Yeah, I think they were definitely going for more stylized visuals. Personally I bought the game to show support, but to me it was an arcade game. I didn't really lke it much, but I suppose it wasn't really aiming to be a proper simulator.

It's OK, but not fantastic. It needs stronger colours, darker field boundaries (hedges) and trees that look darker than the fields. To me, CloD terrain looks like a pastel drawing by someone who has never flown over the South of England. Which is probably what it is.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...102_2901-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...6/DSC01756.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...6/DSC01763.jpg

Here we go again.

Ho Hum. :(

Yeah, they do look good, and can be rendered in far greater numbers than CoD without the same performance hit. However, you’ll notice that when you fly past them close to the ground they rotate, so they seem to be flat 2D images (sprites?) that do this to appear to have volume. A small irritant, but still annoying once you notice it.

CoD’s trees appear a lot more realistic, but apparently cannot be rendered in the same number without a huge drop in frame rates. As someone else pointed out, ‘SpeedTree’ seems to be a misnomer. Maybe with next year’s hardware?

CoD really needs:
3-D hegderows, instead of hundreds of random trees spunked across the South East. We pride ourselves on presentation, you know!
Denser forest areas, rather like in RoF.
From altitude, the trees should be darker, too (RoF seems to model this quite well)
Overall, a more natural look, which WoP seems to capture.

+1

Well, Speedtree is originally an addon for 3DS Max and made for high resolution visualization renders (Although I personally prefer to use Vue for landscapes).

Only later did they start plugging it for use in games. I think the main problem with them is the amount of animation and details on individual branches and leafs. RoF doesn´t seem to have any animation on their trees which makes quite some difference.

Trees in RoF do turn with the camera, quite sure they are not flat 2d sprites though, you would definetely notice that. The stuff about whether or not RoF or CoD landscape looks better is highly subjective, most people compare CoD at standard bright summer day time with RoF and even then I think CoD landscape up close looks much more detailed, although I do love RoF for the smoothness and overall atmosphere. Try setting time in CoD to 19.00 or 5.30, looks a lot better I think :P

Well Tony, if those trees are rotating it would explain a lot as to why RoF has more 'efficient' trees than CoD. As you say, they are probably a 2D image.

About trees in CoD and framerates...I don't think it's so bad actually. I play with medium forest, and while there is a drop in frames compared to bare terrain, my machine still copes at over 30 frames per second at treetop level flying over a dense patch of forest.

Now, buildings for me are another thing altogether. At rooftop height over London or Caen, building detail set to very low and medium density, I can maybe manage 15 fps on a good day. Single digits in industrial areas.

I guess the dev-team could make it easier on themselves by adding RoF-trees for dense forests (where rotating trees wounldn't be noticeable), or have some sort of forest tiles, like in IL2. The hedge rows could possibly be solved as low-poly objects? Imagine a long box, rectabgular or even pyramidal in cross section, with a hedge-row picture on each side with some clecer alpha channel use.

CoD looks great, however, at what costs... And where the heck is the propellor?! I dont get it...