Friday 2010-08-06 Dev. update and Discussions

[Caveman]

Originally Posted by dali

well, as far as your "criticism" goes, I can say only this - Bob is still unfinished and as Ilya pointed out several times, he has visual settings set somewhere in the middle, even AA is off. Talking of LO FC2 - I was beta tester for LOMAC, so I know the series quite well. LO FC2 has some amazing details, like perfectly readible service labels on the skin, but is this contributing to the overall feeling? I would say no. If you want eyecandy for screenshots, then details you are describing are of course on the top of the list. If you want something else from the sim, than eye candy is somewhere in the middle of the "desireable features". For instance - inertia modeling in the LO FC series is far, far from something beliveable. One small detail - braking on the ground - there is one old A10 sim called A10 Cuba!, which has that feeling of weight coded much better than LO FC. I haven't seen or tried Bob yet, but judging from that Ilya's video with spit in major role the inertia modeling is far the best I've ever seen in general public simulator so far. I think that Oleg and team have chosen the correct set of goals (at least those they are sharing with us) for their sim. For me the feeling of mass (weight of the airplane) and intertia, correct dynamics of bullets, aerodynamics, weather, field of vision and AI are the most important for combat sim of this kind. Ilya and Oleg are showing us the visual parts only, which is nice, I like to watch Friday updates, but they don't reflect the qualities behind. That rests to be seen in the near future.

Agree. I've been simming for 28 years and can attest to the fact that graphics, while important, are down the list of desireable priorities relative to flight modeling, damage, etc... All the fantastic moments in IL-2, or any other sim have come from those moments of "wow, that behaved so realistically". The mind tends to "fill in the blanks" a bit easier on graphics than roll rates, air densities, etc...

[whatnot]

Thanks for the update Luthier, looking good! I'm dying to see what the shots will look with final AA's and effects in place and crew bouncing around like crazy as I throw some G's to my crate.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Kefirchik

Hi Ilia! Nice sceenshots. I want to ask you about lighting inside cockpit. At the screenshot we see aluminum metal without paint. I think? what Aluminum must reflect much more than paint. So on these sceen's we don't see the difference in reflect paint and aluminum. Is it optimization for FPS or still WIP?

If i recall correctly from the days i was building model airplanes, all of the luftwaffe aircraft interiors (cockpits as well as the landing gear wells) were painted in RLM 02 colours, which is matte light gray paint. As for RAF aircraft, i think instrument panels were black and the rest was interior green. So, since it's not bare metal but a surface painted with matte colours, i think it's safe to say that they wouldn't reflect too much light.

If you think about it a bit, it makes perfect sense. Why have bare metal cockpits that reflect light and hinder the pilot's vision?

[kestrel79]

Luthier,

Thanks for the pics. The last one has me very excited to see crew members in bombers!

Hopefully I hope to be able to fly my bomber over target while seeing my crew turning, moving, and firing the guns while I fly! Talk about immersive! Seeing shells fly, flash of the guns, this would be so cool.

Before this gets clogged with people who will diss the WIP screenshots I just want to say I trust you and Oleg and going to deliver whenever this comes out. I know you guys are holding all the good stuff back And whenever the time comes to show off the "good stuff", no doubt in my mind you guys will blow us all away with the best flight sim ever.

[Kefirchik]

look at the picture. Paint relfect same as aluminum... We can see only diffuse map, without reflect map.
For compare some picture from Wings of prey...

[BadAim]

Will we be able to turn to the co-pilot and say "take over for a minute, I'm gonna go for a wiz and a cup 'o coffee" ? Seriously though, it's looking nice, I just can't wait to see this thing rendered in it's full DX11, tesselated, HDR'd, and AA'd glory!

[easytarget3]

Thanks a lot for the update!It looks amazing!the models are just stuning considering it WIP!!!
i have one concern, but it could be from my lack of info and experience, because i don see it in motion!
But on picture 2. the tree leaves look very big, compare to a window it looks like same size as 1.5 m window?i know you have limitation and you have only one size of tree, but is itnt the size of detail things like leaves what makes the feelings of scale?maybe in motion we wont see it and maybe this size is perfect for flying around in a cocpit, i just hope that it wont cause the feeling we fly above toy city with toy tree when we go low,
thanks for your hard work

D

[CZS_Ondras]

Hallo,

concerning the trees I wonder what results could have been achieved if Oleg's team joined their powers with another very experienced (with large landscapes) team most of you know - Bohemia Interactive. Their software known as Linda: http://pro.bistudio.com/index.php/se...generator.html appropriately used and optimised for the purposes of flight simulation might have done intresting things. Speedtree looks too like from coloring book, but it is perhaps only my opinion and the final result is going to be excelent.

O.

[BadAim]

Originally Posted by Kefirchik

look at the picture. Paint relfect same as aluminum... We can see only diffuse map, without reflect map.

All of the spots you show are in shadow, except the part that's reflecting perfectly. I mean, can we be serious here? Paint certainly doesn't reflect the same as aluminum, and all aluminum doesn't reflect the same. None of that even takes into account the fact that this is all rendered on what Ilya has admitted to be a "crappy computer". It's already been stated that they are putting the game together on lower range computers on purpose to ensure the highest level of compatibility.

Shall I remind everyone again that this is WIP?

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by luthier

It's called LODs At that distance our airplanes lose their gear legs and canopy framework and flaps, buildings lose their chimneys, tanks lose their gun barrels, and so why should the trees keep their trunks?

We still live in the age where computers have limited resources. Some day PCs will become powerful enough to render a fully modeled tree with every twig and every leaf all the way to the horizon, and that'll be a very happy day for everyone in game development, but the way things are, if we were to splatter a bunch of tree trunks everywhere around the player, you'd be looking at an extremely pretty picture that runs at about 1 frame per minute.

I probably didn't express myself well enough. I wasn't criticising the absence of tree trunks - completely understand the situation re resources, etc.

I was referring to an apparent 'floating' effect on the trees in the foreground in Pic 1 - viewed on my work pc they look slightly as if they're suspended in mid-air. As no-one else seems to have commented on it , it may be down to viewing it on low-spec machine / screen.

I'll check it later on my LCD at home.

Impressed with the pics though