Friday 2010-03-26 Screenshots and Discussion Thread

[Richie]

I like the leaves up close. I think the movie makers are going to go bananas with this sim. If it sells well I hope we get to see many movies on all fronts.

[mark@1C]

The ground environment still need enhance, the impression of artificial work still comes to me immediately, again. It is so impressive that I begin to believe it may well be done in this way intentionally, considering the purpose of optimizing, and we do not spent most of our time on the ground in this game. The engine itself looks like using a cartoon rendering technology while the groundscape open out to me. But the cockpit samples are really fine. I don't know why the staff/or the engine can not carry this FINE into the groundscape.
The first three screenshots look like some place in the fairy-tale, an artificial landscape. It has been said before, looks like a real aeroplane flying over a LEGO city, a Disney theme park. It's hard to tell what's wrong, because they are nice as some people said, in a sense. But the feeling of something wrong does exist, it is not the correct atomsphere fit for the war, it's not a battlefiled, it's a place for afternoon tea...

[imaca]

Originally Posted by mark@1C

It's hard to tell what's wrong, because they are nice as some people said, in a sense. But the feeling of something wrong does exist, it is not the correct atomsphere fit for the war, it's not a battlefiled, it's a place for afternoon tea...

Im beginning to suspect this is the reason WOPs overly dark and grungy look is popular with some.
It seems many people can't get their head around the fact that "battlefields" and "afternoon tea" take place in the same time space continuum.

[KOM.Nausicaa]

The impression of "wrong" arises because you look in close up at chunks of generic created landscapes. This can hardly be avoided - after all it's a flight sim.

The problem with trees and other vegetation is, simply said, that they are very hard to be done right in 3D. It's an insane amount of work to do a good looking tree (from afar, but even more so from up close) in 3D, and it becomes very quickly polygon hell. Unacceptable polygon numbers for a game that has to render things in real time. Hence the popularity of optimized libraries like Speedtree or other tree generators. There are lots around for just that purpose. I am quite frankly rather impressed by those trees - they look really convincing for a tree that is obviously heavily simplified in polygon complexity. It should be no problem to put other species onto the map. The question is just how many Oleg is willing to buy for diversity purposes. (and maybe they are already there, you just don't see them on the selected screenshots).

[RedToo]

Originally Posted by mark@1C

... it is not the correct atomsphere fit for the war, it's not a battlefiled, it's a place for afternoon tea...

The long hot summer of 1940. England on the ground was for many people a place for afternoon tea. The battle was going on up above. Many RAF pilots commented on this contrast after parachuting out of the battle. Until the Germans switched priorites and began the blitz the Battle of Britain was in the air not on the ground and unless you lived close to an aerodrome you were not directly affected.

RedToo.

[Letum]

Thanks Oleg.

[AdMan]

I just can't wait to see an actual landscape. So far what we have is individually modeled objects, it will depend on how those objects are arranged to create a convincing landscape.

[Tte. Costa]

There are so much detail on the trees that I´m starting to think that they gonna have its own DM, burning leaves and broken branches and trunks.
Great work Oleg and team.

[indy]

This is really great pictures.... Great work... But I'm going mad if I starting to think what kind of the hardware will the future users need to run this stuff. OMG!!!! Oleg can you please just say what kind of workstations your team uses for testing?

[zakkandrachoff]

are so manny and VERY details in the trees ! i love that! but, i think we need 3 cpu i7 whit 2crossfire gtx295, all in crossfire (the 3 CPU) to run that

Originally Posted by indy

This is really great pictures.... Great work... But I'm going mad if I starting to think what kind of the hardware will the future users need to run this stuff. OMG!!!! Oleg can you please just say what kind of workstations your team uses for testing?

+1!