Friday 2009-12-25 Screenshots AND Discussion Thread

[mano]

Hi!!

you have done a great work.

I cannot wait for that !!!

the screenshots are absolutely fantastic (sorry for my english)


I have a little question:
there will be, during play time, the possibility to save the game status?

it would be a nice feature.
when I come home at evening, after a job day, i would love the possibility to resume the game status

that could make possible to learn and achieve enough skill to take a good fly and engage a dogfight without restart every time from 00:00 tempo

( i remember in IL2 Sturmovik the possibility to time stretching: absolutely a good "tool",
but I think a "save game" possibility also should make a big difference)



I thank you for all your posts and your good work.
I'm sorry if this was not the right place to ask that question
and i'm absolutely sorry for my "random" english!!


cheers from Italy

[Golden_Eagle_FM]

Nice shots, but still I wonder when we will be able to have all this.
I have stopped now with IL2 since many months after nearly 7 years of use.
Visual quality, sound and graphics seem really something of the past.
Playing with games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (CODMW2) for sure has spoilt me, and having seen demos of Metro 2030. BoB will be against a terrible competition in terms of visual quality, effects, sound, and also physical behaviour of the environment.
Quality design of objects and planes is fine, but the visual quality of the environment, animations of characters will also be important. Pilots must be modelled like the soldiers in CODMW2, with facial expressions.
On the ground same for the soldiers. There must be an animated background of people in the airports or on the ships. Over the many years that IL2 has strived with many little improvements here and there, but now the visual gap is starting to become wider and wider.
Will BoB use DirectX11 features, the power of the latest generations of GPU's, multicore 64bit machines etc. etc.
All my hopes are yes. But the development takes so long and seems to have concentrated too much on the object details (at least from what is shown to us) that I am afraid when it comes out the visual engine may look already something of the past and there will be no time for animating properly the world around.

[MOG_Rumboy]

Originally Posted by Golden_Eagle_FM

Pilots must be modelled like the soldiers in CODMW2, with facial expressions.

Why?

IMHO I seriously hope time is not being spent giving pilots facial expressions. If someone rocks up in my six blazing fire, I'm guessing I'm going to want to manoever, not change my view setting to see if my eye brows are up in surprise.

a flight simulator or human simulator? As an IL2 player, I'd be quite happy with just seeing a pair of legs on the rudders and a hand on the stick!

Great looking WiP - looking forward to this.

[Qpassa]

Originally Posted by MOG_Rumboy

As an IL2 player, I'd be quite happy with just seeing a pair of legs on the rudders and a hand on the stick!

Great looking WiP - looking forward to this.

Agree 100%

[Flanker35M]

S!

In flight sim genre the graphical eye candy is not on the top of the list. Most of the time graphics are very good, but also practical. Too much eyecandy takes a lot of power to process and then what is left for physics or damage modeling? IL-2 is maybe a bit dated in graphics department, but some user made content has changed this as well, especially in cockpits, textures, maps and external appearance of planes.

SoW's biggest catch will be the FM and DM being even more complex than IL-2. And now DirectX 11 coding so no more silly "one graphics card pony" game like IL-2 is causing ATI users to spend a lot of time tweaking. Today both Green and Red team offer a lot of power for games so discriminating either of them is just like sawing off the branch you sit on

So until release have time to upgrade HOTAS etc..

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

In flight sim genre the graphical eye candy is not on the top of the list. Most of the time graphics are very good, but also practical. Too much eyecandy takes a lot of power to process and then what is left for physics or damage modeling? IL-2 is maybe a bit dated in graphics department, but some user made content has changed this as well, especially in cockpits, textures, maps and external appearance of planes.

SoW's biggest catch will be the FM and DM being even more complex than IL-2. And now DirectX 11 coding so no more silly "one graphics card pony" game like IL-2 is causing ATI users to spend a lot of time tweaking. Today both Green and Red team offer a lot of power for games so discriminating either of them is just like sawing off the branch you sit on

So until release have time to upgrade HOTAS etc..

I 100% agree with you on the FM and DM being the most important part of any sim Flanker, and DirectX 11 is a positive. Obviously for successful sales and public interest the eye candy surely plays a major factor as long has it does not significantley effect the 'playability'. Lets hope SOW meets our expectations on all these counts. S!

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

And now DirectX 11 coding so no more silly "one graphics card pony" game like IL-2 is causing ATI users to spend a lot of time tweaking. Today both Green and Red team offer a lot of power for games so discriminating either of them is just like sawing off the branch you sit on

So until release have time to upgrade HOTAS etc..

You mean ATI's lack of driver support surely.

Nvidia was originally used as they had the most stable drivers and support , iirc over 9 years ago the decision was to code with Nvidia in mind because of this fact.
You cant blame Oleg for the poor driver support from ATI even nearly 10 Years later !!!!!

ATI had it right with the X1950 pro and driver 7.11, I had 2 in Crossfire config for a while.

Seems they went chasing numbers to make sales and lost the plot.

Thats a fair point Alpha, ATI cards have always been good but the driver support has been sketchy at best. I'm not certain that has improved much in recent times.

[tagTaken2]

ATI drivers and Crapalyst software suck, I'm never buying an ATI card again.

[Flanker35M]

S!

Do not bash ATI alone Alpha. ATI has full support to OpenGL 3.2 and IL-2 is the ONLY game using old OGL version I have problems with, due the "nvidiasation" done back then. During IL2 beta I had ATI/nVidia/Kyro II and got IL2 to work fine and reported this to devs. So not lack of testing

I can run Rise Of Flight maxed out, Aces High 2 maxed out, STALKER maxed out etc. with my ATI 5870HD WITHOUT a SINGLE glitch due supposedly "crappy drivers and support". From my experience with computers and troubleshooting MOST of the errors are located between the keyboard and the chair

So if IL-2 got some more support, DLL's do this, as I tested them extensively when tweaking ATI to work with it. And it is a 2 way road, ATI and TD/MG must communicate I used nVidia 280GTX with IL2 as well and it has it's share of bugs and stuff like ATI, not a flawless card unless you benchmark only

So my point is valid, DirectX 11 is the right step to get rid of the 1-trick pony stuff we have in IL2. That is a VERY good thing to ALL gamers regardless brand of GFX card. I am not a fanboi of any brand, I just use whatever I want..now it was time for ATI and damn happy with it.

Back to topic. Super details are for screenshots. In the heat of an online fight or hair rising offline campaign you really do not have time to stare if a screw is serial numbered or not and every player wants performance, even eye candy is nice to have. So balance is the key. SoW will be fine for sure so waiting eagerly for it.