Originally Posted by 150GCT_Veltro (Post 242922)

Still waiting for an Ubi confirmation of my cancelled order.

Meanwhile some nice shoots from Jurassic.

Originally Posted by luthier (Post 242965)

I don't think the channel map is playable as a dogfight map. There's still at least a 10 to 12-minute flight from base to mid-channel where the battle is likely to take place, and with the airfields rather spread out along the coast, and the improved i.e. reduced plane visibility it's quite possible for two groups on full real to fly past each other while a few miles away and not spot the enemy.

I.e. there's no reason to split it off at all. You can fly over the large map just as well. The server can create a mission where only Calais and Dover bases are available, and that pretty much does the same as splitting it off.

Once again - small maps are for mindless FFA. Large map is for meaningful coop. It makes absolutely no sense to split it up into parts since the parts would be completely useless for FFA and still mostly useless for historical wars because they would only limit your possibilities without offering significant performance improvement.

The maps are split into regular "blocks" and you only keep a few blocks in the memory around your current position. The difference memory- or performance-wise when flying over online or offline map is insignificant.

The large map only becomes an issue if you have 128 planes starting at 128 airfields all over the map and you begin to Ctrl-F2 through all of them. Then you'd constantly be loading and unloading blocks into memory.

Originally Posted by Kikuchiyo (Post 242983)

I see. Perhaps some would be happy with a smaller version...say a quarter the distance with a stretch of land at opposing sides. I think what some of the history guys want is something that "feels" more real in regards to the BoB. So say a 5 minute jaunt over water tops, to reach the opposite land, with land only at either end so they can feel anticipation if their engine goes out and they have to glide back to land while hoping they don't get spotted and burned down. Would something like that work as a FFA?

I am just trying to throw reasonable ideas out. When I do FFAs I really don't care too much about it feeling historically accurate.

Thank you for your time Luthier. I am sure you are all busy enough without having to come in and babysit the forums. I look forward to 4/19 here in the US.

Originally Posted by Vevster (Post 242975)

Thanks for the explanation Luthier.

Must add that the manual, at least the english one, hints something different.
when you read it, it sure translates as "don't try to fly online on the main channel map, it's too heavy, performance-wise"

What you are saying is quite different.

Originally Posted by luthier (Post 242990)

That's not what it says.

The quote is "If you are creating an online mission, we highly recommend using an online map. Trying to fly an online mission on a large offline map such as English Channel - 1940 will take up a lot of resources and may lead to sluggish performance on slower machines."

The manual is geared towards newer players.

I still remember the days of the original IL-2, and I guess all the way to Pacific Fighters, when we'd get frantic reports from players who created single- or multiplayer missions that ran at 0 FPS, and upon review they were found to have thousands of tanks and trucks and generally an insane number of objects.

We are trying to prevent that from happening here.

I know that player-run online wars were one of the main reason Il-2 stayed popular over the years, so we'd be insane not to want that to continue with Cliffs of Dover.

We simply had no resources to create additional larger-sized maps by ourselves, and it's not like we have a lot of historical options anyway. It'd be great to have a larger land-based map where you could have a moving front line, but we cannot think of a region to base it on considering our existing plane set.

Originally Posted by Dano (Post 242985)

He just stated why there is no point in making a smaller map in the post you quoted.