Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by luthier

Let me also try to be extremely clear.

1. You can fly over cities on my PCs, just not at the highest settings, or at a low resolution with no FSAA. Stutters are only apparent at low altitude. Stutters mean short dips in FPS every few seconds by about 25%.

2. Whether the world's best PC will or will not stutter over cities depends on resolution and FSAA. If you run the game on three monitors at 5760 x 1080 with 8xFSAA, you will experience stutters while flying over London at altitudes under 200 meters or so.

3. The Buildings video option limits the number of buildings on the screen and offers fluid performance while still offering a picture superior to that of Il-2.

4. FPS is highly situation-dependent. We give you a huge sandbox to play with. So I cannot possibly make any blanket statements about performance on any hardware because we give you the tools to bring the game to a screeching halt.
Any game on the market can be made to run at 0 FPS with enough action on the screen. It's just most other developers ration the action very carefully and balance the game to make sure your FPS does not dip below a set minimum. We do that with our stock campaign and online missions but we do not limit what you can do with the game by yourself. Anyone can crank up the resolution and create a large enough low-level dogfight in Cliffs of Dover that will run at 0 FPS and possibly even crash the game.

5. To sum up: your FPS depends on factors beyond your hardware. It also depends on your resolution, on your FSAA setting, and on the amount of action on the screen.

This is the last I will ever address the topic.



I'm actually not sure, I'll have to ask Monday. CoD usually sits at around 1.8 Gigs in the memory. I don't think I've ever seen it go anywhere near 3 gigs.



Our future is highly dependent on the success of CoD. If everything goes well, then yes, dynamic campaign and dynamic weather are items 1 and 2 on the list.



It's not a big deal to code it in, it's just the guy who could do it is buried neck-deep in other stuff. I need to play around with the Warthog some more myself before we begin to think about actions.



No. Nor is one planned for any foreseeable future.



It depends on AI skill level. AI at any level checks the sky in segments, i.e scans the airspace. They also always take clouds and sun into the account.
Lower-level AI pilots have some periods when they don't scan at all. They scan a smaller overall area of the airspace. They focus on each segment longer - i.e. if he looks at his 8 o'clock you can attack him head-on and he won't spot you. Sun blots out a larger portion of the sky for them.
However the sun is not a 100% blind zone and there is a chance even the dumbest idiot will see you coming out of the sun, chances increasing the closer you are to his 12 o'clock high.

In the end, since you're rarely aware of your opponent's skill level, this results in a very realistic picture. You're never sure whether he breaks and turns into you from 3 miles away, or if you can keep sneaking up on him for a no-deflection shot at 50 yards. Very frustrating when you end up holding your fire just a second too long, and he spots you and breaks away after sitting dead square in your sights.



No, it's much more advanced. We have different customization options for different axes. For example you can not only adjust the curves but also set your idle, 100% and WEP positions for the throttle axis. I'm pretty sure this could be seen in some Igromir videos.

Wow Luthier, some seriously advanced AI going on there. I like it.