Well, regarding the colour of the fields, they might be representative of lavender fields? And I'm sure I've seen crop fields of lettuces or cabbages or something that have that kind of blueish colour. But I'm no expert on the english countryside in 1940!

Yay, i'm having reason to repeat myself again, like i do every week during the past month or two: this update is even better than the previous one which was better than the one before.
Also, what are you doing mr Maddox, revealing to the world your son is flying SoW? Hordes of flight sim fans are so jealous, the poor kid might get the evil eye. :-P

On more a serious note now. I read the entire thread and saw all the interesting and encouraging comments made by almost everyone, it's actually a very refreshing change to see it all come together and everyone voicing their opinions in a civil manner, even if we (naturally) can't all agree with eachother.

It also seems that mr. Maddox is on a good roll and feeling talkative today. Lot's of very good snippets worth their wheight in gold if you ask me, seems that whenever i think of a feature and go "nah, it's too complex or too small to do for the first release" the guy comes up and confirms it's already in the game engine :grin:

Some things that got my attention, based on previous posters and comments.

First of all, the terrain. Well, the thing is, we've seen so many variations over the past few updates that i'm sure they will be able to come up with the real deal, mix-and-matching the good points of each individual set of textures they've shown us thus far. I'm not worried, as colour and filters can probably be tuned ad infinitum during the life of the simulator. What i care about is having a robust foundation on which to build the terrain and it seems we have that.

The old terrain in the shots posted by Richie seemed right, maybe even a bit EAW-ish. Maybe that's why it seemed nice to me, i've been conditioned through years of flight simming to think that WWII Europe looked like this, so it could just be the familiarity factor kicking in. Apart from the obvious low resolution/WiP textures used, the colours seemed right, but the old terrain had one marked weakness: the trees didn't blend in right, maybe because the terrain was low-res and the trees were high res.

As for the new terrain, it now blends with the trees properly. Also as Sutts said, terrain undulations are visible from higher altitudes. I haven't lived in England, but from what i know the south of it is nowhere near an Alpine landscape, neither is it totally flat. In fact, this would make it harder to spot slight undulations or small rolling hills than it would be to distinguish boundaries between flat and mountainous terrain.
The fact that it's visible from moderate altitudes in the screenshots makes me believe they got it right.
As for colours they can always be tweaked. Heck, it could be a function of time of day and atmospheric conditions that creates such differences between the tilesets we see each week.

Tremendously encouraging message. Take note, this is the real meat of the update.

I know these guys can do pretty graphics, i'm not worried. Even if SoW released with 1990s vector graphics and they told us "you'll get your real graphics in a month with the first patch" i would still buy it, because i know they can do them right eventually ;)

It's the other things that i want to know more about and that's why i like this post. When they say the aircraft will be done with more complexity than 3rd party MSFS add-ons, it's music to my ears.

Also, i like how Oleg Maddox is so focused on the application of the laws of physics, not only with regards to the aircraft and the other units, but also the entire environment.
I think we won't be able to have 100% identical ingame and real life photo shots, because probably they are modelling this based on the way they average human eye sees it and not the average camera (as evidenced by his earlier reply with the attached photo comparison).
I guess it will become much more apparent if there are in-game filters that simulate different camera settings, so we could for example capture screenshots in natural view, 1940s kodak film view, modern digital camera view, etc.

There you go, the man pretty much confirmed there are plans to make it into a combined arms simulator later on,with the possibility of running massive online battles. Of course, all of this rests on how well BoB will sell, but the plans are there and the foundations have been confirmed to exist.

I'm guessing the first expansion will be mediterranean or an early battle (France or Poland), since he said the planeset will be very similar. When he mentioned the second expansion made by another company i thought he meant Korea, but later on he mentions it separately, so i really don't have any idea what the second expansion is going to be about.

The med should definitely be interesting. Maybe it's time to make some use of my contacts from the time i served my conscript duty in the air force and try to get access to some historical data...after my country was occupied, we had a few Squadrons operating in the desert under RAF command and taking part in all the major battles. Too bad i usually fly Axis planes and will be shooting my own countrymen down when the time comes to fly in that expansion :grin:

I hope the Over Flanders Fields team will switch to SoW and create a new WWI simulator. They have an enormous amount of research data stockpiled, which sadly the old CFS3 engine can't do justice.

Also, Korea would be a blast, especially if we had things like forward air controllers, dropping on smoke markers and such...but what i'm really hoping for that nobody has done to a high level of detail for years, is a Vietnam sim. There's such a great mix of different aircraft there, from late WWII to early jets, from Phantoms, Skyhawks, F-105s and helicopters down to C-47s, A-26 invaders, Skyraiders and even small, fragile Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs. Of course, i'd be flying the prop birds :grin:

Anyway, i'm getting ahead of myself here so let's get back into focus. Roll on SoW:BoB ;)

I also have some interface questions/suggestions. Mainly, will it be possible to assign complex functions to key presses or even have some of them hard-coded according to aircraft specifications?
An example of this is the landing gear mechanism. This also exists in IL2, where in aircraft with manual gear operation the pilot has to repeatedly press the key combination to extend/retract the gear.
In a similar fashion, some aircraft have gear that operate with a single lever. In that case, pressing "G" once would move the lever, again just like it happens already in IL2.

What i'm interested to know is if we could have a "send command until released" function, or a "command A on button press followed by command B on release" function.
This would be very good for simulating spring-loaded switches, or even for the player to be able to apply a continuous input without having to repeatedly tap the required key combination, but simply keeping it pressed and stopping the action by releasing it.

For example the Catalina used three way switches for the carburetor heaters, which were very prone to icing and needed constant monitoring. If you increased power they got too hot and you had to lower the heaters, if you decreased power they got too cold and you had to increase the heat, and so on. If we had these commands, i could map a key to function as "carb heat: switch to increase upon button press, switch to normal upon button release".

This could also work with things like the Cat's float retraction motors, or even the flaps on the P47 which also featured a 3-way control as far as i remember. This had 3 positions, up, down and neutral. There were no pre-sets to choose degrees of flaps, the pilot moved the lever aft to the "down" position and as long as he kept it there the flaps kept lowering. When he had dialed in the correct amount of flaps, he mover the lever back to the neutral position to stop them from extending further. For retraction, it was the same but this time moving the lever forward to the "up" position.

This is the reason the flaps on the P47 have clearly visible sencils near the wing root/fuselage, demarkating the amount of flap extension in degrees: the pilot would set the motor running, look out the canopy towards the wing roots and when he could read the correct amount of degrees on the flaps he would set the motor back to neutral.

Small details on the grand scale of things, sure, but it's these details that lend each aircraft its own particular feel and sense of character ;)

Ok So where do I pre-order this ? Steam ?

OMG!! I'm IN LOVE!! :grin:

What super computer will I need to run this? Dell Alienware? i need to upgrade so give the command sire! :grin:


He111.

This is awesome. As a Cinematographer I am fascinated with all the details, big and small, and especially with all the colors/lighting that will vary with the weather and time of day. I know how hard it is to understand colors and lighting, which is why I understand some people becoming so frustrated from week to week (but not all of them). However, I am very pleased with Oleg and team's evolution of gaming over the years. When I look at these screen shots, I am extremely impressed - especially because I am thinking of the big picture, the moving image.

From my good old memories of Dynamix's Aces over Europe (and Pacific), B-17 I and II, CFSs, Il2 onward, I'm more anxious than ever for BoB. And just when I get settled with the game i'm sure Oleg, his team, and 3rd party will be releasing ever more material. I cant wait to join everyone in the skies.

Some interesting comments about tunable filters. For me I'd love to have the option of desaturating things from "real life" a bit.

That may sound a bit counter-intuitive but the WWII I know is the WWII from the movies, the Battle of Britain, Where Eagles Dare, guncams, old film stock, and that's the 1940s "world" I'd feel most familiar inhabiting. Just a tangental thought :)

I'm happy with whatever daytime palette Oleg serves up though, I watched First Light today and did note a couple of shots of Kent that looked very close to what we see in the SoW screenshots.

Huh?

You don't even know what IL2 looks like "all-out", yet you ask for more details in SoW, which again you won't even be able to enjoy, due to your future only midend PC?

Smart.

edit: haven't read OM's response when I posted.

So it seems to me everybody kind of missed out on the major point in of this update, so Oleg did you keep your promise and have a successful training session with your son and what was the aircraft in question? Also I’m quite curious to know your son's favourite plane?

By the way the He-162 is one of my all time favourite aircraft both in and out of the game and with Canon’s skins is a real joy to look at as well, although I must admit most of my in game play is dedicated to ground attack (with the odd bomber intercept thrown every now and again) and with a slight lean towards the aircraft of the axis, so I am now eagerly awaiting 4.10 so I can get my hands on the Hs-129 .

On that note it would be nice to see the Hs-123 and the Hs-126 in SOWBOB however I guess we may have to wait until the series heads east again for those two planes.

A 500 pages book? Uh...

You know, there are some print shops who can turn a .pdf in real book. ;)

Alienware?
You do know they suck? Especially form the price.
Never buy a branded system.

Your right, but for the money I would be more inclined to pick up an ebook reader or IPad clone (I don't think I'ld be able to afford a real IPad, my money will going towards graphics upgrades I expect), then I'ld be able to look at the map pdf's as well!

By the time I got the SOW, A-10C and Rise of flight documents printed I'ld be up for some serious spoondoolies!

Cheers!

oleg,

thank you for the update !

the cities look very good with dense housing/buildings, and i like the small fences placed around the front door gardens/courtyard that some english city houses do have in real life to. i suspect there will be similar (but much more) fences around some countryside houses ?

if you have a moment can you plz answer the questions this poster asked earlier ?
- i am particularly interested in the function of using 3 monitors and being able to set FoV's for them correctly (partic since the monitors might have to be DIFFERENT sizes, which requires a different FoV setting for each monitor)
- the 64 bit question and being able to use more ram is also important

Not much to say, these pictures are excellent and, along with previous updates, prove that game is almost finished.
I'm pretty confident that soon we'll be discussing about the release game :)

I thought Dx 11 makes everything look better?


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

To me that is much better...all it would need is dark hedgerows around the fields and it would be very good.

I still have my big original 2001 IL-2 box with it's thick manual. White pages with light gray lettering . After a couple of minutes my eyes were tearing up trying to read it. LOL Also on the Pacific Fighter box....That's the only product I've seen where the Axis fighter wins the fight in the art shown....Awesome!

An excellent update, it's looking very good! A question about clouds:

We can see that clouds cast shadows onto the ground and buildings, and presumably onto planes, vehicles, etc... But will clouds also receive shadows? If there are multiple cloud layers the top layer should cast shadows onto the lower layer.

Very interesting!!

Here is some pics i found of the english countryside...

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/9892/country4.jpg
By furbs9999 at 2010-10-16

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2...untryside3.jpg
By furbs9999 at 2010-10-16

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/7...untryside2.jpg
By furbs9999 at 2010-10-16

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/7...untryside1.jpg
By furbs9999 at 2010-10-16

and here is a good one of the isle of wight...

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/8...embridgeis.jpg
By furbs9999 at 2010-10-16

Now i know Oleg said the pic may not be a true image of the colours seen, we dont know time of day etc, but it is quite clear that the landscape should be alot darker with more green fields and dark hedgerows, and i dont see any lavender or bulish violet fields anyway....this is what i see everyday with my own eyes.

now compair it with this weeks shot...

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1146/land2.jpg
By furbs9999 at 2010-10-15


Now...i have to say this is the only problem ive seen with the SOW updates, everything else looks like it will set the new standard for flight sims.

So did you read Oleg's reply about this or did you just not understand a word of it?


It beggars belief. There are genuinely some people here that seem to be expecting real life with the imagery. I'm more interested in the FM and DM being accurate than whether or not the farmer has barley or potatoes in his fields.

As somebody already pointed out the real gems of information are not from the shots but Oleg's commentary this week, very exciting future but obviously dependent on finance. It makes me want to buy multiple copies just in case!!! ;)

I understood what Oleg said perfectly well, he said we would have terrain far better than WOP/BOP and that the game would be cinematic. I believe him and i am certain that eventually we will start to see this. At the moment the terrain clearly still needs work and colour adjustment, Like Furby I live in England and spend every weekend mountain biking in the English country side, Olegs terrain is currently the wrong colours, see Furbs pics for the right colours. Other than that the update is excellent and thank you Oleg. Is it possible that we could have just one screenie in DX 11 in the near future.

I don't think that any adjustment would bring about a positive comment from you

wow guys, you really need to get you're monitors calibrated.
Nealy all of furbs photographs need some adjustments.
some even have a purple magenta cast LOL.

Certaily teh Isle of Wight one is all wrong

Reread oleg's comments about colours and perception.

I only have the one problem with this shot.....

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1146/land2.jpg

.....and that is that sadly the Hurricane is partially cropped, or otherwise it would have made an excellent wall-paper ;)

By the way did any of those that are criticising take into account the distance haze effect at altitude that can turn what is brilliant contrast at low level into pastel blandness when higher up, I have seen it many a time when flying locally down-under and also when I’ve been over mainland Europe and the and the UK?

Just my thoughts!

"It beggars belief. There are genuinely some people here that seem to be expecting real life with the imagery."

Choosing the right color palette for the described area is not a matter of computer power, but a designer's choice.

"I'm more interested in the FM and DM being accurate than whether or not the farmer has barley or potatoes in his fields."

Good question, I've never heard anything until now about the energy model : has it be improved from Il-2, or said in another way will the energy fighters be able to be used in the sim as they were in real life against turn-and-burn fighters ?

Oh, you have the experience to tell the difference?
Or do you only have expectations fueled by reading and other, questionable sources?

Look at all those little roads and lanes that have been modelled. Wouldn't it be great to take that little MG (we saw in a previous update) for a spin to the coast? Especially now we have all the undulations, woods, densely populated towns, breaking waves etc. Just exploring like this would be fantastic. Hope we have the use of a vehicle in one of the early releases.....:grin:

+++++++++++++++++++++++
wow guys, you really need to get you're monitors calibrated.
Nealy all of furbs photographs need some adjustments.
some even have a purple magenta cast LOL.

Certaily teh Isle of Wight one is all wrong

Reread oleg's comments about colours and perception.
+++++++++++++++++++++++

It's right, some of theses pictures have too vivid colors (but from the right shades of green), but on the other hand, the colors of the screenshots have become, this week, from too much vivid to too much pastel, and still with a wrong palette for the described area.

Btw, any medium capturing photons, either human eyes or a camera sensor, gives by definition its own rendering of reality (just compare for instance the differences between the Canon rendering and the Nikon rendering, or even more impressive the differences between the Bayer technology and the Foveon technology). At the times of the film technology, the rendering between Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 were different too, so were different the renderings between Velvia, Sensia and Provia.

That's to say that absolute veracity of a rendering is by definition a non-sense question (any medium is an aspect of the reality, not the reality), but what can be nevertheless attained is a common accurate probability of what is rendered. As an example, among photographers, it was commonly accepted that Provia gave a more realistic rendering of the reality than Velvia. But was Provia rendering the reality in an absolute exact way ? of course not.

The colours certainly are changing and developing from week to week. I think with the complexity of the lighting model it is a difficult task to get things nailed down perfectly.

I'll preface what I'm about to say by observing that I'm really pleased with this week's update and the obvious progression that is apparent. I'm also confident that things will keep improving.

At the moment, I'd agree things are a little too pastel-shaded (though good point Spudkopf about the haze). Not so long ago it was looking over-saturated. With reference to the various photos posted (even bearing Oleg's caveats in mind), and from personal experience of the British countryside there is a certain 'vibrancy' to the greens in summer time that is hard to reproduce - it's all too easy to move into results that are too bright and over-saturated.

I'm looking forward to Oleg presenting us with the final version - judging by this post he seems confident:

I don't have a problem personally with the lavender-shaded fields - I understand the effect they are going for.

Also noticed that the trees seem to be integrated into the rest of the terrain much better now - we're getting there!

Of course but the brain behind it does all the interpretation.
And has to understand what it's seeing.

How many people just rely on postprocessing to get the right colour balance and only get the diff between a bayer sensor and a foveon when held side by side?

In most of the screenshots the woodland is rather sparse.
And the gamma a bit low (for my taste anyhow)

Couple of questions if I may Oleg....

Will the waves move in the direction of the prevailing wind and will house smoke react to the wind too?

I love the densely populated towns you've shown us but I can't understand how it is possible with today's technology to model London in such a way. There are literally hundreds of thousands of homes spread over a huge area....
"Greater London stretched for a twenty-mile radius from Charing Cross".

Will you be making London smaller or less populated as you move away from the centre? Perhaps the suburbs will be a texture only??? Would be nice to know what we can expect.

Thanks

.

.

Do you remember the game "Driver"?
They had a (quite small one) London map too.
And they also wanted to get it right.

They spent 1year and $1.000.000(or was it £?) just to get pictures for the textures of the houses along the road.

I jjust mention this so people understand the dimension of such a task.


So what you say is, energy fighters can't be used against TnB fighters real-life like in IL2?

Ever thought about that your vision of cinematic is not coherent with his?

Strike commander for instance was also cinematic. ;)

[QUOTE=Tree_UK;190135]the game would be cinematic.QUOTE]

In that case Oleg is both right and ready I still have to see one film that has all the colouring just right.
Further more when I’m flying my glider over Europe the sight (distance) is less than what I see in de screenshots.
But what I see I like a lot I'm somewhat of an illustrator and these pics while being rendered look fantastic it would be hard to get as good an result with an artist rendering.
So, Oleg, my hat of to you.
Niels

Just so that people have an idea what my reference is you can have a look at some of my work http://www.dbag.nl/pagina13.php

We see the difference, don't worry Mr. Oleg ... ;)

Nice comment. And right comment. I would add diffent compacts from which most of the shots we ussually see looking in exif of the shot :)

>>Do you remember the game "Driver"?
>>They had a (quite small one) London map too.
>>And they also wanted to get it right.

>>They spent 1year and $1.000.000(or was it £?) just to get pictures for the >>textures of the houses along the road.

>>I jjust mention this so people understand the dimension of such a task.

I don't remember that one Swiss, I'll have to look it up. I agree it is a huge undertaking, even if the technology is capable of rendering such a large number of buildings.

I hope the city boundaries aren't shrunk since I like historical accuracy. I think I'd rather live with texture suburbs than an inaccurate map.

[QUOTE=NLS61;190154]Nice site! :)

No textures only.
The size of London is the same as it was in 1940

Dear Oleg, thanks very much for this update, i appreciate especially the insight on AI dialogues. I would appreciate a lot to have the ability to read subtitles on the lower part of the screen instead of the upper part, in order to still be able to see the world outside. The possibility to have these displayed white on a darkened back (a la EAW, FS) would be much appreciated too.


There are four things obvious to me in this screenshot:

1/I see pink/purple fields that look strange to my eyes. Maybe there are parts of england where they can be seen, but i hope it won't be the full landscape colored like this.

2/Edgerows are not there, there are highway wide roads instead, this does not look right either. If we can't have 3D trees on the edges, at least have green textures there, no grey highways.

3/Reflection on the cockpit (and other places) looks overbright and artificial, makes the whole aircraft look like a model kit with a big flashlight pointing it from a few feets behind the photographer. Is it HDR ?


4/Generally there seems to be many details on the ground, tweaking the bad won't as long or difficult as building the good of the whole scenery has been.

IL2 is my favorite simulator, and BoB will most certainly be too, but let's not repeat the colors problem from the former to the latter, for flight's sake. And please, please provide inside the game a gamma/brightness/color saturation setting, and the ability to turn HDR off.

Looking forward to seeing your next update, have fun with your son this week-end ! :)

Thanks for the quick reply Oleg! Sorry but just to be sure.....

Do you mean there will be no "texture only" areas?
If so then that would be quite an achievment.

Thanks

64 bit supported in a separate EXE
3 monitors was possible. Didn't check it now... probably still works :)

Hmmm! Being Red-Green colour blind I don't know if I'm qualified to comment on this, but I cant see any real pinks and purples. Maybe they've got a touch of Patterson's Curse in their fields?

Yes I mean exatly what you like to know - no simple textures shown the city. No drawn cars by camera from above on the roads, no 2000 year sattelite maps with all its infrastructure drawn like it wasn't in 1940.....

Maybbe we will miss some historical objects, but I think creative users will make it exactly like it was in real life... read my posts above :)

Wow, this is great news Oleg. You guys are incredible.:grin:

1. Agree. This should read our programmer that all the times disagree with me and say me that all doing by this way then we must too.... For this statement I always try to explain that we are not like all... we should be better... :)
Don't worry. It will be tuned.

2... I hate called HDR compression.... But we must have it...
Tuned with HDR and then when you switch off the picture changes too much in colors. So probably toi switch this OFF is not the good idea. But maybe it will be saved in final.

Hi Oleg, thanks for the great update.

Not sure if this has been asked, but please can we have the option to display units in feet or metres? This would be in the speedbar, AI speech, gun convergence etc. In IL2, we are fixed with metres only?

Also, with the speech, it would be great if the term 'angels' was used, as it was in 1940 e.g. "climb to angels 10" = "climb to 10,000 feet"

Cheers

PPanPan

This is all just too good, thanks OlegI'm a bit surprised that no one where you're working has 3 monitors set-up, if it was planned to work on 3. I guess SOW on large monitor would be very nice, but 3 monitors just seems extra lovely.

There will be no sign posts, they were taken down during the war. You will have to ask locals which road takes you back to the airfield.
Maybe this could be a future mod - selecting a message to ask the way and getting an answer from them ....Farmer: 'carry on for 3 miles, then turn left at the crossroads'.

We will need a compass in the car!

Oleg!
How did your son go in his training? :)

Please ask him to go easy on me if he finds me online! ;)


Cheers!

PS. My son (6 yrs old) often sits on my knee as co-pilot when I'm flying!

No! Just a list of pubs between departure point and destination! ;)

"Drive down thar , passed the 'Fiddling Monkey' upto the 'Prince o'wales', carry on for a mile or two t' the 'Rampant Otter', then it's but a mile or two t' the RAF Base!"

He got sick... yesterday. So we didn't fly with him.
I'm at home with him today, its why I'm answering at the moment.
He is sleeping right now.

Yes as I posted earlier, I'd like to know as well?

I read this as next month will be a very important time for us, with a release date announcement for SOW as well...correct?:grin:

Sorry Oleg you beat me to it.

So what is he trainig on and what's his favourite?

1. Should be done. It was in plan and my personal request in the past. Was repeating this request about month or sop ago. Will check later.

2. I gave all the terms in the past. what is used I didn't check yet for all features. I'm busys with overal picture and checking planes and other visible bugs.

...Just to say a word..
I like so much Mr Oleg is so loquacious and inclined to conversation!!!
It seems more relaxed, maybe SOW is really near to come!

Thanks again Oleg for your work and your interacting with us
Keep up!!!:) Great update!

Excellent news Oleg, thank you so much :). Now, it's Saturday, so please stop working soon and have a rest!!

PPanPan

I see a problem if everyone can set the colour to how they want it...we might get some very strange looking user-made skins and objects that won't blend well with the rest of the game. Maybe it is a feature that can wait.

Oleg - I hope your son gets well soon.

Purple and pink tints would not be uncommon in England -- on heaths at least where heather predominates.

Yellow-tinted areas also would not be rare on uncultivated land (gorse), even very lurid yellows (rapeseed) would be seen occasionally on farmland.

dduff

England - crops and hedgerows
 

Indeed, lavender is a crop in some parts of England (particularly Norfolk), though it is something of a niche crop. Not sure how widespread it was in the 1940s. Given the pressure for food crops, I imagine its appeal at the time would have been more limited.
http://www.norfolk-lavender.co.uk/pa...der-fields.php
Flax is another colourful crop.
http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-ima...ax-fields.html
Flax used to be more common in England than it is now.
So, while the bluish/purplish cast of some fields may appear odd, it is perfectly defensible.

The hedgerows, however, are a cucial part of England's landscape, particularly in the south (in the north dry-stone walls are more the rule (http://halfpie.net/article/152/dry-stone-walls)

Post-WW2 farming developments have resulted in the widespread 'grubbing-out' (destruction) of hedgerows, so what you see on GoogleEarth no longer represents the density of what you would have seen in the 1940s.

Being a relatively flat landscape, you don't often get the distant views in south-eastern England that you do in the mountains. One that struck me when I was about four is Farthing Corner just north of Hythe, in Kent. Here's am image I took this July (over forty years later). The role of hedgerows is unmistakeable. All over this part of Kent, the trees on both sides of the road meet overhead creating 'green tunnels' of surpassing beauty.

He like the plane where is following:

cannons,
rockets
bombs
rear gunner to keep his back :)
stable platform

In this case he fly for now Il-10 in Il-2 1946.

However he is not able to land yet. So he prefer to start in air and to finish there as well.

Hope in time he will understand the diffeences in planes and will learn other advantages for the different situations. He need to get experience.

At home I haven't yet PC that to run good FPS in BoB. Say RoF also can't run on my son PC in principle and my notebook - too slow.
I plan to buy for me new PC for home only when BoB will be released.
Same I suggest to all users really. Its why I still don't tell any specs.
Because I'm waiting myself to get it running very good at least at home :).

Just realised that I've never flown the Il10, so I just quickly jumped over to 46 (it was running in the background while I was browsing the forum) and had a look, I totally missed the fact that it was added in 46 and with the later style of cockpit render, I'll now have to take it for a spin (figuratively speaking but maybe literally also) .

Thanks also for the unofficial specs you just let slipp ;)

Thanks for stopping by today Oleg. Your responses are much appreciated.:grin:

I hope some big graphics card manufacturer is reading this...a very generous one I hope! ;-)

Thanks for another great update Oleg. It's always a great treat after a long week at work to see the images reflecting the progress you and your team are making on SoW.

PVT.Roger

On Monday we should compile the version for NVIDIA.
They will make/check separate drivers that to show their new equipment with SoW at exhibition in Moscow in the beginning of November in our showroom. That will be demonstration fro my hands and not for all yet.

Good to see old players/readers/helpers :)

Awesome, will you show us some high-ranged DX 11, AA, All maxed out (if possible :grin:) of that event?

You said there will be seperate EXE for 64 bit support.
Will SoW BoB make use of for example 8 GB Ram?


Bye, Heck

Thanks for clarifications Oleg, quick recovery to son.

About subtitles, can you please have something done so they do not obscure the sky, and user can choose to have them down the screen instead of the upper part ? It is so mouch more immersive in my view when text is in its own window and not over main screen, i usually turn it all off in IL2 but then miss crucial info, so i have to keep 2 lines when flying finn' or german, i'd really rather have those in my lower screen and not where i search for the ennemy !

Oleg, did you seem my comment before about the peripheral arrows? I think they are a great idea, but maybe could look more aesthetic? Like, for the RAF, roundels could be used instead of arrows and for the luftwaffe crosses etc
This way, the icons could be smaller, but also look better ;)

The top position is the best. We tryed other in the past. Amount of lines should be adjustable like in Il-2

We prefer to use only own ideas. Also with further development of the sim just imagine how much then should be different icons of different nations....
The big arrow only when the plane is near you. The size and transparence of arrow depens of the distance to the planes

Oleg, just took the Il10 for a QMB on an airfield, I forgot how the russian gunners tend to crack it when you do things like rolling inverted out of an attack run while trying to avoid the flakpanzers and other flak implacements, however the gunners tend do that a lot when I'm flying, strange though that the Stuka gunners never complain, maybe they are simply scared beyond speach ;)

Landed it first time as well!

AI of gunners in any plane of Il-2 was absolutely the same.
Differences may happens only because of different possible angles of turret rotations and its speed. However the speed as I recall was a feature for differnert electrical drive of turrets in IL-2.

If only DT changet it and forgot about some planes. I don't know it.

If you mean speech of gunner. Yes, some are missed and even not used comparing to original first Il-2. With the changes of AI in time some speeches in Il-2 were forgotten by other than original AI programmer. I told him many times, but it wasn't corrected. Just in several cases for the speeches was correction comparing to original complex and some time random AI speech in Il-2.

Thanks for this great update.

This is a good question. Especially since I am thinking about either 1156 (8GB) or 1366 (6GB) system for my next build. Depends of the CPU and RAM, what will SoW benefit from more.

Can you answer this for us Oleg?

Like this?
:-)

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...14_235436d.jpg
original:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...35436small.jpg

I think yes. I will ask main programmer for sure.

At home I haven't yet PC that to run good FPS in BoB. Say RoF also can't run on my son PC in principle and my notebook - too slow.
I plan to buy for me new PC for home only when BoB will be released.
Same I suggest to all users really. Its why I still don't tell any specs.
Because I'm waiting myself to get it running very good at least at home :).[/QUOTE]

Oleg please, how do you consider my q6600@3.0Ghz?
Is it comparable to your test-bed in office or your home PC?
...what effort is to extort infos about system specs!!!....

hush hush...perhaps he's rising at my bait!....

argh...nothing to to...:-P

Hello Oleg, i'm a "new" fan, but a big fan (screen are impressive and i'am disapointed for wings of prey, and all my hope are in SOW )...
i'm a recent (french) player of il2 1946 and i wait SOW with impatience

I have a suggestion, i hope it's simply to realise or already made for SOW, but if we can add our name and our kill in our plane on-press like IL2-1946 for the logo squadron, it's was fun ;)


and it's was fun if a collector version with a joystick, or toy plane was released too ;)

hi oleg. will there be people in those beautiful vehicles ou have made? and troops on the ground?

Good question. I am also wondering about this.

Really the system of markings even in Il-2 was so complex that never was done before in any game....
In Sow we did even more advanced and even mnore close to historical things.

But with Kill markings ... too many differences, too many locations etc... this means that for each plane we need to set the loacation in 3D model for thes markings and for different types. This would be increadible work from the beginning and in further development of the sim series...

Just one sample to understand... You fly La-7.... in German army online... then you fly Bf109 in British army or in Soviet army....

Hoep you understand that it is simply placement of the texture. This is developmetn of special areas on 3D model code were it should be located with its all varians coming with release and later with the development of the new aircraft, new nations, etc...

It is really not so complex work but too long and great in time of development and research of all various of markings.
Really hard and the result doesn't cost these expences.

You simply change the texture with these kills onboard. In Sow resolutions of textures is higher. They will be visible enough....

Hi Oleg,

Thanks for the regular updates and answers.

Wanted to ask a small question about in game player statistics: Is SoW going to have a pilot logbook, that will keep track of pilots flight hours (online and offline), flown sorties, air/ground kills, gunnery accuracy etc.?

It would be a nice feature and interesting to see how you have improved your flight skills after countless flight hours.

In original plan they was. But for the release - will be just part of these plans. We need at first to animate and set all pilots and gunners. Then we will do in time ground humans
Maybe just some will be set in release. Ground human are unfinished yet. Too small amount of guys was able to work over it in our team. And no possiblility to add more due to limit of funds...
Maybe third party also will help to add a lot of life on the ground. That will be possible in future in our engine and coming in tim,e tools for thirs party. Of course if will not diew doing whzt already is programmed... :):):):)

All these things I keep for answering much later. Bugs that we eliminating now with a limit of time to correct some time ask ask to skip one or other working not well feature. Better to put nothing than working bad - this is my principle in life and work.
So what we will keep in final - later will be anounced.

That is actually a very good idea. How will the size and shape of the arrows be affected by monitor/resolution size?

Oleg, how is the RAF flight kit coming along too? Did you see my posts from last-week or the week-before?

Thankyou as well for taking the time to reply to us; it really is better than any pictures and I mean this in a good way ;)

Oleg, will there be an option to have no text? As a lot of us will understand English and German.

Hello Mr. Maddox,

I'm a long time fan and customer. I wanted to express my respect and gratitude for your work. SOW will surely be a great success.

Should be. Like it was in original Il-2 as well.

Thnks. I hope for this.

S!

Just sprung to my mind. In IL-2 you can edit the file what the HUD displays(on the right), like Power %, flaps, radiator position etc. Can this be customised in SoW too?

Didn't check it. Must be. There is more advenced system of customization in principle. At home I have not SoW after attemp to stole it across internet from my PC.

Then beware of people pretending to work for nVidea...they might be SoW thieves!!
:-):-)

S!

Thank you. I edited power % etc. off my screen as I rely on the gauges ;) I only keep overheat there and some others to keep playability. Sounds good SoW will be customisable as I prefer less stuff on screen and eyes more in cockpit to see what is going on :D

You should write me to old address to know the new email.

I will check next week old one probably last time. Its overloaded with spam and still with the respond to linked to pacific address...

Oleg, with the ground-textures, will they be affected by the weather? It would be a lot for the game to handle, but would be great for dynamic campaigns.

oh, and a few of my mails may be sitting in that inbox, Oleg. Some of them may have more info for you; I can't remember.

Great update Oleg, thanks! :)

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but for me- the main difference between the SOW terrain here and the landscape photos which have been shown in this thread, is that in the SOW shots there seems to be a lot (ie, too much) textural variation going on between each field- basically, from one field to the next, there is a difference in vegetation. In the photos on the other hand, you have quite a bit of uniformity across fields, which is broken up by variations in vegetation in different spots. The SOW terrain looks quite 'busy', while the photos look more placid or relaxed, to put it another way.

That's my only 'criticism' here, if you could call it that. On the positive side, it's great to see really nice resolution in the ground details.

Looking forward to purchase day Oleg- I'm sure you are too! ;)

thanks again for the update :)

Do you mean the changes in rain or in time depending of season of the year with smooth trasition?
No. it is possible to make on a small surface in some shooter or so..
So we wil have one the same looking map for the modelled period.

Later, with other version of the gameplay using this map for other periods of year and war is possible to load other(new, modified) map with changed and corresponding to that season textures, vegetables if is, looking by other way trees, etc.