[Tempest123]

Originally Posted by constant

The screenshots are overall decent, I love the burning planes. ++

However, the specular affect on the planes is severely dissappointing, having the same flat-"plastic" look as in IL2, instead of metallic.

With the new technology, and computers moving to the 64bit bandwidth platform, 1c should not be afraid to move to bump-mapping + environment mapping (reflective) for a more authentically "metal" look.

Notice the minute details of the highlights in the planes construction, the shine on the underside of the wing and on the lowered flap. (Even the orange paint on the tail has a good shine to it!)



Now notice how the plane basically looks flat IL2:



Now look in SoW how well still have the same basic flat look, with what looks like a failed attempt to bump-mapping or a poor version of a bump mapped plane:

(image was too big to leave in a post..)

SoW Screenshot

Producing a properly skinned plane with bump-mapping and environment mapping (even realtime) is not a difficult task these days. You could even generate an environment map for all planes using one render of the environment, say from the players plane position, to a texture, since any plane that will have this reflectivness will need to be within some distance to be noticeable anyway, much too close to notice the lackof diffierence in environment mapping. Even in non-commercial 3D engines such as Irrlicht, this is possible in as few lines as 20, I believe. And second-rendering the environment (not other planes, no ground objects, just ground, water, sky..) should not be a big performance hit either. This second render could then also be used for other things like reflectiveness of the environment off the water.. Not that the water looks bad at all.

However there is probably just too much for these guys to fix to even bother attempting to reproduce that wonderful realistic look that planes have at this point in development. I am just sorely dissappointed they could not address this major peice of the sim as it has plagued the realism in il2 and sorely hampered my willingness to make skins for planes, especially those like the p51 who have had polished metal panels instead of paint.

Your right, except that spitfires, hurris and other planes at this time had matte finishes for camouflage. The bare metal polished planes you speak of came around after air superiority had been largely achieved over Europe in late 1944. This was when the the Allies became the hunters instead of the hunted, and camouflage was less necessary (but more so for german aircraft!). In 1940 the Luftwaffe was the most dangerous air force in the world, and had control over the skies in Europe. The British/allies camouflaged their aircraft to avoid detection by prowling Luftwaffe aircraft. BTW there was a screenshot of a bare metal/reflective spitfire a few months back just to demonstrate that this was possible in the sim.