Friday update and discussions 2011-03-11

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Space Communist

Beautiful video, but one thing I was surprised not to see was a certain "jitter" in the instruments. Now maybe somebody can set me right here because I have only been in the cockpit of an (airborne) aircraft once before and it was a 50 year old Piper, but in that thing the needles just kind of bounced around the indicated points on the various dials rather than smoothly pointing at one place. Was that effect just due the age of the aircraft?

I have no real experience on this, but from purely academic knowledge it might depends on a lot of factors. Maybe modern, more precise or even just well maintained or newly installed instruments could show little jitter while the opposite could show more.

On the other hand, it could also depend on the weather. When flying through turbulence for example i would expect that airspeed gauge to be jumping all over the place.

Finally, the various stages of flight and maneuvers could have an effect. We know it takes some time for the propeller governor to adjust the pitch in a constant speed propeller (not much but still noticeable), so if we are putting the aircraft through violent maneuvers with rapid changes of pitch, angle of attack, airspeed, etc, the changes in the prop blades angle of attack might necessitate a lot of pitch corrections from the prop governor to maintain the selected RPM, to the point the governor lags a little bit behind, overcompensates, catches up and starts all over again...the result would be a small oscillation of the needle around the selected RPM mark.

Since this is a video showing smooth flying with relaxed maneuvers in what appears to be calm weather, we might not be able to draw a conclusion on whether it's modeled or not. It might be there, but the circumstances might not be correct for it to manifest itself?

Interestingly enough, in the first ever CoD video we saw, there was quite a lot instrument jitter, and i really mean a lot. I don't know if this was due to the video being captured on a much earlier version of the simulator or the fact that the pilot was throwing that Spit around all over the place, pretty close to some big clouds as well (ie, possible air currents, thermals, turbulence, etc).

This is the video i'm referring to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMFFQGryWhk

Granted, that's an extreme amount of shaking in the needles. Perhaps a real life pilot could provide better information on this, as i'm going purely by what i know from reading a few aviation textbooks and "how instruments work" articles on the web.

Originally Posted by kirq

2 Weeks to release and still no real ingame footage. Few ground objects screenshots and short vid over the water. I don't know what to think about it. The best selling vids CoD had so far were those two unofficial vids that has been quickly pulled out. I don't get it at all, it looks like 1C/ubisoft don't want to sell this game. I canceled my CE pre-order last week because lack of any ingame footage is a bit fishy at this point. I'll wait untill release, read forums, watch ingame vids on YT (finally!) and then I'll decide whether to buy it or wait for some patches.

There's nothing wrong with that. When we preorder a game, any game, we take a risk. If we don't want to take risks, we wait for the reviews from magazines, websites and most importantly, the community itself.

I preordered the game, which means i decided to take a risk. I can talk about the things i like or don't like based on what we've already been shown and know.

If i don't know something i'm going to ask for more information. I might get an answer or not. If not, depending on how important that information is to my decision of buying the game, i might decide to go on with taking the risk (if i don't mind too much) or wait for the reviews myself (if it's very important for me).

I've made a big fuss myself over the lack of choice in using Steam. However, i made that fuss after i learned from an official source that steam will be required, i didn't assume it would be there before it was even announced.

It's all a balancing act: i make a list in my head of the things i know about the game, weigh the things i like against the things i don't, if the outcome is positive i buy the game and ask for an extra option in the features i don't like so that it gets even better for me and everyone who might share my opinion.

The thing is, we can't expect to have in-depth knowledge of the game when we preorder, that comes after flying the sim or reading a lot of reviews. If you want to be among the first to fly this sim you will have to take the risk and possibly put up with some annoying things as well, if you want a better product and more information before buying you will have to wait. And to be honest, there's nothing wrong with either approach.

The only thing that would be wrong is to expect this to be perfect on release day, be able to play it on that same day and also know the ins and outs of it all. That's physically impossible and we'll have to compromise. I'm not saying the marketing is stellar thus far, but on the other hand mr Maddox and his team are not publishers whose job is to sell the product. They are developers and their job is to make it better.

I would love an in-depth 10 minute video. However, if making that video means spending just a day that could be used for optimization, bug fixes or even some work on a future patch or expansion, i prefer them to do coding instead of promoting. The blame for the lack of promotion probably rests more on Ubi's shoulders than the developer's.

Sure, maybe Oleg hasn't supplied them with in-depth knowledge of certain features, but on the other hand i don't expect there would be enough people in Ubi marketing that could explain to us what's the difference between a Spit with a fixed pitch prop and a Spit with a constant speed prop, neither would they know why it works the way it does.

However they could definitely crank up realism to the max, throw up a quick mission builder scenario, press the autopilot key as soon as they spawn and let the AI do its thing, then save that to a track and capture it on video. Rinse and repeat for a variety of different aircraft types, join them all together and we'd have a nice 10 minute video full of air combat. Oleg has supplied them with enough to do this, the fact they don't is not his fault

Originally Posted by kendo65

I find it hard to believe that I'm actually posting this craziness - just put it down to pre-release tension


I just want to say that I don't buy Tree's much-repeated 'post action render theory' on the videos:

1. If they were going to use this method to cheat us ('cos that's what it amounts to) the logical thing would be to use it to show 200 bombers over London, with flak, Spits, 109s, etc, etc.

2. Pretty stupid broadcasting to everyone that the slow-rendering feature exists at all if they had even an inkling that they would use it to cheat. ie they'd keep it secret - then we (or some of us) wouldn't suspect anything.

3. They'd get found out when game releases. The boost to initial sales would in no way compensate for the damage to their reputation and subsequent loss of sales in the future.

4. And this is by far the biggest and most obvious reason - they are respectable and honourable people who care about what they do. They haven't shown any tendency in the past to over-hype products or cheat anyone. They've been brutally honest also about the state of play concerning the various features that won't make the initial release.

So please Tree, do us a favour, give it a rest

Actually, that's my take on things too. If they can "cheat" the fps, why not show something massive in scale? I don't mind Tree having a different opinion even if he's somewhat spamming it at times (let's be honest here, who doesn't from time to time?), just saying what it looks like to me.

If i wanted to fool my potential customers i'd be going all the way, not give them something in-between.

Originally Posted by Jughead

So, where's the hundreds of bombers and fighters? Is this game to represent the Battle of Britain? Do they teach different history in Russia? Maybe my history is wrong, but I thought the Germans sent huge amounts of bombers and fighters and Britain responded appropriately.

I bet the game engine is capable of it. Our PCs on the other hand probably won't be able to run that even on lowest graphics settings due to the amount of complexity in the flight, damage and system models, probably at least until an extra 3-5 years have passed