Friday 2010-06-17 Dev. update and Discussion Thread

[KaHzModAn]

Originally Posted by zapatista

not really, in most crashes there is just a very simplified "canned" damage model implemented that doesnt take the actual physical forces into account working on the airframe.

a good example of this is flying an aircraft from 4000 m altitude straight into the ground at maximum speed (or plummeting to earth after having its wings shot off at that same altitude). in RoF the aircraft will hit the ground, bounce a couple of times, and come to rest with a wing or few other things broken. it looks no different then an aircraft that crashed from 20 meters, yet it should completely disintegrate with its engine half buried into the ground when it plunges down from 4000 meters at full speed.

did you play ROF ? I don't say physical forces are calculated to affect the damage model accordingly... but it's not as bad as you say

from 4000m straight into the ground isn't possible without loosing your wings, so yes, you don't "burry your engine in the ground", but i'm pretty sure we are years away from a sim where impacts will realistically deform the ground...

so you hit the ground at maximum speed ? you know its around 250km/h for the fastest planes right ? even an I-16 can go almost twice that speed ! some WW2 planes can land at the max speed of a late WW1 plane... so why should it instantly be desintegrated ?

[SaQSoN]

Originally Posted by KaHzModAn

so you hit the ground at maximum speed ? you know its around 250km/h for the fastest planes right ? even an I-16 can go almost twice that speed ! some WW2 planes can land at the max speed of a late WW1 plane... so why should it instantly be desintegrated ?

Because here's what happens to a steel car, which crashes into a wall at 100 km/h:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukq-UUQAcZs

So, why a wood&fabric plane would bounce off the ground after hitting it with the same speed?

[ElAurens]

Thank you SaQSoN, my point entirely. As I recall even Oleg commented on the poor DM in RoF.

There is a lot more to an air combat simulation than pretty 3D models and a small cadre of blinkerd fan boys who are so desperate for anything that they will overlook basic, and show stopping, problems.

Now, let's get back on SoW matters, shall we?

[philip.ed]

OK, so that's one wrong thing about the DM in RoF, but in many respects it has aspects I've seen that trump anything on the market at the moment.

[KaHzModAn]

hey i didn't say the DM in ROF was perfect... just that it wasn't as bad as zapatista said
and i've never seen a plane "bounce" in ROF, except if you arrive on your landing gears, and in that case its pretty normal to bounce

with a frontal shock like in your vid, i agree the plane isn't damaged enough in ROF... but imho i like the way it's done you don't bounce, the plane is still damaged beyond repair, and it explodes half the time...
(plus your steel half-truck must have had more kinetic force then a wood and fabric plane (i think... maybe ))

[Romanator21]

I don't understand why anyone would take a WWI stringbag and fly it into the ground at max speed from 4000 meters. I guess the developers didn't have that in mind when creating the damage model. A WWI era biplane hitting the ground at 100 km/h is not going to react in the same way as a truck hitting the ground at the same speed.

Otherwise, their system is really not bad, and seems at least as good as Il-2's. 99% of the time, wood and fabric planes will crumple, rather than disintegrate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqfom...aynext_from=QL

This shows fatal accident so beware:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuXMX...eature=related

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Romanator21

I don't understand why anyone would take a WWI stringbag and fly it into the ground at max speed from 4000 meters. I guess the developers didn't have that in mind when creating the damage model.

afaik the pictures you posted there are from low altitude or lower speed crashes, and yes under those circumstances the aircraft will crumple a bit, bend, break a wing or so and thats about all the excitement you get. other then finding the RoF modeling of this a bit simplistic, it doesnt look to bad and keeps the crowd happy.

pretending the same result happens with a ww-1 aircraft going into the ground at 140 km/hr is just delusional, and shows how irrational its fanbase is in ignoring some major problems in that sim

Originally Posted by Romanator21

Otherwise, their system is really not bad, and seems at least as good as Il-2's. 99% of the time, wood and fabric planes will crumple, rather than disintegrate.

you'd hope so wouldnt you RoF is a 2009 sim and you are comparing it to a ten year old il2 sim, of course RoF should look better. my point is simply that RoF models physical force interacting in a crash only in a very limited way, and that the bouncing aircraft hitting the dirt at 140 km/hr is a good example of this.

the 2 video clips you posted are a good example, both are relatively low speed low altitude crashes, and thats what they all look like in RoF, no matter how great the altitude or speed the crashing aircraft has

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by KaHzModAn

hey i didn't say the DM in ROF was perfect... just that it wasn't as bad as zapatista said
and i've never seen a plane "bounce" in ROF,

KaHzMod, it makes me think you are a bit dazzled by the eye candy in RoF (and for a 2009 sim it indeed looks good at first glance), but from what you have said so far i doubt you have done much critical observations in RoF to compare it to how in real life you expect physical forces to work on an airframe of very limited strenght.

just try it, take your favored ride in RoF up to say 1500m (since taking it to 4000 m seems a traumatic concept to the RoF cheersquad here), then point the nose to the ground and keep max power on, dont get distracted if a few bits fall of your aircraft on the way down and just keep going in a vertical accelerated dive. under best circumstances with a ww1 aircraft you should be able to reach almost 100 mph.

then watch on external cam what happens to your aircraft in RoF when you plough straight into the ground, you will observe it will hit its nose to the ground, then the aircraft will bounce a couple of times, and some bits will fall of and it will break a wing or even crack the fuselage somewhere. in fact it looks little different from the crash sequence modelled by a RoF plane crashing from 20 or 30 m altitude. that is simply NOT realistic, with the high speed crash from a great height from 1000m + it should go SPLAT and disintegrate into a tangled mess, and yes some bits might still resemble an aircraft component (like part of the tail section maybe, some wing sections or the engine block itself), but the rest should be a barely recognizable mangled mess with lots of broken bits lying around and the engine half buried into the ground.

that limited realism might be fine for a sim from 1990, but not very realistic for a sim in 2009/2010 that makes claims of being uber real (and as it turns out following its long anticipated release, once people looked closer at it RoF does not use pure physics modeling of forces working on the airframe, be this air currents or the structural aircraft encountering another physical object like tree, ground, or other aircraft)

i do have much higher hopes for BoB ! given the extensive structural damage being modeled in some of the recent screen shots, i suspect crashes will be much more realistic to.