Non Friday 2010-04-15 Development Update :)

[335th_GRSwaty]

Thank you Oleg and team!

[GADGET]

Sorry to add a discrepancy note, but I do not find the parachute behaviour realistic, once the pilot is on the ground.

I am really impressed by the pilot animation, a real textbook landing acording to 1940's doctrine.

Nevertheless, once the parachute is not suporting the pilot's weight, it should float on the air as a silk scarf would do (a parachute is nothing more than a huge silk scarf in the wind) and fall over the pilot. If wind is present, the parachute keeps its bell-like form and falls aside the pilot and, if the wind is suficiently strong the parachute drags the parachutist around. The procedure then is to pull the bottom parachute lines to desinflate the canopy and let it fall, or get up and run to either side of the lines so the wind incides the canopy sideways and it collapses.

Here in the animation, the parachute canopy appears to be a heavy object that falls to the ground like a rock, instead of floating once free of the weight of the pilot.
Mi respects for the developers, but as former paratrooper I strongly believe that this animation should be corrected in pro of realism, if that is the original objective.

Either way, I can't wait for SOW:BOB to come out.

[Chivas]

That all depends if there is a wind present. The parachute is never free from the pilot in this short video and won't billow down unless there is no wind.

[Insuber]

+1

Originally Posted by GADGET

Sorry to add a discrepancy note, but I do not find the parachute behaviour realistic, once the pilot is on the ground.

I am really impressed by the pilot animation, a real textbook landing acording to 1940's doctrine.

Nevertheless, once the parachute is not suporting the pilot's weight, it should float on the air as a silk scarf would do (a parachute is nothing more than a huge silk scarf in the wind) and fall over the pilot. If wind is present, the parachute keeps its bell-like form and falls aside the pilot and, if the wind is suficiently strong the parachute drags the parachutist around. The procedure then is to pull the bottom parachute lines to desinflate the canopy and let it fall, or get up and run to either side of the lines so the wind incides the canopy sideways and it collapses.

Here in the animation, the parachute canopy appears to be a heavy object that falls to the ground like a rock, instead of floating once free of the weight of the pilot.
Mi respects for the developers, but as former paratrooper I strongly believe that this animation should be corrected in pro of realism, if that is the original objective.

Either way, I can't wait for SOW:BOB to come out.

[I/ZG52_Gaga]

Looking great there !!!

Very nice tumble action and all ...

does the airspeed play any role on how fast the pilot puts away his parachute?

Are we going to see pilots or gunners being draged away by strong surface wind blowing?

Does the pilot cary a sidearm he can shoot with?

Are we almost done?

Can we have the game this year?

[furbs]

just what i was thinking Gaga...jeez...its a flight sim and i want to play it sometime before i pop my clogs

[He111]

looking great Oleg and team.

This debate about what a pilot does after they parachute to land is getting stupid, if it's friendly, they're ready for the next mission, if it's enemy, they're a POW. The real debate should be what happens when they land in water, remember many brave and skilled pilots were lost to Poseidon. The Germans put a lot of effort into rescuing downed pilots with sea planes and ships but Britain kept trying to destroy them.

I have an old book on the BOB, printed just after it happened, it shows the methods British coastal command used to rescue pilots. Here's a picture of a "rescue station" and patrol boat.

(I cannot load the picture, I don't have a Photobucket account, but I can email it if someone’s interested?)


And another thing, a good alternate mission might be to fly a lysander into france one moon lit night to supply arms to the resistance. Lets see who can land onto a small field at night?

He111.

[Baron]

Originally Posted by GADGET

Sorry to add a discrepancy note, but I do not find the parachute behaviour realistic, once the pilot is on the ground.

I am really impressed by the pilot animation, a real textbook landing acording to 1940's doctrine.

Nevertheless, once the parachute is not suporting the pilot's weight, it should float on the air as a silk scarf would do (a parachute is nothing more than a huge silk scarf in the wind) and fall over the pilot. If wind is present, the parachute keeps its bell-like form and falls aside the pilot and, if the wind is suficiently strong the parachute drags the parachutist around. The procedure then is to pull the bottom parachute lines to desinflate the canopy and let it fall, or get up and run to either side of the lines so the wind incides the canopy sideways and it collapses.

Here in the animation, the parachute canopy appears to be a heavy object that falls to the ground like a rock, instead of floating once free of the weight of the pilot.
Mi respects for the developers, but as former paratrooper I strongly believe that this animation should be corrected in pro of realism, if that is the original objective.

Either way, I can't wait for SOW:BOB to come out.

Finally some consructive critisism pertaining to the actuall update.

+1

Other than that it looked great.


I can however imagine it to be very difficoult and takes a lot of work getting it to look realistic (affected by wind and so on). Hope not.

[Novotny]

@Gadget: your criticism is polite, however I think you may not realise the complexities of what you're asking for.

Have a glance over this article discussing cloth simulation within a 3d title:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...-for-3d-games/

Whilst it's certainly technically possible, it's very difficult, so we once more come round to the problem of finite resources. Making a game is all about balancing compromises. I'd be extremely surprised if SOW is not feature-complete at this stage. if Oleg is still deciding on implementing possible features at this stage then I couldn't possibly see the game coming out within the next year or two.

You've got to decide what sort of features are most important for a flight simulator. If this was a game about the linen industry, then accurate cloth physics would probably be high up the list of important effects. I want almost all of the development work to go into the feeling of flight, the representation of terrain and the believability of the AI. I wouldn't be prepared to sacrifice any development time from these areas for what I feel are less important factors.

[Codex]

Cloth simulations are difficult if you don't know what your doing. However cloth simulations are not that difficult to implent, the difficulty is whether Oleg has the resourses or will to put it in a parachute.

Cloth simultaions have been around for years and are readily availabe in many common Physics / GPU API's:

nVidia + CUDA
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/d...imulation.html

ATI + Havoc
http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=havok-cloth


Here is a realtime cloth demo using Flash 7
http://www.custom-logic.com/exp/cloth/cloth.html