why do cities seem so small?
 

Not sure if its just me. Cities seem really small, even cities like Berlin. It takes a very short amount of time to fly over them.

I kind of wish they were bigger, they don't seem that grand at all. Or maybe its all in my head.

Because, they were small at the time. For example, my home city area have expanded approximately 5 times since 1945.

Some maps are in scale 1:4 or 1:2. For that reason buildings are smaller too, cities as well.
This guy will play in NBA after war, be sure :)
http://s24.postimg.org/6rqdfcuox/grab0033.jpg
How big is this gate in real?
http://s15.postimg.org/eydewy4d3/grab0032.jpg

Its an old discussion/argument.

If you had a 1:1 perspective the processing power needed would huge.

It has a feeling of "Micro Machines" at times and you don't feel immersed in the terrain due to its smaller size,
probably why air fields look huge on maps in perspective of the landing requirement for the aircraft,
also its proportionally incorrect due to making maps "playable" back in the old days when 8-16mb GPU's were the high end marque.

Its also the same with shipping, carriers etc they seem too small when flying near them or landing on them.

It would be cool to have something done to make the games perspective seem like your in it rather than viewing from too far away,
its difficult to explain exactly why you don't have the sensation of a 1:1 environment but i hope the rambling above helps.

PS:

One game I did see, and had a go of, was Wings of Prey, my son was messing around in it flying a P51 low level in winter through a tree lined valley,
the perspective was spot on and it felt like you were actually flying past snow covered trees instead of the terrain we have in IL2 1946,
the trade off being of course the WOP maps are tiny in comparison to Il2.







.

All maps are 1:1 scale. Some buildings, however have bad, out of scale textures.

Check out this site:

http://warfly.ru/

It has WWII aerial photos of various Soviet cities overlayed on google maps, so you can check out how this cities grew since then.

They weren't high end, they were middle of the range. Which is where most of the customers were, so that was where the market was.

I built a computer back in 2000, it had an Athlon 1GHz, and a 64MB AGP 4 graphics card, I could have bought a faster Athlon if I'd wanted to spend a lot more money, but I don't remember how much faster the absolute top of the range was. The AGP was a GeForce 2 GTS/PRO (that's confused, but it's what the maker called that particular card), there was an Ultimate above it, I suspect with the same ram capacity.

I see a Moscow map but I don't understand Russian to navigate the site well enough to know exactly what you are trying to say, its probably not what I'm talking about the maps 1:1 perspective not its size geographically.

Even today not everyone flying IL2 uses top high end GPU CPU.

The 8-16mb cards were most common in use it the beginning of IL2 with 3DFX making some of the best at the time before 2000 and the later Nv cards who bought out 3DFx Voodoo the Voodoo 5 128 card was one of the most expensive at the time.

64 mb cards were probably the norm around its release 2000 era still considered high end due to the fact most other games were just emerging from the caves and flight sims were the most demanding software out there.

I made a picture for you:

http://imageshack.us/a/img690/448/stx6.jpg

You may see how much city area grew since 1940-s. Most of the ex-Soviet cities grew at a similar way between 1945 and 1991. Even not a major ones. And they still grow, although at a bit slower rate.
I bet, European cities also grew in a similar way at the same period.

Edit: If you look closely at the WWII-period photos from the site, I posted above, you may find Moscow defense positions and AT ditches in the South-West sector. If you compare it's location to the modern map, you will find, that currently this places are far within the modern city limits! While in 1941 they were several km out of the city limits.

So, my point is, the cities in the game are small, because they were small back in the 1940-s.

Distances in the IL-2 non-fictional maps are 1:1 scale. I.e. if distance between, say, Kiev and some nearby village IRL is 10 km, then it is 10 km on the in-game map as well.

original object number limits were very low, nowdays its a bit different :)

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/4603/f6bc.jpg

yea its getting lost in the translation.

Perspective
and not
Geographical

I know most of the maps geographically are correct.

The perspective when flying in the map relative to objects trees buildings bridges are too small hence lack of map immersion low over towns and cities.


http://s15.postimg.org/eydewy4d3/grab0032.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psd76bc5bb.png

Cliffs of Dover did a lot better not 100% though

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...410_163506.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psd777d4ad.jpg

I'm done :)

This is incorrect.

Take the L'viv map, for instance. Indeed, the grid overlay is 1:1 scale (10km square equals 10km, etc.), but underneath the grid the actual map itself is about 85% scale. This results in the cities and towns on the map being 15% smaller and closer together than they would be if they were 100% scale.

For example, in the game's map, when measured at the same latitude the centers of L'viv and Krosno are about 140km apart, whereas when measured from the same points on a real chart they are about 163km apart.

Other maps in the game similarly are at reduced scales, and some are quite obviously way below scale, the Libya-Crete map being a example of this, with a much-reduced and out-of-place Sicily being added as well.

The 'micro machines' look comes from missing details and too simple lighting - thats all. If you fly over the villages of the Slovakia map, you will see, that it can look quite realistic.

And have a huge frame rate drop.

:)

It's the most beautiful map in the game, though. Gorgeous.