Friday 2011-01-28 Dev. update and Discussion

[Trumper]

Regarding the colours,the proof will be in the pudding.
QUESTION, IF it is decided the colours are not correct are they the sort of thing that can be altered either by the user or by the developer in a patch after the sim is released?.

[mazex]

Originally Posted by robtek

Yes, i feel the prewhining is strong in this forum.

Lol

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by Trumper

Regarding the colours,the proof will be in the pudding.
QUESTION, IF it is decided the colours are not correct are they the sort of thing that can be altered either by the user or by the developer in a patch after the sim is released?.

The development team knows what they are doing. They are especially sensitive to graphic issues. Afterall, the graphics environment is a priority for most current users of IL2. It certainly will be the same or more so with BOB COD.

You are going to love the graphics environment.

Take your dog for a nice walk, don't worry over it.

[addman]

Originally Posted by mazex

Lol

Yeeees! Strong in this one the whining is.....

[swiss]

Originally Posted by addman

Yeeees! Strong in this one the whining is.....

Relax and wait he must.

But it was quite a hot summer

Now you mention it: Maybe luthier should add some predators.

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

WOP uses a lot of cheats to trick you into thinking that the terrain is good, when in fact it's pretty fake. First they use that annoying vignette to make it look like an old film, you can turn that off. Next look at the view distance. Looks like you're flying over modern day Beijing with all that fog. Next the colours are exagerrated and in some cases washed out to look (at the same time) more vibrant and toned down.

It also relies on the FSX terrain trick of having the "ideal" altitude for terrain detail. The textures you will find look best at the altitude you spend 90% of the game at. When you get lower they look all stretched and very low detail. Load up the Slovakia map in IL-2 and start buzzing around at 200 feet. Doesn't look so good now does it? Same thing with WOP.

All flight sims suffer from this exact same problem. Even COD to a certain extent. In order to get rid of this issue you'd need ground textures to be a lot larger and more detailed. This would be both extremely time consuming and also it would really tax your system or require LOD settings that would really break immersion when changing altitude.

Look at this pic I'm posting below: It's the first pic that would load properly in GIS when typing "wing of prey terrain" with large pic settings.

Do I really need to explain why this is does not look good?

NOOOOO I lost my post by accidently clicking ctrl... wtf

Jockey, you are brilliant I actually never noticed the things you pointed out before myself. Maybe on comps, with maxed settings they removed it? Next time I play I will have to check, but the fact that its their discretly in the background is why it is very clever.

So why isnt the SS on max or high settings? Its like an artist who has a gallery but only displays their mediocre/lunch time scribbles in the window. When you pass by they say: Hey, come inside I have some amazing paintings. Only $60 for entrance to see my good art, all this stuff in the window for show is just the below average work, but imagine how great the "good" paintings will look!

It makes no buisness sense, it makes no sense as a professional dev team and it makes no sense to put out images of the game which are inherently visual advertising/sampling, yet giving us only the mediocre scenes which strikes me as a quality issue (like take pride in your work, always present the best etc). It just doesnt "add up" and makes even me even alittle skitish when combined with the vids we have seen and the horrible performance at the show...
It looks like an engine from 5-10 years ago when you couldnt use HDR and AA at the same time, its absurd and jarring.

Also I dont have a problem with the pallete, but I think the colors look "washed out" and kind of pastel...
Its not my monitor ever so dont even suggest it, I own 4 LCD monitors where 3 of them are different (1 Dell, 2 Samsung + another Samsun of different model), as well as old crt's for when I am working. Its not a monitor issue.

[Cobra8472]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

WOP looks good for what it was intended to do. Run fast and smooth on a Console or Midrange PC and remind people of the camera filters used in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. The reason they do that is to trick people into thinking, this is what it should look like, because, hey! "That WWII movie and Show looked like that".

What Oleg is trying to do is show you what a flight sim would look like if you were looking out the cockpit glass, and not at 70 year old archival footage.

What I'm saying is that comparing the terrain in WOP to COD is not really a good comparison at all since the WOP environment has been so warped that there isn't a realistic frame of reference in it. Despite what people say about the grass in COD, WOP is more like a cartoon with all the colours and effects set to the extreme. There are no accurate colours in the game, so it's harder to say something looks wrong, meanwhile COD is going for everything looking realistic, so it's easier to find faults, even though it is miles more accurate and realistic graphics wise.

and I'd tend to prefer the cinematic look these games try to put forth.

Why? It simply looks more interesting, gives the setting a different feel, etc.
Lighting is an amazingally important aspect in any medium (photography, film or gaming).

It changes the entire way you percieve the scene, changing the emotions, impressions, and everything inbetween.

Considering CoD has a dynamic day-night cycle, this needs to be seamlessly transitioned between time and weather states. (i.e. different color correction based on time of day and weather)

Do you think there is a single accurate colour in any other game, or film for that matter? Everything nowadays goes through colour-correction - and it makes things much more interesting to look at.


Using Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers as your example is rather dumb, considering the fact that they only use a very light bleach-bypass film process, barely altering colours (mostly just desaturating them slightly).

[kimosabi]

Let's just wait and see what tweaks CoD:IL-2 will offer. I know RoF has adjustable saturation in the startup.cfg file(conf.ini) so you can pretty much use the color saturation you like.

Oh and good luck rendering a photo realistic image in a flightsim in 2011. That's like 20-30 years ahead. I don't see why people would use a photorealistic image as reference at all. Especially when we consider the medium.

Originally Posted by Cobra8472

and I'd tend to prefer the cinematic look these games try to put forth.

Why? It simply looks more interesting, gives the setting a different feel, etc.
Lighting is an amazingally important aspect in any medium (photography, film or gaming).

It changes the entire way you percieve the scene, changing the emotions, impressions, and everything inbetween.

Considering CoD has a dynamic day-night cycle, this needs to be seamlessly transitioned between time and weather states. (i.e. different color correction based on time of day and weather)

Do you think there is a single accurate colour in any other game, or film for that matter? Everything nowadays goes through colour-correction - and it makes things much more interesting to look at.


Using Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers as your example is rather dumb, considering the fact that they only use a very light bleach-bypass film process, barely altering colours (mostly just desaturating them slightly).

1. Most people are interested in COD because it's striving for accuracy instead of "looks more interesting". They want accurate FM, accurate damage, and accurate lighting as opposed to a bag full of effects to get an atmospheric feel and still run on consoles and midrange PC's.

2. I don't know where you're going with the middle portion. I know that "accurate" is somewhat relative and that no game has a perfectly accurate colour for it, but I think that Oleg and Co. are trying for it instead of "washed out" like WOP.

3. Using Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers as an example works perfectly since that's that the WOP guys were going for. Spielberg washed out the colours and used steadycams since that's what you see in archival footage. He toned it down for the movie so the audience would be immersed more in the time period since everyone has seen a WWII clip. WOP went for the same thing, trying to get people to identify the same way since most people who are going to buy a WWII flight sim have watched archival footage as well.

If you prefer the cinematic look, I wouldn't be surprised if there were options in the config file or maybe even the graphics panel to get closer to what you want. And ATI/Nvidia also have soem rendering options that will help out as well if you get the full driver/suite downloads or aftermarket add-ons for their driver suites.

[Cobra8472]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

1. Most people are interested in COD because it's striving for accuracy instead of "looks more interesting". They want accurate FM, accurate damage, and accurate lighting as opposed to a bag full of effects to get an atmospheric feel and still run on consoles and midrange PC's.

2. I don't know where you're going with the middle portion. I know that "accurate" is somewhat relative and that no game has a perfectly accurate colour for it, but I think that Oleg and Co. are trying for it instead of "washed out" like WOP.

3. Using Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers as an example works perfectly since that's that the WOP guys were going for. Spielberg washed out the colours and used steadycams since that's what you see in archival footage. He toned it down for the movie so the audience would be immersed more in the time period since everyone has seen a WWII clip. WOP went for the same thing, trying to get people to identify the same way since most people who are going to buy a WWII flight sim have watched archival footage as well.

If you prefer the cinematic look, I wouldn't be surprised if there were options in the config file or maybe even the graphics panel to get closer to what you want. And ATI/Nvidia also have soem rendering options that will help out as well if you get the full driver/suite downloads or aftermarket add-ons for their driver suites.

Isn't that what we're all aiming for? Immersion?

"accuracy" is - as you mention, a relative term. To me, the current screenshots of CoD are not exactly the epitome of realism either.

You seem to have this arbitrary conviction that "effects" are bad. Why the hell is this? The color correction used in WoP works absolute wonders. It provides a sense of immersion, and sets a mood to the mission/area in which you are flying.

The rendering of trees, clouds, atmosphere and terrain by WoP is unmatched, even by CoD. As someone else mentioned, it has a bag of tricks to make it look good, and as long as it looks good, who cares how many shaders they use, or how they page their terrain.

And no, that is not what the WoP devs were going for. Some of the maps are pushing the colors towards bronze/beige, some are diffusing the whites, but none that I have seen try to emulate the bleach-bypass method utilized by the colourgrader in Band of Brothers/SPR.
Band of Brothers and SPR are very unique films - considering the fact that they do very minimal colour correction.

If you mean to say that they were trying to achieve a cinematic effect by color-correcting the screen, then yes- they were, alas so does every other film in existence.

And that is exactly my point, you say "the same way since most people who are going to buy a WWII flight sim have watched archival footage as well."

Isn't that the whole point?
To immerse ourselves, suspension of disbelief, etc.
Cinematic effects help with this, simple as that.