Where is the ground personnel?
 

Haven't seen any so far. Did I miss something?

No drivers no mechanics no gunners.

I hate to have to be the one to deliver the news: But the dev update where Oleg promised ground crews was actually a dream. I know - it happens to me to.

However, future versions of the sim might have such features...

Don't be so pessimistic!

In the Ilya Shevchenko interview he said they had to remove some features because of performance issues.
In the screen shots we see aircraft with and without crew and bail out's, so that suggests the game is capable of having human units.

Would love to spawn as a person in a barrack, run to my airplane, jump in, and take off. :)

First make sure to use the toilet, I swear If I got to be your tailgunner again you get last nights nachos scared out of you...

Simply a matter of time also, and whats neccessary or not, this is just a fun gimmick.. it dosnt add to the gameplay or anything, and so many features are either unfinished or left out due to various reasons.. and they might be added later like Ilya said clearly in the interview.

Some people in the streets (very low polys sprites are enough), near the houses, are also necessary for not having the feeling of flying over ghost country.

I reply now to the two usual objections which will come almost mecanically from the fanboi permanence office :

1 : yes, I've flown at low altitudes, over cities or country town, at the speed of a WIII aircraft and yes, people in the street, near the houses, are quite visible (some animals in the country, cows, horses, would be quite interesting too).

2 : we are in 2011, standard personal computers in 2011 can stand a few more polys for basic people and animal sprites (after all, these sprites have to be realistic from some hundreds of meters far away, not be realistic like in a FPS game).

"...this is just a fun gimmick.. it dosnt add to the gameplay or anything..."


This is of course totally wrong, the immersion feeling, the feeling of "being there" comes when what is described in the game is described in the most possible realistic way (of course, in relation with the technological capacity of the current pc's).
That means "visible people", "accurate clouds" etc...

Don't be fooled, people saying "this is just a fun gimmick" (when someone is asking for a realistic feature) are the very same people who are just interested to fly with the "GPS" to the center of the map for another useless points counting furball. Of course, for these people, the "furballers", an empty map with just a big single uncolored polygon with also an empty sky (1) would be quite enough for their "gameplay".


(1) clouds are annoying for gameplay.

Agreed agreed agreed! Being an "offliner" that was a big issue for me in IL-2, everything was so static and lifeless. No people walking about doing their business, no birds (birds in the Silent Hunter series really added to the immersion when you got closer to land or leaving port). As said before, I'm not asking for some super detailed NPC models a la Crysis. Just something that doesn't consist of less then 10 blocks of polygon and has a face :)

Traffic has been planned as a feature since way back - I remember Oleg saying that they had buses and traffic moving around in the streets along pre-programmed routes. Likely to be one of those features that may not make initial release though.

Adding people in the street I can see would have difficulties - potential for A LOT of individual objects. Also, I can foresee a lot of criticism if they don't have some level of AI ("I did a low pass in my 109 and they didn't even move or look up!"), and as for a 'basic' representation - you've read the forums - 'basic' doesn't cut it with the whingers.

"... potential for A LOT of individual objects. "

Not obligatory.

I remember when flying over some middle-sized villages over the Swiss middle plain that one could see some people here and here, but of course not massive crowds, like in a rock concert.


"...I did a low pass in my 109 and they didn't even move or look up..."

This is not an valid argument, at least not in 2011.
A low-poly sprite (and when I say "low-poly, it's low-poly, enough to be realistic at one hundred meters away) could have some basic scripted movements.

I remember how cool I found for instance the trees moving in the wind in Shadow Warrior and it was in 1998 on a Pentium 800 ;-)



"basic' doesn't cut it with the whingers."

Again, this is not a valid argument.

If it's possible to model in the game a military truck exact to its most little pieces (1), it's also possible to model some people and animals at the necessary resolutions for being "natural", when seen at some hundred meters away.



(1) what it's quite useless by the way in an aviation sim, as these objects are not be seen from very near from an aircraft.

And to the objection (which will come, be sure) "it's illegal in my country to shot at cows and people in the street", I simply answer : "let's make the civilian and animal crowds not destructable." Case closed.

So what are the things that we think might not make the initial release, I dont think OM or luthier have given a definite list..


Dynamic weather?
Player manned AA guns?
New Clouds?
Cinematic experience?
Traffic?
Ground Personel?

wb tree, how was your vacation? :D

lol, it was good mate, im kinda getting used to it now. I spent most of my time corresponding with Nelson Mandela he also has an history of asking the 'wrong' questions.

It's good to see you back. Societies have a habit of destroying their oracles and I'm glad you weren't sacrificed to the Sim-Gods. ;)

It will vary - different over London. Numbers matter - in il2 there is option to turn off gun crews to reduce load.


They'd need to have a set of reactions for different situations - low fly-past, getting shot at, bombs going off nearby. Either is likely to get complex or be unrealistic. And people will fly over them lower than 100m.

Also, making them not destructible is a poor decision I think.


My point was that if they do a set of objects that are low-detail and don't react realistically, people will complain. But there has been a screen shot of cows, so who knows maybe we'll get some people too but I think for a long time we won't see realistic numbers of civilians.

My personal guess would be that we might see crews for the AA guns and some ground personnel. There was an option I think for dynamic weather in the fmb screens, but haven't heard any details since on it - hoping it makes it.

"t will vary - different over London. Numbers matter - in il2 there is option to turn off gun crews to reduce load."

Simple.
In the game setup, an option "civilian crowd on, civilian crowd off".
By the way, as already said, no need of über-huge crowds like during a techno parad !


"Also, making them not destructible is a poor decision I think."

Yes, but we live in a stupid PC world where there are probably some authorities which will find that offensive.
By the way, as I don't understand the mentality of shooting civilians for pleasure even in a real war, it's not a problem for me not being able to shot at civilians in a sim.


"And people will fly over them lower than 100m. "

Not a valid argument.
If you fly some meters away from a cow, you may for sure not fly very long more.
On the contrary, a cow looking like a reasonable cow, seen just one or two seconds during a low pass, doesn't need to be modelled with millions of polygons.

And remember, guys, in the very first version of IL-2, all these nice guys running from the trucks when attacked.

It was ten years ago.
Today, in 2011, I'm not even asking for more.

1- Might be but i don't think so.

2- I don't think so.

3- I agree.

4- Thats very subjective. People might think its cinematic and others not.

5- Agree, its seccondary on importance and usually very fps demanding.

6- Agree.

7- Probably also fx effects, like better smoke, explossions, fire, water splashes, and so on. Just like with IL-2 that they were adding or improving this effect as the years passed.

And probably some other features that we will not notice until the sim progresses and they are added. But its all pure speculation that does not give anything constructive.

Probably those seagulls we saw will have to wait until later. Maybe a proper next-gen dynamic campaign won't make it either. Although I really hope not.

Noooooo not the seaguls, anything but that :grin:

There are some birds in Arma2, it looks very nice.

Birds? http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...artin/SAdv.gif
I hope they look like this!
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...856ee-3221.jpg
http://www.secondcitizen.net/Forum/i...face-drool.gif

Missing features
 

Sniff

I guess we will have to learn to live without the Killer Wales that attack ditched pilots and the randomized Molehills that make takeoffs so much more difficult.

Although the thing i cannot pardon is the exclusion of Susannah York she would have been such an outstanding feature.

http://a.bricout.free.fr/images/wall...annah_york.jpg

Whatever one cannot have everything and we must learn to cope with it.

Regards
Hunger

Well even though some seem to be a fan of that person I found her role in the Battle of Britain always as one that one could have well done without, also her sixties hairdo certainly never fitted for a fourties period picture...thats like having cd-players in the seventies or worse.http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...omics/motz.gif

No dynamic weather? Is that confirmed?

No Blob, nothing is confirmed yet, but we do know a lot of features are being dropped, we are just speculating as to which they are.

Speculation is Trees forte. That and repitition.

......and yours is? No i wont say it.

They are so frenzied about Cliffs of Dover last developments they failed to repair to their stations and missed appearing the first video altogether. :confused:

I’m sure in the following weeks they will resume their posts… :?

That wouldn't work for me. Either do it right or not at all. I always hate it when the quality isn't consistent throughout, and the ground detail shown so far is too good to include some Il2-style low polycount models.

On the other hand polygon crunching isn't such a big deal anymore these days and the performance impact probably not the biggest problem anyway (compare the number of trees and houses we have which have similar complexity). Maybe impact on memory and CPU (if those objects are supposed to be non-static) could be an issue, but most probably it's simply the development resources again which are lacking, which is by far the most limiting factor these days, especially for such rather small projects like CoD.

There were shots of ground personnel models some months ago and it would be great to have at least vehicles and AAA manned. Civilians I can personally live without but I realize not everyone has the same priorities.

Go on? What is mine?

You and your constant moaning... It's easy to be negative.

"I always hate it when the quality isn't consistent throughout..."

Like for instance the ultra-sharp houses floating over low-quality ground textures ?

"On the other hand polygon crunching isn't such a big deal anymore..."

Yes, today, you can design a very nice cow, with few polys, BUT with a very high texture baked back from a very detailed model (with softwares like Zbrush, Mudbox, Mari or 3dCoat). I still wonder why these softs have not been used for the ground textures ?

LOl... good shot Tree .;)

Wow, you're easily pleased.

Fail.. , and might I add facepalm?

http://livetienglaskula.blogg.se/ima...m_59360425.jpg


Folks in the streets still doesn't add anything to the gameplay itself.. for crying out loud.. are you gonna go up against what the developers themselves are saying? I never mentioned anything about clouds, how on earth
can you compare clouds to people in a flight sim? The clouds obviously play a big role and they're there. All the basic stuff in the sim that is necessary is already there, stop being such a baby and imply that people
that don't whine about the smallest little details are inexperience folks who doesn't give a sh*t about anything ?

Things will be cut and things will be left out due to various reasons such as deadlines, quality reasons and/or simply because they didnt add anything to the gameplay.
Maybe its time you realize how game development works, and that Oleg can't please everybody.

mmkay?
mkay.

No, although that's also an issue (one that will fortunately go away with higher texture and AF settings, as shown in previous screens). I was more thinking of going from the Gladiator cockpit to the P-47 in Il2. Or watching some of the legacy 3D models in DCS along with some of the latest ones with 150.000+ polygons.

Baked-in shadows don't work well with dynamic lighting conditions, which is why Oleg probably sticks with bump mapping for the terrain (rarely shown so far unfortunately). And the models we've seen from planes over ground objects to seagulls already has a very conservative polygon count and are using various tricks to make them look more complex (just check how many of the vehicle surface features are done with bump mapping).

But that's not really my point - what I'm saying is, polygon count is not really the problem (for rendering ground personnel or traffic), so using "sprites" is not the solution. Such objects will not eat a current GPU:

http://fooblog.mexxoft.com/wp-conten...figuren_01.jpg

What the Kraken says, basically. As long as these personnel have no real AI to speak of, it shouldn't be tooooo-tooo taxing, but as far as I'm concerned it'd be a nice extra and nothing more as a release feature. This game is about flying historical air combat missions, not RAF Fighter Station Simulator 1940.

It's not a show stopper but in IL-2 back in 2001 we had ground gunners and drivers, if convoi was attacked they jumped out. Must be said that those figures were low polygon.

Today (political correctness) such features are the best way to a 18+ rating!

i think as long as you wont be able to kill them in any fashion the game will be 8+ so dont worry. :)