Aerial Photographs of the UK, Hundreds of them; and Bird's-eye View of Trees
 

Many, many photos of the English (or British) landscape, taken from the air:

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/Portfolio.htm

It's interesting to compare them with what we see in IL-2 CoD :-). And a discussion about trees in CoD is in the following post.

Some photos picked out from there:

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ct-ba29326.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...es-db51188.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...s-eb17013a.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...um-db51166.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ee-ba29362.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ad-da48781.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...el-eb07479.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ig-ba29277.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...rk-fb32568.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...cy-da06669.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...al-ba29327.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ct-ba29364.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...-1/ba27115.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...-1/ba27054.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...r-ba29305a.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...rs-da48809.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ve-db50317.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...-1/ba21130.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ad-da48828.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...e-db51485a.jpg

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...p-aa07044b.jpg

The landscape in CoD is already so good that I often found myself enjoying the beauty of it as seen from the air. But having become more and more formiliar with COD visually, I think that as far as trees and woods go, there is still big room for improvement.


By examining the aerial landscape photos, we can find two imperfections of the CoD trees:

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1 - The colours of the CoD trees and woods are not dark enough. Trees and woods should generally look darker than the ground.
(Almost all the picutres posted above illustrate this point.)

2 - The colours of the CoD woods lack the variation in colour found in real woods (in a bird's-eye view), the variation, in fine art terms, being often a sort of cold colour & warm colour alteration. The colour variation is sometimes very conspicuous but at least easily decernable.

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...ct-ba29326.jpg
Here the woods' colours display evident variation both in a lightness-darkness manner and in a coldness-warmness manner. As to the latter aspect, browns and yellowish greens are abundant among vaious shades of green. Even trees of the very same type will be well likely to display different colours, since some trees grow earlier, some better, etc.

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...-1/ba21130.jpg
Tree colours in the woods, in this picture, show very little lightness-darkness variation, but some trees look more cold-coloured (bluish, or cyan-ish) and others more warm-coloured (yellowish). The warm-cold colour variation would be more prominent if the exposure of this photo had been less, considering the very strong sunlight, as shown below.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...4&d=1337259636

In CoD, the colours of trees look almost indetical. Of course, the computer draws such extremely monotonous trees faster than better looking ones - I know it. But to what extent will the game fps be slowed down if some variation is added? Perhpas it's worthwhile to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some CoD trees and woods, mostly from the screenshots thread, for easy reference:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1335604872
http://s14.directupload.net/images/120303/ogxvt6x9.jpg
http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/x...antPhalanx.jpg
and from a recent thread: http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a23...5-17_00002.jpg

If these two shortcomings are overcome, CoD's landscape will be even more beautiful! :)


~

These pictures are clearly fake; the sun shining and no rain in england????... you must of thought we were born yesterday ;)

Lol

It's raining everyday in England??? English people don't know what sun looks like? The Battle of Britain was fought in rains??? LOL

you may want to explain how they fake them. lol

outstanding pictures of the cliffs.I think they did a great job rendering them in the game.
the pictures with the hurricanes looks fake for some reason.I dont doubt they are real but it looks like they are taken straight out of Dover ;)

Nice to see Hawkinge BoB Museums still falling apart.......

Donations are getting harder to come by each year as these little place fall into oblivion.

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/galler...es-db51188.jpg

The Hurricane's are replicas, sunbleached, and parked in Hawkinge Battle of Britain museum (a great museum too).

Brenzett's falling on hard times too, I pop in there for a chat whenever its open and I'm down that way.

Nice people there .

http://www.brenzettaero.co.uk/Museum-001.html

Back on topic


You have to remember that the camera shots are enhanced to give a enriched foliage look to the ground and sky for that matter.

I took this shot up the Pyrenees (French Side) and gave it some adjustments in PS4 to make it look "richer"
although its a great looking view in real life the enhancement is false as in most of the above shots.

What we see with the MkI eyeball and our brain interprets is different from a cameras image
so we enhance it to make it look better to compensate for the original impression we felt or think it should look like.






http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...CF1889copy.jpg


Anyway were not flying a scenery simulator, but the feel of CoD at certain times of day is pretty good compared to anything else I've seen.


.

Just a note :

-Most of that photos are not in summer time, while in BoB was, so the grass should be less green and the trees too due the summers´s time sun effects.

I think that the main difference between those photos and CLOD is that the treetops are too thin in the game while in the photos they have more volume.

Brenzett.....your'e another one of us Kent mob.

In London at the moment unfortunately, but manage to escape now and then :)


Manston aren't you ?


.

Yes, was also working out of Biggin hill until recently.

Most of those shots are under-exposed...not the best example

Hi Woody,
Those pics of the Hurris are in the http://www.kbobm.org/ just down the road from my house.:cool:

when i can fly threw this wonderful valley in Dover??Will it ever be available?

go there and take a picture for me Joel. after all these years i sure would like to see yer ugly mug :grin:

~S~ bro. been great seeing you again.

edit: i dont care if its @ the Pub down the road. send me a pic...lol
you got my addy.

Yes you are right about photography's difference from scenes in real life. Actually I myself had added a note of this at first, "Although what a photograph shows us (i.e. what the camera tells us) is not exactly the same thing as what we see with the naked eye, but..."; at last however I deleted it, thinking that saying it would require lots of explanation. Now, here is the explanation:

Despite that fact that what photography shows is slightly different from what the naked eye sees, and that a photo's colours can also be enriched to make it look better (also more false, so to speak), the resultant photograph is still telling many basic truths, such as the relative darkness of the woods to the ground, and the variation in colour of the woods. You don't say a woman is 'false' when she has done some enhancement on her face by means of cosmetics, and as before her eyebrows are still darker than her skin.

Your photo can also explain my ideas when it is un-enriched.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1337306857
Here the lush colours of the original image are gone, and the image will be very close to reality if my colour reduction was not overdone. The 2 facts remain unchanged: that the trees are generally darker than the ground around them, and that there is colour variation (mainly cold-warm alteration) in the sparse woods. Actually these facts are still present when you de-colour it so much that it is almost black and white, below:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1337306857

:) So we need to be aware that truths should not be thrown away when there are some small blemishes accompanying them. And the photos I posted are still a readable reference for the CoD players, and hopefully also for the developer.

~

Definitely. :)

It was during the summer and autumn of 1940 (July–September 1940).

You will arrive at other conclusions when comparing colour relationships within the photos and the corresponding colour relationships within CoD. ;)

Treetops in the sim are too thin; this is something important I shoud have added.