I did understand Olegs reply, and i understand some of the pics i posted are not 100% the right colours but they are alot closer to what i see everyday.

Now if people think the colours in Olegs shots are closer to the colours of southern England than the ones i posted, thats fine with me... maybe they can find one real picture that matches that mix of colours and looks like Olegs screen shot, and then post it here.

We used photos from the air and space for the august-september time of the year exactly for modeling our set of textures.

They are not exact textures. But using as a reference professional photos, accessble info for locations of vegetables, rural zones, etc

Yes it is isn't exactly satellite map... but we should model 1940...
Direct satellite maps would be good for modern sims... however they should too much reworked in term to clean from all the objects, like cars on the roads, etc. Also they should be reworked in colors, contrast, etc because from the space they are looking not like on the ground or even not like from 10 km altitude.

So.. we really doing better than some offers.

S!

Used the mail ;) How is ground modelled in SoW? As in many books pilots complain that when a grass field was used a lot it became dusty and during rain got soft and muddy. And are the grass fields smoother than in IL-2?

Oleg already answered it, but I would like to add this: I tried BOBII and didn't like the roundels at all. Yes, true they are more aesthetic. But I found it took me everytime a split second too long to identify if the roundel was british or german. Also, they give no info about distance if I remember correctly, like Oleg's arrows always have. In a combat situation I thought although they looked nice on screen, they were not very practicable.

The "3D" arrow cone in CFS3 was nice in the sense that it gave you a good hint on the relative angle enemy vs you, but it was always only activated for one enemy at a time (the selected enemy) and was ALWAYS in the dead middle of your screen -- an incredible stupid decision if you ask me.

Ideally I would like a combination of both...Olegs arrows and super quick identification with distance hints work just great, add to that maybe a 3D version of one of those arrows for the selected enemy giving you relative angle.

I don't know, just thinking loud here. :-)

Ok, I'm a bit of a Hardware Neanderthal, what should I have in my new system? the new ATI card and 3 monitors looks impressive, that's a must .. maybe even a 4th monitor for my 6 o’clock??:confused:

8G ram I assume and 64 OS?

Any help

S!

I think the arrows work fine as we are "conditioned" in IL-2 to them. And easy to see blue or red as same is also in IL-2. Maybe you could have an option to just leave enemy arrows and discard own side etc.

Heres a modern day image from the same area, around Deal in Kent.

There's an awfull lot of variation in the vegetation here and this is only a few square miles.

http://i822.photobucket.com/albums/z...e/SoW/kent.jpg

Coulours are always gonna be open to artistic interpretation.

Agreed, the colours(and maybe not enough hedgrows) are the only thing that i think are not quite on the money, everything else looks great.
The shapes and textures of the fields looks spot on.

You didn't understand my answer.

I will explain by a bit other way in shotest way.

1. The purpose of the shots was to show sharpnes of the ground image from altitude and on great distances.

2. Your posted photos are not like the human eye see it in real time

3. I answered you that the colors are not final.

For all:
Because we are fighting with HDR technology that damages some time real colors we tune the texture colors already long time. And now this work is close to final, but need to be tuned exact tint and saturation of textures color - one for all

HDR in its way how it is used by all (compression) - great mistake of someone...
We will use it minimal... close to zero. Because it is impossible already to remove. Just in cockpit it gives some advantage. But overal - it is global mistake of all developers. Probably main world developers understood it already too and tuned it to minimal.

I think many photographers will confirm my thought if the speech is about realistic lifelike photos and not about toxic colors that someone think is cool... (some time really cool if it is the art using this toxic colors especially :))

S!

But you can adjust some of the colors in your GFX card control panel if needed to get a color suiting you, regarding the pics and terrain color discussion.. I use that if I want more color or less of it. I think the screenies really depend on how the system is adjusted etc. And with Final we will finally see it :D

Thanks again Oleg, i know the colours will be tweaked until release and i hope you can get the closest colours to real as you can while fighting the tec problems.
Like i say...everything thing else is looking very good and i can see the improvement in detail even from last weeks shots.

Buy this way you will adjust common colors but not the color of the plane corresponding to the ground suface.

So this is just possible way of small adjustment on user side but not the different details of overal image by different way.

Hello Oleg, thanks for taking the time to answer so many questions.

It seems that we really are in the home straight leading up to release, with decisions being made on cut-off of features - ie included features will be tweaked in the time remaining, while features which are buggy or require more work are held back for later release.

Have all decisions been made yet on everything that will be included BOB? If so what percent would you say of what the engine is capable of will we see in first release?

Thanks.

Oleg, I too, flew over England this year and Furbs' shot is an accurate representation of the colours of the English landscape. I am not trying to be rude, but have you flown over England? I think, perhaps, we may be able to judge the best. Obviously as you say a camera won't give a 100% accurate representation, but from experience I think those of us who live in the country can give a good idea of how it looked.
The colours currently shown for SoW suggest a spring-look, where the fields are quite a lush green. In the summer of 1940, it was one of the hottest summers' on record, and the fields would have had a burnished look.
I do understand your theories of colour though; it will differen between each PC, but this is just my observation ;)



Winny, there weren't rape-fields in England in 1940. I know you weren't saying there are, but I'm just pointing it out. It's interesting to compare a modern-day picture with one from 1940.

Hello Oleg, thanks for this awesome update!

It might be too early to ask, but will multiplayer be handled in game or externally using a program like Hyperlobby?

Yes I was in England say about 20 times and have a lot of my own photos, including from the air that I did myself.

I will soon tell it. We integrating interface now. But its not a time to anounce. We are doing by reqest of publisher.
Anyway there will be still the possibility to integrate to another systems by creative users and third party.

Current limit is 128 players.
It will be finally decided later to cut the amount for the beginning or keep 128. Will let you all later.

That sounds so awesome.

Having troops running around on the airport gives so much immerson.
Please don't hold that part back for the first addon. :)

Oleg, one question, i don't know if it was already answered, will be in SOW a more complex movie player? i mean, we can go back, fast forward, pause, step by step ?

Troops actions are not planned yet. Just some amount of animated people miltary and civil.

Maybe later in time

No. But there is completely new possibilities comparing to Il-2

I remeber a particlarly hot period in '74 or '75 when I was on holidays in the UK.

The one thing that stuck me was the hedgerows.
And the speed at which a lot of the fields had turned yellow.

And the haze

Happy to know HDR will be toned to a minimum.
Perhaps I'm old fashioned that way but it looks too gimmicky.

Hopefully we'll get some gear in the future that can record 50 or a 100 stops and we'll see HDR for what it, is a stopgap solution.

True but if you then imagine all the yellow-y fields to be more like the surrounding ones then the SoW image starts to make more sense.

The problem is that all of the textures have to work together A/C, ground, water etc. The devs are recreating the world thier way. It has to be coherent as a whole, taking into account the average PC's capabilities.

For me WoP was getting close to photo realism in places (hell, I have screen grabs from the PS3 BoP that look so close to reality it's scary!) and I have no doubt that Sow will look far better than WoP.

Truth is no-one on here knows what it actually looked like flying next to a hurricane over England in 1940, it's all subjective because the colour film of the time was not 'correct' colour wise and the rest of it is all black and white.
There has to be some level of interpretation allowed to the developers that makes it all 'fit'

A question about ships en submarines: Will there come oil slicks on the water when a ship or submarine is hit?
Have a nice weekend.

Stop for today.
 

I need some time to spend for my family.
So... its a lst post today. Sorry.
And I told already too much... that shouldn't really yet :)

have a great weekend Oleg and thank you for your answers

:grin:

Thank you Oleg for all your time spent with us, your answers are really interesting. I'm sure it will be the greatest game ever.

Cheers,
Insuber

Essential: We must have a farmer riding on his bike, and he has to fall off it (that will be the damage model) when we fly over him at 10 metres height. Please.

:-)

That is excellent news. Any clues on who the publisher is, or better - is it at least someone else than UbiSoft? :)

Few questions about the MP:

1. Will there be an option to first load some custom made skins on the server, and then force players (server setting) to first download them before hitting fly or even joining the server. I am asking this because some time when many people load their skins all you see is blank skinned planes flying all over the place.
   
2. Also, I asked this once before - would it be possible (for servers with external views on) to disable the option to browse through enemy planes? More important - to prevent from seeing which type of planes is the opposite side flying (in IL2 this command was 'S')?
   
3. How is kill crediting implemented? Will we have shared kills and if so in which way will server determine when it is a shared kill and when it isn't? What about human manned gunners (if I remember correctly, humans will be able to join a human piloted bomber on dog fight servers)?
   
4. And last but not least - will there be an option to limit which countries or air forces can be selected per side? This would greatly help admins of the servers which try to simulate a certain scenario or battle - servers that are historically oriented (this goes for question #1 as well).

Thank You for your time.

Good idea.. Can we have frighten-able herds of cows too?

Great shots Oleg, thanks. Did you ever think back in 2001 that people would still be playing il2 10 years later? Or that it would remain current so long?

Ooohh and flights of birds so you can't fly too close to nesting area's for fear of hitting some and crashing:o:o

Isn't it time for some real announcements soon, like system specs or release date?

Btw the shots are looking great ;)

And he has to shake his fist angrily as we zoom away!!

And when we bail out some pitchfork wielding farmers should come and surround us as we struggle out of a hayrick or something...

..So we got a publisher!!! Great news:-P

really awesome update :) thanks a lot!

Roads / railroads in terrain
 

Hi Oleg, thank you for posting both updates and answers.

As far as I can see, the current ground texture system uses a network of borderlines that look organic but repeat fairly often over the terrain. The area within one set of borderlines is then filled with an appropriate texture (golf course / field a / field b / field c / farm / forest / village / city / industry ) and with the appropriate models (vegetation, buildings etc). Then the borders themselves are applied, these being hedges, paths, roads etc. For a quasi procedural texture system, I believe this is one of the best solutions available, and your results look overall very nice. However, the system does not look too good when such a field is cut by a railroad. Screenshot No. 3 illustrates my point. The REAL geometry (railroad lines, big highways) does fit badly into the texture when compared to the basic borderlines. The only solution I can imagine would be to treat such a road / railway line as yet another borderline, and apply different textures to the different segments that have been divided by this geometry. It would not be perfect, but it could be coded, and it would make these roads and railways fit better into the landskape, making them both blend better into it and be more visible in that they change the landscape around them.
The mockup picture below illustrates my point.
Flutter
http://www.lange-aviation.com/tmp/gndtex.jpg

It was really great to hang out with you this morning, Oleg. Thanks for inviting us to your home!

That's excellent then!
Did you fly over in summer? There can be a vast difference in the colours over a prolonged period of 'intense' heat (if intense can be used for England :D )

Have a great weekend.

Good point Winny as well.

Nice observation! And a good idea for solving the problem if I may say.

Many thanks for all your answers Oleg. It was great to spend part of the saturday with you.
And also many thanks for your compliments on my art.

I'm gittin' so as I can' stan' da wait!!!!!

Yes, great news, but I found something that was possibly disturbing to a degree. Oleg said that they were integrating the MP at the request of the publisher (read his post to see exactly what he said). So here is my concern:

In another game where my gaming clan ran several servers, a fee from EA was passed along in the monthly charge for operating the server. It was simply a way for EA to get residual income and the fee was high enough to keep a lot of groups from running their own server. As a clan we operated on donations only but several times some of us had to kick in personal money to keep the servers up for the next month.

What did we get for the monthly fee? Nothing from EA that was positive.

I hated the way EA implemented the fee. It made running servers considerably more expensive, lead to compatibility problems, and actually ended up retarding the growth of the game online.

I am no longer in the business of running servers for a gaming group so maybe my information is a few years old. Things may have changed OR maybe this has become the accepted practice by publishers.

So if there is a fee (and I don't know if there will be one or not so don't flame me) I hope there is at least some "value added" benefit from the fee besides lining the publisher's pocket. I don't mind paying as long as I am getting something in return.

Splitter

OMG. Hopefully it's not the DRM stuff they are including.

Everytime I am away from the thread you are posting! I have such terrible luck. ;)

128 players is a lot :) however in several years time, the increase in internet development and with your plans for theatre and genre expansion I would like to ask if this is a fixed limit or possible to increase? If a Tank or Sub/Ship sim was realised and could be integrated then there would undoubtedly be far more players......may want to cluster those servers :cool: I'm probably getting way, way ahead of myself here :eek:

I have a separate question too. Is the speed of sound going to be implemented? In IL2 you drop a bomb from, say 5000ft, when the bomb goes off you hear the explosion as you see it. The explosion sound would be delayed. I have faith in your eye for detail Oleg :D

The updates are great, thank you for talking to us.

S!

I think the sounds are better than in IL-2. I read the speed of sound is modelled so you should not hear instant boom if a bomb explodes far from you, Osprey.

About 128 players. That is a nice figure. It is hard to get a lot of ppl to get a good gameplay. Same is seen in EVE Online when there is like 200-700 players shooting at eachother in a fleet fight. There is lag and even sometimes server nodes crash. But the server has at peaks over 50.000 players online..on ONE and only server.

Hello Oleg,

Maybe my suggestion has been already mentionned, but I d like that Bob includes a statitics module with graphical interface, giving you statistics with detailled information, at the end of your mission, to help you to evaluate.

Thus, for the same mission (coop or dogfight), we ll be able to know if we improve our accuracy of shooting, our flight strategy in dogfight (position etc).

In short, this statistics module will be very useful to progress and would help you to know your rank in the grading of the pilots of Bob

Thanks for reading me Oleg

And thanks for the update

I really like your edit Ailantd. Even though this latest batch of shots is getting close to what I had hoped for in my dreams I also think that there is to much blue and violet like you say (and you show that with your edit in a great way - an image says more than a thousand words). As I'm already nit picking I also think that the landscape also feels a bit "over exposed". Go down 1/3 EV maybe? ;)

Oleg - please take our comments with a grain of salt as I really like the improvements you have made - and you have said many times that the textures and lighting is not final so...

Maybe the textures will be "open for modding" so we can download "Aliantd Greener Fields mod 0.1" a few weeks after the release? That would be a great way to handle it as there are so many different opinions here :)

Thanks again for taking the time to answer so many questions here! /Mazex

Good information, thanks.

Interesting.

On one hand, it seems that the multiplayer interface is decided by the publisher. I'm just theorizing here but i guess it will probably be integrated with a copy protection method and to be honest, i dislike mandatory online requirements unless they are a "once in a lifetime" online activation, or i get something worthy in return that enhances the gameplay experience. I want to be able to play a game i paid for whenever i want, not whenever my ISP or some cables allow me to.
On the other hand, since it will be possible to add 3rd party tools for online server browsing, maybe i'm totally mistaken (hopefully) and things are not that hard-coded. Maybe it's not DRM and multiplayer rolled into one, but just an integrated lobby browser for multiplayer, which would be fine.


The most positive note of course in all the above is the player limit. Having 128 players with that level of detail will be an immense experience :grin:

As long as Punkbuster aren't involved. Awful awful software and hideous support and help from the vendors. You can have a legal game etc and still get problems because of innocuous programs which are nothing to do with the game.

Thanks Oleg/Winny for your comments #page 31.


Cheers,
Ekar

Yes this is a personal perception for each of us. One in ten males have some form of color blindness. Men that are not color blind, see colors differently than the man standing next to him. Woman see colors much more accurately then do men, and women amongst themselves, also see colors differently. So you see the problems associated with true color interpretation, to each is different, even drastically so. I am red/green color blind, and am restricted to day light hours only piloting.:grin:

OH sure get your question answered then tell him to take off:!:

Great update and answers Oleg. Keep it up :)

In principle I think I agree with you, though to be honest the online activation etc that has been put into titles from DCS and Rise of Flight havent really been too bad IMHO.

Cheers!

Excellent point. It sure caught my eye as well. Although I'm not totally ok with your solution yet it probably is a very good suggestion to improve upon. For example make a special railway border with hedges etc. - if it is wide enough it would look organic if the smaller "over-cut" vector of the field is not too small compared to it's total size.

Actually, i don't have either one of those titles because of their activation methods and i haven't regretted it yet. If it takes 5 years of waiting before i can fly a sim the way i want to i'm perfectly content with it, assuming it hasn't been surpassed, i totally lose interest in it and end up not ever buying it by that point. I guess the effect on sales is obvious :grin:

There are a lot of arguments pro and con, but in the end when viewing entertainment software purely as a product and not something more (which is what the distributors do), i think we're entitled as users to apply the same criteria of judgement and kick up a storm if we're not getting value for money, added value to compensate for drawbacks of certain features or, as is more often the case, if the product's value is artificially diminished by features clumsily tacked on at the publisher's demand, long after the original coding work is done and usually with little thought on how it will affect the software's usability.

I think Oleg's mentality on the issue is pretty close to what most of the users agree with, as evidenced by one of his more recent interviews on SimHQ, but sadly these issues are usually a publisher decision. For now, i'm just being happy about the progress of SoW. If someone outside Oleg's team manages to screw things up for us it will really be a pity, both for us and for the developer team as sales do tend to suffer when the potential customer runs the risk of being locked out of a perfectly legally purchased piece of software. ;)

I'd hate to turn a perfectly good thread into a DRM flamefest (not implying anything about you, it just tends to happen a lot when things like that are mentioned), so i'll stop here. However, it's an issue that should be discussed somewhat as we near the release to get a feeling of the community's thoughts on the matter and avoid being faced with a "done deal, take it or leave it" scenario we might not agree with. Maybe a separate thread in free-form discussion to give us the main trends on what people think, so that we could then compile them into a poll would be a good idea.

I can't believe that after all those years Il-2 is on market there's still someone out there who hasn't seen that arrows yet.

About landscape, we'll have the same textures for both France and England?

God I hope Oleg doesn't mess it up and follows RoF path. This was a terrible mistake and besides myself, I know a lot of people that skipped that game until the DRM was brought down with one of the patches. Having to pay for additional planes is also a massive PITA.

DCS used irritating Starforce with limited activations, but if I have to choose between the two - I would go with DCS.

I play RoF and the protection is no problem at all.

Since the update to 1.12 or 1.13. you can play offline without internet connection. So i don´t know why people have a problem, with software developers, which only try to protect their intellectual property.

wake up buddy!

the time without any protection is over!

Am I blind? Please can someone tell me what's the difference between those two pictures?

S!

Really can not dislike RoF protection, zero inconvenience for me and there is the offline option as well now. Best is I do not need the DVD to be in the drive while I play so can keep it safe on the shelf.

@Foo'Bar: Die Farben der durch die Eisenbahn geteilten Felder wurden geändert. Das Problem ist das sich die Textur neben den Gleisen nicht ändert, momentan könnte man meinen die Gleise befinden sich auf Stelzen so dass der Bauer ohne Probleme unter ihnen mit seinem landwirtschaftlichen Gerät durchkommt, dabei stellen Gleise normalerweise ein großes Hindernis dar.

(Habs mal auf Deutsch geschrieben, mein Englisch ist für solche Fälle einfach zu schlecht)

The colors are a little different, but I don't see much difference.

m( ok, now I see some little difference. Thanks for helping me, mates :) But to be honest, without help it hadn't sprung to my eyes.

Perhaps I am blind.

Hi Oleg:

Firstly I'm one of the biggest fans of the IL-2 series your good buddy Tree can vouch for that Ha ha ha! My handle is Hackl over in Simhq. Please look at this. Maybe you can make it more clear why this terrain in this weeks update looks the way it does.


http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...3116077/5.html

Sorry if i'm going to broke some rules, but considering that RoF and SoW will be probably our toys for a while, i think we can't avoid this....

RoF has been released the last year, SoW will be probably released in the next one. As customer, i would like have a landscape at least with the same quality of RoF.

SoW is still WIP, but actually seems to be clear to me that the "critical point" of this sim is first of all the landscape (textures).

However, here we go.
http://www.150gct.it/users/150GCT_Ve..._39_resize.jpg

I'm sure it will Veltro..I'm just confused over this weeks updates. I can't see SOW coming out with a terrain witch is posted up this week. I'm sure it will be totally different when released that's why I posted the link to simhq. Everyone over there are wondering the same thing.

+1, thank for the link.

Oleg has promised that SOW will have far better looking terrain than WOP/BOP, I know we are not seeing anything like that yet but im in agreement with most on here that Oleg must be holding back showing us until final release.

I know that this is very important to you and a few others. As for myself I could'nt care less, its all about game play for me. Heck I would be happy if the terrain looked the same as in 1946, and that I could enjoy smooth game play with all of the new features in SOW.:grin:

I've been following the SimHQ thread - have to say that I actually prefer how the terrain is looking in this week's update compared to the 'Spitfire from the Heinkel cockpit' pic.

For me the terrain in that shot looks over-saturated and 'cartoony' in comparison. The trees aren't integrated as well either.

I'm not saying that the current shots are perfect, but I see a process of improvement in how things are developing. While being too pastel-coloured, this week's shots are closer to real, photo-like colour balance than any I've seen so far.

(especially pic 2 - the Hurricane at medium altitude - when I first viewed it in a web browser on 1680x1050 screen it looked very close to photographic and I was very impressed. Viewed more closely at full-scale the pastel-tones become more apparent, but I really think that things are moving in the right direction)

I say the same Tree.

I have a question about DRM.

I've been away from PC gaming for about 7 years and I was wondering what's so bad about the DRM in DCS and RoF? What's so wrong with it that it's actually putting people off buying the software?

I'm not trying to start a big DRM argument or anything I'm genuinely curious.

SlipBall you nailed it … some one give this man a Cigar.

Why worry!
 

This is Oleg we are dealing with, do you seriusly think he would release a sim that he was less than 100 procent happy with? "I can do better than this but let them have it now!"?

Think not!

The real danger is that he might never be happy!

Regards

Viking

I made 2 changes 2 the pictures from the updates.
the first one changes a couple of colours (I'm not saying my version is better than the original).
the second one deletes almost all text and arrows . I also changed the botoms of some clouds a bit.
:grin:

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/6...3201703bmp.jpg

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6...1014234733.jpg

maybe the pictures are a bit too large...

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6...4234733.th.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/6...1703bmp.th.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I think half the problem here is the use of modern day tractor tramlines in the fields, which look odd when they are broken up by something like a railway line.

I'm from a farming background and at the risk of sounding like a stuck record:

1. The evenly spaced tractor tramlines that are apparent in these shots would definitely not have been seen - these are for the efficient application of fertiliser and sprays on a large scale with 15-30 meter booms. This technology has only been around since the 80s really.

2. Baled hay and straw would largely not have been seen, especially round bales. Loose hay/straw stacks and wheat stooks were the feature of the day.

3. Lines of straw in fields would only come later with the introduction of mobile combined harvesters which had only just been introduced to the states.

I haven't seen any evidence of the last 2 yet but maybe the textures are targeting the pre-harvest time when cereal crops are still maturing.

Now I agree, in the big scheme of things this is not an issue but it would have been nice to get it right when the textures were being created. I did point it out ages ago. In the Memphis Belle movie the modern day crop lines are a dead give away.

Standing cereal crops should be an even texture with no parallel tractor lines - these came much later as agriculture became more intensive. These simple textures would have been far easier to produce.

Also, at that time Linseed was grown (blue fields) but oilseed rape is a recent introduction (bright yellow fields). Kent was also full of orchards which have largely been uprooted now.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...9&d=1287325120

you loock whit atenction the direction of smoke hause smoke.........
is perfect direction not wind interference. (my personal translation)
Attachment 3700
look at the direction of the smoke houses ...... perfect.
There is no wind interference.(google translation)


watched the direction of the smoke of the houses ...... is perfect. Not c' it is no interference of the wind.(yahoo Bable fish translation).

what is english correct?

Those people who are comparing it to WOP/BOP have to remember that both of those games use maps that are the size of postage stamps. In comparison, SOW's map goes from the north of France, to the midway point of England, with each town and city being rendered by hand. The size comparison alone means that not every little "texture border" is going to be perfect. You're going to have some railways crossing fields and such that are not going to look right, and you're probably going to have some field textures extending under houses, etc.

Another thing to remember is that WOP/BOP cheats when it comes to graphics. It's really heavy handed when it comes to filters and different effects, which overall makes the terrain look more "natural in-game" to the user, but not realistic.

Further more, what you are seeing when you take a picture with your camera and what you see posted on the net from people flying over is not an accurate representation of what real colour is. You need an expensive camera with a RAW output, then tweak it's colour levels in Photoshop before you ever get close to real/actual colours and lighting.

People who are posting pictures of modern england have to remember that much has changed since then. Air quality, weather patterns, field sizes, and even crops. Today farmers are all using Monsanto type crops that actually look different colour wise to their 1940's counterparts. Back then they were using heritage seeds, the real stuff. My father can tell the difference between crop colour now and 30 years ago, how about adding another 40 years to that?

All these things together make SOW (WORK IN PROGRESS SHOTS) look much different to what you see in WOP/BOP and what you see when your jet is coming in for a landing at Heathrow.

Oleg has said that he has flown in over England something like 20 times in the past while, plus he is a professional photographer (or at least is on a professional level). I'm sure he's much more qualified to tell you what will look right and what won't.

I'm not a fanboy, just someone getting tired of every 3rd post in these threads being about the same thing, when Oleg has said a hundred times that it's WIP and being changed all the time.

I noticed the lack of wind in that screenshot too. I hope wind, turbulence etc. are still within scope of the initial release.

+1 Absolutely spot-on analysis!

The only bright yellow crop in those times was in fact mustard.
This is why I get tired of hearing the "I was out on my mountain-bike..."-type threads that keep coming up.
It's as Sutts says. Agricultural practice has changed drastically since 1940 and the landscape has drastically altered too, both in topography and colours. I used to do some farm work in my school holidays, back before haystacks were made out of bales, when the principal tool was a pitchfork. The horse was the main source of horsepower, for ploughing and carting.
Just a further example: the elm tree. This easily-recognised tree was an essential part of the English rural skyline until they were all cut down to prevent the spread of Dutch Elm disease in the 1980s. Now they are all gone.

Who said anything about no protection at all?

I am just saying, and many people will and do agree with me - that what RoF had at the beginning was a mistake. And the fact you have to pay for every additional plane? Thats just rubbish.

A bad decision like this can kill the sales. Just like it was with the last Silent Hunter. Fortunately for RoF players, they came to their senses and now the game can be played offline. I won't even go into 'the release without the dedicated server debacle'...

Google is the best, but not perfect. "Look at the direction of the house smoke..." is right.

Try this site...it lets you hear what you wrote too!

http://webtranslation.paralink.com/

SoW may be making compromises because of it's much greater overall complexity but the fact remains that from a medium altitude, landscape visuals that we've so far haven't surpassed WoP. Ground level - no comparison, SoW wins hands down. But I think Oleg's dismissive remarks about WoP landscape in the past have raised expectations and we expect SoW's landscape to be better than SoW in all respects.

SoW landscape is still WIP and we've been told it's already been improved over what we've seen so I'm looking forward to these improvements.

BTW, my comparison of the two isn't based on filters in WoP which I'm not a fan of. WoP just seems to have better placement and density of trees and they integrate with the ground better.

If it looks natural, how can it be unrealistic? ;) Now I agree that WoP uses some very overdone filters and also some simple "cheats" like the secondary lightsource opposite of the sun (works great to give objects more depth on the unlit side even though it's not realistic at all). On the other hand computer graphics has always been about "smoke and mirrors" in the sense that the standard shading procedures are not based on real life, but rather happen to look nice.

That's certainly true, but still the subjective impression about what matches people's idea of real life scenery is what counts in the end. I do think that overall much WoP is closer to this real life impression than the SoW images posted this week. At the same time some important aspects of landscape rendering are already way better here.

Personally I'm not too worried. I guess people are simply irritated that the SoW updates don't show constant improvements in every area; it's obvious that the team is still experimenting with many aspects. Most screens released so far focus on certain aspects, and many people fail to see this (usually ignoring the shown features and commenting on something else).

So far we have not seen a single screenshot that combines the best aspects shown in individual screens.

The smoke from the houses is rising straight up. (this would be the best way to say it)

It's irrelevant though because you don't know what the weather conditions are set to in that picture. It maybe that it is just not windy. You could only say this was incorrect if you knew what the actual wind speed was.

have a look at this vid, now it isnt great quailty and of course the colours might not be 100% true, but they show much closer what i see with my own eyes everyday than the screens from this weeks update.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...3917701546539# (fast forward to 20 mins)

Not a blue field in sight.:)

Very interesting and informative video : this is exactly what I want to see in the sim (1).




(1) to the fanboys, again, I'm not asking here a perfect photorealistic rendering of the reality in the sim (I know it's not technically possible with our PC's), but a good choice of the color palette for the described area. Basically, I want to see the green of England.




P.S. Is the above film available/buyable somewhere in good quality ?
Is this a doc from the BBC ?

What you need is a scenery simulator.

SoW BoB wont be for you in this case .

Alpha, i will say it once more, ALL im talking about is the colours.
everything else ive seen from SOW looks great, and im sure it will be great.

I think you misappropriated some facts.

Sure you have to pay in RoF for every single plane, BUT first of all, in RoF every plane has his own individual physics and progressive flight engines. In IL2 the difference between the planes are only atttributes. You could not compare apples to oranges.

Sure it is better to pay nothing, than a few bugs, but if the quality is OK, i will pay for DC.

Agree about the tree placement in WOP - it's one of the main elements in producing a realistic effect.

I had a look at some WOP screenshots again today - and while overall I think it does currently have the edge, I don't think the gap is that big - really, with some more incremental shifts I can see SOW getting there.

(that's without mentioning the filtering and other issues where SOW already is ahead)

This all does come down to the colour palette issue - I really do think that people will be surprised at just how much things will come together when they get that tweaked. Just take it as a given. They'll sort it.

Notice also that hedgerows are turned off in the current screens. Also haven't seen waves on the shoreline yet. It's Work in Progress - it'll be sorted.

"What you need is a scenery simulator."

You obviously missed my "fayboy post-scriptum".

I know my English is far from being perfect, but I think it's nevertheless easy to understand that I'm not asking for a perfect photorealistic rendering (which, I know, is still not possible with the current personal computers), but just for a correct color palette for the described area (here, England), what has nothing to do with the technical capacities of our pc's.

I wonder what can be made of this comment,how far down the line would they have to be to get video card makers involved.

Dear Oleg maddox if simulator SoW not have the wind is negative.
wind is a important physic factor.
EXAMPLE direction of wind.
GLIDER airplane not fly if not have Wind.
Wind cold or wind hot.
http://www.soaringwear.com/uploadz/0.../ba8-Max34.jpg
glider airplane.
http://i87.servimg.com/u/f87/12/97/12/97/2009_059.jpg
instrument meteo for take direction and intensity of wind.

I think the same too. It's just seems people worry so much about anything they might not like, to the point of completely missing other things that are in fact very well done ;)