Friday 2010-10-01 Dev. update and Discussion

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by Dutch_851

Tumbleweed floats and bounces gently across the screen..............

In answer to my own post it seems to me to be the contrast between the darkness of the trees and the paleness of the fields at this altitude in the SoW shots.
For the fields to be that pale, I'd expect the trees to be less black green and more green green, yet when we get lower, they seem more green green relative to the surrounding landscape.
Maybe a simple colour contrasting thing.
Anyone?

Ok, I'll bite

You were asking about what's missing from SoW's landscape that makes it look strange. Above all it is texture resolution: as displayed the textures are extremely blurry, and in contrast you have the relatively sharp edges of the tree lines. There is a mismatch in detail which is something the human eye is quite good at realizing. The impression is that the trees a somewhat detached from the landscape.

As for the trees themselves, there are repeating patterns in the forest areas; yet again a focus point for the eye and something we aren't used to from reality, so it looks out of place.

These are the main issues I can see. I'd expect that in motion, the tree rendering as shown on that screen (which is already a bit older) could also result in some flickering.

Note that none of these issues are unsolvable (it's possible they were already non-issues when that image was taken, just not in that detail level). The colours and lighting themselves look spot on to me, and the atmospheric model is way beyond what Il2 provides. The same goes for the view range which is exceptional (most sims have a much closer horizon).

In the Il2 image you posted, the main drawbacks are the colours (see above) and the fact that a lot of the vegetation is only part of the texture, although that's not too apparent from a still shot at that altitude.

A final point: we haven't seen medium-distance shadows in any SoW screen yet. Shadows are very important to generate the impression that objects are placed within the landscape (and not "floating"; partially an issue with the trees). Il2 can create some very good images because every object up to a certain distance casts a nice shadow. Seeing a higher shadow distance (probably a quality setting) would also improve the SoW scenery a lot.