CoD vs some other sims that model Kent?

[klem]

Originally Posted by Friendly_flyer

Oh yes, I've got no problem with the trees being a big task to render, not to mention keeping track of. If proper woods are to be implemented in CoD, I think the dev team will have to come up with some way of making them without using large number of speedtrees.

Field size is a matter of tile graphics, and should be simpler to implement.

I agree, I'd rather see a selection of 'blocked in' or one-piece woods and hedgerow models placed around and/or together instead of tightly grouping humungus numbers of individual trees to represent a wood.

What would the damage model have to be? Perimeter impact zones? Would that be easier to model than all those individual trees? Do we really care if the 'wood' sways/doesn't sway? They could have just a perimeter of swaying trees. The visual immersion of the environment as a whole, especially from the air, is more important than isolated exactly correct swaying trees IMHO. 1C could use those for specimen trees on airfields etc.

I expect the trees we have would be useful in land battles with driveable tanks etc., but perhaps 'block' woods could be modelled to be driven through with aircraft damage modelling confined to the perimiter 'bubble'? When your heading down to it at 350KIAS there's not much point in fussing over which branch of which tree you hit.

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by JumpingHubert

@mazex
thanks for the great comparison. Maybe there is a simple solution for clod´s lack of dense forest: a new class of objects.......a forest layer as a hole without gaps. At the edge single bushes & trees. And a blue filter to "simulate" the atmosphere.

good graphics in simulations is important. It supports immersion.

CoD matches the actual maps beautifully. What "lack of dense forest" are you talking about?

[Malk]

Originally Posted by Therion_Prime

Wrong.

You sir dazzle me with your solid arguments!

[unreasonable]

Very helpful post mazex, thanks.

According to the University of Reading website:

"Since 1945 the UK has lost:

95% of its wildflower rich meadows

30 -50% of its ancient lowland woods

50% of its heathland

50% of its lowland fens, valley and basin mires

40% of its hedgerows"

Of the hedgerow loss, some part would be down to urban sprawl, some due to grubbing up or neglect of rural hedgerows. I have not yet found a way to quantify this, but have some ideas if I can find the numbers for land area usages.

So if we had 100 miles of hedges in 1945, now we have 60. So if we took a square grid representing hedges now, and imposed another set of horizontal lines over it we would double the number of "fields" with a 50% increase in hedge length giving us 90 miles of hedge. We can assign the remainder to urban sprawl as a first estimate.

So I was also a bit surprised that the 1945 and now photos seemed to show almost identical field boundries and numbers. This could just be regional variation, but...

then I remembered that many hedges are not grubbed up, they are simply neglected. When you neglect a hedge it slowly morphs into a line of trees, the most vigorous survivors shading out the laggards, with bank or ditch (if present) eroding away. The line of trees may eventually be felled (or, if elm, destroyed by the evil Dutch).

So it may be that some of the field boundries in the photos that were hedges in 1945 are now lines of trees or even just tractor paths. Now we need a photograph interpreter sub-forum.

So it looks as though COD gets the number of fields about right but is ailing in the hedgerow/tree management department.

(What a pity they did not use satellite mapping as a first estimate, then we could all be having fun finding our houses and farms....)

[pupaxx]

Originally Posted by klem

I agree, I'd rather see a selection of 'blocked in' or one-piece woods and hedgerow models placed around and/or together instead of tightly grouping humungus numbers of individual trees to represent a wood.

What would the damage model have to be? Perimeter impact zones? Would that be easier to model than all those individual trees? Do we really care if the 'wood' sways/doesn't sway? They could have just a perimeter of swaying trees. The visual immersion of the environment as a whole, especially from the air, is more important than isolated exactly correct swaying trees IMHO. 1C could use those for specimen trees on airfields etc.

I expect the trees we have would be useful in land battles with driveable tanks etc., but perhaps 'block' woods could be modelled to be driven through with aircraft damage modelling confined to the perimiter 'bubble'? When your heading down to it at 350KIAS there's not much point in fussing over which branch of which tree you hit.

+1 cristal clear analisys

[klem]

Originally Posted by David Hayward

CoD matches the actual maps beautifully. What "lack of dense forest" are you talking about?

I think I understand what you are saying, the third picture in mazex's last (picture) post makes the larger forest areas look fine at altitude but if you look carefully at other areas and especially when you get down low you see those "scattered trees woods" and dotted tree lines along roads with no hedgerows as in some of the CoD screenshots that were posted earlier. Some roads do have occasional trees but the current setup is oversimplistic and cartoon-like.

[Friendly_flyer]

Originally Posted by klem

I expect the trees we have would be useful in land battles with driveable tanks etc., but perhaps 'block' woods could be modelled to be driven through with aircraft damage modelling confined to the perimiter 'bubble'? When your heading down to it at 350KIAS there's not much point in fussing over which branch of which tree you hit.

I personally believe this would be the best solution. The only problem would be if you landed in a wood by parachute. Then again, when in a parachute, you are effectively out of the most computer intensive game, and the CPU could be used to populate the wood patch (or nearest 100 meters around you) with speed trees.

Unfortunately I have absolutely no programming skills, so I don't know if it is at all possible, not to mention feasible.

[Viper2000]

Landing your parachute in trees is relatively unlikely to kill you compared with flying into trees in your aeroplane.

It would be relatively simple to just say

If parachute then
trees = not deadly
else
trees = deadly
end if

Personally I think that the immersion factor would be greatly improved if we had hedges, power lines, phone lines, plough furrows and crops to contend with when attempting forced landings. At the moment, field selection is pretty much just anything approximately flat and not water = good...

Livestock would also make things interesting (even if it was static). I'm told that cows like to lick the dope from fabric covered aeroplanes, so the sim could add a few extra % damage points to aeroplanes which landed in fields with livestock... Of course, hitting a cow at 70 knots would do neither it nor the aeroplane much good either, and if you land in the same field as a bull then loss of doped fabric might well be the least of your worries!

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by Viper2000

Personally I think that the immersion factor would be greatly improved if we had hedges, power lines, phone lines, plough furrows and crops to contend with when attempting forced landings. At the moment, field selection is pretty much just anything approximately flat and not water = good...

You know what would also be cool? If 1C hired actual people to walk around the virtual map and give the finger to passing German aircraft.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by mazex

One thing that should not be forgotten when discussing the English country side is the fact that the Brits are a conservative bunch - especially the farmers

Google Earth as many sure know have a "history slider" that shows aerial maps from old days. Over the UK there is a rather large coverage of aerial photos from 1945 - most of London is there etc - and a lot further north. As Isle of Wight is also there I went to a random place (this is true - I did NOT search) and captured a shot from 1945 and one from 2005 (the latest):

1945:

2005:

And CoD (I know it's not the perfect alt etc but...)


So many places today are not far from what they looked like during the war Try it yourselves - it's even more fun in Google Earth as you may pull the "year slider" back and forth and see the lack of difference even more easy... There is a lot of Germany from 1945 too (Berlin etc). Interesting stuff!

For me CoD gets it quite right... Naturally it's not satellite mapped so the fields are "wrong" etc - but the repeat that is very obvious in WoP is not that obvious (even thogh I agree the mapping of tree lines etc in WoP is very nice).

Look at the WoP image from my original post - it's not that hard aligning the trees and forests etc if you take a small piece of land and then just repeat it... Marked them below:


The thing is that in CoD the textures repeat (but much larger) - but they have tried adding forests where they should be - and roads. In WoP they just repeat it all (ground texture and the trees). It gets a heck of a lot easier getting them right then But it get's a lot less realistic for many of us...

Good post MazeX. This is one of those things that 99.9% of people dont notice unless it has been pointed out to them or they are specifically looking for it.