Friday 2010-07-30 Dev. update and Discussions
 

Very quick update today. We decided not to show any more effects or any other gameplay elements until they're ready, so the updates are going to be very peaceful for a while.

1. We've optimized our trees. They're now visible all the way to the horizon.

2. All aircraft finally have tactical markings applied.

3. We're having tons of fun playing with crew animations, which are nearly complete. But we won't make a video just yet because it would also have to contain various SFX.

Great that the trees work now - the high alt shot of the Hurricane shows that it's starting to look as it should now!

Thanks for the update!

Absolutely stunning!

Just one little thing: the rotating props look a little flat.

We are not worthy!

You mean like this:

http://www.zazbot.com/wp-content/upl.../cessna172.jpg

really really nice I really don't think i can wate much longer

Here we go again...

Propellor side view is perfect. From front or behind it has to look flat.

Thanks Luthier.

I'm quite happy with how things are looking. Keep up the great efforts.

A simple question from me, will enemy/friendly/other player/ai plane's main operating surfaces move or will we be forced like in the current IL2 to look for othe visual cues that they are trying to sideslip, barrel-roll etc.
At the moment all planes do not seem to show elevator,alerion, rudder or other movements other than on the player controlled plane. I could be wrong but all the visuals i have seen seem to reinforce this. Please tell me I am wrong.
Other than that I have to say everything looks great.

Example
Look at the screenshots of the 109's in formation and the J88's banking and all the control surfaces look static?

Hurricane prop - Bf109 seat armour
 

Thanks luthier for update

Just a couple of things 'bugging me'

1. The Hurricane propeller shape is not right (I will follow-up asaspo with a couple of photo scans) from the book 'My Part of the Sky' by Roland Beamont.
2. There is no seat head armour plate on the Bf109's - not sure if this model had it?

Everything else looks terrific - keep the the pics coming.

DFLion

The terrain on the first shot looks weird.

The trees look like they would be flat green paper swimming on the water surface.
They seem to have no depth from sight of the sky.


Rest is nice.

Nice shots :D

was PO a squadron code for the Hurri-bus? Also, how will the markings be done? Does the game handle the various sizes of roundels in place in 1940, the various underwing schemes, etc etc ? :)

Nice to see that sfx aren't being shown although it'd be great to see the development of it.

Will clouds be edited to have flat bottoms?

A/C models look awesome.

Thanks Luthier. Btw, i agree with Hecke.

Aircraft models look good, terrain still looks like a cartoon well to me it does, but I do appreciate this is still early in development.

A great question though from Bobb4 i am also hoping that the AI control surfaces will move.

That is exactly as it should be: you cannot really "see" in flight the movements or determine in a meaningful way the position of the operating surfaces.
For some strange reasons the movements in Il2 are exaggerated beyond belief and may give you a wrong impression this is normal: it is not!

Anybody having ever flown an aircraft or observed other aircraft maneuvering would tell you that the kind of operating surface travel "to the stops" you see in flight in Il2 is unrealistic: such positions will only be seen at slow speed (typically beginning of takeoff acceleration run: you may need full rudder travel if torque is important, or full elevator up to keep the wheel on the ground after landing for instance), and also due to slow speed, in some aerobatics manoeuvers (but not combat manoeuvers: you would never go that slow for obvious reasons).
Using controls with the travels shown in Il2 would instantly overstress the hull and wings, if not breaking them right away...IRL!

So you should not expect being able to guess another aircraft sideslip that easily just by noticing rudder position, unless you have really the yes of an eagle! You would notice it as you said yourself by other cues, mainly the almost undefinable "wrongness" of its flying or the fact the ailerons are not symmetrical in a prolonged way: this is the only cue which can be easily observed even for very low control travels

JVM

Thanks for the update Luthier. Simply gorgeous. The crew animation sounds very exciting.

Early in development...oh reaallllly?...
Anyway great update.

[QUOTE=dflion;172629]Thanks luthier for update

Just a couple of things 'bugging me'

1. The Hurricane propeller shape is not right (I will follow-up asaspo with a couple of photo scans) from the book 'My Part of the Sky' by Roland Beamont.

This has been covered before. There were a number of different spinner profiles used and this is a good representation of one of them. I think I remember someone saying that some Hurris were fitted with constant speed spitfire units which were slightly oversize and required an oil collection ring to be fitted behind the spinner to prevent escaped oil from getting on the screen. I think this might be one of those.

The other cues are fine. But the control surfaces are not moving at all period.
Be they in the air or during take-off and landing.
Pilots heads are not moving either, a very sterile envitonment. Luthier has talked about crew animation i was just hoping control surface movement would be evident by now.
Other sims (which i will not name) have already included this.
Four J88's in a right hand bank all with exactly the same control positions????
Lokk at the Hurricaine which is obviously player controlled and you will see the rudder is moved!
Not a gripe just a question.

Hmmmmmm,haven't seen any good lookiing terrain shot from the air as of yet,i'm getting a feeling that's something they are struggling with.........maybe they should give Gaijin a call?;)

Not much new "stuff" from the pictures,but thanks for regular Friday updates,they are very important for the community.
Btw how is game development going?Everything according to the plan,or with some unexpected difficulties?

You're right, but when looking at it from an angle, like in pic #3, you should see some of it's thickness, specially near the axis, where it is moving slower. I see they try to implement it by inserting some shaded segments into the prop disc, but it looks odd. I've seen WIP pics shot from the side, there you clearly saw that the rotating prop is thick, but now it's totally flat.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...3&d=1280475957

http://www.airventure.de/wow04/Hawker_Hurricane.jpg

http://www.airmuseumsuk.org/airshow/...HURR%20RAC.jpg

I mean in terms of terrain, and lets be honest we are not going to see SOW this year.

Sometimes I think people complain just to to show how "smart" they are....
C'mon is "just" WIP, let them work...
Thanks Luthier

When it first was announced i was in my 40's when it will be released i will probably be in my 50's............my god!:shock:

The only good point for me for not releasing the sim this year is that ubisofts rights on the name will end (as far as I heard) and so MG could get rid of these hijackers.

Great ground detail
 

These pictures look like finished to me. Great!

Love the ground detail from above in picture 1.
Great improvement on the ground colours.

Those markings on the 109's look great as well. We probably will also get a technical officer markings.

I hope all of you WIP, whiner cry baby bitches are happy that we all now have to do without real progress updates!

That’s what happens when you revert to behaviour similar to your first childhood experience of difference.

Jesus, what is the average age in this forum?

Probably around 14...yes, sad we get restricted updates now. Great shot, thanks for posting Luthier.

lmao...some things never change.

I swooped in...now I swoop out.

See ya next week.

Only if you want a very small area around you visible, my money is on Oleg holding back to stop others (ie; Gaijin) nicking his techniques. Ask yourself this, The current terrain may show technical advances beyond IL2 but it so far fails to live up the overall image quality excepting a few shots, can you really see Oleg releasing the Storm of War series with terrain that looks worse that IL2? Have a little faith.

Somebody give Tree a kick, he seems to have got stuck in a loop.

Oleg & Co,

thx for the update !

the aircraft look great. good to see more groups of AI flying missions together :)

one minor question: how tall is the average pilot in BoB ? the hurricane pilots look a bit smaller then the average pilot would have been in ww2, with loads of headroom clearance (which was only the case for short pilots in hurricanes afaik). this might be a minor issue

BUT for the 109, either the pilots are VERY small or we have a a proportion issue again with the aircraft (unlikely since luthier said aircraft were modeled to the milimeter). BUT we know an average sized male pilot in 1940 was cramped sitting in the 109 cockpit, with his head almost touching, or even touching, the canopy (see earlier video posted on this forum a few weeks ago, showing modern youtube video of a pilot for an english tv show sitting in, and comparing, the amount of room and access to controls the brittish/german pilots had).

historically the germans pilots were VERY cramped in the 109 with little room (unless the pilot was "jockey sized"), yet they seem to have loads of room in the current 109 BoB cockpits

Average size of a male human in the 1930s in Germany was 167cm. Most fighterpilots, like Galland and especially Udet were almost not commissioned, because they were too small for the military standards. Comparing that to a modern man with an average size of 176cm for Europeans is silly.

Beyond that: Totally agree with TB56. Same fuss every week. I hate missing Oleg or Luthier's posts later in the thread, but I tend to just read the first page of a thread and ignore the rest. Total waste of time and energy.

Thanks for the updates Oleg. Sorry about the forum regulars.

Excellent! Love the aircraft markings, almost photoreal. Not gonna nitpick until I have the sim in my hands, I have never seen aircraft that looked that good (FsX included).

Yes nice up dates very enjoyable to see! The comments are less so. You have the impression of a hoard of impatient spoiled brats. Best just to look at the up dates and totally skip the comments.:roll:

I agree with you, WUTZ. I hope that Oleg and team stay steady in their excellent efforts. Too many wish lists and peculiar requests from the peanut gallery. If all were satisfied, the game would never be finished and there would be no commercial computer strong enough to play it.

PFF, what do you expect, they have to make concessions.
It still has to run on our PC's.

Thanks for the understanding

Thanks for the update, I have a quick question regarding the trees:
does your sentence above mean we will not see the trees "sprouting" from the terrain anymore when we get close?
(that's what we currently see in IL2 which appears to me like going from a texture to a full 3D model).

Maybe it's just me but that's a real immersion killer... same goes for the houses :(


Sorry if the question has been asked/answered already.

46 Squadron, out of Stapleford Tawney in Essex.

They also saw action in Norway.

The previous terrain shots with individual trees showed them disappearing after some distance, as it is not possible to render them to the horizon even with all kinds of programming tricks.

My understanding is that this update shows the most simplified tree/forest LOD that is overlaid over the landscape at distances where no individual trees are rendered anymore.

The fact that Luthier probably still uses a low-end graphics card on purpose (as announced recently) doesn't help the overall quality impression, but as these are development shots these complaints are missing the point.

Of course, a keen I could pick up the movement - especially if one of the aerolons picked up the sun for a moment. Some of us also tend to fly early aircraft and often end up at around 200kph for most of the fight. We don't all fly '44 and '45 BnZ.

Cheers :D

---

Updates may be restricted but it's not as if we're missing out. I'd rather not see details which the crew absolutely hate and are crap than see them myself. When things are close to how they'll look, then we should be shown them with the added incentive that they can be tweaked until release.
put it this way; would you rather be shown a fugly woman or wait a month and be shown a beautiful one? ;)

In real life some of the 109s did and some didn't during BoB. A similar situation to the Hurricane. If I recall correctly there were at least two Bf-109 micro-variants planned for this sim.

+1
plus im sure many people here is playstation & xbox gamers and fly one hour of week in some arcade setings server in Hlobby.and now come here to say how to make the flight sim...pfff omg!!
and every time they killed from other pilot then cry cheaters hakers etc....:)
thanx oleg and tean for update continue your job!

The point about development shots (just like back with Il2 on the Blue Byte forums, for those who remember) is to see what they are working on, not to be impressed by shiny screenshots. That includes dead ends, half-finished stuff and reduced quality settings. I sure am still interested in seeing that. But maybe too many people are unable to put things into the proper context.

In other words, I sure feel like missing out.

Pff, hopefully i'm gonna love at you when Luthier tells us that they hate it more than we do. You are just a damn FANBOY.
But I can tell you, you won't have any advantage sucking up Oleg and his team.

For Oleg critique is more helpful than your "Perfect", "Stunning", "Awesome", etc: He can read it and gain inspiration and see what the potential customers expect.

It's our money that he wants and if you don't have any prospects... well, than be quiet because you're not any help at all.



P.S It's just small critique, not an insult to MG!

These posts are NOT for critique. Do you really think Oleg posts updates because he's dying to know what a bunch of 14 year olds think?

Do you really think Oleg wants to know what a bunch of fanboys tells about it?

Surely not, because they will buy it anyway according to no prospects.



BTW I would say noone here is 14, hm, maybe you but noone else.

Accepted, but then people are bound to comment on things that are bad in order for that aspect to be improved. We people are the main people that'll buy the game, so I feel that if enough people feel strongly about a certain aspect then the devs really need to look into it. I don't mind seeing WIP shots, but I think that people should be able to say whether they like it or not ;)

Now that is the most exciting thing I've heard in a long time, if it's true. Ubi$oft has a long history of meddling with things and forcing titles out before they are ready, all to the detriment of the developer.

Hecke, you're missing the point. Oleg is not looking for feedback here, he's just letting us see a few pics because he knows the community really wants to see them.

The arrogance which leads people to think that Oleg wants to know their opinion astounds me.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...4&d=1280475967

that pic of Ju88 is just lovely :)

and what about more skins for hurri and 109 (i prefear without yellow;)). Them someone else will do it and will be a so heavy skin.

And i am very interesting to see (if will be) the nose art in planes:cool:

http://lodela.110mb.com/aviones600/6...9ecoldeoro.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2167/...6364101749.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3535/...13dae35057.jpg

Look at the thread title its called Dev.update and discussions, of course Oleg wants some feeback you plum otherwise the updates would be locked like they were previously.

I believe it's more a case of allowing discussion, as per the title, and not feedback, which is not in the title. But anyways, I'm derailing, so let's leave it.

Just be fair to let people tell their opinion about it whether positive or negative and let Oleg decide what he does with it.

I completely agree.

Ilya - Just to be sure I understand that correctly: You can select the german staff markings in any colour you wish, right? Because they were always only in black & white and sometimes even just in one of the two colours (or even just an outline in some rare cases). Or did I miss something here?

Any form of discussion arising from the updates posted become feedback the instant anybody involved in the Sim reads them, the only way for them not to be feedback would be for Oleg, Luthier and crew to never read them whatsoever.

Sorry but we are on a FORUM here, not a cold war CCCP TV... it's normal that people express DIFFERENT opinions, bad or good, especially when the shots of the week are far from perfect...

Like others, I truly hope the terrains will be MUCH better (more realistic colorwise, really different following the proper altitude, and with a nice atmospheric haze and weather effects, closer than the actual WOP reference in the matter - I mean the visual overall feeling to fly in an atmospheric real world at every altitude level, which is for me the strongest point of WOP)... SOW's Terrain is one of the area which is really NOT in par with the fabulous work on the planes with their hundreds of little details and the nice reflection's shadders on their painted metal surface.

There is nothing wrong to express an opinion... we just have GREAT expectations for this game, that's all. The fact that the release date seems very (too) close to see all these changes/finalization really happen is a bit disturbing for some of us ;)

a perfect post.

if i could add something, it would be that the asinine stupidity demonstrated by faceless nobodys through ignorant demanding posts, and obsessing over increasingly detailed minutiae must despair the devs horribly.

must must MUST give the impression, however small, that no matter how hard you work balancing time with productivity with playability, groups of ignorant gorillas will pound out stupid ranting put downs to your efforts.

who wants to make anything for such drooling idiots?

if I were a dev on this title, i would glance but once at these threads and never more.

EDIT: or i'd sift through the thread for the prize stupid posts, and send them off to a ...."bathroom tissue" manufacturer to print up a few rolls to supply the office?

i appreciate Oleg posting pics to whet the appetite.

Where are the swastikas?

+1 Quote for truth.

Wonderfull work, on the first shot, the terrain colour is pretty well done due to the haze.

FANBOY...

Why do you assume to talk for Oleg and Team.


BTW: What does SFX mean?

The most dangerous kind... faith zealots. ;)
To them: Open your mind and get a life! It's not just one way... :o

SFX: special effects :)

luthier, am I correct in assuming that there will be two versions of the He111 in game? From the screenshots it looks like there is a P-2 and H-3 version.

everything look great. nice fresnel trick with reflection on planes ;)

but the first impresson about pilots and proportions... these guys are just too small (maybe there is some geometry intersection problem when pilots are bigger)
especially 1o9 pilot looks like ewok in plane.


please compare proportions of head (helmet/headphones) with canopy

fotos
http://www.kurfurst.org/Engine/Boost...arance198.html

video - lightly build modern pilot squished inside 1o9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9YVe...eature=related

I think Oleg and crew have a good idea who the whiner/demanding types are. There's always a select few who ask or critique things to 'improve the development', but in reality they're just pissing against the wind.

(EDIT: I need to change pissing into the wind TO pissing in the pool. Now we don't get to see the full updates because of a few. Everyone out of the pool!)

There are ways of pointing out omissions and corrections. Many find it difficult to critique without sounding like children prattling around with their baby spoon, baby forks, and pacifiers.

Show me one improvement made by the developer at the instigation of a whiny brat.


Some of you should look back at a few updates and see the detail around hangers, the support vehicles, cities et al. Remember how great the Spit and 109 pit looks. Then ask yourself, with that attention to detail do you really think Oleg's gonna let sub par land mesh go out the door?

I don't think so.


You may think this is wild eyed raving from an Oleg ball washer, but no. It's someone who's watched development of BoB, and has seen improvements and increased detail over the last 6 months. I may not have liked everything, but it's WOP. It says that on every update.

Look at the progress and have a bit of faith that things will get ironed out to the best of their ability.

Yes, I think most of us realize the point of the terrain shot was to show the trees all the way to the horizon ...not some final version that I imagine will look like 352's channel with no tiling and trees rendering for miles and miles in all directions ...wa wa wee wa!!!


planes @ water height...looking great!

S!

Can't stop admiring the sleek lines of the Bf109E ;) :D

AHhhhhhhhh yes. Back on topic. I think I'm in love with the 109. She's sexy, sleek, and oh so dangerous..... (well not in my hands, but I digress).

Yes, that gaggle of yellow nosed fellows'll be my desk top untill at least this time next week.

Well I clicked on the images, then clicked again, then zoomed in and I have to say I rather disappointed by the paint scheme.

The 'skins' look very soft and lacking detail as do the surface textures of the aircraft. I had hoped by now that Direct X effects would be present so that we'd be able to see bump-mapping along with sharp detailed skins as the next generation is supposed to be 2048x2048, and when you look at some of the skins you get now from skinners like Cpt Farrell and Kristorf, the ones on the Hurricane and He-111 look soft and quite disappointing?

This, I know is WIP, but I had hoped that we would see some land texture, paint-scheme texture and bump-mapping by now?

So, sitting back and sipping the pint I mentioned in my previous thread....hopefully a video will be coming soon?

Cheers, MP

Once again, absolutely gorgeous!
I don't have the words to describe the absolute beauty of the things you are putting into the sim.

NICE!

I was wondering if the game will support multiple monitors? Does anyone know?

Great pics!

Bumping this:
+1

I remember some taboo about that for IL-2. Does it still apply?

But regardless, it's absolutely beautiful. This WILL BE state of the art CFS when it's released; I'll have cash in hand!

It did look alright in previous screenshots, ut todays shot make them look like sitting too low in the cockpit. The way they look it appears to be impossible to look through the gun sight.

Previous = looks alright
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...531_141445.jpg

Today = too low?
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...729_171440.jpg

Original
http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b..._Unbenannt.jpg

I'm excited about the fact Oleg and team are working on "crew animations"...I really like the idea of these fantastic aeroplanes being filled with moving and reacting people. I think it would be a nice detail to have crewman that respond to the changing tactical situation. Some of the details might go unseen (during the heat of battle) but just knowing that their is an (possible_hopeful_wishing) animation of the co-pilot taking over the duty's of a wounded pilot, or an animation of a the crewmen as they inflate a rubber raft following an ocean ditch...animations and activity like this will really add to the feeling of "reality".

p.s. I'm sure the movie makers will enjoy this added detail of reality...

I learned long ago that the sim community, beyond most all others, has a knack for nitpicking about absolutely irrelevant details. I understand it's important to have as much accuracy as possible (it is a sim after all) and I want Oleg and Co. to put out the best product they possibly can, but most of the nitpicking concerns graphical limitations and things that don't make a bit of difference in the long run. I'm more concerned about FMs, DMs, and that sort of thing, you know...things that are actually important in a combat flight simulator. Unfortunately, those aspects can't really be conveyed in a screenshot, so I just enjoy the screenshots for what they are: Brief, momentary glimpses of a much larger picture.
________
Website Design

I aggre with you mr necrobaron. About the question of moving control surfaces to be seen, question has been answered before in the forum, yes, we will see them mooving, but only close distance. in the today picture of the JU88 i think (not sure) is seen that elevator is not neutral.
Other aspect not refered yet is, if buttons can be programed to act not only as momentary but also as toggle switch, witch would be very usefull to cockpit builters etc.

Once we know what cameras we have?

I'd love a camera on the gunsight, but looking back at the pilot. This would be fantastic to record the pilot animations as combat ensues. A movie-makers dream camera that would be.

Cheers, MP

Ah,but who started it?
How many updates have we seen that aren't relevant to a flightsim,eh?
I personally don't care about the "physics of a swiveling antenna on the rotating turrent of an armoured car"..........

They do sharpen up quite nicely in Photoshop:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/RedToo/x02.jpg

RedToo.

The baron speaks the truth.

I think the development team is doing the right thing in toning down the updates. All they lead to is people nitpicking and asking for silly "additions". Plus, I believe Olegg recently conveyed the reality that other entities steal ideas and such from them. So why publish graphical updates for the competition and the ungrateful?

What update do I want? What do most of us want? A report on how progress is coming concerning a release date. Just let me know if the sim is going to be ready for the Christmas gift season. Is that estimate still on track?

...and you can't call ME a FANBOY as I just purchased 1946 and haven't had the chance to play it yet :).

Splitter

would you please stop saying that in each thread, on multiple web sites... we kinda got the message

Thx

Hallo Luthier and company! Very nice shots, and to my eyes the propellers look great!

The serial on the Hurricane is off though. British WWII military serials was not hyphenated, but simply a 1 letter 4 numbers, like this (photoshopped):

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...ing/Serial.jpg

If the serials are added as an actual code in an appropriate font, I suppose this would be an easy thing to fix.

Actually, it's clearly visible that the Ju88 closer to the camera has its elevators slightly deflected upwards, the one in front also has a slight upward elevator but it's harder to spot...maybe they've already used their ailerons to bank and they are now just pulling on the stick to make the turn.

Now, as for why they have the exact same control inputs, i think this is to save CPU power in AI calculations. Just like IL2, it seems that AI in formation tend to move in almost perfect unison (although AI planes still do wiggle back and forth a bit in formation, you can check this out if you engage autopilot and up the time compression a bit). It sure would be nice to have some variation to make it feel more "human", but it won't bother me much if it saves processing power for other equally important things.

A question about RAF finflashes
 

To Oleg and Luthier.

In all the screenshots so far, the RAF planes have had the 24 inches wide by 27 inches tall finflash. This was first introduced in August 1940, but was not universal throughout Fighter Command before December 1940 (the squadrons presumably having more pressing issues than repainting markings).

An order for tail-markings for RAF planes was issued in May. It specified tricolour markings in RAF paint colours, red forward, and stated that they should "cover as much of the fin area as possible". Thus, a number of versions appeared. These are all taken from photos of Hurricanes in 1940:

"Full" tails:
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...ning/Full8.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...ing/Full10.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...ing/Full11.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...ing/Full13.jpg

"Cropped" tails:
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...lcropped65.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...llcropped8.jpg http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...lcropped10.jpg

Finflash:
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a37...ing/Flash8.jpg

RAF flew with the various "full" and "cropped" tail markings all through the Channel clashes in summer 1940, by late September/early October perhaps half of the squadrons had changed, and some stragglers flew with them even into early 1941.

Do you plan to have a look at this rather amazing variety of tail markings? If so, I have started collecting data on what squadron had what tail markings, and when they changed over to the regulation flash.

Concerning the ongoing debate about criticism, whether Oleg and co want it, whether it's valid, useful, etc, etc, etc, I think the main issue has been that despite being told again and again and again that certain aspects are WIP and will be improved many of us seem incapable of really taking it on board.

It seems to raise a real sense of panic in some people to be confronted with the 'work in progress' aspects - as if they can't make the leap of faith needed to really believe that it will really be improved and get better.

They then feel compelled to point out the faults just in case Oleg and co haven't noticed. Unfortunately, in most cases I think they probably already knew. Then we work ourselves into a lather over 5 or 6 pages, before one of the dev team has to step in to cool things down by restating what was posted on Page 1: "This is WIP".

(Luthier has taken to near-pleading recently "Have some faith in us")

I think the developers had an interest in giving us an insight into the current state of play in the development process, sometimes 'warts and all', but they always told us when it was so. Seems they've concluded that the strategy was more trouble than it was worth and that we just weren't capable of handling the WIP elements.

A shame, but I can't say that I blame them.

Well dont get upset with me I never suggested a BOB anniversary release date in 2010!! :grin: You have to keep saying it because there are a few on here who believe its going gold now whilst Oleg is on holiday..... honestly!!

And why shouldn't it???

I think this might just be the effect of the viewing angle. In all 3 shots you can see the pilots shoulders sitting above the canopy rails. To me this means the body position is probably correct.

Another factor to consider is the style of canopy. I too have read accounts of how close the canopy top was to the typical pilots head but from what I gather, these accounts were based on the heavy framed square canopy, not the lighter one with curved glass edges that we see here. Perhaps this type was introduced to rectify the head room problems? Dunno, I'm no expert.

My bad, just looked at the pic from my home computer with a bigger monitor and you are right. The control surfaces are moving. Thanks for setting me straight :)

safe to say that terrain was not ready to have been shown

doh! :oops:

A bump for this as well. The tactical markings look a hundred times better than in stock IL2 (yes people, I know about MAT Manager), but it's important that the correct colors are used.

indeed! there was no "standard" how the 109 looked like during BoB.
the main versions were E-4 and E-1.

they could have the rounded or later canopy.
"external" windshield armour or not.
head armour or not.
rearview mirror or not.

its pure in 1Cs decission how the ingame 109E will look like !!
all is correct :D

I also believe in Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and the Soul Cake Duck!

Learning to live with disapointment is an aquired trait.

Cheers!

Thats a midget pilot. In previous image he brought his phone books and encyclopedias in the cockpit to seat on them. This friday he forgot them.