Friday 2010-12-17 Dev. update and Discussion

[Trooper117]

Loving the look of this now each week.. Great stuff!

[TheGrunch]

Looking niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice. Maybe too bright during the day, but that's tweakable I'm sure.

[Oldschool61]

What amazes me is how excited people are over exhaust flames that they will almost never see when they are in the cockpit. Only time you see these is if there is a plane next to you starting up or if you fly in third person view.

Oleg, I think that if you could reshape the flame textures into a streaky fashion instead of circular, that might help improving realism. Don't forget that these flames come out at high pressure from a tiny exhaust and get straight into the airflow, so they don't really get much chance to look like a fireball! It's incredible how things look better with the right texture!

[moilami]

Originally Posted by Oldschool61

What amazes me is how excited people are over exhaust flames that they will almost never see when they are in the cockpit. Only time you see these is if there is a plane next to you starting up or if you fly in third person view.

How about a new doctrine "don't shoot untill ye see the exhaust flames" If not, then recheck Bf 110 engines and cockpit

[Richie]

What great work I never would have guessed you could get two colours in the flames like that. But...I think the day time flames need to be toned down. I've never seen flames coming out of a 109 like that in the day time.

Two 109s take off under full power in the day time with no flames visible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71gYnaGyb8

[mazex]

OK Oleg, it looks stunning... The time budget to spend on exhaust flames is now depleted - move on

[The Kraken]

Great attention to detail. And makes reading last week's update thread again an interesting experience Smoke trails caused by certain engine actions is also a nice feature beyond pure eye candy - will be interesting to see to what degree the AI will also abuse the engine from time to time (maybe based on skill level).

And that 110 sure is a beauty - can't wait to get my hands on it...

So thanks for another very nice update!

[Blackdog_kt]

Excellent example of how nicely things are progressing with regards to community interaction. It just goes to show that if we can self-moderate ourselves a little bit, there's a lot of feedback to be provided and it's definitely not going to waste. This is a clear example that the developers LISTEN and do their best to please as many people as possible.

Awesome update

Originally Posted by PeterPanPan

Very nice Oleg. So, the engines smoke if the mixture is too rich, and the flames burn bluer if too lean. Brilliant!!

PPanPan

Exactly. In the first two pics with the Hurricane, if you watch the engine management panel at the bottom left and compare between the two screenshots, it's obvious how the only thing that's changed is the mixture. This models closely what most people had witnessed in real life and what was printed in that period manual from the Allison engines, as it shows the flames going from red to blue when the engine is leaned.

In some of the pics with German aircraft we can see that the prop and/or mixture parameters are blank (only throttle is diplayed for the Ju88, while mixture is not displayed for the 110), since they probably have automatic systems to manage those.
What really got my eye however is the 109 picture which displays the numbers for all three parameters (mixture, prop and throttle), something that probably indicates its one of the early models that didn't have the automatic engine management systems.

The only thing i could say is that it looks a bit too bright. However, these are stills captured with the sole puprose of showing off the flames, so i am inclined to believe that they are either looking brighter on purpose to make the details of each effect easily visible, or that they were snapped with a track running at 1/4 speed, pausing on the frame that the effect is most pronounced and snapping the picture.
In motion it might look totally different, for all i know it would probably be alternating between flame and no flame depending on which cylinder is firing at the time, with time between changes depending on the amount of RPM the engine is running at, just like we saw in last week's videos.

Finally, if abrupt throttle changes produce black smoke from unburnt fuel, it will be awesome to help us judge if we are spotted. Say you are bouncing another aircraft and you suddenly see a brief trail of black smoke, you instantly know that he's going full throttle so he's probably seen you and will take evasive action.

And since the importance of the details we're seeing in this update has been questioned a few posts back, let me say that it's things like that which excite people about the little details. It's not the details per se, but what these details can tell you about the aircraft.
A knowledgeable person will be able to deduce certain things about what an aircraft is doing, just by looking for the right signs. This can be used to get better performance out of your plane, or to judge the potential performance and actions of the enemy one

[Osprey]

The most interesting part is not the effect at all. The significance of these changes in exhaust if a symptom of engine management - that will put much more workload onto the pilot if he is to get the best from his machine. No more sudden, abusive, violent moves to escape .50cals - it should be like the guncam footage we see where the aircraft being struck doesn't seem to react like we regularly see in IL2. Responses and awareness should plummet

Oleg, are you going to answer any of the questions from the thread 2 weeks ago regarding the FMB??