Friday 2011-01-21 Dev. update and Discussion

[Richie]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Adman, what game is that 2nd shot taken from, it looks gorgeous?

I think that may be a Microsoft game Tree although I may be wrong. The problem with them though is when you get low to the ground everything looks totally different as in pretty bad. That's what I hear anyway. Also I wouldn't trust any add from Microsoft until I saw in game footage

[Blackdog_kt]

That is actually ingame from microsoft's FSX. However, i suspect there's some 3rd party payware terrain add-on involved in the pic with the Gladiator.

Don't get me wrong, i like some things in FSX a lot and even though i don't own a copy, i fly it whenever i get the chance when visiting a friend. However, the way FSX and its add-ons do certain things are inherently unsuited to a combat sim. The stock FSX terrain is not much to write home about for example and the most celebrated feature in screenshots, which is again part of a payware add-on, the clouds, are 2d overlays from real photographed clouds and not actual 3d virtual clouds.

It's great for flying around near your home town, doing transatlantic hops in an airliner with time compression and the mid-flight save capability, or zipping along at low level in some kind of STOL aircraft over a detailed aftemarket terrain add-on from a place you'll probably never visit in your lifetime like the airstrip on the foothills of Mt. Everest, pretending you are shuttling climbers there in your twin otter, there are even 3rd party developers that have managed to overcome some of its stock FM flaws (apparently, it takes special coding to get aircraft to spin properly in FSX) by clever usage of their own modules, but there are still certain limitations that would show big time in a combat sim.

I like it a lot and if i had money to burn i'd probably buy it and a bunch of add-ons (which is the high quality stuff really), but like someone else already said it's like comparing apples and oranges.

For starters, there are no satellite photos of 1940s Europe to texture the landscape with, even if there were they would take up an enormous amount of disk space, plus in a combat sim you will invariably spend a lot of time down low attacking ground targets and having the ground go all blurry on you because you're close enough to distinguish it's just a flat texture would destroy immersion completely. Also, no matter how cool the aftermarket 2d REX clouds look in comparison to the stock FSX 3d ones and the 3d ones we are getting in CoD, there's no way around the fact that for AI line of sight calculations and maintaining fair play in multiplayer we need clouds modelled in 3d. Otherwise, one could be thinking he's inside the cloud and safe, while another guy can see him just fine and is already diving on him. Just a few examples.

[JG1_Wanderfalke]

my Fsx folder has more then 200 Gigs

[PSPbr]

Would be awesome bail out in 1º person, grab a gun, rob a car and return to the base.

But its not Battlefield =/

[Necrobaron]

I don't expect the ground details to be like that of FSX (or its mods), but the screenies posted by Adman do demonstrate how odd the lime green terrain looks at this stage. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.
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Lovely Wendie99

[StonedRaider]

Great shots, every friday my week gets better!!! This is great. The release news are great also. I've been following your updtaes Oleg for 3 years now, and what a stunning trasformation it has been. Please keep posting these screenshots most of us look forward to them!
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I've never seen so much petty responces on a forum. I mean the grass does not look correct??? ah yeah the grass is really going to matter when you are 3,000m doing combat, or even when u are 1 m above ground going at 300km/h. Maybe sometimes you guys should post something nice: "the lighting looks good, but the grass needs a little more work" and not "if you not going to show us some AMAZING shots then don't bother posting".

Maybe Oleg should not post anymore untill the release, and then everyone will be WOOO AHHH NICE.

Flame me all you want, but thats just my 2 cents.

Raider.

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This pic is nice, but I can already see areas where the satellite photo texture has been stretched and warped due to the 3D terrain. If you take this shot down to 500 feet or less you're going to see how ugly it can get.

Another thing to remember is that these are aftermarket add-ons that cost serious money and usually only cover certain areas that are either around airports or various scenic places you might want to visit. They look decent around airports where you will be getting lower and lower due to your approach, but pretty much everywhere else they look like ass. It's like the Slovakia map for IL-2. High up it looks like the real deal, down low it looks like a 5kb pic someone stretched to fit their 46" HD-TV.

Oleg is an accomplished photographer and a well known perfectionist. I'm betting the finished product will look a lot different.