Friday Official Update, July 20, 2012

[Bounder!]

Thanks for the update Blacksix, great to hear the trees and the problems with the hurricane startup online are being fixed. Could you confirm if problems with FMs are still being examined and worked on?

Thanks

[phoenix1963]

I see the blinds are carefully shut in the office picture.
Is this a way of hiding the location from the moaners on this forum, so they can't storm the building?
56RAF_phoenix

[klem]

Originally Posted by bounder!

thanks for the update blacksix, great to hear the trees and the problems with the hurricane startup online are being fixed. could you confirm if problems with fms are still being examined and worked on?
thanks

+100

[Osprey]

Originally Posted by Bounder!

Could you confirm if problems with FMs are still being examined and worked on?

Thanks

6 pages before this important question is asked.

The RAF flight models that were supposed to be patched are very inaccurate, especially for the Hurricane and should be fixed.

[ATAG_Snapper]

Originally Posted by Bounder!

Thanks for the update Blacksix, great to hear the trees and the problems with the hurricane startup online are being fixed. Could you confirm if problems with FMs are still being examined and worked on?

Thanks

+1

Now that the office move is completed and the floors are mopped -- which is good to hear -- could you please advise what fixes have been applied to the currently incorrect flight modelling of the Spitfires (all marks), Hurricanes (all marks), Bf 109's, and ME 110's?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Frequent_Flyer

Blackdog, Good points. However, it appears performance related issues, ie. the sim pausing when a group( as few as four ) EA are encountered. Dramatic framerate reduction when hits are obtained causing debris particals, vapor, smoke and/or fire to trail from an EA. Sometimes followed by CTD . Even if the bomb sight calulations are rectified it appears the performance issues most encounter would reduce the immerssion factor to an unacceptable level. I find it disconcerting no mention from the developers regarding performance increases.I was under the impression the " new graphics engine " was being implemented for this express purpose. I am cautiously optimistic the " trees" will be fixed.

Well, the reason i'm advocating these changes is that most probably it's a purely numerical calculation issue in the bombsight code (Edit: at least that's how it seems from testing done by various pilots, there is definitely a mix-up between imperial and metric units in how the sight treats your inputs regarding tracking the target and calculating the release point).

It's probably at the same level as the non-starting Hurricane that they fixed. For example, they might have made it possible to start with a colder engine or raised the starting oil temperature, both of which is just changing the value of a variable. That's less than one line of code.

And since i'm simplifying things a bit to make a point and i haven't actually seen the code, let's just up this a little and say it's 100-200 , or even 1000 lines of code. To put this into perspective, i'm a beginner programmer and i can routinely crank out 300 lines of working Java code in the span of a two hour lab session at uni. In these two hours i have to read the problem/assignment, understand it, analyse it, decide on a modeling solution (what classes i need and so on), implement it and check for errors.

Fixing the bombsights is probably an evening's work for the developer team at most, and that's probably the guys who are not even involved with the graphics rewrite.
Small things like that would not tie up the graphics programmers, not to mention that it's probably the field of the AI/systems programmer to do this and not the job of the graphics guys, so it wouldn't really delay the performance fixes.

As an example, the Ju88 gyrocompass was not working ever since the release of the sim and got fixed in the previous beta. All this time however, there was a similar compass on the He-111 that worked fine and the code could have been copy-pasted all along.

I'm not disrespecting anyone's flying preferences here because i fly most of the aircraft in the sim, but this example clearly shows that trivially easy to fix issues with big impact on gameplay are neglected, because most people try to prove/disprove rights and wrongs in the FMs of their favorite/opposing fighters and more or less "steal the spotlights" in every single patch.

If it's not 100 octane it's the lack of DeWilde ammo, the grass being too green, the lack of MG-FF/M in the 110s, etc, etc. Well, these are all important issues to fix but also more time consuming (or at least equally time consuming) to giving players the ability to aim some bombs. And even if all of these things are corrected, there is still no battle of Britain without bombers. It wasn't a mid-channel scrap, it was a bombing campaign.

Just take a look at the FM/DM section and you'll see what i mean

[Allons!]

As far as i can see theres a pair of pedals. This indicates the devs are flying either CoD or probably IL-2 classic. 1st proof that the devs are testing themselves and so i have no doubt where the tears are coming from.. Allons!

[Frequent_Flyer]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Well, the reason i'm advocating these changes is that most probably it's a purely numerical calculation issue in the bombsight code (Edit: at least that's how it seems from testing done by various pilots, there is definitely a mix-up between imperial and metric units in how the sight treats your inputs regarding tracking the target and calculating the release point).

It's probably at the same level as the non-starting Hurricane that they fixed. For example, they might have made it possible to start with a colder engine or raised the starting oil temperature, both of which is just changing the value of a variable. That's less than one line of code.

And since i'm simplifying things a bit to make a point and i haven't actually seen the code, let's just up this a little and say it's 100-200 , or even 1000 lines of code. To put this into perspective, i'm a beginner programmer and i can routinely crank out 300 lines of working Java code in the span of a two hour lab session at uni. In these two hours i have to read the problem/assignment, understand it, analyse it, decide on a modeling solution (what classes i need and so on), implement it and check for errors.

Fixing the bombsights is probably an evening's work for the developer team at most, and that's probably the guys who are not even involved with the graphics rewrite.
Small things like that would not tie up the graphics programmers, not to mention that it's probably the field of the AI/systems programmer to do this and not the job of the graphics guys, so it wouldn't really delay the performance fixes.

As an example, the Ju88 gyrocompass was not working ever since the release of the sim and got fixed in the previous beta. All this time however, there was a similar compass on the He-111 that worked fine and the code could have been copy-pasted all along.

I'm not disrespecting anyone's flying preferences here because i fly most of the aircraft in the sim, but this example clearly shows that trivially easy to fix issues with big impact on gameplay are neglected, because most people try to prove/disprove rights and wrongs in the FMs of their favorite/opposing fighters and more or less "steal the spotlights" in every single patch.

If it's not 100 octane it's the lack of DeWilde ammo, the grass being too green, the lack of MG-FF/M in the 110s, etc, etc. Well, these are all important issues to fix but also more time consuming (or at least equally time consuming) to giving players the ability to aim some bombs. And even if all of these things are corrected, there is still no battle of Britain without bombers. It wasn't a mid-channel scrap, it was a bombing campaign.

Just take a look at the FM/DM section and you'll see what i mean

I completly agree, it can hardly be called the Battle of Britian without a competant Luftwaffe BG. If it were as simple to fix as you beleive, it makes you wonder why it has not been addressed. The FM's will be an eternal debate.

[planespotter]

If you look this with business eyes it is obvious why not fixed. Most resources are to the new game and nearly nothing to the old. Why is easy. The sales curve for CoD is established (flat...declining?), and nothing the devs do now for that will change it. There is no such thing as a 'relaunch' of a game and not much money in trying to win back unhappy customers. Better use your staff and money to make a new game to grow sales. So be happy for any work on any patch at all.

[tk471138]

Originally Posted by planespotter

If you look this with business eyes it is obvious why not fixed. Most resources are to the new game and nearly nothing to the old. Why is easy. The sales curve for CoD is established (flat...declining?), and nothing the devs do now for that will change it. There is no such thing as a 'relaunch' of a game and not much money in trying to win back unhappy customers. Better use your staff and money to make a new game to grow sales. So be happy for any work on any patch at all.

....hopefully the devs know that if cod is not fixed, then the new game will be boycotted by many....

your logic is flawed....the devs are the ones who should be happy we still support them and many of us will still buy the new game under the condition that cod is fixed BEFORE that happens....they are the ones who should be considered "lucky" when the game breaking bugs are gone and the game meets reasonable expectations, since the future series relies on this one fact....

personally them meeting expectations is a WIN WIN, for both users and the company, and this is both my hope and my belief that it will come...