Friday 2010-06-17 Dev. update and Discussion Thread
 

Trees in cities are currently turned off to test final buildings placement - rest assured our cities will be green for release!

The trees are still being improved, it's not the final version. As I told earlier – we will tune everything in every detail till end of the project…and then will improve for the next project :)

So don’t worry about some graphic and colors/lighting glitches that somebody may see on these screenshots.

Water (separate image from programmer’s PC) – is one of the various types in testing. The coastal and shelf (underwater) textures are not present on the shot (in progress).

Additional
 

Some more

nice!

citys look top notch, water looks just beutifull (maybe a crash in the water for next week, please :p ), and hurris also do look lovely targets for ze 109!

congrats Oleg!

I've got just one thing to say and that is WOW:shock:

Amazing shots Oleg!
I showed the first picture to a dear colleague of mine and he asked me if I took that photo ;)

If you ever think of releasing a "Collectors Edition" or whatever I would gladly pay ~150$!

Regards
Simon

Pavel Manchenko
 

This is more then life!

you meant "SOW" right ? :lol:

Great shots Oleg ! I wasn't worried about the look of the ground... and I was right ! just awesome !

with textures under it, water will look great too...

you've made my day !

Oleg, great shots; love the water and the hurricane! :D

Regarding the landscape, the way to make it look realistic is to have actual hedges on either side of the roads (except maybe in the cities) to give a realistic view of the landscape. There appear to be some hedges, but every flight-sim on the market makes the mistake of only using tress to simulate the environment. Whilst this looks good, it lacks the realism.

Look at any photograph from the 1940 period of an aircraft in the air, and you will see that the fields look at though they have 3-d borders :D

Keep up the good work!

EDIT-and by the way, there were no rape-fields in 1940 (unless an innocent women walked onto a farm) so I don't think there should be any yellow fields.
Are these field textures showing the quality they will be in the final release?

Bravo Sir, Bravo. The cities and landscape are excellent can't wait to see with trees in the city.

Very impressive Oleg, The water actually looks................wet lol

Cheers for the updates.

it must be early yet
 

I can't believe I'm on the second page of today's update! :D So much for frivolity.
Oleg, things seem to be coming along nicely. I am happy to see that there are options regarding weather condition in the FMB. Thanks to you and the team for the effort in trying to post regular update screen shots. It's a great boost to look forward to and see these regular updates. It also makes the waiting just a bit more tolerable (and keeps your Sow_BoB junkies off methadone!)
Flyby out

Too late ;)

There seems to be quite a queue :D

LOl .ed , I bet ya av bin pushing the refresh button all day.

Looking great, slightly concerned at the lack of any elevation in any ground shots though.

City picture with three hurry s is Great ... cant wait the game:-P

Oh my God Oleg , that looks amazing !! I think all game developers would benefit of being good photographers in the same time ;-)

And yes, me too I would gladly pay 150€ for collector's edition - with a good manual and maybe reproduction of historical flight map inside ( BoBII did something like that)

Question:

I absolutely loved when you introduced morning fog in IL2 -- that was amazing back in the time. With morning fog hanging in river valleys and such. Lovely !
Will you do that in BoB SoW ? (guess you will hehe) -- and do you have screenshot ? :-)

Thanks a lot and keep it up !!

There are elevations... and they are seen on the shots, however shown places where they are too small. Look on the shot with the Hurry over water.

PS. For elevations we use satellite data :).

Too late!:cool:

Yes, it is. Too early to show :):):):)

Was just coming back to post that after looking closer I can see it lol :D

:grin:

In terms of the yellow fields, I think that could be ripe wheat/barley/oats?

I also see some hedges but not enough of them...could be a performance thing I guess.

Yippiee !

Absolutely smashing pics. How extreme can the weather get? wind etc

Thankyou
:)

Love it excellent pictures!
Good job there!

Great pics Oleg, looking superb:grin:

Beautiful shots! I can't wait for the day when you put it all together and say HERE IT IS!

Thanks for the updates! I can't think of another game developer who interacts with their prospective audience/customers in such a intimate fashion. I wonder if you know just how much we appreciate that? It's something special to watch you guys create.

All of these Friday updates leave me eager to see (AFTER game is done!;-) a "Making of SOW" documentary. How you are building such an incredible world is fascinating to me.

And for the 'Special Edition', price should be no more than $100!

Very nice indeed,i do still see repetitive terrain tiles though.................is there no way around that?

Wow, looks excellent! I really like the detail in the cities and the nice curves on the hurri and beau.

You are the first who noticed it. I placed this shot with two targets: one is wather and another - to show the quality of the ship :)

The first target to show that we keep main features and use of Il-2 FMB which will be very useful for Il-2 players. And then we add a lot of new features in the same frame of use like the old one. We keep even most hot buttons or button + mose controls the same.

In the gmaeplay we have two controls of views - the new one due to more greater use of muse (clicable cocpits) and by the switch - same as in Il-2.

Everything for easy transfer from old to the new one... by other words - in terms of user friendly transfer.

Oleg,

excellent looking new shots, the scenery is looking very good already ! also excellent distant visibility, the horizon looks very good with distant objects/shorelines visible.

one observation: looking at the scenery shots one thing seems to be missing with the country houses, there are no gardens around them ! it makes the houses look a little odd just placed in the scenery like that (even if there are roads/driveways leading to them)

question: will there be time for the final release to have some gardens and fences around the countryside house ? could work with making 3 or 4 fence types (picket fence, wire fence etc), and 3 or 4 garden types (just short grass, medium grass, some scrubs or flowers and grass. for ex). mixing the fence and garden types randomly would then give many combinations that add variety to the scenery.

having gardens around the houses might seem trivial, but looking at the low altitude shots that is the main thing that seems missing. i would also agree with the earlier comment from another poster about the need for some hedges at some of the field edges, and needing them next to many of the smaller country roads (having lived 6 yrs in kent in southern england, i know the type of scenery there )

It is a great manual work... now two persons working over it. I hope in most places you will see these details. Many of them were done in 3D models. As well as many special nice details for the airfields that make them looking lifelike.

And as the samples of manually painted textures we use the photos. Modern and old of WWII time.
Not all things is possible, but we try to make everything looking like it was at 1940... Hard to find enough color material for that.

Just WOW!
This is all such great work.
I am looking forward to seeing this in high res and AA turned on :)

Yes probably the exact same work than making such things in full mission builder in IL2 ... I can imagine. How many saturday afternoons I have spent putting fences and telegraph lines in Il2 FMB !

Agreed, that morning mist was the most immersive experience I've ever had in a virtual world! :D There is nothing like weather phenomena to really make you feel like you're there. (remember Morrowind?)

I have a little question regarding the clouds:

are there plans to include different cloud types (especially the high altitude ones) ?

Excellent Work!
Thanks very much for the update!!!

I noticed the beaufighter has the observer/navigator modelled.
Can we hope for a user playable station?

keep up the good work!!!

cheers
Schallmoser

Oleg, do you have an answer to my question on page-1? ;)

Yes, something like this.
Auto is impossible... too different models now and mor comples textures of ground that to make some tool that would place it auto...

Nice update !!
The Avro Anson looks good, it also looks like an easy mark with all that glass walls for the crew.

Regards

Hunger

Yes we will have several types. Answered several times in the past.

There is the answer for this the 5 posts above.

A, sorry. Must have missed that.

Stunning modeling of the landscape. Absolutetly top notch. I have seen nothing like this before in flight sims. It will be the first time that you will actually have to search for targets on the roads because of the dense foliage ;) .

It is plane that won the BoB....
So before you shot down Hurry, this plane may shot down couple of bombers :)
Depending of pilot of course :)

Are we going to be treated to an in game Hurricane cockpit shot like we had of the 109 soon? :D

"there were no rape-fields in 1940 (unless an innocent women walked onto a farm) so I don't think there should be any yellow fields."

Hmmm, oil-seed rape wasn't introduced into Britain until after 1940? You learn something new every day!

Mustard............ or Buttercups....:-)

No words...
 

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww wwww...
~S!

Re Yellow fields - I think there may have been mustard fields. I'm unsure exactly how they looked though.
We had fields where I lived as a child that were yellow, and we called the crop they grew mustard.

Edit: Mustard looks the same are rape seed, if you look on Wikipedia for 'mustard plant'.

Hi Oleg truly great work!!

1. How close (in time) is it to see a dogfight movie (spit - emil)?
2. Please post at least 1 photo with a damaged emil inside and outside
(random damage) to see.

Thanks in advance

Excellent post Oleg! I love fridays.

By seeing the great reflections on the cockpit glass, I was wondering if they will be visible from long distances. I remember from the times I was in an airplane that reflections on the ground really caught my attention. It would be nice if you could spot planes from long distances by those flashes.

So Oleg, how are colours going to be modelled for the fields. Is the scenary going to be fluent, in the sense that if I drove down any of the roads, there wouldn't be trees in the roads or the fields will all fit together well?

Also, I know the trees are all WIP but look at this:
http://www.bugbog.com/images/galleri...ds_airview.jpg

focus on the bottom right-hand corner of the shot, at the hedges are clear. Also, notice the open space; the landscape is not at all cluttered ;)

We have new specialists for the effects. When they will be done then we may post video. At the moment I dislike to show too much.

You know we are posting our work not like others. We show all in details step by step, but not the only final videos and shots. We show real work in progress...
Really it is my own input(principles) coming in game industry more than 10 years ago, that some developers also copied. :)

The planes look very beautiful Oleg. May I ask, will your BoB have the big raids with 3-400+ aircraft in the sky at the same time? or will it be more the smaller battles with 50-60 aircraft, like in Il-2?

1. Photo is too much saturated.
2. Yopu may see already that we have all roads clear, even in forest under the crowns of trees. However we have not yet bridges. This is also great manual work to place them in the right places of the rodas and rail roads (and some part auto). The dark lines on the map on the shots - rivers. Also I noticed in the text of update that we have some glitches that we should correct till end (means some glitches of textures as well).
3. Repeating: for our textures we use satellite data and photos of WWII time - mix. That to make it looking not like it is now, but more close to WWII time. And really it is not easy to find all things now for all surface of the map.

It may depends of the PC power and altitude of flight. As more close to the ground more power PC you ned that to render many aircraft at the same time.
Can't say you exact amount of aircraft in the air. Simply because the full graphics settings are not finished yet.

Thanks for the reply Oleg. You are right about colour, I wasn't focusing on that, but I was more intrigued by the use of trees. IMO, apart from in forest areas with larger trees, small trees/scrubs/bushes should be the most frequent on the map.
Excellent work.

I did have a website that I looked at once which had aerial shots of areas in England around the 1940's. I can't find the site though.

all the better to make my Flyby-Die-by missions, my friend. I liked the IL2 FMB. The new FMB looks so familiar and intuitive that I will probably get a lot of virtual pilots killed! :D
Flyby out

Hope the Avro is flyable, It would be an ideal partner for the Tiger Moth at the training unit so we can get our multi-engine endorsements!

Cheers and thanks for the updates!

just a matter of sitting back and watching it all come together now :cool:

Solid
 

Still impressed most by how "solid" the aircraft look. Its quite striking to me. Is it just a feature of the resolution? or the polygon count? Its like the perfect shape has been achieved and that makes the model look like a solid item.
Fantastic work anyway,

I hope yes. Right now it isn't like in real life. But I would like to have it realistic and not like the all the time winking. It should be really rare effect and almost not visible in some diection and distances.

Ok, hard to explain with my poor English... Simply I want to get it not like the hack... We will see in final...

excellent previews, looks great despite WIP.

thanks for the regular small updates, keeps the interest alive.

Thank you sir. Very nice work from the crew and the updates are appreciated.

Is there any other games developer who spends the time to talk to the community like this? Cheers Oleg, great work on your part.

Just one simple question: is the game still on the tables for a release this year? :cool:

Yep, this is great and unique that you take time to awnser our questions !
in other big productions they only do small teaser videos and don't ask anyone if it looks good or not... they just say it's perfect...

so, just a question ! :-P
in the screens with the Hurri being at a pretty low altitude, we don't see any grass, was it desactivated for the screens or is it just still too far to see it ?
i can say it would require a lot of PC ressources to have them from a good distance so, will this be an option ? scalable ?

I hope we would not die doing it.... we should finish.
I personally working over the next sim theater.... doing the doc what should be there that to make it interesting for all...
And two variants of theaters... depending of possible calculated in future income.... I hope you understand me right.

So does that mean that it will be released soon, because you are already looking towards the future? A lot is already here for a North-African theatre :grin:

The grass take a lot of resorces in the fligth sim (great surface covered to show). So it is switching smoothly off at some distance. Currently it is neccessary.

I should run at home.

So will read all on Monday then.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooo

ok thanks, i can understand it is neccessary, I want it to pretty but be playable too! :rolleyes:

oh and BTW nobody saw that mistake or said it, but we are friday 18 not 17... I guess you do need to run home and get some sleep ! :grin:

Amazing shots. What about the Avro Anson ? I think AI-only !?

Thanks Oleg. These screenshots are the most impressive so far.

Years ago you mentioned that SOW will have river bank elevations. Its hard to tell if the creeks in these screenshots have an elevation change. Do you still plan this feature? River banks would make the terrain come to life even more than they do already.

~Salute~
Chivas

modeled from original drawings. I've noticed most sims, especially ww2 the planes look too thin/flimsy, especially in the wings.

Me too...with two additional wows,
Wow~,wow~,wow~.....
looks like encouraging news.
Cheers.

Looking good :)

Still a bit to go in the landscape department in terms of matching the graphical fidelity of Wings of Prey. But really getting there...

As a point of difference, the trees in Wings of Prey really do have a nice sense of volume. The landscape textures also seem to be higher res than the SOW screens I've seen so far. I can see in these latest screens that the textures also blur out fairly aggressively away from the camera, but as you mention the graphical settings aren't finalised.

Very excited to see SOW mature into a powerhouse of a sim.

Take your time and get things looking and flying as best they can. :grin:

Cheers,

I know Elvis have left the building but….
“for our textures we use satellite data and photos of WWII time – mix”….
All I can say is, and probably so at the time of release, is whooow!

S!

Nice to see SoW shape up nicely! And the GUI looked familiar ;) Have a nice weekend!

Stuning amazing impressive great photos!!!! Thank You Oleg!!!
Keep Us Friday-addicted please!!!! ;-)

I can again also just say WOW!

But, Oleg, can I ask what is being done regarding shore lines? I still look at this with jaw dropped :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqpCx...eature=related

Just a short video of this? Perhaps? :D

Great update, that Anson looks superb with the sun glinting off the canopy and the light striking through the shadow on the port wingroot. Fantastic! I just hope I'll be able to afford a computer to do it all justice!

fantastic screenshots , do want special edition!! ;)

Amazing work, still hoping for a 2010 release.

I dont think my faith has been misplaced...this game is looking like it will really deliver the goods! Fantastic !!!!

We had an in game cockpit shot of a 109???

Great job !

Landscapes, textures, trees, water, planes, everything looks great and very realistic !!!!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=15024

If I understood Oleg correctly, he meant 'if we don't die in the attempt, we should finish'. As your question asked if it would be released this year, this implies that it will.
Or is that just my own wishful thinking? It would be a shame if release didn't coincide with the 70th anniversary year.
Here's hoping for 15th September release to make it perfect............!

Thank's to you as always!...very impressive up-date as always!:grin:

the work is very impressive
i see miss something:- the terrain of the city need more texture and things

http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/a...617_205618.jpg

http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/a...ff/beta_03.jpg

anyway., nice updates. video will be the besto of the best of the best

He said the trees and stuff were not in the city, right in the first post.

Very good point, and one that is greatly appreciated! Also, thank you for the beautiful Hurricane shots!

One thing: The Hurricane seem to have slightly more reflectivity from it's fabric covered surfaces than from the metal ones. Shouldn't it be the other way around, or is it just a trick of the (virtual) light?

As long I understood Oleg, SOW is ready, in post-production stage ( details...)
We all know how much people here are addicted to details ( I was amazed with the guy who actually known the right place of the Taifun´s landing light )
The process of fine tuning seems to be tedious and very hard to do with lots of manual work ( art...)
When he said he was in the process of doing the docs of the next sim I understood
that ´s like a film director doing the storyboard before starting the shooting,right?:grin:
It´s obvious that SOW will be a landmark in flight sims, we just don´t fully realized how big it will really be.
My real concern is about the system needed to run this baby.
Probably the oficial recommended specs in the box will be something like: DO THE BEST YOU CAN DO,MAN!:mrgreen:

Oleg, one of the very first model airplanes I ever made when I was a lad was an Avro Anson I. I have wanted to "fly" one ever since. I am now 56 years old and I hope that I can fly one in the virtual sky of Storm Of War.

Excellent update.

Thank you very much.

On planes I've seen, fabric covered surfaces are not any less glossy than metal ones, assuming they've been doped and painted.

A lot seem to be anticipating a North Africa theatre next, but the battle of France would only require the addition of French aircraft. The battle of Norway and Holland are also strong possibilities. I personally can't wait for battle of Poland and Spanish Civil War scenarios: more plane types involved than I'll know what to do with.

Great screen shots so far. I'm curious as to how the marking system will work: results like from MAT Manager or better?

EDIT: Although your team is still adding objects and tuning terrain and other features on the map, is it safe to say that the final size of the map has been determined? If so, how big is it? Any images of the final map?

Great progress Oleg!

Please tell your 3d guys that they are doing a fantastic job, especially the ones who are building all the other stuf, like buildings, cars and ships. These will be essential to making this sim feel lifelike and usually falls short when it comes to proper appreciation.

@lbuchele: Thanks. ;)

my hope future STORM OF WAR maps
this is i hope:
Goulf Of finland (leningrad)
http://estonia.blogsome.com/images/map_estonia.jpg

War for Malta and sicily (HMS Argus HMS Eagle HMS Glorious)
http://symbioticpublishing.com/image...of%20Malta.jpg

crimea (i can fly this map whit close eyes)
http://rkka.ru/maps/krym.gif

and my fallhope conflict: 1971 pakistan-indian air war with no precise missile

Nice screens but why are all screenshots without AF and AA?