This is really one of the best updates in a long time. Long shadows? Moving windmill blades? In my flight sims? I get the feeling this engine will be heavily licensed by other developers, there is that much detail near the ground and a solid "world building" background, especially with the care taken in modelling not just realistic atmospheric and time-of-day conditions, but also having them interact with the way the graphics are displayed.
The pieces might not all be in place (in some cases i think the pieces are taken out, reworked and put back in) but the rate of progress reminds me of a steam engine...it starts slowly but when it builds up speed, good luck trying to stop it
As for the features requested during the course of the past few months:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dutch_851
Every week, I add the latest screenshots to a slideshow and every week I see old screenshots with stuff in them that people complain are missing from the new ones. Or Hurri pilots with mask and helmet on which no-one complained about and are the same size as last week's picture which caused huge debate. There was a great picture of a shot-up Spit sitting in a yellow field.
It really is worth going through the 'links to updates' list to refresh your memory.
How it looks running.......?
I'm just jealous of the blokes who see it every day and get paid for the privilege...........!
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I more or less agree. I was recently linking the updates to a friend of mine, he used to be a Falcon4 flier back in the day and i'm trying to get him back into flight simming.
Since he's not registered on this forum i linked him foobar's excellent update blog and while doing so, i started going through past updates myself. There were so many things that have already been shown and yet, i didn't remember seeing them. And yes, most of what people ask for has been displayed at one point or another in previous updates.
It might not be a case of "take a look at our awesome yellow ochre, dry grass", but the screenshots are there, it's just that they don't advertise the features too much yet. Some things are subtle but they are definitely there and to be honest, i kind of like it when i re-examine the update screenshots and spot things that i missed during the first viewing. It's nice hunting to spot features just like in this update, where people have spotted the windmill rotation and it was confirmed.
The positive feeling i get from it is that if i'm surprised with this title by watching still pictures, imagine how surprised i'll be when i get to watch everything in motion for the first time. My biggest hope is that i won't only be surprised...i want to actually get scared the first few times. I won't go straight to the QMB to see explosions and fireballs and listen to the sounds because i wouldn't want to spoil it. Instead, i'd get the longest campaign option possible and set right into the mood of things...
Imagine that you create a pilot and enter a carreer, the game asks you "do you want to fly the flight school missions?" and you click yes. After some flights in the Tiger Moth you get posted to a conversion unit a bit further north to avoid combat while learning to use your new fighter.
You've gotten to grips with the basic interface of the sim, you've configured your controls and graphics to your liking and you are gradually but steadily getting pulled into this virtual world with every extra flight you make.
Before you realize it you feel like you're actually there. You know, it's a fine summer day and you're cruising along on a training familiarization flight in your Hurricane, courtesy of the operational training unit you've been assigned to. You haven't even seen combat in the new sim, heck, you don't even know how a machine gun sounds in SoW. Just soaking in the sun, taking in the sights and enjoying the reassuring, throaty rumble of a few hundred horses under your Merlin's cowling...a complete upgrade in terms of excitement compared to the puny Gupsy Major powering the Tiger Moth.
As you turn around to your next waypoint, your tail faces the sun and you revell in how real and believable the change in lighting angles is diplayed with your instrument panel turning from a darkened, shady one to a bright one, basking in the sunlight.
In fact, you're so immersed that you can almost feel the warmth of the sun and smell the exhaust fumes entering the cockpit from your partially opened canopy. After all, it's such a nice weather out there with nice cumulus clouds formed by the thermals rising from the plowed fields that you really don't want to slide the canopy shut and spoil the visibility. You're just enjoying yourself cruising along the countryside, in fact you're so relaxed that even though you notice it with your peripheral vision, it fails to actually register on your brain, the ominous shadow that gradually superimposes itself on your instument panel...it's a twin engined plane.
You think to yourself "bah, they can't be that far north, after all it's still a game and games are predictable". Then, in the split seconds it takes to marvel at the way the shadow interacts with your cockpit interior and while you leisurely decide to give a bit of bank and turn your neck around to check six just in case, you hear the sound of gunfire whizzing by, see the tracers and feel a couple of loud thumbs. You almost jump out of your seat, endangering the welfare and continued operation of the connecting wires and consequently your entire headphones/TrackIR/Trackclip assembly, but nevertheless satisfied that this simulator is capable of smacking some fearful respect and surprise back into the soul of a person who's been into flight sims for the past 18 years. Nursing your crippled bird back to base seems impossible even after damaging your attacker and forcing him to disengage, so it looks like it's time to set it down in a nearby farm and enjoy the hospitality of the local population. Looks like a nice chance to sneak a few pints of beer to relieve the tension.
After bringing up the "end mission" dialogue and exiting to the menu, you are still so immersed that your mind fills in the missing parts...the phone call back to base, sending a car to pick you up and driving you to the debriefing tent. Taking a look at the debriefing screen you identify your solitary menace that almost cut down your carreer of virtual acedom before its prime...a Me110 that probably got lost and separated from its flight during a long range freijagd mission. Seems like you got your first probable, as a sound spotting station further to the south reported a 110 crashing near the coast. Alas, it will be a week or so before accurate confirmation and even then you might not get full credit, but at least you survived and you are thankful for that. You are even more thankful for the fact that the sim managed to make you feel like a rookie, rediscovering the joy of it all
