Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[No601_Swallow]

Originally Posted by swiss

I can only talk for myself, but the only reason for dumping all that cash into peripherals for a game is to get an (unfair as zappa thinks) edge over the others.
It's just like real war - better equipment wins(usually).

You feel you get an advantage by using a 60" screen @800*600 - go for it.

Ah! The old Raybanjockey philosophy!

But I have to say, Swiss, the reason I dump cash I can't afford into peripherals for the game is to boost my sense of immersion and involvement in flight and WWII air combat. Honestly, nothing competitive - just to have a good time! (Which is why I'd never lower my screen resolution - talk about cutting off you nose to spite your face!, and probably why I'm generally canon-fodder or "bait" for my squadron mates!).

[Edit: And I agree with you, Flyingblind - from what I've taken from the updates, hopefully glints and reflections from targets will make bogie-spotting - particularly those currs beneath you - much easier.]

Anyway, as others have said, I feel like a seven-year-old waiting for Christmas! When I finally get a tattoo, it'll read: "Two Weeks - Be Sure".

Thnx Oleg, Lutheir and the gallant 22!

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by Chivas

It sounds like normal flying will be very close to the original IL-2 but stall fighting will be extremely difficult

Definitely going to have to pay close attention to air speed/speed over ground, especially with any kind of high wind in the mix.

[DC338]

Originally Posted by Hoverbug

I can give you one from personal experience. I was in a Lake Amphibian (a very noisy plane) with some excellent David Clarks (headsets) on and we had an F-18 on a low-level training route cross in front of us at the same altitude at a distance of half a mile. I heard him at the same time I saw him and it was loud. That said, that's the only time in 4,000 hours of flying that I heard something outside the airplane while airborne, but then I never made any gun runs on Heinkels and passing within fifty feet of them.

So yes, it's possible to hear things outside a plane in flight - but only really loud things.

The only reason I say this is a guy from work flies Spitfires for the temora museum (http://www.aviationmuseum.com.au/aircraft/) and he says flying in formation with another spit or Mustang and he definitely can't hear them. I would be interested to listen to Oleg's P-39 recording though. Guns firing would be audible but pretty quite I would assume given the difference in sound.

I just hate conducting a perfect bounce and when coming up from behind and below to have the guy suddenly break. The only explanation is they heard me coming.

[ChrisDNT]

Just my experience : I've flown once in a P3 very near to a DC-3, never heard anything.
I've also flown sometimes in jet fighters in formation with other jet fighters, never heard anything outside.

[Baron]

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

Stuka LOD 2/3

With a resolution of 800x600 or lower these are like flying bricks with lower settings.

Except, thats not a Stuka.

[swiss]

Originally Posted by No601_Swallow

Ah! The old Raybanjockey philosophy!

But I have to say, Swiss, the reason I dump cash I can't afford into peripherals for the game is to boost my sense of immersion and involvement in flight and WWII air combat. Honestly, nothing competitive - just to have a good time! (Which is why I'd never lower my screen resolution - talk about cutting off you nose to spite your face!, and probably why I'm generally canon-fodder or "bait" for my squadron mates!).

[Edit: And I agree with you, Flyingblind - from what I've taken from the updates, hopefully glints and reflections from targets will make bogie-spotting - particularly those currs beneath you - much easier.]

Anyway, as others have said, I feel like a seven-year-old waiting for Christmas! When I finally get a tattoo, it'll read: "Two Weeks - Be Sure".

Thnx Oleg, Lutheir and the gallant 22!

Raybanjocky? That's quite funny.
It's like I said, i don't consider myself a "pilot".
I do this for fun(I prefer eyecandy over superman x-ray view), and honestly I can't get the slightest bit of immersion sitting in front of screen, no matter what size, refreshing at 60 to 100 times a second.
This is program trying to reproduce RL - but being what is it it never can, never will.

Before I spend $2k on a new monitor I'll rather get a bigger TV or so, things you can use in RL - with friends and such...
However, if someone decides to go the highend this route, I'm fine with it and wouldn't feel disadvantaged at all.
But even if you have a $20k system, you can be sure one day you'll meet the young Russian equipped with a 17" CRT and a shitty PC who's gonna whoop your a$$ really bad.
Unless you can surprise him(which is not the issue here, as everybody can spot the enemy at 3k) - it will always end in dogfight - the extra 1k visibility come in really handy here, right?

[swiss]

Originally Posted by DC338

I just hate conducting a perfect bounce and when coming up from behind and below to have the guy suddenly break. The only explanation is they heard me coming.

It's well known bug in IL2 - you have to use the crappiest sound settings available to exploit it.
Cool choice btw, shitty SFX vs spider sense.

Or - maybe he's an experienced pilot, spotted you and intentionally let you come closer. Breaks work much better if you surprise the aggressor.

I would far rather see a beautifully rendered, sharp and antialiased plane at 500m and to make a positive ID when it counts.

Amen.

[DC338]

All I want is for that bug to be fixed.

I've do not doubt that you would hear something when shooting though, feel would be more apparent (I agree that some sound is needed to give the same sense as feel isn't available unless FFB.) I'm sure you could hear or feel a hit (I've shot steel plates with a rifle) so that I have no problem with that.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by swiss

Again: What if someone uses a beamer? He will have a 100" screen, huge pixels. Cheating, right? It will never be fair - ever. Unless Oleg sells some standard systems too and locks out everything else.

ahh the old reductio ad absurdum way of pretending to say something meaningful. if you dont understand the topic under discussion, how about you just limit yourself to forum discussions you do understand instead ?

You see everything is different.
GPUs, screensizes and and resolutions, internet connection etcpp.

and ? where you trying to say something relevant there ? news flash: you'r not you just seem to be waffling and being disruptive while others are trying to exchange meaningful information

Originally Posted by swiss

Are you seriously saying the size of a pixel, in relation to displayed distance in game, vs reality is wrong?

nope, you really dont get it do you ? i'll try and take it in smaller steps then, since previously even providing illustrations with explanations didnt seem sufficient for you

1) the topic we (you know, the "other forum users" here) were discussing is how realistically il2 can display the visibility of distant aircraft, compared to what a real ww2 aviator would/could see from his cockpit (point being, the game trying to "simulate" a ww2 pilot experience, for which accurate visibility of enemy aircraft and ground targets is crucial). several posters earlier in this thread were raising concerns that they hoped these errors and know major problems in the il2 series would now be corrected in BoB ( it has been raised multiple times before, including in this forum in the last few yrs). oleg in previous years has indicated he is aware of this issue, and is trying to address several elements of it in BoB/Sow (one of these improvements seems to be that distant LoD models now have "3D volume" to them, as can be seen in one of oleg's earlier video clips). this problem has been extensively discussed and debated for years in the main il2 forums, and is well recognized (even if you dont seem to be aware of it, yet you keep blabbering on trying to either dismiss it or interject with frivolous meaningless banter)

2) the problem can be broken down into various elements, some of which are

a) how visible the most distant il2 "dots" are.
- when the smallest LoD model transitions to just being displayed as a "dot" (which can be anywhere from around 1500 m for a fighter or 5 km for a large bomber), this dot stands out fairly clearly against the open sky, but it blends in way to much with the ground terrain (being just a simple 4 pixel flat little square that slides over a textured background).
b) how well/poorly the various LoD models stand out against the background (in many situations they blend in to much, and in some situations planes can become invisible even if only a few 100 meters away and directly in front of you)
c) how well/poorly ground targets like tanks, trucks, etc stand out against the background (as mentioned before, you should be able to spot individual tanks/trucks moving on an open road or in a field from 1200 to 1500 meters altitude, yet in il2 this is impossible, you need to be at around 300 meters (a BIG issue !)
d) as a fighter pilot the main experience a SIMULATOR should be able to display, is that we as virtual pilots can track objects around us correctly and represent the situational awareness a ww2 pilot would have of objects or targets around him. in il2 you effectively are flying in a mini bubble of 30* of this visibility, AND you have blinkers on because your screen size is limetd. currently as users we are stuck between having a "pretty" sim with nice detailed planes and scenery, but the designers did not deliberately use methods to compensate for the limitations we have imposed on us by sitting behind an imperfect display medium (our monitor in our living rooms) rather then look "out the window" at a live battlefield. yet many of those limitations can be addressed and improved.

Originally Posted by swiss

You had to consult an astrophysicist to notice?

ahh more meaningless banter from the ignorant

as you might not have noticed, the screenshot i posted of the gun sight showing the distant b17 had some calculations on it, they confirm that right up to the point of the most distant LoD model of the b17 transitioning suddenly to just a 4 pixel dot, that this last LoD model up to that point was indeed the correct size (because at the start of this debate we need to confirm the object itself is correctly drawn by the game engine). that specific post however was to confirm that these distant dots in il2 (4.0 are indeed displayed as 4 pixel blocks, and that you can simply double its size and significantly increase its visibility by halving your ingame screen resolution. now hold onto your socks, because here it comes the punchline ! the only reason that all this matters is because we need to compare visibility in the il2 game to what it would be in a similar real life situation ! eg, if i am looking at an me-109 1500 meters away in real life under good visibility conditions and can clearly see him, i expect a SIMULATOR to allow me to do the same, and if i keep my eyes glued on the little sucker to therefore be able to track him as a maneuver to engage him. and, wait for it, here it comes,........... in il2 currently you cant with the current way the dots work (unless seen against open sky, and even then it is much less clearly visible)

hence, in order to have any hope of tracking the me-109 many people with high resolution are resorting to halving their resolutions, and artificially increase the dot visibility (but at the same time make the whole sim virtual world ugly to fly around in, and wasting the precious $'s they spent on their nice hardware). the fact some people use the same method to "cheat" online is completely besides the point. the whole focus of these "discussions" is to end up with as realistic of a visual world as we can to fly in, no more, no less. iirc in the 3.02 patch oleg briefly introduced a fix to address this dot visibility issue, and he made these dots larger and more visible (using more pixels and making them all black iirc). it might not have been "pretty" (for those liking eye candy over realism), but it served the purpose to more closely represent distant aircraft visibility and improved your SA significantly. a large section of the crowd however seem to think "hard to see = i am playing a really neat game", and have no clue about what visibility should really be like, or what recreating a real ww2 fighter pilot's experience means. sadly the whiners won the day in the following months, and in the next patch oleg reversed his changes, hence you have ever since then been back to the myopic 30% il2 "SA bubble" we have now.

Originally Posted by swiss

6bit/8bit:
I have no idea what your talking about.
In the settings menu it says something about true color, 32bit.

you need to look into this yourself a bit if you want to learn more about pc's.

Originally Posted by wiki

Truecolor: 24 bits (16,777,216 colors, "truecolor")
Truecolor can mimic far more of the colors found in the real world, producing over 16.7 million distinct colors. This approaches the level at which megapixel monitors can display distinct colors for most true to life video and photographic images.... 24-bit truecolor uses 8 bits to represent red, 8 bits to represent blue and 8 bits to represent green. 28 = 256 levels of each of these three colors can therefore be combined to give a total of 16,777,216 mixed colors (256 × 256 × 256).

most medium and high level lcd's fall in that category, they are ususally refered to as 32 bit because of software enhancement on top of the 24 bit. the 24 bit allows them to display a very clean gradient in color, including grey's

Originally Posted by wiki

Almost all cheap LCD displays (such as typical twisted nematic types) use dithered 18-bit color (64 × 64 × 64 = 262,144 combinations) to achieve faster transition times, but they must use either dithering or Frame Rate Control to fake 24-bit-per-pixel truecolor, or throw away 6 bits of color information away entirely.

and because they have a stepwise display of color and greys, when a shade of grey it needs to display falls between 2 values it can display, it keeps "flipping' back from one grey tone display to another, a process referred to as "dithering", it is what makes those same monitors very poor in displaying shades of grey and black (for ex when displaying a movie in HD you can see this "glittering" in large black/grey area's and it makes them a poor technology for watching video). of course the salesman just told you "lookie here, aint it nice, and it is FAST (and cheap), why bother with them fancier ones ?". and fast is about all they are good for, except that for 10 yrs or so most lcd monitors have been below 8 msec refresh rates, making them perfectly fine for most gaming to (but you will pay 50% more for them)

except that in il2 when you are trying to track a little black/grey square of 4 pixels against a green/brown or white background, this "glittering pixel" (which cant make up its mind of exactly what shade of grey to display) stands out MUCH more then on a high quality monitor, pure coincidence, but it is why a select small group of people in these discussions keeps thinking the visibility problem is less severe (note: in the crt days we were all in the same boat, and most video cards and nearly all crt displays were 32 bit). so your video car might be able to display 8 bit per primary color, but if your monitor is 6 bit limited that is all it will display.

and one last thing,[b] do you even know how to setup your il2 FoV so that it is correct for your monitor size ?[/b[ (and the distance your eyes are from the screen). because many of the less informed people who keep saying they can see things most of us cant (pun intended), are in fact "gaming the game" by using lower FoV settings they they should and use it as a zoom magnifier to scan the ground or sky for things they actually would be able to see from a real plane cockpit

so either start informing yourself a little about how extensive this problem is, by searching the ubi forums for example (or simhq or combatsim), then setup your system FoV correctly, compare your TN 6 bit monitor it to a normal 8 bit monitor, and then find out what real visibility was like historically for ww2 fighter pilots and ground pounders. and then maybe look at what RL visibility is like from an aircraft cockpit to, just so you have an idea of what you CAN see in RL. failing all that, how about you go play somewhere else and stop interjecting in topics you know very little about its not a forum pissing contest, we are trying to exchange useful information and improve the SIMULATOR in its next incarnation.

Originally Posted by zapatista

ahh the old reductio ad absurdum way of pretending to say something meaningful. if you dont understand the topic under discussion, how about you just limit yourself to forum discussions you do understand instead ?



and ? where you trying to say something relevant there ? news flash: you'r not you just seem to be waffling and being disruptive while others are trying to exchange meaningful information


nope, you really dont get it do you ? i'll try and take it in smaller steps then, since previously even providing illustrations with explanations didnt seem sufficient for you

1) the topic we (you know, the "other forum users" here, it doesnt always have to be about you ,and what you do or dont know) were discussing is how realistically il2 can display the visibility of distant aircraft, compared to what a real ww2 aviator would/could see from his cockpit (point being, the game trying to "simulate" a ww2 pilot experience, for which accurate visibility of enemy aircraft and ground targets is crucial)

several posters earlier in this thread were raising concerns that they hoped these errors and know major problems in the il2 series would now be corrected in BoB ( it has been raised multiple times before, including in this forum in the last few yrs). oleg in previous years has indicated he is aware of this issue, and is trying to address several elements of it in BoB/Sow (one of these improvements seems to be that distant LoD models now have "3D volume" to them, as can be seen in one of oleg's earlier video clips). this problem has been extensively discussed and debated for years in the main il2 forums, and is well recognized (even if you dont seem to be aware of it, yet you keep blabbering on trying to either dismiss it or interject with frivolous meaningless banter)


2) the problem can be broken down into various elements, some of which are

a) how visible the most distant il2 "dots" are.
- when the smallest LoD model transitions to just being displayed as a "dot" (which can be anywhere from around 1500 m for a fighter or 5 km for a large bomber), this dot stands out fairly clearly against the open sky, but it blends in way to much with the ground terrain (being just a simple 4 pixel flat little square that slides over a textured background).

b) how well/poorly the various LoD models stand out against the background (in many situations they blend in to much, and in some situations planes can become invisible even if only a few 100 meters away and directly in front of you)

c) how well/poorly ground targets like tanks, trucks, etc stand out against the background (as mentioned before, you should be able to spot individual tanks/trucks moving on an open road or in a field from 1200 to 1500 meters altitude, yet in il2 this is impossible, you need to be at around 300 meters (a BIG issue !)

d) as a fighter pilot the main experience a SIMULATOR should be able to display, is that we as virtual pilots can track objects around us correctly and represent the situational awareness a ww2 pilot would have of objects or targets around him. in il2 you effectively are flying in a mini bubble of 30* of this visibility, AND you have blinkers on because your screen size is limetd. currently as users we are stuck between having a "pretty" sim with nice detailed planes and scenery, but the designers did not deliberately use methods to compensate for the limitations we have imposed on us by sitting behind an imperfect display medium (our monitor in our living rooms) rather then look "out the window" at a live battlefield. yet many of those limitations can be addressed and improved.



ahh more meaningless banter from the ignorant

as you might not have noticed, the screenshot i posted of the gun sight showing the distant b17 had some calculations on it, they confirm that right up to the point of the most distant LoD model of the b17 transitioning suddenly to just a 4 pixel dot, that this last LoD model up to that point was indeed the correct size (because at the start of this debate we need to confirm the object itself is correctly drawn by the game engine).

that specific post however was to confirm that these distant dots in il2 (4.0 are indeed displayed as 4 pixel blocks, and that you can simply double its size and significantly increase its visibility by halving your ingame screen resolution.

now hold onto your socks, because here it comes the punchline ! the only reason that all this matters is because we need to compare visibility in the il2 game to what it would be in a similar real life situation ! eg, if i am looking at an me-109 1500 meters away in real life under good visibility conditions and can clearly see him, i expect a SIMULATOR to allow me to do the same, and if i keep my eyes glued on the little sucker to therefore be able to track him as a maneuver to engage him. and, wait for it, here it comes,........... in il2 currently you cant with the current way the dots work (unless seen against open sky, and even then it is much less clearly visible)

hence, in order to have any hope of tracking the me-109 many people with high resolution are resorting to halving their resolutions, and artificially increase the dot visibility (but at the same time make the whole sim virtual world ugly to fly around in, and wasting the precious $'s they spent on their nice hardware). the fact some people use the same method to "cheat" online is completely besides the point. the whole focus of these "discussions" is to end up with as realistic of a visual world as we can to fly in, no more, no less.

iirc in the 3.02 patch oleg briefly introduced a fix to address this dot visibility issue, and he made these dots larger and more visible (using more pixels and making them all black iirc). it might not have been "pretty" (for those liking eye candy over realism), but it served the purpose to more closely represent distant aircraft visibility and improved your SA significantly. a large section of the crowd however seem to think "hard to see = i am playing a really neat game", and have no clue about what visibility should really be like, or what recreating a real ww2 fighter pilot's experience means. sadly the whiners won the day in the following months, and in the next patch oleg reversed his changes, hence you have ever since then been back to the myopic 30% il2 "SA bubble" we have now.



you need to look into this yourself a bit if you want to learn more about pc's.

most medium and high level lcd's fall in that category, they are ususally refered to as 32 bit because of software enhancement on top of the 24 bit. the 24 bit allows them to display a very clean gradient in color, including grey's


and because they have a stepwise display of color and greys, when a shade of grey it needs to display falls between 2 values it can display, it keeps "flipping' back from one grey tone display to another, a process referred to as "dithering", it is what makes those same monitors very poor in displaying shades of gret and black (for ex when displaying a movie in HD you can see this "glittering" in large black/grey area's and it makes them a poor technology for watching video)

of course the salesman just told you "lookie here, aint it nice, and it is FAST (and cheap), why bother with them fancier ones ?". and fast is about all they are good for, except that for 10 yrs or so most lcd monitors have been below 8 msec refresh rates, making them perfectly fine for most gaming to (but you will pay 50% more for them)

except that in il2 when you are trying to track a little black/grey square of 4 pixels against a gree/brown or white background, this "glittering pixel" (which cant make up its mind of exactly what shade of grey to display) stands out MUCH more then on a high quality monitor, pure coincidence, but it is why a select small group of people in these discussions keeps thinking the visibility problem is less severe (note: in the crt days we were all in the same boat, and most video cards and nearly all crt displays were 32 bit)

so your video car might be able to display 8 bit per primary color, but if your monitor is 6 bit limited that is all it will display

and one last thing, do you even know how to setup your il2 FoV so that it is correct for your monitor size ? (and the distance your eyes are from the screen). because many of the less informed people who keep saying they can see things most of us cant (pun intended), are in fact "gaming the game" by using lower FoV settings they they should and use it as a zoom magnifier to scan the ground or sky for things they actually would be able to see from a real plane cockpit

so either start informing yourself a little about how extensive this problem is, by searching the ubi forums for example (or simhq or combatsim), then setup your system FoV correctly, compare your TN 6 bit monitor it to a normal 8 bit monitor, and then find out what real visibility was like historically for ww2 fighter pilots and ground pounders. and then maybe look at what RL visibility is like from an aircraft cockpit to, just so you have an idea of what you CAN see in RL. failing all that, how about you go play somewhere else and stop interjecting in topics you know very little about its not a forum pissing contest, we are trying to exchange useful information and improve the SIMULATOR in its next incarnation.

Wow..All I can say, is that you guys have a looooooooooooooot of spare time to spend discussing about...what ever you talk about !
We need another update fast !

Salute !