Friday Update, February 24, 2012

[Chivas]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Although I have no interest in driving around in a ground vehicle especially in a flight sim (I have a real one on my drive) I have to say that I am very encouraged by them, Obviously it means they have fixed the 'no tree collision' which is wonderful news and also they will have fixed the issue where you could turn trees off, by that I mean I have my trees on max settings and my opponent has them on minimal I think I’m losing him in a dog fight by dropping down into a clearing and all he see's is just ground and wonders what the hell I am doing!
It’s clear this has now been addressed and will hopefully be in the next patch, I would imagine the massive FPS increase as allowed them to now have a permanent landscape (i.e. cant increase decrease tree amounts), which the guy working on ground vehicles would of insisted on, you see if you had hidden your tank in the woods but your opponent can’t see the woods because he's turned them off it kind of destroys any idea of having ground vehicles that can be used in a simulation/ground war. So, by introducing drivable vehicles we will have a more realistic sim with tree collision and a permanent landscape so I think that it’s great news.

BlackSix's post that mentioned the trees will eventually have a damage model was very good news. I don't see it happening for awhile though, unless the new graphics engine releases enough resources to allow a damage model for each of the uncountable amount of trees on the map. I believe the developers have already modified "SpeedTree" to suit and hopefully they can modify it even more so, and call it "MuchFasterTreesWithACollisionModel"