Friday 2010-09-03 Dev. update and Discussions

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Romanator21

Luthier, the problem is that you designed your pilots to look like this:









However, these are elite midget pilots. Their tiny size makes them more tenacious, and hardy.

You should model your figures on people with more normal skeletons.

Like this:

Hahaha, excellent

I think pilots are modelled with their seats lowered, in "combat mode" as Chivas said. A lot of modern and wartime photos show them sitting higher in the cockpit and that's probably accurate as well, but i think it has to do with personal preference of the pilot and what's happening during that time.

Remember, these planes are taildraggers with long cowlings. My guess goes like this:
Taxi, take off, landing, maybe even cruise to assist in situational awareness and formation flying--->seat adjusted to the high position for extra visibility
Combat, in order to align your head with the gunsight and put as much of the body inside the "hard" parts of the airframe--->seat adjusted to the low position.

That being said, the guy's head looks a bit small but Romanator's pics look no different. I mean, how come they never appear out of scale in bombers but they only look small in fighters? We know for a fact it's the same size model.

Aircrew animations in the He111 are just right and damage modelling seems superb, especially the dented and deformed metal plating. Planes look awesome as usual too.

The only issue i have is with the 1st picture. Lot's of people have commented on it and they said it better than me, as i couldn't initially pinpoint what it was that i found strange.
In short, the planes looks so damn perfect that the terrain seems somewhat out of place and that comes down to two things. First, maybe it just needs higher resolution textures, i don't know. Second, the trees also look like they are made to a higher spec than the rest of the terrain, so they somewhat "stick out" of it. If the trees were not so highly detailed or the rest of the terrain was upgraded a notch or two, they would probably blend in just fine. Maybe the tree detail level in the graphics options could be tied to the terrain texture detail level? Just an idea.

The funny thing is that i have seen screenshots in previous updates where the terrain textures seemed absolutely fine, so maybe it's just a case of tinkering with different settings and resolutions.

However, there's a silver lining in every cloud and in this case, the first screenshot shows its biggest redeeming quality. That draw distance is huuuuuuuge and the way the details fade into the distance is very gradual and well done

All in all, another promising and very appetizing update and yes, i stand by my assertion that as far as graphics are concerned i'd buy it this instant. They are good enough for me, if the rest of the title (FM/DM, campaign engine, sound, etc) is up to the job i can wait for the details (like pilot head size, road size, etc) to get fixed in the patches following the release.

P.S. The 1c guys may not answer much, but they sure are listening. All this talk about death animations and what did we get in this update? Animations of dead and injured crewmen. It's not even the first time it happened, a member with a good eye for details and knowledge of airframes talked about the size of trim tabs on the 110, guess what? They were corrected too.
The team sure do keep an eye on things and react to what gets discussed around here, just ask nicely about things and it might pop up in the next update