Short review from TX-Gunslinger, SIMHQ

[KOM.Nausicaa]

Here is TX Gunslinger's review from SIMHQ...he got his hands on a russian copy.
I am just copying this over from SIMHQ. I thought it was an interesting read.

Originally Posted by TX Gunslinger

It's sensational - like we all hoped. It stutters and lags with too many planes. It has performance issues - the core loading needs to be more balanced, and it clearly needs to be optimized.

****The shadows are FPS killers, but I'm too stupid to turn them off. Actually this is a mistake on my part - the shadows don't significantly effect performance on my system It's like - let see - your first women. Uhhhh your first gorgeous women. That's how good it is I flew it all day. It's funny - the terrian isn't the fps killer as I flew through towns and over roads with my 109, just over the treetops. The water is unbelievably beautiful.

Once you get the Epilepsy filter off - the props are fantastic. Particularly in the cockpit when you pork your engine - which I did a few times. As the engine gradually dies - say from not enough mix - the prop gets slower and slower - which of course the RPM gauge shows - but you can SEE the prop from you cockpit slow down - slower - slower - finally individual blades - then stop.

The 6 DOF is the smoothest I've ever used and I didn't even tweek TrackIR 5 software at all. The clickable cockpit is every bit as great as Black Shark. It's so cool after all these years to be able to interact with the cockpit - move the levers, and such. So many new controls. Like now - you have two radiators - one for water and one for air. You can actually open the rads with one key and close them with another. No more "increase only" Rads like in Il2.

The same base key structure is there - so no relearning. So Oleg gives us a familiar interface with the same baseline keys - with 100 new ones and many, many alternatives. Some of this is what the "Negative Nellies" are focused on. They think it's the same, because Oleg tried to keep familiar interfaces - but it's not at all.

I only flew the 109E3, and btw - found the in-cockpit sounds much improved over Il2. The panning with TrackIR was sooooo smooth - I just can't get it out of my head. I didn't shoot at anything - too stuck on stupid just flying around and doing tailslides, barrel rools, spins and trying to get into an inverted spin and recover. Spin recovery was great. Gotta try all the other planes once I finish with my controls. you'll have to add a lot to your Il2 profile - and move some things around.

Hope I gave you a good feel for it..... Graphics are astounding. Feel of the aircraft great - turbulence and flutter are sooo cool. It's strugging on my Rig - just like Il2-FB did when I couldn't run perfect settings and had to stick to 1024X768. That's how it should be - it has a lot of life and a lot of depth we can't touch yet.

I hope Dart decides to go back into making movies when he see this (if he hasn't already). Bombing in this baby is going to need "Dart's Training Video's" for sure.

S!

Gunny

and

Originally Posted by TX Gunslinger

It's not running as well as ROF at all. It's running worse than the earliest ROF, prior to release - when more than a couple of aircraft are around.

Problem is, when you get more than a Schwarm of aircraft (4) around, it really drops. Something is clearly wrong with the optimization to the point that you know it will be fixed. Poor thing is sick, and that's good. There's a Frie Jagd QMB mission that I've been running over and over. It has 3 Defiants, 6 Wellingtons, 3 Spits and 8 109E3's. With AA 2X at 1920 X 1200 32bit shadows on = Min 7 Max 56 Avg 26.8
- with shadows off = Min 7 Max 58 Avg 28.2

I have Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 @ 4Ghz, 4 GB DDR2, ATI 5870 - Win 7/64

These are not super accurate benches - but I stayed up just to give you some kind of idea (and because I can't stay out of the damn 109 cockpit).

Clearly, the software is not optimized. The beauty of releasing first to Russia is that their communties are in my experience, the best beta testers in existance. They will (as can be seen) break it and bang it too death and find every little graphics bug you could imagine.

Hope this helped give you some kind of idea. Great thing about having it now, is mapping all the controls - testing them and mastering and having fun with the flying.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...ml#Post3247799