Friday 2010-09-03 Dev. update and Discussions

[Ekar]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

Ok, look at this...



... don't you see the differences ?


P.S: of course, I'm not speaking here of the über-ugly filtering of WOP, just of the geometry of the landscape and the implantation of the trees, fields, roads and rivers.

Yeah, WOP seems to have a much more natural/organic/diverse clumping arrangement of trees than SOW currently. This might be a low settings thing again, but I also think WOP still looks pretty good on low settings from memory.

SOW definitely has the better colour palette here. Most of the other WOP maps fare better in terms of the colours, but the English one is quite bad, imo. Of course, it all depends on the weather. Natural lighting is incredibly changeable.

[JtD]

Second time I can only say very nice pics!

[vanderstok]

Nice update! (and testing my new Avatar )

[Tbag]

Hey Vanderstok, red 13 is my number

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by SlipBall

Well these photo's vindicate luthier, for all we know, it could be a ground crew member in the pit, thanks for clearing that up...

---------------------------------------------

Great up-date, thanks!

I see things a little differently. I'm now convinced the pilot is the correct height but his head is too small. Perhaps this was the result of scaling the pilot's entire body down instead of just shortening his legs? One person might have shorter legs and narrower shoulders than another but their head will usually be about the same size.

Try this.....open the following images side by side and fully zoomed. Take a ruler and measure the depth of the real guy's head and compare this measurement with the depth of the real hurris lower perspex panel in the front windscreen and the initial lower perspex panel in the sliding canopy. The guy's head is approx. the same depth as both these clear panels.

Now do the same with the sim pilot and sim hurri. You must allow for the portion of the chin hidden by the collar though. You'll find you need to add at least 2mm to the guys head to match the scale found in the real picture. This makes the head at least 20% too small.

I have no doubt the sim hurri dimensions are spot on. It's the pilot's head that is out of proportion. Try it for yourselves.

I hope this can be seen as constructive rather than just wining. I'm just trying to explain the gut reaction of several observers on this forum including myself. I'm extremely impressed with what I've seen so far and I can live with little issues like this.

[Igo kyu]

The pictures do look good, the planes to my not particularly knowledgeable eyes look good, but the lack of proper railways is terrible.

If we'd seen railways sooner, it could have been said sooner.

This is not in my view fixable before release, unless release is already set to be in the third quarter of 2011, and there is already someone working full time on nothing but railways.

Most places where rails crossed roads, there were bridges. Often railways were raised above the level of the land (called embankments), often railways were below the level of the land (called cuttings), sometimes if there was a long hill in the way there was a tunnel cut through the hill. This made it possible to keep the levels of the railways fairly flat, which in a hilly country, which Britain is, meant that the trains could travel faster and more efficiently. Railways were not new in Britain in 1940, the locomotives and rolling stock were fairly modern, but the railways were mostly laid out before 1900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History..._Great_Britain

It was a lot of work, but workers were cheap in those days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navvy

I used to think Tree was a pessimist, but if this is going to be fixed before release he's now looking very optimistic indeed.

[Dafunkfire]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

P.S: of course, I'm not speaking here of the über-ugly filtering of WOP, just of the geometry of the landscape and the implantation of the trees, fields, roads and rivers.

The atmosphere causes substantial filtering. It's not ugly, it's just the way it is. Light waves pass through a profusion of gas molecules and other terrestrial particles. Yeah, I understand WOP's excessive sepia hue doesn't agree with everyone. But you can't deny that it looks effective. It seems the mob's foremost qualm with the visuals is the terrain, and it is obvious that filtering occurs in reality much more so than what we have seen. I believe this would vastly improve the current visuals. And it seems that it would be simple to pull off. Also, it would mask low res textures. Good for FPS perhaps.

But what do I know.

[AdMan]

Originally Posted by peterwoods@supanet.com

Forget how tall the pilot is. It is the headsize (with or without helmet) that is so wrong.

Compare this upscaled version with the original. This is far from perfect but should serve to illustrate what many are saying. And, for Luthier, the pilot's eyeline is pretty well centred on the the reflector sight.

very nice, looks much better

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by Dafunkfire

The atmosphere causes substantial filtering. It's not ugly, it's just the way it is. Light waves pass through a profusion of gas molecules and other terrestrial particles. Yeah, I understand WOP's excessive sepia hue doesn't agree with everyone. But you can't deny that it looks effective. It seems the mob's foremost qualm with the visuals is the terrain, and it is obvious that filtering occurs in reality much more so than what we have seen. I believe this would vastly improve the current visuals. And it seems that it would be simple to pull off. Also, it would mask low res textures. Good for FPS perhaps.

But what do I know.

WoP's use of sepia and other image filters doesn't have much to do with atmospheric filtering. All SoW screens we've seen have pretty much the same atmospheric conditions which are pretty clear and allow for extremely far view range, but that doesn't mean the game won't have different conditions modelled in the end.

Also you can't hide low res textures behind haze. Low resolution is an issue close to the camera, so you'd need a thick fog layer to hide that... so if you want high-res textures, ask for high-res textures - not a way to hide low-res ones

I agree that colour/filter and scene complexity issues aside, WoP does a lot of things very well when it comes to artwork. The ground textures are great and the whole scenery looks consistent; nothing looks out of place. I hope SoW's landscape moves a bit more in that direction while the team is working on it. Not that I can't live with what's being shown so far.

Great update again, thanks for taking the time to keep us in the loop.

[Jumo211]

Originally Posted by MD_Titus

well... how can you say it would be more realistic? that looks more hollywood tbh.

i'm guessing to get blood splatter like that you'd be talking either arterial spray or explosive shells removing both tissue and clothing. don't forget pilots wore a lot of clothing and, at least in bob, were usually subject to death by rifle calibre bullets. combine these two factors and bleeding out would be limited to soaking pilot suits, not decorating the inside of the plane like someone has been overly enthusiastic with the ketchup bottle. unless you it's a very specific bullet strike area then there wouldn't be large amounts of blood splatter. and certainly not in such patterns as you've added.

No , no , that picture looks almost funny comparing to reality .
Have you watched " The Fighting Lady " documentary ? , there you can see badly injured WWII U.S. pilot returning and landing on the aircraft carrier deck and look at his canopy , you won't see anything through the blood splatter everywhere all over the glass , how he managed to land that bloody crate is beyond me , they even tell you how that happened .
I will make HD DVD quality video of it tomorrow .
It's the only color footage I know of which shows such devastated blood canopy and pilot is not only alive but also managed to land his plane .
One of the well know Japanese Zero pilot hero in another documentary " Wings of Defeat " is talking about flak exploding close to his cockpit ripping off the whole bottom of his leg , I am sure that must have been wonderful inside cockpit yet he managed to tighting up and choke temporarily leg blood artery and returned for a landing .
Human being is capable of an amazing things in order to survive .

Thank you luthier for nice update , once there is BoB:SoW video available , we will all talk more in detail .

S! HG