perhaps there should be squirrels visible inside the trees, with perfectly reproduced anatomical systems that respond correctly to gunfire?

wait, why dont they model each and every hair on the squirrels!

yeah the sim is absolutely worthless without realistic squirrel hair!

WE WANT PERFECT SQUIRRELS! WAAAAGH SQUIRRELS !

And moles and molehills, you know, after the rain all the meadows are full of them.
Moles are very important to me, they add a lot to the total immersion feeling.

:lol::lol:
and will we be able to see the earth-worms after the rain . Can i be informed on the colour and the size of them please?

To Oleg's team: keep the good work up , you have my 200 % support for whatever you are making
Salute :!:

As can be seen in these aerial photographs, you normally can't see tree trunks from the air. It's rather the exception than the rule.
So for me, it looks certainly good enough. Did you actually realize how far back to the horizon we are able to see the trees in the sim?

Yea...that was an intriguing detail. I wish we could see the screen shots, lol.

nor the leaves :grin:

The old tree pics posted by TBag look at lost closer to these aerial shots than the new trees.

One can see that the trees are way too high. ;)

Luthier, in case you have a desert map soemwhere - please use that one for the next screenshots....

But then agian, maybe the color of the sand is not like the real desert, or maybe the grain of sand is the wrong size. :rolleyes:

It's incredible to see that a lot of trees in England actually have 2 or 3 floor height.
I was wondering why the trees was so high in the second pic...
But I still think that they might be a little shorter,what do you think?

AND....

whoever modelled those english "countryside" photos a couple of posts back, forgot to put the damn squirrels in.

reality just isnt modelled the way it should be.

there are so many things wrong with the countryside shown in the photos i dont know where to start.

if you know what to look for, the true expert can spot the errors really easy. :cool:

If you look at your pictures, then you can clearly see that a lot of trees are actually taller then most buildings...

Conclusion, nothing wrong with screenshot #2!

Very human like behavier.:)

I think that Oleg and Luthier are pulling our legs a bit now....;)

None of the screens they showed us lately had AA, nor was in DX11, nor had a " high resolution"....I also think, IMHO, that they are in fact many steps ahead of what we have been shown every fridays...
They understand how we react better than we think, and they're gonna turn this in their advantage...
They are probably working hard on making a video that will make everyone go " WOW" once and for all...But it takes time...So they tuned down the latest screenies to make the leap even bigger when the video comes up...
So I am very otimistic, as you can see....:rolleyes:

Good job !

Look just like "Mannequin"

Pretty good I guess, afterall how far do you really have to take it for people to enjoy a game?

Game !?
 

We are talking about a simulation here!
Please!

Viking

Oops! :lol:

I notice in this shot- apart from the great trees (beautiful!), better texturing on the ground including what appears to be a detail bump map which blends in with the satellite(?) imagery. This is the first time I've seen this shot and if this is an example of SOW at higher graphical settings (AA is also on) then I would be more confident in the graphical abilities of SOW to deliver an impressive and immersive experience.

The recent shots in contrast have sometimes shown very blurry ground textures which sort of look like un-detailed blobs of colour, not very nice... I understand these are WIP shots taken on low settings on an underpowered PC, but I and others can only discuss what we see.

The devs of course have the freedom to release any kind of shots they like- and they can highlight different graphics systems or anything else they feel like sharing. I'm personally interested in mainly wanting to see things in high quality, but if we only get low settings/low quality shots before release then I'm not exactly going to complain. I think any kind of communication about how things are going is great!

They're fine. :roll:

It's so easy to caricature... Almost everybody agrees that the height is fine. We all see outside, some trees 3 or 4 floors high. The proof is that screens posted by Tbag are fine for all despite trees are tall too.

But look at the differences :

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...7&d=1281087306

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-conten...0/grab_011.jpg

The difference is not the height but the complexity. Everybody knows that some trees are 20m high but they do not look like little shrubs with tripled volume and do not have leafs with the size of an Opel Blitz...

By the way, the trees in the second screen are really good looking.

I think people are focusing on the scenery because that's what we see the first on screens and also because most of us know that Oleg and his team will provide us an amazing sim on every other sides...
The few problems IL2 had where related to sceney like "flashy green" and scale problems.

Personnaly, I focus my attention on trees and land textures because everything else is almost perfect to me. It should be taken as a compliment... If the most demanding simmers are complaining about trees, it means that Oleg is on the right way, isn't it ?

You are 100% right. It is indeed a fact that people always find something to complain about. Now, there is even a real reason to whine about, because the trees shown in the latest screenshots are not really that good, to put it nicely.

I find it interesting that some shots look almost like Il-2 (yes I know!) while some just are jaw-droppingly beautiful... Maybe they're just teasing us?

Or maybe they found some 4-year old shots and posted those just for kicks? Or maybe the game is already finished and they're just postponing the release closer to Xmas? Or maybe there is no game and it's all just a hoax?:rolleyes:

I am sorry but the brass knockers on the buildings are way off.

Forget the tree's, the knockers on those doors is just simply unforgivable. Do you really

expect me to make that leap of faith with crap knockers like that?

This is just another nail in the coffin of SoW...

This is supposed to be a S-I-MU-L-A-T-I-O-N!

Yet you guys cannot even get the knockers correct.

Sad, sad day.

And another caricature...

I'm going there for a day visit tomorrow, in ten hours' time! :)

so i guess a September release, for the BOB anniversary is obviously scrapped, guess it'll be 2011 now.. and then 2012, and then the world ends

I am too afraid that is the case. So much "graphic engine" changes and not having even the SoW BoB site going... plus the IL-2 4.10 delayed like forever... is a good sign 2011 and beyond is the target.

I would imagine this time next year would be more realistic, the ubisoft owned url stormofwar.com runs out in December having reached its 7 year life span so maybe Oleg is waiting for that before he gets the promotional ball rolling.

I supose in 10 years Oleg wll tell us the real story of what happened to BOB, whether or not it ever gets released. I bet some bad things happened and it almost fell apart several times.. it's probably spent most of it's time on the back burner and life support..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo-f2...1&feature=fvwp

P-61 Black Widow flight walk through.

Imagine that routine every flight.

I dare any screaming foaming mouthed plane start up fanatic to do this every sortie.

or even remember 20 minutes of detailed startup procedure.

perhaps oleg knows what he's doing.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSIso...eature=related

the same thing, this time for the B26.

Not a friendly airplane.

As to the "start-up fanatics" , just remember that the crew or the pilot usually comes to
a pre-flighted, warmed up airplane, not 20 min. say 2 to 3 min. start-up procedure.
And even less in a scramble!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwksK...489398B72D07FB

and the P-39.

I figure you get the idea, and the source, by now.

happy viewing.

so, before every flight in a new aircraft in SoW, set aside 20 - 30 mins then.... if you're a fast learner ;).

and clearly in remote airfields, you have... "all the comforts of home."

yeah.

nice try.

but, no.

and, by second visit, you're telling me pilots dont pre-flight aircraft before every flight?

they just run up and fly away as per the movies?

without EVER... let me say that again... EVER... checking their mounts?

no.

just no.

Where in the world was aircraft staring procedures a topic of this week's development update? :confused:

it wasn't.

i thought it might offset the detail fanatics who look for anything, however minor, to criticise.

as in, no computers, it takes time to start an old warbird?

sadly, i thought i might be lauded for posting real world, irrefutable, actual information that might contribute to the genre.

how naive of me.

;)

i think you just want attention so hello

no.

i dont.

anything worthwhile to add?

ok i really like the idea of chimney smoking and i will enjoy making a winter time mission :grin:

haaaa hahaha smoke that chimney abbe boy.

;)

Well, that's why the "detail fanatics" want things like realistic systems management in their simulators, because the real pilots had to do it as well. If one doesn't want to, then one should feel free to drop their realism settings a bit, instead of trying to enforce their preference for a lack of increased fidelity in modelling an aircraft, which by the way is the reason we buy all that expensive hardware every few months ;)

I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. You like padlock? Fly with padlock. You like spending 30 seconds on each mission warming up your engine? Spend those seconds looking at your oil pressure and temp dials. No harm done.

The difference is, that if these things are included in a simulator then it's up to the player to decide if he's going to use them or not. But if there's no padlock feature coded into the sim, you simply can't choose wether to use one or not.

Ideally, SoW at 70% difficulty settings should be equal to IL-2 at 100% difficulty settings. Why? Because PCs grow stronger, sims evolve thanks to that processing power and developers can model the aircraft in much higher detail. Just the improved FM/DM and systems modelled could easily cover that much of a difference in difficulty.

However, i'm starting to get the idea that people are obsessed with keeping the title of full switch virtual pilot because they like thinking to themselves that they could operate a real aircraft: "man, i'm flying full switch, it's full real". No, it's not.

Full switch means nothing if it's not what happens in the real bird, it just means "the maximum amount of complexity our engine and your PC can take without making it all a slideshow".

Case in point, i can fly the classic Dynamix sims of the 90s like Aces of the Pacific all day long at full switch and claim whatever i want, but in the end it would be the equivalent of flying IL2 with most of the FM realism options turned off. It's just flying the sim at its maximum complexity, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that aces of the pacific at full complexity is still light years away from IL2 at maybe 20% difficulty, not to mention the way a real aircraft truly operates. In that sense, SoW should surpass IL-2 as well, funds and development time permitting of course.

Long story short, let's tick the appropriate boxes in the realism options when SoW is released and fly at our preferred settings, instead of trying to drop the difficulty level for everyone, even those who would want it increased, just so we can cling to our precious title of pretend-pilots. :rolleyes:

Choice people, choice...it's a good thing ;)

1+ Blackdog_kt

and preflighting is the job of the ground-crew who lend THEIR plane to the pilot!
I have a ppl and the preflight of a C152 or Pa28 takes about 5 to 10 min., without crew.

There might be a reason why these trees look a bit simpler...First of all, there's way much more trees and buildings in the SOW screen, this means a lot more stress for cpu and videocard!

How detailed do you want it to be?! Do you want to fly at least 30-60fps or do you want to watch your plane moving every second or so...

Sacrifices have to be made for playabilty, for a flightsim trees are just a bonus. And this looks more then good enough.

I cannot imagine that everyone wants to buy a new super computer to be able to run just a flightsim. Please return to the real world.

Planes' look and feel and behavier are the most important thing for a flightsim...

If you guys are just bickering about some trees, then this might be the evidence that everything else is allready on a high level...

Flightsim is never gonna be real if you don't have the same movements, and the same g-pulling experience...

all peoples in this forum have age 20-28-30-35-60 age old and have experience from FSX F16 FALCON X-PLANE LOCK ON ecc.ec.
now we whait SoW simulator.
and we want SUPER SIMULATOR OF WW2 not arcade game ONE STANDARD SIMULATION IN ALL WORLD.
i loock OPS operation flash point and ARMA2 is good but very good product is a STANDART in all WORLD.
FSX is a stadart in all world.
BUT NOW WE WANT A NEW GENERATION OF SIMULATOR NEW TECNOLOGY NEW PHYSIC AND GOOD REAL SIMULATION not a simple game.

Omg, we already have an yber simulation for the public and it's called DCS series. Not even SoW will top it , DCS is more than 90% accurate to flying the real thing, reason why no one will top it is simple.. they focus 110% on one aircraft at the time. No we won't have one gigant super simulator, that's just wishful thinking, it's not even practical, fun or doable on a large scale if you're to create a 1:1 living world with Infantry, Tanks, Aircrafts.. i could list 1000+ issues with that
here and now.

Arma 2 isn't meant as a hardcore sim within any specific genre, its a Combat-simulator, simulating warfare overall in a realistic manner. By the way , check your spelling sometimes?

It was a fair point, engarde, but you did pick two of the most complicated aircraft of the Second World War systems-wise and the videos contained a lot of lengthy explanation that an experienced pilot would not need.
For the single-engined fighters like the Spitfire, Hurricane and 109s that the game simulates we're talking more like 3-5 minutes tops. From the Pilot's Notes for the Spitfire Mk II:

http://htmlimg4.scribdassets.com/225...306470/000.jpg

http://htmlimg3.scribdassets.com/225...5ae618/000.jpg

The Spitfire particularly was prone to overheating on the ground - as the Pilot's Notes above state "Warming up should not be unduly prolonged, as the temperature rises quickly, and some margin must be kept in hand for taxying. If it is 150 degrees before the aircraft taxies out, it will become excessive if there is any distance to taxy downwind."

As for the Luftwaffe twins, the BR.20 and the Blenheim, of course you're right, there's a lot more mucking about to do. The thing is, most of the things you'll notice on the checklist are not things we as sim pilots need to be overly concerned about. We fly pristine aircraft that don't suffer from mechanical failures without pilot error or enemy action. Things like checking the tires for bruising and slip or checking for the correct oil pressure after engine startup are things we can take for granted, and that means that we're not really talking about "realistic startup" (which DOES take a long time), we really mean, "pressing all the authentic buttons to make stuff happen". ;) In fact, since we're assuming that everything on the checklist before stepping into the cockpit the final time before takeoff has already being done, you can knock about half of the startup time off each of those videos anyway.

I have no problem with fully realistic proceedures as long as like every other aspect of the sim, they are scalable. For offliners it will be a very important part of their experience, so go for it.

For online, where folks have much more limited time to fly even very long, complicated missions, some compromise between the ultra complex and arcade start up proceedure will end up being used.

If an online campaign has only 3 hours to run it's mission, and you might be able to do 3 sorties in complex twins, I will virtually guarantee that the majority of players will not want to spend half that time sitting on the ramp clicking buttons.

The object is to fly and fight, not fight the game mechanics just to be able to play.

Thankfully Oleg understands this.

We should all be able to have our fun, whatever we think "fun" is.

As far as I'm aware they are both screens from SOW. As to scene complexity, I can't speak for SOW, but other modern games have been able to do great things with object instancing whereby you can have a great many of the same or similar object and suffer minimal impact on system resources. Maybe this has to do with certain features in later versions of Direct X, or maybe it's just good programming on the developer side. I'm no programmer, I just know it's possible.

Scalable to current, future, and past hardware seems best. There's no reason not to work towards accomodating GPU/CPU power that may be a year or two away from now, especially if SOW is not going to be released for awhile yet. The latest DX11 cards from Nvidia and ATI are super quick, and some of the budget cards in these new lineups are very reasonably priced.

You're entitled to your opinion. I'd imagine for a 2010/2011 flight sim, trees would be de rigueur by now. For a flight sim that's aiming to be a revolution and new standard setter for perhaps years to come, well... ;)
It seems plenty of people following the development of SOW are preparing to upgrade their systems when the time is right. It's certainly been mentioned time and time again by people throughout these threads. Though I'm sure any computer up to fairly modern standards will be able to handle SOW- the devs have indicated they are taking precautions here.

Yup.

There really isn't much else to talk about in static shots. There's just simply an absence of evidence (distinct from any evidence of absence ;))

For start up procedures a mixt between DCS BS and current IL-2 would be OK. That is 3 options:

1. Quick start up... like in Il2
2. Auto start up... like in DCS where all the switches are pressed in correct order by the computer... having an animated pilot inside would be a plus...
3. Manual start up... like in DCS... you press the switches to bring the beast to life.

Remember that SOW will be open to 3rd party add ons. Some have done wonders with FSX and made significantly more complex add ons than MS stock planes. WW2 fighters are not nearly as complicated as the modern stuff modeled in DCS. Thus we might very see similarly detailed simulation of certain aircraft in SOW.

Exactely what I wanted to say! :)