"Wings" Of Prey (PC). Watchout Oleg!

[Flanker35M]

S!

So if it is hard and solid info that WoP is NOT based on IL2 engine, then I stand corrected. Might have got wrong info myself then and can admit it if I am wrong To my understanding Rise Of Flight is modified IL2 engine though. Has nice self shadowing and lighting on planes etc.

IL2 sure is 10 years old, but it has more content than ANY WW2 game yet. It will take SoW lot of time to bring even a fraction of it, like MTO etc. The curse word "modding" has done that to IL2 and of course Team Daidalos with bringing in new officially endorsed stuff. So it is far from dead Some code changes are a dream and sure not priority for OM

As of detailed structures or such in landscape. Personally I do not give a damn if the tractor in the field has the Massey-Ferguson stenciled on it when I zoom over it at around 500km/h or if every door knob in a town is individually made..you get the pic. Sure for screenshots or movies fine, but otherwise you do not see it while playing. Immersion does not need all bells and whistles

It is just waste of resources if going too deep to the detail factory I am an online player and there all that matters is PING and PERFORMANCE. You do NOT want stutter from hyperdetailed objects or stuff like that, it kills gameplay. And online you are not there to admire if grass sweeps in wind or the water is exactly the right color..you die if you day dream For an online the dots, plane shapes and such matter more than if a small gimmick is right or wrong on the ground.

Do not get me wrong, I like nice graphics. But they have to serve the game, NOT distract away from the game, replace content or decrease overall performance. SoW will be VERY intensive on your machine because it will have a high fidelity DM/FM + new AI and more planes in the air. Also plane models have far more details/polygons which all take more horsepower.

Even Oleg's team for sure has good programmers, there is a limit what one can do. A constant balance between being playable and just a nice slide show. Oleg would not make a game that would run just OK on today's rig and wait for better hardware to appear. He will release a product that runs on a broad spectrum = SALES and INCOME! Sure with the option for the tech freaks to bring their machines to their knees by turning it all ON in options A plus is that if SoW is DirectX 11 then both ATI(already) and nVidia(soon) will run it fine without gimmicks..Both manufacturers make cards that eat games for lunch.

Oh well, too long rant now. But IL2 is NOT dead, it could use at least some support still. WoP has potential, RoF even more so and is the only WW1 sim at the moment bringing back the bugs between your teeth SoW will start a new era, when released. So times are good for gamers

[Chromius]

I agree with the points you have made

Originally Posted by sweln

Yes, graphics are immersion, but also a simulation of reality. Getting blind because of light you can fake it with lightness, but it's ugly. HDR looks better and so on.

Professional sims don't have beautifull graphics, for sure. That's because they don't have to sell it to the global public!

So yes, focusing on a realistic simulation and not keeping the graphics up to par with current capabilities will most likely result in less sales and a smaller overall community, which everyone has to admit that for the multiplayer to be fun we need a decent pool of players to make it thrive. And for the single player, new campaigns and missions made by interested people. This is the balancing act.

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

As of detailed structures or such in landscape. Personally I do not give a damn if the tractor in the field has the Massey-Ferguson stenciled on it when I zoom over it at around 500km/h or if every door knob in a town is individually made..you get the pic. Sure for screenshots or movies fine, but otherwise you do not see it while playing. Immersion does not need all bells and whistles

It is just waste of resources if going too deep to the detail factory I am an online player and there all that matters is PING and PERFORMANCE. You do NOT want stutter from hyperdetailed objects or stuff like that, it kills gameplay. And online you are not there to admire if grass sweeps in wind or the water is exactly the right color..you die if you day dream For an online the dots, plane shapes and such matter more than if a small gimmick is right or wrong on the ground.

Do not get me wrong, I like nice graphics. But they have to serve the game, NOT distract away from the game, replace content or decrease overall performance. SoW will be VERY intensive on your machine because it will have a high fidelity DM/FM + new AI and more planes in the air. Also plane models have far more details/polygons which all take more horsepower.

Even Oleg's team for sure has good programmers, there is a limit what one can do. A constant balance between being playable and just a nice slide show. Oleg would not make a game that would run just OK on today's rig and wait for better hardware to appear. He will release a product that runs on a broad spectrum = SALES and INCOME! Sure with the option for the tech freaks to bring their machines to their knees by turning it all ON in options A plus is that if SoW is DirectX 11 then both ATI(already) and nVidia(soon) will run it fine without gimmicks..Both manufacturers make cards that eat games for lunch.

Yes the other big tricky balance, how much of it is going to work in Multiplayer for fps and Pings. #1 Immersion breaker in Multiplayer, how smooth it plays.

[Chivas]

Originally Posted by 13th Hsqn Protos

Unfortunately there is not a shred of evidence so far to support that.

Just a lot of propaganda started in response to wop terrain textures. They got caught with their pants down by W.o.P terrain. Be sure.

I would love to be wrong ....... but not hopeful of all the 'qualifiers' I have heard.

Lets see.

Well I'm not sure where you've been looking but I've seen the screenshot of the elevation grid map showing the river banks etc. that will be in SOW.

Also every screenshot of aircraft, buildings, and vehicles of SOW have been more detailed than BOP.

Oleg also says in these forums that everything is better in SOW. I have no doubt with Oleg being a professional photographer, he knows what the terrain in England should looked like in 1939 and should be able to convey this in his sim.

Why should I believe Oleg...well he has already delivered the best combat flight sim in the IL-2 series so has a possitive history. Sure SOW is late but in that time he delivered Pacific Fighters, IL-2 1946 etc...

I have no reason to believe any na sayers who never contributed anything to my sim enjoyment.


I helped beta test WOP and enjoyed it very much. I was blown away with the graphics and thought they were the best I've seen in a combat flight sim. That said theres plenty of room of improvement.

ie. River Banks
Better roads and railways { I don't think I seen a railway track on the BOB map.
Much larger Map {especially the BOB map} this also would facilitate opposition airfields
Clouds
Moving weather patterns

Lighting in WOP killed the game for me in Simulation mode. Aircraft disappeared anywhere in the sky 180 degrees on the side of the sun in many missions. No amount of Nvidia brightness, gamma, etc would fix it.

Like I said earlier WOP did an excellent job with frame rates and LOD's, this will be Olegs toughtest job with the high detail of SOW.

[13th Hsqn Protos]

Yes those riverbanks will definitely enhance the feeling of flight ....

In about 3 months there will be an in game movie with some terrain and then some actual comparisons can be made.

Show me ..... that is my motto.

I don't blindly 'believe' in anything or anyone ...... only that game design is a business.

As for how it will run, that is a legitimate concern. There is no excuse for it not being blazing fast. There are tons of code optimizers out there for game designers to take advantage of --- and hardware is plenty fast enough to rip any game to shreds.

It won't be that long now. Will S.o.W be evolutionary or revolutionary. Thats the real question. Wait I guess thats naysaying ....

.
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[nearmiss]

WOP looks good, now we should all understand why Oleg hasn't been an open book about what will be in the BOB SOW.

I don't blame him a bit. There is always someone looking to take away your candy.

[Lucas_From_Hell]

...and there's the "surpise" factor.

Would you actually be surprised if they gave away everything we'll have in Storm of War? They want high levels of WTF?!ing going on after the release, and some secrecy helps on this matter.

Just give them time. Anyone remember how surprised you were when you saw some of the interviews Oleg and Ilya gave, where they told little features, nothing really big? Well, if we were that impressed with that, no doubt we'll be even more impressed after the release.

F****** guaranteed, trust me .

[nearmiss]

Good for you lucas

I've been IL2 since 2001 and I can tell you with no hesitation.
Oleg has never failed to deliver far and away more than was ever expected.
A very sincere man about his work, which means the SOW final will probably just blow everyone away.

[Romanator21]

Well, in the Il-2 years, you never expected to be blown away. When you expect to be blown away, 99% of the time, you aren't.

"Yes those riverbanks will definitely enhance the feeling of flight .... "

I thought your whole argument was the WoP had the best detail/presentation/realism. Now suddenly it doesn't matter? To me this seems self-contradictory. Also, WoP hasn't demonstrated a superior "feeling of flight", especially when it's obvious that a basic thing as recoil is not implemented. Even worse for the 'immersion' are the American pilots who sound like Homestar Runner. I just can't help but giggle.

Well, I guess I'm an Oleg Fanboi for saying anything to criticize WoP.

I do love the urban riverbanks though: They are built up with stones, not flat beaches like in Il-2. Cities are also dense, which is visually pleasing. Graphics in general are eye-candy and the game is fun too.

[Flagrum_3]

Originally Posted by Romanator21

Well, in the Il-2 years, you never expected to be blown away. When you expect to be blown away, 99% of the time, you aren't.

"Yes those riverbanks will definitely enhance the feeling of flight .... "

I thought your whole argument was the WoP had the best detail/presentation/realism. Now suddenly it doesn't matter? To me this seems self-contradictory. Also, WoP hasn't demonstrated a superior "feeling of flight", especially when it's obvious that a basic thing as recoil is not implemented. Even worse for the 'immersion' are the American pilots who sound like Homestar Runner. I just can't help but giggle.

Well, I guess I'm an Oleg Fanboi for saying anything to criticize WoP.

I do love the urban riverbanks though: They are built up with stones, not flat beaches like in Il-2. Cities are also dense, which is visually pleasing. Graphics in general are eye-candy and the game is fun too.

Well I might get reamed here for some things I'm about to say but what the hay...I gotta get it off my chest ....I've been flying sims for atleast 2 decades.I purchased the orig IL-2 when it first came out and was totally blown away by it's realism in all aspects...Sure it wasn't perfect but the numerous 'free' upgrades turned it into possibly the best flight sim ever made and I believe 'still' as people started to push Oleg and team for more planes, more graphics, more planes, more graphics and the whole while nothing was done to improve the important things like FM and AI.I purchased all subsequent versions of the game right thru till 1946 hoping that things other then graphics would change but was dissapointed.I still believe that the original is still the best if you forget about graphics...It sounded better, AI worked better and flight dynamics were way more realistic then any version afterwards....thats why I still play it.

So although I understand that "Graphics" are needed to bring in the 'larger crowd', 'younger players'... and Im not against it as it does add to the immersion effect but I just hope with SOW, Oleg and team put 'as much' emphasis on the important things like true FM, AI etc; for us Ol' guys who have tagged along for almost a decade online and offline.

I ask Oleg to go back and play the original and please bring back that feeling again!!

Eye candy is sweet but true immersion is realism in the cockpit

I've also played WOP and BOP and believe me, take away the graphics and they have nothing on IL2 IMHO.


F_3

[sweln]

Well, I'm pretty sure Oleg's team can do both : graphics and sim gameplay. For graphics you need modelers and rendering programmers. And for simulation you need game designers and gameplay + physics + AI programmers. So it's not the same job. Not the same persons.

Actually for the graphics you don't need that much rendering programmers. The engine has to be solid and smart, then it's just a good polish over it.

I'm confident that SoW will be a very good simulation, and perhaps visually nicer than BoP / WoP.

Abou the graphics themselves, I'm unsure of the quality possible for this reason : in order to make a very impressive simulator you need quite a huge amount of power for physics and all the stuff happening while you are flying (AI, vehicles moving all around on the ground, detailed map, atmosphere singularities and wathever I can't think of).
So once you have your simulation all set up, I wonder what's left in terms of ressources for graphics.

WoP is beautifull but doesen't simulate much stuff. Less than Il-2 for sure. And it runs just fine on my Quad Core Q6600 + GeForce 8800GTX. I don't think that it would run correctly with an added layer of heavy simulation and detailed ground objects (tanks, cars, stuff).

In my opinion, unless SoW's engine is a absolute code beauty, on my system SoW won't be as apealing as WoP. Well, that's the price for simulation.

But, I truly hope that the game will be better looking as WoP because one day I'll have a system that will run it a it's full potential. And also because beautifull graphics is overall nice and because people want nice looking stuff with a good simulation!

So... what where we arguing about already?