Friday 2010-10-15 Dev. update and Discussion

Those people who are comparing it to WOP/BOP have to remember that both of those games use maps that are the size of postage stamps. In comparison, SOW's map goes from the north of France, to the midway point of England, with each town and city being rendered by hand. The size comparison alone means that not every little "texture border" is going to be perfect. You're going to have some railways crossing fields and such that are not going to look right, and you're probably going to have some field textures extending under houses, etc.

Another thing to remember is that WOP/BOP cheats when it comes to graphics. It's really heavy handed when it comes to filters and different effects, which overall makes the terrain look more "natural in-game" to the user, but not realistic.

Further more, what you are seeing when you take a picture with your camera and what you see posted on the net from people flying over is not an accurate representation of what real colour is. You need an expensive camera with a RAW output, then tweak it's colour levels in Photoshop before you ever get close to real/actual colours and lighting.

People who are posting pictures of modern england have to remember that much has changed since then. Air quality, weather patterns, field sizes, and even crops. Today farmers are all using Monsanto type crops that actually look different colour wise to their 1940's counterparts. Back then they were using heritage seeds, the real stuff. My father can tell the difference between crop colour now and 30 years ago, how about adding another 40 years to that?

All these things together make SOW (WORK IN PROGRESS SHOTS) look much different to what you see in WOP/BOP and what you see when your jet is coming in for a landing at Heathrow.

Oleg has said that he has flown in over England something like 20 times in the past while, plus he is a professional photographer (or at least is on a professional level). I'm sure he's much more qualified to tell you what will look right and what won't.

I'm not a fanboy, just someone getting tired of every 3rd post in these threads being about the same thing, when Oleg has said a hundred times that it's WIP and being changed all the time.

[airmalik]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Those people who are comparing it to WOP/BOP have to remember that both of those games use maps that are the size of postage stamps.

SoW may be making compromises because of it's much greater overall complexity but the fact remains that from a medium altitude, landscape visuals that we've so far haven't surpassed WoP. Ground level - no comparison, SoW wins hands down. But I think Oleg's dismissive remarks about WoP landscape in the past have raised expectations and we expect SoW's landscape to be better than SoW in all respects.

SoW landscape is still WIP and we've been told it's already been improved over what we've seen so I'm looking forward to these improvements.

BTW, my comparison of the two isn't based on filters in WoP which I'm not a fan of. WoP just seems to have better placement and density of trees and they integrate with the ground better.

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by airmalik

SoW landscape is still WIP and we've been told it's already been improved over what we've seen so I'm looking forward to these improvements.

BTW, my comparison of the two isn't based on filters in WoP which I'm not a fan of. WoP just seems to have better placement and density of trees and they integrate with the ground better.

Agree about the tree placement in WOP - it's one of the main elements in producing a realistic effect.

I had a look at some WOP screenshots again today - and while overall I think it does currently have the edge, I don't think the gap is that big - really, with some more incremental shifts I can see SOW getting there.

(that's without mentioning the filtering and other issues where SOW already is ahead)

This all does come down to the colour palette issue - I really do think that people will be surprised at just how much things will come together when they get that tweaked. Just take it as a given. They'll sort it.

Notice also that hedgerows are turned off in the current screens. Also haven't seen waves on the shoreline yet. It's Work in Progress - it'll be sorted.

[ChrisDNT]

"What you need is a scenery simulator."

You obviously missed my "fayboy post-scriptum".

I know my English is far from being perfect, but I think it's nevertheless easy to understand that I'm not asking for a perfect photorealistic rendering (which, I know, is still not possible with the current personal computers), but just for a correct color palette for the described area (here, England), what has nothing to do with the technical capacities of our pc's.

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

...
I know my English is far from being perfect, but I think it's nevertheless easy to understand that I'm not asking for a perfect photorealistic rendering (which, I know, is still not possible with the current personal computers), but just for a correct color palette for the described area (here, England), what has nothing to do with the technical capacities of our pc's.

I've used the term colour palette myself, but I remember Oleg mentioning a while back that the situation in SOW is much more complex than it was in il2.

(I'll paraphrase from memory here - perhaps someone else can track down the original quote? And with apologies to Oleg if I mangle this...)
Because of the more advanced lighting model, it is no longer a simple task of just choosing the correct colours for the various textures. The lighting model used by the engine modifies and varies the underlying colour in a manner modelled on real-life physics. So, they may arrange something so that it looks perfect at low-level in bright sunlight and then find that it is way off in mist, or from a higher altitude. The difficulty lies in tweaking the parameters of the lighting model rather than in simply producing a 'once and for all' accurate colour palette.

I think this may be why the ground-level shots (Spit in field, trains, etc) are generally viewed as being very good while the medium-level shots are still off.

Once again, the word is 'WIP'.

Originally Posted by ChrisDNT

"What you need is a scenery simulator."

You obviously missed my "fayboy post-scriptum".

I know my English is far from being perfect, but I think it's nevertheless easy to understand that I'm not asking for a perfect photorealistic rendering (which, I know, is still not possible with the current personal computers), but just for a correct color palette for the described area (here, England), what has nothing to do with the technical capacities of our pc's.

Well, I think that Oleg does in fact "ask" his team for photorealistic final product...That was his goal from the very beginning of SOW and that is probably why the whole project took so long to complete...And I also think that what we see at every friday's update is in fact work from months ago and Oleg keeps the big "revelation" for an ultimate official release trailer...

Salute !

[SlipBall]

Back in the day, we didn't need any stinking green

[Richie]

Originally Posted by SlipBall

Back in the day, we didn't need any stinking green

Hey that takes me back.....What fun days those were. Twelve hours straight flying till your butt hurt so bad it burned!!!

[zodiac]

wonderfull update... again

There is advertising in the streets! That is a very nice detail. As a graphic design student, I kind of love those old ads. Can't wait to take a closer look at them.

I suspect that during the lifetime of sow, these streets will really come to life. Soon we will have some missions like this:
objective 1: drive with your racing green sports car to the airbase exit.
objective 2: pick up your girlfriend at her home.
objective 3: find a way through London's traffic jams
objective 4: find a parking place near the cinema
objective 5: get her back home "safely"

Oh Oleg, I have one question:
Will there be churches in the towns? I don't remember seeing one in the updates. In Belgium (and I suppose in France and Britain to) there's a church in almost every village. sometimes even if the village only counts 10 houses. For regular Flemish towns, churches were the only tall buildings around. They really give image to a town.

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Another thing to remember is that WOP/BOP cheats when it comes to graphics. It's really heavy handed when it comes to filters and different effects, which overall makes the terrain look more "natural in-game" to the user, but not realistic.

If it looks natural, how can it be unrealistic? Now I agree that WoP uses some very overdone filters and also some simple "cheats" like the secondary lightsource opposite of the sun (works great to give objects more depth on the unlit side even though it's not realistic at all). On the other hand computer graphics has always been about "smoke and mirrors" in the sense that the standard shading procedures are not based on real life, but rather happen to look nice.

Further more, what you are seeing when you take a picture with your camera and what you see posted on the net from people flying over is not an accurate representation of what real colour is. You need an expensive camera with a RAW output, then tweak it's colour levels in Photoshop before you ever get close to real/actual colours and lighting.

That's certainly true, but still the subjective impression about what matches people's idea of real life scenery is what counts in the end. I do think that overall much WoP is closer to this real life impression than the SoW images posted this week. At the same time some important aspects of landscape rendering are already way better here.

Personally I'm not too worried. I guess people are simply irritated that the SoW updates don't show constant improvements in every area; it's obvious that the team is still experimenting with many aspects. Most screens released so far focus on certain aspects, and many people fail to see this (usually ignoring the shown features and commenting on something else).

So far we have not seen a single screenshot that combines the best aspects shown in individual screens.