Friday 2010-08-27 Dev. update and Discussions

[arjisme]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

The propellors in these shots look like the kind that you see in a movie (or a photo). Is this deliberate? It'd be cool to choose between different looks for how the propellor displays in-game

Interestingly, the propellers in the first two shots don't look like that.

[AdMan]

I figured out why buildings still look like lego land

There are no hedges or plant growth around any of the buildings. Hedges, bushes, are common decorative trim and would help integrate buildings with the land same with vines, moss, and dirt growing upwards on the buildings, I think I've seen moss on some of the building textures but I think they should be more pronounced, especially along the bottom.

[Blakduk]

Great pics!
Pics #3 & #4 make me wonder- just how did the crew of a Ju88 bail out?????

[major_setback]

Nice update.
The sea loooks great today. Nice highlights.

The plane shine seems to have been perfected, it has looked very good in the past few updates.

I would prefer the Hurricane pilot to be immobile rather than placed too low in the cockpit. It is very noticeable.

Thanks for the update, it is always very welcome!

[lbuchele]

Hi,Luthier thanks for the update.
I´m curious about the way aircrew exit the damaged planes.
Did they actually "work" their way out of the plane or they do more like Il2 scaping thru the fuselage?

[bf-110]

Originally Posted by luthier

also a little bit of fancy flying (you can collide with each one of those wires).

:-ppppp

Nice!
BTW,those pilots really resemble National Kid...

[Zorin]

First off: Get well soon Oleg.

Regarding the new screenshots.

1. Coming together nicely. Everything starts to feel natural.
2. The Ju88 model does show its age, which is sad. Your Do215/17 already has modelled thickness for the hull and canopies, which the Ju88 doesn't have and results in a IL-2 look I had hoped not to see in SoW.
3. Will the aircrews on multi-crew crafts all have the same face? I thought they would not, but the screenshots lead us to believe otherwise.
4. Does the Ju88 skin shown in the shot show a bump map yet? It doesn't look like it. There is a hint of a specular map in the "bail-out" top shot, I believe, though.

On a personal note: Thanks for fixing the small glitches on the Bf110. Highly appreciated

[zxwings]

Actually I think the flames in IL-2 look better. Sorry for this incongruous remark.

[Blackdog_kt]

Judging from the fact that even in IL2 one could have multiple different faces for pilots and even import his own, i guess it's going to be the same with SoW. Maybe they just didn't care about inserting different faces, because they wanted us to focus more on how the crew moves, eg the bailout scene and the way the pilot looks around in the second picture? Just a thought. In any case, i think it's safe to assume that even when small details are concerned SoW will be at least on par with IL2. In that sense, i don't worry about missing features if i have seen those features in IL2, i'm sure they'll be included at some point.

As for the buildings, it might seem they lack randomized vegetation close to them, like small gardens, but the rest of the 1st picture is very interesting. You can clearly see that the field near the left edge of the picture exhibits plow lines, the fields are sufficiently different to prevent the repeating tile effect and they also have hedgerows around them. On the field visible just behind the buildings we can also see that they took care to mix different types of vegetation, as there's not only a circular row of bushes but an isolated tree as well and it also exhibits areas that lack grass coverage. I think we can safely lay the matter of vegetation to rest

What i'm really curious about is the tracers. They look a bit laser-like , but then again i'm sure so much research has gone into this that i can assume they are historically correct, plus the IL2 tracers also seemed strange to me when i first saw them.

I think that the whole package is coming along nicely and we've reached a point where we can't deduce much more from still images, in fact i'm guessing that a lot of misunderstandings arise from this fact. A lot of things that might look strange or funny in screenshots could be looking perfectly natural when seen in motion. This might be seen as an effort to coax the developers into providing some video goodness and in a sense it is, but it also shows how far the title has come during the last few months.
A short video showcasing some of the core elements would not only help to pacify the restless among us, but also fuel the excitement even more.

As far as i'm concerned, i don't even need to see full detail DX11 graphics glory if there's interesting stuff being done in the video. It doesn't even have to be combat footage if you ask me, just starting the aircraft up and taking it for a circuit around the airfield would reveal so much about the details and inner-workings of the new sim that it would be an absolute joy to watch (maybe that's why they don't show such things, to prevent the competition from knowing what kind of goodies it has).

If what we're seeing are low to medium detail graphics, i'm 100% certain that overall graphics quality will be near excellent. Sure, some things could still be improved, but graphics-wise it's good enough for me to go out and buy it this instant if i was to judge from graphics alone and it was available for sale.
The reason people get restless and nit-pick is because they've only been shown graphics thus far. That's what they focus on and since 90% of it ranges from very good to downright excellent, they'll start debating the size of individual leaves

In fact, i'm so satisfied with graphics that i've starting becoming much more curious about actual gameplay at this stage, namely the things that we didn't have in IL2. I can't help but wonder about things like the new complex engine management, radio communication and sound for example. I'm not apprehensive about it, i'm sure it will be done to an equally high standard, i just expect to be pleasantly surprised by these aspects of the sim and watching the whole community going "oooh" and "ahhh" over it all

Judging from the rate at which progress occurs (we went from "these flames are weird" and "where's my hedgerows" to "these flames rock" and "terrain looks convincing" in the span of 2-3 updates), i'm going to be optimistic about it and hope that we'll finally see it during autumn. The more it improves the harder the wait becomes though, but such is the life of a hobbyist

[Romanator21]

Who allowed you guys to set a real Ju-88 on fire? Those things are rare these days you know. Tsk tsk...

BTW, make sure Oleg gets more vitamin C.