Friday 2010-07-09 Dev. update and Discussion Thread

[rakinroll]

Man, awesome sunrise images, thank you.

[philip.ed]

I think it's sunset. The sun it getting higher as the camera gets higher

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by leggit

As a professional artist and digital artist i assure you there is nothing wrong with the colour range. Try calibrating your monitor properly.

i hope you were referring to the sky when you said the colour range was right, not the scenery

in the most recent screenshots with the low flying cluster of german aircraft over Brittan, the colour of trees and scrubs (and their spacing), looks to me more like the french maquis in a long bleaching summer, then the lush english vegetation in southern england (where i lived for 6 yrs)

since oleg repeatedly stated this is wip and vegetation colours and even trees shapes and types are not final, its not really worth debating if its right or wrong and i am not really concerned

somebody in the last couple of weeks posted 6 or 8 photographs of southern englands scenery (hedges and roads ?), and those colours were spot on from the way i remember them

here they are: posted by major-setback a few weeks ago: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...hedges&page=15

the brightest green ones could have been after a couple of rainy days and then some hot/warm days, and the more washed out greens (still much brighter and more colourfull then the recent ones seen in oleg's latest screenshot) would have been after a week or 2 of summer weather without any rain. maybe we need to have a wip-around and get oleg a package deal for a weekend in southern england, after all it is summer there now and the colors should be about right. anybody here from southern england that can comment more on these colors ?

[Space Communist]

The fact that this engine models the terrain on a globe is just nuts, and awesome. This game will be the gold standard for a decade, just like IL-2. I am hoping Oleg licenses the engine successfully and we can see what others can do with it as well.

[PilotError]

Originally Posted by zapatista

maybe we need to have a wip-around and get oleg a package deal for a weekend in southern england, after all it is summer there now and the colors should be about right.

Oleg is on vacation right at this moment. Maybe he is already in southern England ?!?

When Oleg first started giving us regular updates there were shouts of cartoonish colours!
And now they are too washed out!
But they are all WIP.
I can't help thinking that some people have expectations that would require a top of the range computer from about 20 years from now.

I think the updates we've seen so far are showing us a preview of a game that will be ground breaking, but it will have it's limitations.
After all it will still be just a game, probably an exceptional one, but still a game.

[brando]

You might want to note that the summer of 1940 was in fact hot and dry. While Setback's pictures are good colourwise, I don't think they are of southern England. They look to be of hedgerows in the southwestern region; ie West of Bristol. This side of the country is directly in the path of the prevailing winds and receives far more rain than the southeast: but the southeast is where all the major action occurred. A hot dry summer in southeastern England turns grass brown very quickly.

Whether there is any plan for weather-related changes to land colours I don't know - but from midsummer to October (1940) the land would only have looked more faded with every passing week.

B

[C_G]

Clearly what the engine should do is calculate the quantities of precipitation and sunshine received with respect to a calendar of seasonal crop planting/harvesting and extrapolate the level of colour saturation and height of the grass and crops.

It should also take into account whether Farmer Jarge has decided to plant more wheat rather than mustard seed depending upon the predictions of the 1939 Almanac and war-time production priorities. It should estimate the likelihood of Farmer Jarge having taken in the crop depending upon the prior days' weather, local ale festival dates (two day hangover recovery-time), and whether his ewes came down with foot-and-mouth disease (the likelihood of this would have to be determined by a separate but reklated algorithm, obviously) and precluded him from attending to his crops. In addition, the algorithm used to calculate the breakdown/wear rate of aircraft could be applied to Farmer Jarge's farm equipment and horses/oxen to assist in the determination of field colour and length.

Finally, it would be nice to see derelict cars/poles/other obstructions placed in Farmer Jarge's South-East English fields in response to mandated precautions against German invasion gliders. Naturally, the number of said obstructions should gradually increase over time as it would be a total immersion killer to see the fields suddenly populated overnight with obstructions that had not been there the previous day.

While I'm thinking of it, it would be nice if the trees could bud/bloom/blossom in spring in accordance with their type and, conversely, change colour and lose their leaves in the fall in accordance with their type, the weather, the altitude of said trees, and local microclimates.

I hope this is not too much to ask, Oleg. All I really want is for the most realistic flight simulator possible. One which would be virtually identical to the real world, only I would be 6'1" and have a slight sexy scottish burr notwithstanding an education at Eton.

[philip.ed]

Despite some saturation from age, this is an ok example

[Splitter]

The color shade thing is pretty far down on my list of things I am looking forward to.

Shades are different on different computers. I see it all the time going form office to office when they all have the same background. One monitor will look washed out, another will look too vibrant. There is nothing a combat sim could do about that.

Most systems have some way of adjusting color. Some games have sliders to adjust colors, saturation, and such. All Oleg needs to do is get it close and he will never please everyone unless they adjust their system.

Flight models, damage models, frame rate savers, good mission infrastructure, multiplayer support....those things are what will make or break the game.

I'm not saying that people who are knocking the colors are wrong, just that those things are easy tweaks for the programmers and end users.

Splitter

[Il2Pongo]

Originally Posted by C_G

Clearly what the engine should do is calculate the quantities of precipitation and sunshine received with respect to a calendar of seasonal crop planting/harvesting and extrapolate the level of colour saturation and height of the grass and crops.

It should also take into account whether Farmer Jarge has decided to plant more wheat rather than mustard seed depending upon the predictions of the 1939 Almanac and war-time production priorities. It should estimate the likelihood of Farmer Jarge having taken in the crop depending upon the prior days' weather, local ale festival dates (two day hangover recovery-time), and whether his ewes came down with foot-and-mouth disease (the likelihood of this would have to be determined by a separate but reklated algorithm, obviously) and precluded him from attending to his crops. In addition, the algorithm used to calculate the breakdown/wear rate of aircraft could be applied to Farmer Jarge's farm equipment and horses/oxen to assist in the determination of field colour and length.

Finally, it would be nice to see derelict cars/poles/other obstructions placed in Farmer Jarge's South-East English fields in response to mandated precautions against German invasion gliders. Naturally, the number of said obstructions should gradually increase over time as it would be a total immersion killer to see the fields suddenly populated overnight with obstructions that had not been there the previous day.

While I'm thinking of it, it would be nice if the trees could bud/bloom/blossom in spring in accordance with their type and, conversely, change colour and lose their leaves in the fall in accordance with their type, the weather, the altitude of said trees, and local microclimates.

I hope this is not too much to ask, Oleg. All I really want is for the most realistic flight simulator possible. One which would be virtually identical to the real world, only I would be 6'1" and have a slight sexy scottish burr notwithstanding an education at Eton.

Don't forget the beetle blight, no shire with the beetle blight will have blooms in summer. Unless they got the pesticide shipment, which the Germans can intercept. And therefore win the war. Because no self respecting Spit pilot will land at an airfield that is one rgb value out from the expected shade of grass. The AI pilots will assume its a ruse and strafe the field.