Channel Map Comparisons
 

Just been flying around in the ROF Channel Map and (as is only natural) comparing it with Cliffs of Dover.
Both have got good points and issues.

On my first quick mission I was amazingly underwhelmed. The Major draw card for this expansion is the new water – this turned out to be a setting issue. If you would like to see some waves and any interaction between the water and the land you need to set the wind speed above 2m/s (you will also by the way be setting it too high to land any of the float planes on the water)

My second flight (with waves) game me a much better impression.
Frame rates using FRAPS to record was interesting. ROF was sitting about the 16fps mark and COD was capped at 30. (on my PC)

I got gigabytes of FRAPS footage on my hard drive from both sims so I'll go through them and see if I can edit a few short videos for comparison. (Not very good with this so please bear with me)

If anyone else has been playing around with the new map please feel free to post and share your views/pic’s/vids.

Also if anyones got any stuff from the IL2-46 channel map mod please contribute.

Cheers! :)

Waiting patiently, if you could land in a farmers field, love to see a screen.

Its a mixed bag for me, some of the things in COD I prefer and vice versa certainly the 3D water is amazing.

I will need to check it out a bit more but my two main issues at present are that the landscape looks a bit washed out and my fps are around the 30-40 mark which is terrible given that I had a good constant 60fps in COD :shock: :-| Then again the AA works in this game and I don't suffer random slow downs.

I think I'd like to see the water toned back a bit from the almost pacific blue it is now. Must have a look in the files and see if I can do something about it myself. The whitecaps could do with toning down too. Especially when HDR is switched on.

The towns and villages look a lot better than I was expecting. The ships are a real pleasure too. Something I really missed in the other channel. I'm getting a significant hit in performance however, but considering how hard they were pushing to get it completed on schedule, I'm fairly confident there will be some optimisation down the track.

Btw Skoshi, you can still land in harbours and rivers etc when the wind is up. There are two kinds of water on the map.

Landing in a farmers field (As requested) inland of dover.

Tostart off here are the graphics settings
http://i1042.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8403bc46.png

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZvbsZ9Rr58

One thing I noticed is the haze in the distance over water, from memory I set the weather to "clear".

If anyone sees any issues with my setting I'm all open for suggestions.

Cheers!

They just torpedoed the entire online community with this map.
The map is sold as addon. Looks like not many online regulars got this new map and if it shows up in the rotation on the server, the guys that don't have it get kicked. The server instantly goes from 20-30 people to five. Now those that didn't get the map can't play, and those that got it don't have who to play with.
If you dare posting about it on ROF forums they delete the thread in a heart beat.
Good luck with this bussines model in the next game.
The map is ok, the collor of water is off. Water looks like 1946 water with better waves. The lighting engine makes it look wrong.

Were you expecting them to just give it away?

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to be a ROF cheerleader here but if they offered a system where those who don't own the map could play on servers that are using it, do you really think that anyone but dedicated server owners and single player fans would actually bother buying it? It would essentially mean that they did all that hard work for nothing.

I think the map is a little expensive but that is to be expected for a project of that scale.

The reason they are closing threads like that is because those threads always turn nasty and the ROF forum mods don't want to deal with a ton of anger about something that is actually perfectly logical.

Lastly, I don't think one can really compare ROF and CloD's channel maps, both are built with different goals in mind and while I will always say that CloD has a better looking map, I don't feel that it counts against ROF's map as they both do what they set out to do (though I find that ROF is consistently smoother in the FPS department and the weather effects really make it interesting).

I imagine that this thread is really just going to turn into another ROF bashing session, I suppose there is no avoiding it on this forum.

I wish we could all go back to talking about CloD and not CloD compared to everything else.

Low level near Deal ROF followed by Cod!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcXZf...=youtube_gdata

I think they were suposed to think about the online community with this move. It's not like a plane one doesn't own. If you don't own a plane in the mission, you could just get another plane, or fly gunner for somebody else. With this one, everyone that doesn't have the map is out and the mission goes to crap.
This map can straight up kill the online community. I don't think they thought of that. Are they going to make enough money on this map to compensate for the online guys that will just give up and go look for another game?
Maybe, maybe not.
The map is ok and the new boat is fun, but, I wouldn't risk killing the online game play for this map.

Do you have the same crazy fog I do in ROF? I don't know if it's something i did or not, but I can't even see the sun at sunset. :(


http://i.imgur.com/ZBGoJ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/g5Ok2.jpg

I wouldn't be so negative about it. Everyone has to live with the fact that the Future of the IL2 Series is Il2-BOS. If people can't talk about their concerns and hopes how will the developers get a feeling what the community is willing to buy.

It would be a absolute pitty it in a year or so time the developers released a product that failed to meet the expectations of their market.

Even before the developers stopped working on COD, it was impossible to discuss it in isolation. I think this is all just a natural progression and that people still need the oportunity to talk about the state of things.

And also threads like this gives people who know the in-and-outs of ROF give people like me tips to improve the visuals and performance of ROF. That's not a bad thing.

Over the ocean yes but not over the land. (I think)

I totally understand folks who go on the BoS forum and voice concerns about the upcoming sim, I even understand the same folks going to the ROF or CloD forums and voicing those concerns also, that is what makes a healthy community (and we are all one community, we all play historical flight sims!)

The problem comes when some choose to just stand around and complain, make unreasonable demands and try to stir up trouble (by trolling topics, instigating fights) and when someone calls them out, they act like they are the victim and that they "were only voicing concern" and accuse the mods of silencing them or some other such nonsense.

Constructive criticism is great, it allows dev's to see what they should do next, complaining, comparing two different products with two very different goals and acting like we are football fans that can only root for one team or the other helps nobody and only causes more problems down the road.

I don't say that you do this Skoshi, I have read your posts and although perhaps I see subtext in some that might actually just be me being to sensitive, I think you are a pretty stand up guy that does not tend to make snide remarks just to piss people off.

Honestly, I think this entire thread is pointless, it is just going to turn into another thread that makes users of both (like me and probably many others) feel unwelcome, it might not be that now but just wait till the trolls get here and start trying to bait others into conflict.

ROF is not CloD, CloD is not ROF and BoS will be neither, I think that is the best way to look at things at this point.

I understand your point of view, but don't neccessarily agree with it, but thats fine. whether you choose to participate in this thread and your contribution is entirely up to you.

Loft over at the new forum sums this up quite well

I think the same sentiment should apply when participating in threads like these.

Cheers!

Nice screens!

Here are some I took on my first foray on that map...



http://imageshack.us/a/img546/3222/f2alanding.jpg




http://imageshack.us/a/img826/4846/f2aenemyair2.jpg

The new patch changed some of my settings so I did not realize my AA was turned way down. It also turned bloom back on, normally I don't use it as it does not look at all real.

The ground textures are too washed out, just as in the other RoF maps, but overall it is not bad, if a bit lifeless feeling, again just like the main RoF map.

I cannot fault the aircraft models though. If only RoF's environment looked as good as the aircraft.

Thankyou, I hope that you are on the mend. Please try that again in that rye field over there, we are waiting to welcome you :evil:

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...ps66212d3a.jpg

1) Try ticking Multi-GPU. It has benefits even if you have a single card. The downside is a little stutter at CERTAIN sun angles, however a little rare stutter is better for me than lower FPS.

2) Set Filter to Bilinear in game, and force Anisotropic X16 for ROF via NVIDIA CP. That way you will see more details in textures at shallow angles (i.e. while flying low).

The haze is a new feature apparently. As for online, Jason did once say that online would be no problem when the new map was released (or words to that effect) And I, as quite a few others it seems, just assumed that even if you didn't buy the map you would still be able to fly online with it ( I thought it would be a map download for missions like you see now in games) but as Jaws said, anyone asking about it gets their thread locked/deleted pdq now.
I bought the map, as I mainly fly online anyway, but I know some others in the squad won't have it. Performance is worse than CoD for me, and the sound bug is horrible.Hopefully there will be a hotfix.
Not nice to see most people in a server kicked as soon as the new map loads.

So they will need to buy the map...what do you guys do on the map, mostly dog fight?

Well, on the whole the Central (German) aircraft are underperforming, and some of the Entente aircraft are optimistic to say the least so we usually fly Gotha'a or 2 seaters.
One of my squadmates did a bit of research, obviously finding performance figures for WW1 are not so easy, but it appears that most info was taken from captured examples:
- Albatros D.II is missing 11kmh topspeed (164 vs 175 - Mercedes D.III)
- Albatros D.III is missing 15kmh topspeed (170 vs 185 - we have the late OAW version with Mercedes D.IIIa)
- Albatros D.Va is missing 17kmh topspeed (170 vs 187 - Mercedes D.IIIa)
- Pfalz D.IIIa is missing 13kmh topspeed (168 vs 181 - Mercedes D.IIIa)
- Pfalz D.XII is running on the wrong engine (currently: BMW III, should be: Mercedes D.IIIau)
- Fokker D.VII is running on the wrong engine (currently: Mercedes D.III, should be: Mercedes D.IIIau)
- Fokker D.VIII is missing at least 15kmh topspeed (185 vs as much as 204 - Oberursel URII)
The last FM changes were done over a year ago...

You can range for artillery, do visual reconnaissance at low alt, and do photo reconnaissance at higher altitudes. You can also do the usual bombing, strafing and tail chasing that other sims do since time immemorial. Ship busting and maritime patrol stuff will probably be along now too.

PS:

Tweaked the ocean colour a bit. My graphics settings are lower than usual here, but you get the idea.

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...ed_IV/none.jpg

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...ered_IV/b3.jpg

That looks more like the channel I know FIV. Where do they come up with these colours. The channel is not the Pacific.

[QUOTE=Feathered_IV;490123]You can range for artillery, do visual reconnaissance at low alt, and do photo reconnaissance at higher altitudes. You can also do the usual bombing, strafing and tail chasing that other sims do since time immemorial. Ship busting and maritime patrol stuff will probably be along now too.

PS:

Tweaked the ocean colour a bit. My graphics settings are lower than usual here, but you get the idea./QUOTE]

Thanks, and your color tweak does look good

The idea of "the good business model - DLC", is to provide the sandpit (good quality ) for free, with basic toys (again, good quality including good quality cockpits) for free, and let developer addons and 3rd party people make the toys/ etc to compliment it and make their bucks there. AI models should be made available for onliners, who have no wish to fly any particular plane/ vehicle which may have been put into a mission/ co-op... ie there should be no requirement to make a purchase to fly in an online mission/ co-op, other than what the flyer wants to fly/ drive.

Else go with full blown Expansion Packs, of good quality and DLC from there


oh, and its got the same fake looking trees and heavily masked (the fog) fps eating distancing... and Channel water isn't Pacific blue

Jaws2002.. I understand your frustration.. but you have to remember the map has only been out for a day or to...( plus its the holidays..more people probably have the map..just don't have it installed.) As for players that cant play because they don't have the map.. is just the way it is. It sux I know but other than running a dedicated channel map server.. their isn't any other way around it. On a positive note.. it will stimulate channel map sales, that will help produce other maps. S! Or other projects ;)

Well, here's my thoughts on the new map, compared to the CloD map particularly with reference to England.

I'm certainly not going to post my views on the new forums, because you are not allowed to point out any negative aspect of the RoF/BoS engine, due to a certain moderator, in fact i find it amusing that more criticism is tolerated in the RoF forums than in the new forums......

Also, i should mention that i like both games, although most of my time is still spent in il2 1946 hsfx, because thats what is easier for the squad to fly due to technical issues regarding both the other games (lack of co-op mode for Clod, and difficulty in hosting co-ops in RoF without a futuristic internet connection).

For those who haven't seen the new Rof map, heres a vid i made for Frycinet who asked to see a non dogfight vid of it,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MZ-4tSIUZs

Anyway, things i think are better in the RoF channel map,

1) I like the overall colours of the textures better, although there are not many different types possibly as Clods. However, they look more like where i live to me.

2) I like the attention to accuracy in the coastline mapping, its better than clods, re the little bays, which parts are cliffs and which are not along the coastline. (at this point i should add that i live about 2 miles from Manston airport, and have flown in a Stearman out over Margate and the coast, featured in both maps). Flying for real over Margate and out to sea, RoF's coastline is much better.

3) Trees. Not necessarily the look, but the ability to hit them, although i prefer the density of tress on CloDs map.

Things i think the Clod map is better,

1) The sea. By a huge margin indeed. Although Feathered_IV's colour mod is a huge improvement (are you going to post that as a mod over on the RoF forums, pretty please!), when you get down low over it in Rof it looks terrible in my opinion, Clods looks fantastic.

2) Towns and villages. Far far superior in Clod. Towns are more accurate in size, and there are more represented, and for some reason small villages on the RoF map look like there from the 17th century. I live in a small village, in a house that was built before WW1 as are most in my street. They do not look like mud huts. In general the buildings look much more like English building on the Clod map.

3) Colour of the sky and horizon. Living here, i can say with absolute certainty, in Clod is much more what i see in real life here on the South coast. The haze is just about perfect for this part of the world, and having lived in Australia for a year i can understand why people from other countries think it should look different, but for here they are wrong, period.

Regarding fps, i get about the same with Clod maxed out as i do with the Rof maxed out, indeed on the RoF forums there are many complaints about the optimisation of the new channel map on some systems. One thing to mention regarding frames however, is that obviously i have lots of aa running when i play RoF, not so much with Clod lol, so that might skew fps, although i haven't tried turning off aa on the Rof map to check how many fps i'd gain.

So to conclude, both have strengths, and both do some things better. On balance, i prefer Clods, although its pretty close.

This is what i've read as well, and i find a concern especially your line, The last FM changes were done over a year ago....

Until recently i've mainly flown central power aircraft, and was amazed by how easy allied planes are compared. I can predict a certain Hungarian having a fit when BoS comes out......

This is the only forum where you can say negative things about Rof with out threads disappearing. It is also natural to compare 2 different products that are modelling the same thing.

Yep this is interesting, and has caused many complaints over on the RoF forums, mainly because they were told by the infallible management that this wasn't going to be the case, lol.

That said, i can't see how it was ever not going to turn out as it has, it is the nature of the online community to play with new toys.

anyway, thats my take on it all.

Edit, you can see what i mean about the sea looking bad imo towards the end of this vid, looks best in 1080p,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8p6W1dDLkc

Wonderful game but...that does look pretty bad at sea level.

The reflections on still waters (Dover Harbor for example) are very off putting.

I'll get a screen shot shortly to illustrate.

And yes, Olegs's water is better than Loft's, by a fairly large margin.

You guys are safe here, for now:evil:

Ok, here is an area where CloD's and IL2/46's water is far far better.

Reflections.

The water in RoF looks like it's liquid metal in game. And note that the reflections are transmitted under the hull, there is no reflection of the lower wing or the hull itself.

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7...eflections.jpg

The sea movement looks fantastic, but i dont really like the reflections of the water, ive never seen the channel that colour or reflect like that.

From the vid, the landscape looks more like the England i know.

talking about reflections, anyone else think this looks rather odd, watch from 1:35 onwards, and the burning plane,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vudKEfO9vb0

As i said in my previous post Furbs, i agree with you on the texture of England though.

Could you do a vid with overcast or heavy low cloud?

Cheers.

pick the weather, location, and time of day, and i'll knock one up (just sightseeing?).

Cheers, if you dont mind...

Heavy cloud, start above 5k over the coast and come down then low flight over the sea to inland, set time around 6pm.

Overcast, start low over the sea, work inland, time around 4pm.


Cheers FB. :)

Will do. The vids themselves won't take long to make at all, however, due to my third world internet connection (SE English village) the upload time to youtube will!

Understand FB.

Have you tried to turn down the reflections in the options?

Why? I always assumed that higher was better (there on max which is 20 i believe at the moment).

Oleg? He no work here no more.

Just a thought, maybe the reflections are too errr...reflecty for the channel water:)...was just a idea.

And the 20 setting is for light sources i think, not reflections.

ahh yes you are correct, my bad.

i see reflections in the settings now, its on max at the moment.... hmmmm......

I think you're right. The water is too "reflecty" lol. I live on the south coast, though in a much nicer place than Fruitbat:-P and I know this sounds strange but the sea surface should have a matt finish. Not quite the gloss we've got here. The action of the water surface is amazing though. Colours? Difficult for any devs to do I think as the colour of the sea changes constantly and the naked eye perceives colour in a much different way from any photo-process.

Performance of this new map on my PC? Just got back from PC World :evil: and have doubled my RAM but looks like my venerable old 460GTX 756mbvram has met it's match here. 660ti 3gb in the new year I think:cool:
Runs slower than CLoD but still smoother. Do I prefer CLoD map to RoF map? Probably. Do I prefer RoF to CLoD? Probably.

Yes, but we don't need webbed feet to fit in........;)

You flying later on?

Webbed feet? No. But a few of these little beauties always help to break the ice:-).

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...80908034-1.jpg

Flying later? Yes please!!!

Thanks fruitbat, what a good read, very interesting! Surprised about the bigger accuracy in the RoF coastline, that's cool. My main gripe with the RoF map (from your movie, I'm away from my gaming comp for three weeks) is the sterile sameness of the landscape. I love the lighting and atmosphere effects, but after a while you just feel that it doesn't really matter what area you fly over, it is all the same...

I feel that the RoF towns on the map are 'representations' or some sort of digital summary compared to CoD.

But, wasn't it the original intention of CoD to permit ground fighting on the map??

Put paid to a Felixtowe near dover...


http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...red_IV/1-2.jpg

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...red_IV/2-2.jpg

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...red_IV/3-1.jpg


Short lived triumph however. Forgot which England I was flying over and clipped a tree :(


http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/d...red_IV/4-1.jpg

Nice pictures Feathered!

One thing I noted is that you seam to have a lot more texture to the cliff face than I've been seeing, What graphics settings are you using?

Cheers!

Thanks! I've got landscape textures set to maximum. You take a bit of a hit in frames per second, but not too much.

We want to fly too!!

http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/w...irda2a/baa.jpg

It will never work! There are only two seats!

On seeing the different screenies for the RoF Channel map, I can't get over how much it just seems to be a washed out and blued up, a few terrain details added to, hazed (to help fps) over, building detail dumbed down, landscape sparsened, nvidia water cranked up version of CoD's Channel map.

It appears to be a modded CoD map.

You know they are on completely different engines right?

It's all binary! A one here and a zero there. What do you want it to look like????? ;)

The Channel ;) and original work ;) ;)






engine has nothing to do with a port over ;)

ok...its definitely not a port over...
you can say what you like about the quality of it, thats up to you.
But I wouldnt throw about rumours of copying just because you think they look similar..they're based on pretty much the exact same areas, how different can they possibly look? aside from the obvious engine differences.

You have absolutely zero idea what you are talking about here. :rolleyes:

Lies

@ LukeFF...

you're not saying that exports from CoD (port over) can't happen, are you?

We have already seen that you can port models over to the ROF engine, that much is common knowledge.

I've read some stupid stuff on the various forums in the last couple of weeks, but this wins first prize.

oh god good one thats an excellent conspiracy theory, but i guess i learnt as all coincidences theyre not such you just read so

It's not a port from CloD, but I do agree it looks every bit as bad as the rest of RoF looks to me.

An impressionist painter's view of the world, done in pastel water colors for a children's book.

The only thing that RoF gets right visually are the aircraft models.

I think a lot of you are being way to harsh on 777 Studios/RoF. They actually got a viable economic model going for flight sim development, which is huge, and the basis for EVERYTHING.

Also, to say that BoS will just be WWII on a RoF map does the team a big injustice. I am sure they have a lot of goodies up their sleeve with BoS. They have carried out amazing improvements to RoF over the years. The important thing to remember is that the improvements will NECESSARILY have to be rolled out INCREMENTALLY, for economic and time schedule reasons. As CoD showed no company can finance a 7 year development period in this small niche sector.

BoS will most probably be a rather bare-bones sim, with not so much content but with the architecture for future additions in place. The barren wastes of the Russian steppes - in winter no less - will be a perfect first place for a map that will be ONe and not four years in the making (As the RoF Channel map compared to the CoD Channel map).

The worst thing, the absolutely worst thing, the flight sim community can do is to heap criticism on BoS from the day of release. I witnessed the terrible spectacle of that with CoD and I really don't want to see it again. ...But it seems a lot of people don't learn and that it is starting again. - Please cherish the fact that some people are putting their life-blood into hi-fi sim development (instead of WoT, WoP, or whatever all the arcade games are called...).

I really really hope we are in for years of great development with the new franchise and I would be immensely sad it if it is stopped in the beginnig like we have seen before. People really have to redimension their expectations to the economic reality of flight sim development...

Well said Freycinet. I don't think we'll see that again though, 777 might release a "bare-bones" sim but I bet at least they'll have the basics in place, like a.i radio commands, a working gui, more intuitive online modes and an actual functioning campaign etc. What I've learned with CloD is that functionality is much more important than ambition. Ambition can't grow and prosper unless the basic foundation is in place, CloD's foundation was unfortunately laid way too late. Who says that the RoF engine will be the first and last resort of the future of the IL-2 franchise? The success of BoS will determine if there is a future for the IL-2 franchise and to be honest, realistically, there might not be one. So yeah, let's ALL be a little more humble in our expectations.

Well said, but your last point is completely invalid.

The communities reaction to CloD did nothing to tarnish the product. The product tarnished itself, in the same way that awful regimes lay the grounds for their own downfall. It was a mess at release and evolved into something a lot better. It has/had so much potential.

If BoS is a success it will be well treated, and if it is awful the community will be honest. RoF itself shows that a sim can be poor at release and evolve into something pretty damn good.

Don't really want to go there, BUT, the above was almost exactly my description of how COD looked from anything above a few thousand feet. On the ground it looked great however! ;) [This probably says a lot again about the plus and minus aspect of COD's advanced features - the advanced lighting model that meant terrain colours and appearances were affected by the parameters input to the lighting system. The minus being that apparently it was so complex that they were NEVER able to make it look satisfactory at all altitudes, so from ground it's really great but gets washed out and pastel-shaded as you go up. They tried tweaking it in various patches and were never able to get it fully sorted]

I personally prefer the ROF depiction of England to COD's, but as the COD map was one of my big bug-bears that's probably not surprising.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose.

Good post Freycinet.

I dont know where you live ElAurens, but ROF colour palette is much closer to life than CODs, though which you prefer is personal.

I dont know how BOS will turn out, but i will stay positive until i see anything that changes how i feel.
What do i expect from BOS at release?

A working sim that will play well.

It will be very hard for them to come close/equal/surpass 1946. Why with all 46 has, its assets for that theater, realistically impossible I guess to get done. Unless much can be imported from the new joint venture thats in place. I want them to do well I just can't see it for that theater, within the limited time frame.

Sorry, but what clear advancements does the RoF Channel Map show over the original one produced for Storm of War (which may have been updated for CloD)?

I think the colour palette in CloD is wrong, but if fixed would look 10X better than the washed out RoF rendition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GtsNqaE1yU

I get the feeling this is a more of a test of the engine and possible player base,

I dont think they will be risking too much in the timeframe they have, if it sells well and the reviews are good, then i expect they will reach further.

They are going for a working, upgraded IL2 that plays well.

If they get that right and the IL2 crowd switch over, then we can expect further theaters and upgrades to the engine...64bit DX11 and such.

What i dont understand is the hostile attitude for BOS, COD is dead...the future is BOS and then onward, even with modding(and i wish them well) COD is not going to go anywhere with no more maps or planes.

If BOS is crap, then by all means rip into it, but at least wait till we see the first screen shot.

IL2 crowd switch over will be very difficult...Even with its age it is still an incredible combat sim. A lot of guys are going to say OK, I'll give up my D9 and my P 51 to go spend 300.-

Well, of course they can't equal il-2 1946 nor surpass because il-2 1946 is not just ONE game. It's a compilation of all the il-2 releases up until 2006 so you can't compare it. A fair comparison would be the original IL-2 Sturmovik release of 2001 if we are talking about content and features (maybe not features though). Original IL-2 only had a few flyables and a few maps. You can't compare over 6 years of combined work vs est. 1 year of work.

If you mean future expansions and theatres then the answer will also most likely be no, it won't reach the same amount of content as il-2 1946 and no wonder, considering how much more advanced and expensive game development has become the last 6-7 years. No sim developer will be able to pull that off unless they have a really, REALLY sound business plan. This time around I think the developers should be focused on quality and features rather then gimmicks and throw-away extras to succeed.

Over the original one from the video - none whatsoever I'd say, but over the one we actually got I think it rectifies a few of the shortcomings, specifically trees and colour balance.

But, please note the colour balance in ROF can be varied quite a bit by choosing different options under the 'Post effects' settings. There is also a tweak for saturation buried in the Startup.cfg file in the Rise of Flight/Data folder (at standard default saturation of 0.75 it can look washed out. I have increased it to 0.815 which gives better results) just seen that some people are using saturation = 1.00. I may have to give that a go.

Then there is the new FlightFX/SweetFx that has brought improvements too.

With everything tweaked the criticisms about washed out colours don't really apply.

I was thinking today that il-2 46 was maybe the high water mark for combat flight-sims. I certainly got more enjoyment out of it than from either COD or ROF.

il-2 got so many things right and set the bar very high. It's showing its age graphically but BOS and whatever comes after (?) will take some time to fully replace it.

I agree, its going to be tough but if they get a few key things done very well, then they have a good chance.

Single player has to be good, most flight simmers are offline, so it has to have a well written campaign that offers varied careers and good replay value.

AI has to be at least as good as IL2, anything less and people wont bother with SP.

The QMB again has to be easy to use, fun and again offer varied missions including ground attack...having played the ROF QMB i have no worries there.

MP has to have COOP's, if they want the IL2 crowd this is a must, one of the top must have features.
It needs to be as easy to use as IL2 but with bells and whistles added.

I think if they get them right and have good enough FM, DM and CEM they will at least on the right track.

Will they leave all of that was the point I tried to make...they did not, to come here

Ok, I see what you mean. I'd really like to know why the majority of the il-2 community abstained from CloD, was it lack of "traditional co-ops"? or was it just lack of content? From a pure flight-simming perspective I couldn't -I tried- go back to il-2 1946. The feel of flight was yet again re-invented with CloD, unbeatable and the cockpits alone surpassed anything from before. I guess there's no single answer to it.

No single reason, but lots of reasons, some big some small.

In some areas COD was light years ahead of everything, in others worse than IL2.

Add in the very high system requirements at release...

Its a shame really, some of those features could have been fixed quicker than a graphic engine rewrite. If they had just fixed the bugs and left the overhaul to the next game I think our upgraded PC's would have blasted the other problems away.

I agree, some of the menu system stuff being fixed would have gone a long way, the sim itself was okay and I am sure better computers would have hashed a lot of the issues out.

The somewhat difficult to deal with menu issues would turn a lot of new players off though, which is a shame really.

maybe you could post up some screenies of what you're saying there?

LOL!! You call that a landing!! Nice vid though up till the bloddy part..

Hmm.. that bites.. I was hoping it would be that you couldn't run missions on that map on your PC if you didn't have the map.. but that you could fly in a mission hosted by someone.. sort of like they do with the planes.. disappointed in that..

Good post.. makes sense .. but it is still a little disappointing because of my previous post.. and I bought the map..

As for the last part of your post I think till this all settles out and some kind of clear path for CoD comes out.. and we see just what will become of this 1c777 merged product the comparisons will be there.. it is unavoidable.

You shouldn't have to apologize for extolling the virtues of another sim.. here or on any other flight sim forum for that matter and that only gets dicey when the posters involved take it there.. here or elsewhere. If those threads didn't turn nasty we would have more discussion across the boards with less acrimony. At the end of the day it's all about the flying really and I can't speak for anyone else but for me this is all good because it's like seeing the planes that used to hang from my wall in a totally different light breathing and moving.. Only now I don't have to go "EEeerrrrnnnhhhhh ... dudududududuhhh krshhh .. burlllghghg..." I can see it on my screen .. :)

LOL! Hey! I've been flying in sim since Elite on the Apple][+, Never said I was any good at any of 'em! ;)

It's Sim pilots like me that give those guys online their 100+ kills per month! Still, I get a great sence of achievement for every mission I finish!

You will not lure us again :evil:


http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f3...psee145f60.jpg

awww...no screenies?

Here's a few lifted from the SweetFX thread to demonstrate what some people are getting. Some of these pics may even be a little over-saturated!

If they could fix the glaring issue of the aircraft markings looking like model kit decals that otherwise looks quite reasonable.

Just a quick OT question. Why does Jason over at 777 promotes this sweatfx untility rather than fixing the problem in the Sim? Or is there issues with the utility? Are the changes just subjective or is there a performance hit?

Because it saves him money, someone else can make his sim look pretty and nobody seems to mind.

What does it actually do? Is the effect seen in game or is it just for screenshots?

it's seen in game, it's a .dll file you put into the game directory that injects shader effects etc usually with a .txt file for tweaking the settings, exactly the sort of thing Furbs would have whined about if used with CoD to fix AA but perfectly ok with ROF oddly enough.

Oh good grief...just cant help your self can you Bongo. :)

Too busy helping others mate...

In fact ive used SweetFX for both COD and ROF, in ROF you dont really need the SMAA because it already has 8XFSAA and 8XAF...but its useful for adding a little sharpening to the textures, making them look even more brilliant! ;)


In COD SweetFX helps a bit in the cockpit and your own aircraft but get any further away and it doesn't really help, because COD only has 2x FSAA, COD's real problem is in the LOD at medium and far distance, where as ROF doesn't have LOD's it renders the full high detail LOD at any distance, it also keeps the markings.

One of the things im really looking forward to in BOS is seeing a flight of 109's with proper FSAA and AF.

Of course not using LOD's can really hog resources with high numbers of objects in the scene, so I guess the poly limit on models will have to be sacrificed to an extent, we don't want pretty we just want fps.

or of course limit the number of objects you have in a scene, I believe ROF does this.

True, the low LOD's in COD wouldn't of been such a problem if we had more FSAA to deal with it..but having both the LOD and low FSAA just made the fantastic aircraft models look ugly at mid/far distance.

Bongo, zip it up.

Why do you feel the need to constantly attack other members when unprovoked? You just made yourself look like a complete fool, and your naivety on the reasoning behind the implementation for Sweet-FX in RoF is astounding.

As Furbs said, it isn't to remedy a failure in the nature of RoF-proper, but rather to 'improve' the artistic/aesthetic appearance of the game, whereas the main use for CloD is to inject some form of AA (which, let's be honest, is a total failure in the game).

Those are the facts. Either deal with them, or continue sounding like a spoilt little brat who lost his favourite toy.