Friday 2009-10-23 Screenshots Update discussion thread

Originally Posted by luthier

There's no AA on those shots because they use HDR, and right now you can't do both.

SoW no longer uses OpenGL

HS....hehe I remember the early interview with Oleg about BOB SOW...he said how opengl is a much better choice for BOB SOW than DX....never mind

so it would be DX9?

[FS~Hawks]

Well done the pic's look really grate and i cant wait to jump in and fly around for a look.

Well done good job and good to see you.

[rakinroll]

Man, those ground details very good. Thanks...

[luthier]

The switch away from Open GL took place a while ago. There had been two camps at Maddox Games, the pro-OpenGL camp and the pro-DirectX camp, for a while. Eventually the arguments of the pro-DirectX camp won over, so the switch was made. It wasn't a particularly dramatic event, just a logical evolution of opinion based on a bunch of boring technical details.


Regarding the colors, once again, this is work in progress. Oleg specifically said that it's being worked on, that it's not final. So please think of it as a glass half full.

A lot of features go through this annoying development phase where it takes forever to get them perfect. It can take 3 days to build a feature to 90%, and a month to get it to 100. That's where we are with the visuals. It's a hugely complex system with lots of components, each at a different stage of completion, so at this particular time it happens to result in the picture we're seeing right now. Glass half full, guys, glass half full.

A bunch of smart, talented, experienced people are coming to work every day to work on the graphics. Oleg is constantly breathing down their necks and hounding them over each tiny detail. The visuals are a HUGE priority for him personally, huge. Have a little faith in the man.

[Feuerfalke]

You can see it's WIP in several areas, but it's VERY promising IMHO.

Of course some colors look to bright, the textures too blury, especially at some distance, but if you take a look at picture 0116, you'll notice there's barely any atmosphere rendered at all beyond the clouds. You can see the sharp horizon in between the clouds.
Once haze is enabled and set up correctly, it will probably blend colors and textures nicely.

IMHO it's even more obvious looking at the Spitfire and the Bf110. It's simply some layers switched on and off. While the Bf110 shows the reflections and bumpmaps, the Spitfire has switched those off and shows how detailed the textures are.

Long story short: The screenshots are not what the game will look like, but what makes the differences.
That's also true for the trees - it doesn't mean they will stay like that, but rather like: "hey, we don't use layered textures to show forests, but individual trees!"

[dflion]

Originally Posted by luthier

A bunch of smart, talented, experienced people are coming to work every day to work on the graphics. Oleg is constantly breathing down their necks and hounding them over each tiny detail. The visuals are a HUGE priority for him personally, huge. Have a little faith in the man.

Well said Ilya, I can really understand Oleg's 'attention to detail with the visuals', he wants the 'best of the best' and a flight sim that will last into the future.

Keep up the outstanding work.

DFLion

[Chivas]

Thanks Luthier...Visuals are very important to me aswell. You can have the best FM possible but if it doesn't look right, it kills it for me.

I can't imagine how difficult it is to bring all these features {FM, DM, AI, Moving Weather Patterns, Cinematic Terrain, and aircraft } together with playable frame rates.