Quote:
Originally Posted by wjc103
It seems to me that the following seems to be of interest to a lot of people:
Human activity on the airfield during:
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Spot on! But I'm afraid we'll just see limited human activity due to the sheer amount of work required to generate the required animations. What we really need is procedural animation which doesn't require manual keyframing/mo-cap for each animation:
With an engine like this and 'intelligent' characters that react automatically to the external events, there'd be no end of "OMG did that just happen?".
Some of the greatest moments in IL2 are the results of aircraft AI automatically reacting to the environment and situations. This engine provides the same for human characters.
Every bailout would be unique depending on airspeed, g-forces, aircraft attitude etc.
Wing riding ground crew wouldn't have to be specifically keyframed to do that with different animations for each aircraft's wing. Imagine hitting the brakes and watching the wing rider fall off the front of the wing. Even better, wait for someone to climb on and then power up suddenly. Bonus points for tricking the guy into hanging on while you take off
Human characters wouldn't just be puppets going through the motions of their programmed keyframes; they'd have a sense of self-preservation. Jumping away from the prop if you don't warn them with a 'clear!' before starting the engine. Seeking bomb shelters on seeing diving bombers or hearing the air raid siren.
This stuff isn't idle pie in the sky musing. There's already a few games using this technology. Look up Euphoria Engine from NaturalMotion on YouTube.
I don't pretend to understand all the challenges involved in implementing such technology in a flight sim using today's technology but I sure hope we won't have to wait another ten years for the next version of IL2 to get this.