Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[Ravenous]

Originally Posted by Hypernova

Luthier, I can't believe what I hear. I feel frankly cheated.

I was right two or three years ago or so when I said on a forum to Oleg that he was being pulled by the "perfection syndrom" regarding the modeling of planes, trucks, tanks etc... But we are not paying for a bunch of technical drawings to build planes, tanks and trucks. We pay for an immersive simulation of certain historical events, that includes, airplanes, pilots, but also tanks, trucks ground objects, artillery, infantry, environment, weather, sounds etc. etc. etc. It is the combination of all this that makes it a big hit, a killer game. There must be an equilibrium between all the actors in the game.
I am not interested in flying one airplane that has been modeled to each bolt, nut and screw, each cable, wire etc.. It has to be visually excellent but there is a limit. I do not care if when hit the airplane explodes in a perfect physical dynamics way with the excact perfect structure and parts damage. Some approximation is perfectly enough. But I care to have all the other things that makes me feeling that I fly in a living dynamic environment.

Shoestring budget. Sorry but this not acceptable. Oleg said five years ago that your ambition was to build the best of the best and other than perfection was not an option. I commented at that time that the budget for such an ambition was a team of 10-15 people and 5-10 or more millions of dollars at minimum. But if you knew you had no budget for such ambition, then I feel cheated to have waited so long.
And five years later you cannot even afford to do sound recording. Or model the various categories of people that should populate and animate your flight sim. You will just dump people in the trucks!!! Com-on!

Luthier, five years of developments. That is enormous, I have the feeling you were alone, the whole team. And I have the feeling that there were many other products developed and financiall probably more interesting and this COD has been kind of sidework. It could have lasted 10 years. Realistic (and not arcade) flight simulation is a niche market in gaming (It is not the market of World of Warcraft, or GTR and similar games, completely uninteresting for me) and I understand that it is not justified to do a large investment for it. But this you should have said. Keeping us with extremely high expectations over such a long period is a terrible risk. A risk that we will feel very very disappointed. It will not become a killer flight simulator but a killed one.

Il2 Sturmovik / Pacific Fighters was a killer flight simulator with all patches and improvements had an incredible long life on my machine, about six years. Why? because it was an incredible surprise, of unexpected quality, playability and immersivity.
I am now afraid that due to extremely high expectations COD will be exactly the opposite.
A year ago it was a sure buy. Now I will wait and buy only according to what will be the experience that will be communicated buy the first fliers.

Uhm, I'm not going to tell you what to feel or anything, but i want you to consider what you are saying here: you are telling him that you are "very very dissapointed" with CoD because they could'nt afford to send about a truckload of equipment from Moscow to Britain to record a real Merlin and Daimler-Benz engine, and that vehicle crew slipped their mind for the time being... You are infact so dissapointed by this that you don't want to buy CoD unless someone you trust says it's a killer sim...

The way I see this is: OK, they don't have a real Merlin/DB engine, BUT they recorded real engines of other planes and engineered the sound to be a stand-in for them. As far as i know, that seems to be the only way they could get their hands on the engine sounds of, say a Zero..or even a M163 Comet etc. etc.

So to me this is just as good as the real thing when you realize that they aren't just half-assing this by slapping the sounds of a lawnmower in there and then call it a Tiger Moth.. they have professional equipment and i'd assume that since they could have recorded the real thing if they had access, their sound engineer is most likely a professional too.

Besides, Luthier already said that the sound feels right, and I'll take his word for it.. You've been waiting for 5+ years? I would have assumed that you have seen these people's passion for what they do, so i would have thought that you could take his word too untill you could judge it for youself..Or do you consider 50-ish dollars or whatever your currency is, to be waaaay too much to pay for something that is supposed to be the successor of IL2 in every way when it gets off the ground?

And regarding Luthier's choice of words that you freaked out about...

would you please relax for a second, take a breath, and then try to think about the quality of the rest of the sim...They aren't LITERALLY going to just dump somebody into the driver's seats of the vehicles just to put something in'em..

and even if they weren't too good-looking...what do you care?? You're supposed to be zipping by at alittle more than 1m altitude AND you're going to be going alittle faster than walking-pace...atleast I choose to believe that you're supposed to be engaging COMBAT while in FLIGHT in this SIMulator..

I'll be using a ram on the door of my local gamestop if they aren't open at the very second they're supposed to

Can't wait to get the new incarnation of WW2 CFS's, and to actually take part in the "childhood" of it

sorry, if this somehow offends you, that was not the point of this, I simply got fed up with all the panic about the green, and the small pilots..and the wrong eye-color in the reflection of the pilot in instrument-glass in the cockpit..and tracers that look like starwars (which btw was made to look like WW2 AIRCOMBAT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!) and all the other nitpicking people have had the spare time to bother the lead developers with in the updates..

*sigh* I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish people would take the history of every game into account when thinking about CoD too..They almost without exception get patches and fixes to correct anything wrong with it, and in IL2's case it was also ADDED to the content by the patches

[fireflyerz]

Originally Posted by Ravenous

Uhm, I'm not going to tell you what to feel or anything, but i want you to consider what you are saying here: you are telling him that you are "very very dissapointed" with CoD because they could'nt afford to send about a truckload of equipment from Moscow to Britain to record a real Merlin and Daimler-Benz engine, and that vehicle crew slipped their mind for the time being... You are infact so dissapointed by this that you don't want to buy CoD unless someone you trust says it's a killer sim...

The way I see this is: OK, they don't have a real Merlin/DB engine, BUT they recorded real engines of other planes and engineered the sound to be a stand-in for them. As far as i know, that seems to be the only way they could get their hands on the engine sounds of, say a Zero..or even a M163 Comet etc. etc.

So to me this is just as good as the real thing when you realize that they aren't just half-assing this by slapping the sounds of a lawnmower in there and then call it a Tiger Moth.. they have professional equipment and i'd assume that since they could have recorded the real thing if they had access, their sound engineer is most likely a professional too.

Besides, Luthier already said that the sound feels right, and I'll take his word for it.. You've been waiting for 5+ years? I would have assumed that you have seen these people's passion for what they do, so i would have thought that you could take his word too untill you could judge it for youself..Or do you consider 50-ish dollars or whatever your currency is, to be waaaay too much to pay for something that is supposed to be the successor of IL2 in every way when it gets off the ground?

Two of the most famous aircraft in the world one with an instantly recognisable engine note , the other being one of my favorite engine sounds "db.600.series" the cost of audio equipment is under £500 and the rest is some polite airfield diplomacy , a favour or two and knowing how to place yourself via the conditions , the editing....childs play , but what do I know and its like you said , so what if a spit sounds like a skyvan.

[Ravenous]

Originally Posted by fireflyerz

Two of the most famous aircraft in the world one with an instantly recognisable engine note , the other being one of my favorite engine sounds "db.600.series" the cost of audio equipment is under £500 and the rest is some polite airfield diplomacy , a favour or two and knowing how to place yourself via the conditions , the editing....childs play , but what do I know and its like you said , so what if a spit sounds like a skyvan.

I didn't say i don't care what it sounds like at all, i said that i doubt they'll just record a lawnmower and call it a Tiger Moth..

and Luthier said that they had engineered the sounds of the engine of a russian (can't remember if it was a fighter) plane to sounds like the real thing..
it's not like the 109 is going to sound like a piper cub..atleast not as far as i can understand.. and just to clarify: the same goes for the spitfire..i doubt it'll sound like skyvan

oh, and
"We're still working on sounds. Engine and gun sounds are pretty good in my opinion, but a lot of people will take some time to get used to them because they're not what you expect, especially guns as heard from inside the cockpit. We got some funny bug reports about that from some beta testers.

You can hear outside noises, yes. As you should. We can argue this based both on memoirs and on scientific formulas."

and
"We couldn't record the real Merlin or a Daimler Benz or basically any real engine from BoB era due to a limited budget. There aren't any in Russia, and we couldn't fly out our sound engineer to the UK or Germany with all his equipment.

We do have the recordings of the real engines of course made with various Russian aircraft this summer. Using advanced SFX magic we transformed our samples to sound the way we needed."

doesn't really give me the impression that all you need is a laptop and a singstar-mic to record it in BINAURAL audio

[el0375]

IN my opinion teh sound will be good, i have never heard a merlin engine but i will be very enthusiastic that teh tried to put soem similar one, for teh budged they hav ethis is very nice job. I might understand that for some people this is an important thing but in order to see mor ethings added up, all will depend on game success, i hope it will

[Peffi]

There are many engine recordings available for every airplane we are going to fly in CoD. No need to go anywhere just to make own recordings. I very much doubt engine sound will be an issue for serious complaints. It is less than 2 months until we will have our hands on this sim and everything we want to know and Luthier patiently answers now will be answered then. If you are unsure you want to buy the game, then wait for some days after the release and read the reviews before you decide. Really simple really.

[Ravenous]

Originally Posted by Peffi

There are many engine recordings available for every airplane we are going to fly in CoD. No need to go anywhere just to make own recordings. I very much doubt engine sound will be an issue for serious complaints. It is less than 2 months until we will have our hands on this sim and everything we want to know and Luthier patiently answers now will be answered then. If you are unsure you want to buy the game, then wait for some days after the release and read the reviews before you decide. Really simple really.

I don't think you'll find any in Binaural audio?

I have no idea if you could "make" binaural by multisampling a regular recording or anything, but the video Oleg had in an update a while ago had BINAULAR AUDIO BETA or something like that in the name, so...

[Abbeville-Boy]

sounds were terrible in years after the first release
they got to be better
in cod
cant be worse

[fireflyerz]

Originally Posted by Ravenous

I didn't say i don't care what it sounds like at all, i said that i doubt they'll just record a lawnmower and call it a Tiger Moth..

and Luthier said that they had engineered the sounds of the engine of a russian (can't remember if it was a fighter) plane to sounds like the real thing..
it's not like the 109 is going to sound like a piper cub..atleast not as far as i can understand.. and just to clarify: the same goes for the spitfire..i doubt it'll sound like skyvan

oh, and
"We're still working on sounds. Engine and gun sounds are pretty good in my opinion, but a lot of people will take some time to get used to them because they're not what you expect, especially guns as heard from inside the cockpit. We got some funny bug reports about that from some beta testers.

You can hear outside noises, yes. As you should. We can argue this based both on memoirs and on scientific formulas."

and
"We couldn't record the real Merlin or a Daimler Benz or basically any real engine from BoB era due to a limited budget. There aren't any in Russia, and we couldn't fly out our sound engineer to the UK or Germany with all his equipment.

We do have the recordings of the real engines of course made with various Russian aircraft this summer. Using advanced SFX magic we transformed our samples to sound the way we needed."

doesn't really give me the impression that all you need is a laptop and a singstar-mic to record it in BINAURAL audio

Lol , not trying to get your back up , im simply making a point of what you said , we are all more than a little how shall i say....worried about the mounting pile of things that are not going to be in the release , for me the sound side is very important it is over 50% of the game , and as an ex AAA moderator I would say that there is about 50 thousand potential buyers out there thinking the same thing , and they know what a spitfire sounds like.
I am optamistic that they will pull it off , but at this stage in the game no one is rushing to show off there audio creations I would say audio disapointment looms , and my game will have to be dubbed if I want to make a movie out of it , which is sad as the original game was broken so that the audio could be improved so why was sound not a priority this time round ? , dont make no sense to me.

Jafa.

[meplay]

Originally Posted by fireflyerz

Two of the most famous aircraft in the world one with an instantly recognisable engine note , the other being one of my favorite engine sounds "db.600.series" the cost of audio equipment is under £500 and the rest is some polite airfield diplomacy , a favour or two and knowing how to place yourself via the conditions , the editing....childs play , but what do I know and its like you said , so what if a spit sounds like a skyvan.

I hope you get hold of them mod tools

[swiss]

Originally Posted by fireflyerz

Two of the most famous aircraft in the world one with an instantly recognisable engine note , the other being one of my favorite engine sounds "db.600.series" the cost of audio equipment is under £500 and the rest is some polite airfield diplomacy , a favour or two and knowing how to place yourself via the conditions , the editing....childs play , but what do I know and its like you said , so what if a spit sounds like a skyvan.

500quid?
You sure get some bad ass equipment for that.
What makes you think they will run the engine for free?
Just because it's a for a certain Oleg Maddox whos name is(most likely) completely unknown to the plane owner? And it's for a commercial purpose.
They will you $1800 just to put that microphone near their running BD6xx engine - and that probably doesn't even cover cost....
Please repeat for EACH engine.
Plus travel, accommodation, expenses.
You will top out $20k before you know.