Well said!

Well, zaelu, that's the difference between a 2DOF and a 6DOF full geometry cockpit. Maybe you can figure out yourself, which one is easier to render. And even then, you always have an option to increase or decrease level of detail. I don't know what detail level the cockpit is set to - how do you know?


Hopefully the animated crewmen will do their part to stop the dogfighting Bombers as they are common in IL2 - LOL.

Maybe i´m just to easy to convince, but IMO the terrain on the first screenshot looks excellent.
Beside, now we know we will not have "ghost" gunners and copilot on bombers. Long time ago it was said that we would have "ghost" planes for saving resources and because of all the animations required. Now we can see gunners, is a new adition, and only Maddox Games know what else they have in reserve for us.
Thanks for the update.

Fantastic - morning fog! Will make landings and takeoffs good!

Yes, jagged, sorry. OK, I understand. Can we see with AA on?!

Wow, am sooooo exited about the crew moovments. Sounds fantastic!!

barndoor

well, as far as your "criticism" goes, I can say only this - Bob is still unfinished and as Ilya pointed out several times, he has visual settings set somewhere in the middle, even AA is off. Talking of LO FC2 - I was beta tester for LOMAC, so I know the series quite well. LO FC2 has some amazing details, like perfectly readible service labels on the skin, but is this contributing to the overall feeling? I would say no. If you want eyecandy for screenshots, then details you are describing are of course on the top of the list. If you want something else from the sim, than eye candy is somewhere in the middle of the "desireable features". For instance - inertia modeling in the LO FC series is far, far from something beliveable. One small detail - braking on the ground - there is one old A10 sim called A10 Cuba!, which has that feeling of weight coded much better than LO FC. I haven't seen or tried Bob yet, but judging from that Ilya's video with spit in major role the inertia modeling is far the best I've ever seen in general public simulator so far. I think that Oleg and team have chosen the correct set of goals (at least those they are sharing with us) for their sim. For me the feeling of mass (weight of the airplane) and intertia, correct dynamics of bullets, aerodynamics, weather, field of vision and AI are the most important for combat sim of this kind. Ilya and Oleg are showing us the visual parts only, which is nice, I like to watch Friday updates, but they don't reflect the qualities behind. That rests to be seen in the near future.

Luthier, Oleg...

It's looking fantastic. Lighting really adds to everything quite nicely. The landscape is really coming together.

I went back to the old Spit Video released a few months back and noticed how well made the cockpits were and how well detailed and real the lighting looked. It's obvious this sim will take the best IL-2 ever was a multiply by 4 or 5.

Excited to see the crew animations too... Can't wait to fly this beast...

I utterly detest trees done via this method, they look absolutely awful.

Hee hee! Now THAT I can't wait to see.

Amazing update! Some issues with trees (scaling, as leaves seem a bit too big compared to building features in the town shot and the "floaty" patches of green) but we all know we can't have perfect visuals without perfect supercomputers.

In fact, looking at it a bit closer it's not so much that the trees are "floating" per se, so i'd say it's not about the lack of trunks. Trees are there, shadows are there for depth perception and there needs to be some FPS optimization too, so i'd say they are as good as can be.

The one bit that sticks out in my eye is the patch of trees visible near the yoke and left rudder pedal through the cockpit glass. Trees in the distance look great and they probably even have a lower LOD detail model, because when viewed from an angle their difference in height and shape gives a sufficient impression of volume. It's only the ones that are viewed at an almost vertical angle that look a bit weird, because the top of the entire tree patch looks like it's the same height, giving the false impression of a flat/2D surface.
Of course, the trees are still 3D and different in size and their closer distance to the player means they use higher detail LODs, so i'm curious as to why. Maybe the upper layer of tree patches in near range LODs just needs a bit more contrast or "jaggednes" to accentuate the feeling of it being a non-uniform surface.

In any case, just like i always say seeing it in motion will be better.

I like details like the chimney smoke a lot, especially if it can be used as a wind indicator for us to make dead-stick landings in the fields after receiving battle damage. With the improved FM and and the dynamic weather knowing which way the wind is blowing will be crucial, especially when emergency landing a damaged plane.
The buildings look great and the fog near the sea is a very nice touch.
Terrain on the whole looks very good to me, despite the debates about the proper shade of green for English grass.

I think that terrain colour in general just has a lot to do with the amount of ambient light and shadowing and the way they affect color perception and in that sense, i find it sufficiently realistic. I mean, on one hand we have people who like WoP-style shadowing and lighting effects on the landscape and on the other we have people who expect to see the same vibrant shade of green in every screenshot, regardless of surrounding weather and light conditions.
I think the terrain we see in the updates is somewhere in the middle between these two extremes and that enforces my belief that it is in fact realistic. We have shading and light effects without them being overdone.

Finally, the aircaft models look great as always, but what really gets my blood pumping is the cockpits and the animated crew members.
I can't wait to "sit" in one, press every button, flick every switch and watch those needles move on the instruments :grin:

As for the first shot, it just looks like something out of a movie, or a wartime photo album. It looks somewhat majestic, but only because there is no gunfire. If there was gunfire coming from that Spit it would simply be scary, sitting in that glass nose and all :grin:
I agree with what's been said that the glass might seem a bit too transparent, but if you look a bit lower and to the right from the nose gun the reflections are apparent. So, i'm guessing that both the lack of reflections in the rest of the cockpit glass and the not-so-green landscape has to do with the fact that there's some moderate cloud cover. Seems that the amount of ambient light and shadows has a wide and profound effect on how everything is diplayed without being overdone, i like that a lot.

Hi Ilia! Nice sceenshots. I want to ask you about lighting inside cockpit. At the screenshot we see aluminum metal without paint. I think? what Aluminum must reflect much more than paint. So on these sceen's we don't see the difference in reflect paint and aluminum. Is it optimization for FPS or still WIP?