Question about the water in IL2 1946
 

Hi!

I have been playing IL2 for a while but only after a recent update has the water started to look like this:

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Misc....0iA2-UlJHdX_qQ

I think it's great, and I'm just curious as to how the 3D wave effect is achieved? Is the water surface an actual 3D mesh or is it a 2D plane with some sort of 3D illusion? Just curious!

Thanks :)

No image shown ?

There's four settings for water in the conf.ini water= 3 & 4 use Nvidia OGL Vertex Shaders

Setting 1 & 2 use normal OGL rendering and ATI cards should use these as they cannot use water = 3 & 4

IIRC

:)

I'm not a graphics card engineer but... if its the 3D effect from an nVidia card then they use something called a displacement shader (I think that's what its called anyways :)).

Basically there's an animated texture that is layered on the water textures and instead of being displayed as a texture on the surface it is used to calculate a 3D mesh using the shader engine on the card. It's layered with 2D textures to create the full 3D effect.

There may be a better more technical and more technically accurate description but that's how I understand it to work from a laymans perspective.

is there any difference between 2, 3 and 4 modes?

Yes there's a difference between all 4 settings if you have Nvidia.

Nvidia Water=2 from a few years back when I was testing some stuff out I made a screen video.

http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/...1/DSCN0592.mp4

Also some old screen shots at M4T

http://www.mission4today.com/index.p...p=show&kid=303

and something else ati water=2 is the same with nvidia water=4 or there is difference between them

Water = 0 - Water with flat geometry (fastest).

Water = 1 - Water with flat geometry (fast).

Water = 2 - This mode is visually similar to water = 3 but it runs on ATI cards 9800, X800, X1800 and later models.

Water = 3 - Fast render mode with Vertex Shaders 3.0 (NVIDIA 6600 and later models)

Water = 4 - Better quality mode with Vertex Shaders 3.0 (NVIDIA 6800 and later models)

Reminder:
ATI 9500 and higher supports modes: 0, 1, 2.
NVIDIA 6600 and later models support: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.
NVIDIA cards before the 6xxx series support: 0, 1, 2 (2 is not recommended).

Yes, there are several differences you may want to consider before choosing your Water mode:

-General Frame Rate
-Water Quality (Subjective)
-Shoreline Quality
-Cloud Reflections

Aviar

With V Sync off you must have horrible tearing in the cockpits.

Honestly, I really don't even notice it....maybe I am just used to it. As a mission builder, I can get a little carried away so I like to keep track of my true frame rate. Plus, when I activate V-synch my mouse gets laggy in the FMB. I can't have that since I spend so much of my time there.

Aviar