Friday 2009-12-18 Screenshots AND Discussion Thread

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by Igo kyu

Agreed in general, where there is a land war ongoing. The BoB wasn't like that, there was only air combat.

In real life they never were, and when one or two were slightly damaged, they were fixed in a couple of days.

London and surrounding areas were bombed heavily, there was a great deal of damage. I realize BOB was an airwar, but ground objects and landscape were destroyed as well.

When it rained the airfileds were a quagmire of muck and mud. The aircraft looked equally mucked up. The grass was laid flat from rain, etc.

The BOB SOW is just the beginning of a new series like IL2, with addon maps, aircraft, etc. The expansion of war theatres is in the planning as well. What I'm saying is we won't be fighting the BOB for the next 10 years. It would be more immersive to play through the battles in the Ardennes in a muddy, snowy, hostile environment as it really was. The Mediterranean theatre and North Africa, Italy, etc. all had some differences in conidtions,etc.

It would really be a plus, if we had a way to apply muddy and beat up skins to aircraft with little effort. Possibly by just setting the weather conditions the airbases and aircraft skins would be muddy, dark, beat up,etc.

I think about landing and taking off aircraft in the mud and rain, sleet and snow. Sliding around in the muck and mire, and frozen ground in your aircraft would add so much to the feel of what it was like.

Most important is not to be flying in the pristine and beautiful battlegrounds we have in IL2. I'd really like for bad conditions and destruction to be a big part of the experience.

[zapatista]

Oleg & Co,

thx for the ingame screenshots, its starting to come together and the nice tall grass really adds to the immersion instead of just flat tiles like we see in most games the screenshot of the tall grass amongst the trees brings back memories of northern france/england just by looking at it !! the trees with thick foliage look very good already even in the basic alpha colours used now.

some Q's:
- will some parts of the tree branches move in the wind in a similar way to the tall grass ?
- will some of the small light objects (chairs, cups etc.. seen in other earlier screenshots ) in the game also get blown away by strong wind weather, or even prop wash or air vortex's when an aircraft is very close ? and will doors/windows etc move in the same way by interacting air physics in the game ?
- will wood debris and other material from ships/aicraft float on the water after the object sinks ? (idea for luthier maybe with his immersion idea's thread, leaving an oil slick with some debris after sinking)
- the 109 looks brand spanking new as if it just rolled of the production line, will the "new" aircraft always look as crisp and perfect right from the start ? (they had to be shuttled in by air as replacements i suspect, and even freshly washed might just not quite look as perfectly clean and unused on their first day of use)
- is the big flat square looking vertical "screen-type" object in the background of one of the screenshots a practice target to set gun convergence, or can it even be used to try and practice strafe from the air in a training environment ? (and get a closeup of the result afterwards to see how accurate you were ?)

thanks for all the hard work, am eagerly awaiting the next installment


to the "anti tall grass" folks:
- i doubt the germans would have had gardeners assigned to their engineering crews that built these short term frontline airfields. the best you could hope for is tractor with a large schrub cutter on the back to run through the open area's a couple of times during the warmer months, and even then that cut crass would never be "short" (maybe about half the size it is now)
- oleg's previous screenshots already showed that where vehicles have traveled in fields and roads, they do leave tracks and flatten the grass !! so used area's at the airfield itself will/would/should quickly flatten, which will make the scenery look even more real, some flat and some tall grass in the same area depending on activity (and maybe fire/explosions could flatten + darken grass in local area's to ?)
- the tall grass looks very realistic for what you see in the warmer months in real life in england/france/belgium next to the roads, in fields, between trees in an orchard or forest etc, and it looks MUCH better in the game then neatly trimmed grass like you would only see in a manicured english garden

maybe eventually Oleg can make 2 grass models that can be used for different area's (or different seasons ?), tall like it is now, and medium (about half the size it is now). but if right now you need to choose between tall and medium, the taller one is probably the most realistic for general use in game during summer (and BoB was in the summer months)