Friday 2009-10-23 Screenshots Update discussion thread

[ECV56_Lancelot]

Great update, this really show good progress on the sim. I'm still shocked by the spitfire cockpit shot, its GREAT for an alpha. The rest looks very good als but with the expected tuning needed for an alpga software.

Like very much the forrest with difereng kind and hights of trees.

My questios would be:

1) All the trees will be collidable?

2) Seccond the question about seeing the hull of a ship below the waterline, or a submarin close to the surface?. It would be cool to be able to have partial sunken ships near the shores, with most of the ship below the waterline.

3) The drums. Are they individual drums put together or a single object all together?. Would they explode, burn when shot or bombed?
Or even thrown away if a bomb falls and explodes near by? Physics engine i'm asking here? Something like we see on todays FPS.

4) Great model of the engish fuel truck. Is there a similar model with the hose deployed to put them near an aircraft and make it look like its chargin fuel?. I know this is too much

5) Finally some serious smoke column on the 0147 pic , not the classic thin cigarret smoke column we are all get used to on out beloved simulators

6) Something that seems nobody notice? We have CURVES ON ROADS
http://files.games.1c.ru/il2pict/grab0126.jpg

Is this mean no more of the old angular "elbows" on the roads like we have on il-2?
Also we will be able to have moving vehicles inside the forest?

7) A wish for an update comment. Will there be more complex damage model on bridges?. Not just one bomb near by and bye bye bridge?

Looking foward to the next update .

[mazex]

Thanks for update Oleg, and I'm very happy to finally see some ingame shots. The terrain definitely looks good enough for a flight sim, especially as there is no "fog after a few kilometers" like those console arcade flight games use to be able to crank up the ground detail...

The planes are beyond good enough - so stop working on them

Now that we have finally seen the ground - lets talk new features in the game!

Good luck with the project! /Mazex

[Blakduk]

Great to have some early shots of what the game will look like!
I'd be really pleased to see a picture with characters (such as pilots in their seats, drivers in the cars etc).
Are there plans to have 'high gore' type characters in the game?

[Flyby]

Oleg, or Luthier
Why the decision not to go with OpenGL? Inquiring minds want to know (it might be educational).
Flyby out

[Thunderbolt56]

In those pics, the aircraft props are not turning. Are the aircraft images overlayed on the landscape or are those some actual "in-game" shots?

[dflion]

Thanks Oleg and Ilya for the update pics.
From my amateur photography perspective I have made the following observations of each jpeg.

Jpg0100 Spitfire cockpit – excellent cockpit reproduction, very clear ground detail from cockpit windows (high depth of field), all shadow effects are excellent.
Jpg0101 Extinct Volcano – Distant airfield, trees, fields, earth rocks, water reflections, clouds are reproduced in high detail with excellent visibility to the horizon (high depth of field) I noticed there were no cloud shadows over the land mass.
Jpg0102 Covered vehicle – Excellent detail, good shadow effect, long grass, distant trees and house look very effective and much more realistic than IL-2. High cloud effects very good.
Jpg0103 Red & White check control tower – Good detail and shadow effect relative to the sun’s position.
Jpg0104 Airfield wooden tower – good detail and shadow effects, very crisp and clear distance details of trees, airfield and aircraft line-up. I like the airfield ‘depth of field’ effect, it looks very realistic.
Jpeg0105 Petrol drums – good shadow effects, long grass looks good (though a bit too bright green). Again the distant airfield and trees are very crisp and clear with the ‘depth of field’ effect.
Jpeg0106 Radar Tower – Excellent detail and shadow effect from midday sun.
Jpeg0108 Large radar towers with water and cliffs – Water looks excellent (though no shoreline wave action). Cliff detail and shadow effects are very good.
Jpeg0110 Line of vehicles – Excellent tree shadow effect with patches of sunlight – again excellent ‘depth of field’ showing tree varieties and their shadows to very good effect.
Jpeg0111 Water, Cliffs, Clouds and Hills – Water looks much more realistic, cloud types look excellent in late afternoon sun with very effective shadow effects.
Jpeg0112 Fuel truck and different grass types – Excellent attention to detail with truck and contents. Grass types look very good, though colours are a bit vivid.
Jpeg0113 Fuel hose truck, airfield buildings and aircraft – excellent detail on truck, buildings look like typical WWII types. Distant aircraft line-up and trees very crisp and clear under noon sun.
Jpeg0116 Flying shot – Excellent cloud and shadow effects with excellent water and ‘white caps’ effects. Very good distance clarity of land and cloud shadow effects.
Jpeg0117 Spitfire top view (1) Excellent aircraft attention to detail (surface rivet detail) with excellent shadow and Perspex canopy sun effects. Water underneath more realistic with ‘white caps’.
Jpeg0126 Spitfire top view (2) Same aircraft description as above. Tree and ground detail very realistic with excellent shadow effects, a huge improvement on IL-2.
Jpeg0130 Volcano setting sun and clouds with water reflections. Spectacular sun, cloud types and reflective effects – very photo realistic.
Jpeg0131 Sun, cloud, land and water effects – A great grab showing very photo realistic effects.
Jpeg0147 Spitfire smoke and shadows – very realistic smoke effects with very good shadow/sunlight effects on Spitfire.
Jpeg0168 Me110 – Excellent shadow and canopy sunlight effects with very good sun and water reflections. Again a very photo-realistic grab.

Summary – Some colours are a bit bright which is obviously still a work in progress.
Overall, the attention to detail is excellent. Looking forward to the next release.

DFLion

[blottogg]

Lancelot beat me to it...curved roads! Other terrain features Other things I noticed were vertical cliffs (ask the guys doing Mod maps of Dover how easy that was in the Il-2 engine), forests that look like forests (from any angle), self-shadowing cockpits, airplanes and ground objects, and grass. The smoke shot and clouds look like a huge step up from Il-2 as well. Looking at the Spit gunsight has me wondering if I'll be able to adjust range/wingspan settings in-game. I know most of this has been announced months earlier, but seeing it all rendered in-game is still great. Glad to hear you're feeling better Oleg, and thanks for the eye candy.

As far as the fresh appearance of the aircraft, Oleg has mentioned in the past that persistant weathering will be a feature of the sim. Unless that has changed, expect to see shots of it in-game in the future. As Ilya said, they can't show us everything at once, especially while they're still coding it all.

As a request for the next update, are there any rivers with bridges on the test map? I'm curious to see how riverbanks are done in the SoW engine. I'm also curious how indirect lighting will be handled in SoW. In Il-2 I'll frequently turn on the instrument lights during the day to see them, in part because there isn't much indirect light thrown on to them. The shots here look better, at least in noon daylight.

P.S. I'm glad to see the RSU (Runway Supervisory Unit, aka "the box", pic 103) is included, having spent more than my fair share of time in one myself. Will poor performing pilots in campaigns be relegated to the RSU to perform gear checks (with the binoculars included) until their performance improves?

[nearmiss]

Will SOW support the nVida 3D?

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by Flyby

Oleg, or Luthier
Why the decision not to go with OpenGL? Inquiring minds want to know (it might be educational).
Flyby out

Considering the possibilities especially of DX10 and 11, this is the better choice to make full use of modern hardware. As I and some other people posted before, some things are also a lot easier to accomplish under DX. DX10 and 11 have native support of multiple CPUs and GPUs and can also render more efficiently to multiple-monitor-setups than the simple desktop spreading of XP. Of course you can do the same under OpenGL, but it's simply more work, which means precious time that can now be used for more important tasks.

[Flyby]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Considering the possibilities especially of DX10 and 11, this is the better choice to make full use of modern hardware. As I and some other people posted before, some things are also a lot easier to accomplish under DX. DX10 and 11 have native support of multiple CPUs and GPUs and can also render more efficiently to multiple-monitor-setups than the simple desktop spreading of XP. Of course you can do the same under OpenGL, but it's simply more work, which means precious time that can now be used for more important tasks.

Aha!! As I suspected! It was educational. Thanks Feuerfalke.
Flyby out