Friday 2011-01-28 Dev. update and Discussion

[Sven]

It does look good Jockey, why? Because the creators of this are brilliant, doesn't consume a lot of PC power, runs great, looks good, it's perfect. Like Oleg's trick with the trees, just brilliant. You are of course being tricked, but this kind of tricking is class.

You sound like someone who just went to a magic show, and afterwards saying out loud in the crowd: You guys do know that that was all a big trick right?!

Originally Posted by Sven

It does look good Jockey, why? Because the creators of this are brilliant, doesn't consume a lot of PC power, runs great, looks good, it's perfect. Like Oleg's trick with the trees, just brilliant. You are of course being tricked, but this kind of ticking is class.

WOP looks good for what it was intended to do. Run fast and smooth on a Console or Midrange PC and remind people of the camera filters used in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. The reason they do that is to trick people into thinking, this is what it should look like, because, hey! "That WWII movie and Show looked like that".

What Oleg is trying to do is show you what a flight sim would look like if you were looking out the cockpit glass, and not at 70 year old archival footage.

What I'm saying is that comparing the terrain in WOP to COD is not really a good comparison at all since the WOP environment has been so warped that there isn't a realistic frame of reference in it. Despite what people say about the grass in COD, WOP is more like a cartoon with all the colours and effects set to the extreme. There are no accurate colours in the game, so it's harder to say something looks wrong, meanwhile COD is going for everything looking realistic, so it's easier to find faults, even though it is miles more accurate and realistic graphics wise.

[addman]

LOL! "Casual gamers". They don't even know what a flightsim is. Most people on this forum are fanatics, I'm willing to admit it, are you?

[swiss]

Originally Posted by addman

LOL! "Casual gamers". They don't even know what a flightsim is. Most people on this forum are fanatics, I'm willing to admit it, are you?

addict yes, fanatic - no.

[blades96]

I'm trying to be delicate, so I'm giving my views in the form of a complement sandwich.

The cockpits look incredible.
The landscape coloring looks off. Too bright and too much yellow.
The plane exteriors look great.

Example landscape with game cockpit

[nearmiss]

I've read the landscape color and brightness whines until it's just unbearable.

Think about what you are saying...

High quality video cards render differently with settings. The internet postings you see are also affected by your local VC settings. The quality is also set when the poster puts the picture up, rendered from his computer settings.

The most important thing is to just leave off these whines, until we get the BOB COD installed on our computer systems. Then you work through your settings and configuration files to get the color and brightness just right for you.

[Cobra8472]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

WOP looks good for what it was intended to do. Run fast and smooth on a Console or Midrange PC and remind people of the camera filters used in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. The reason they do that is to trick people into thinking, this is what it should look like, because, hey! "That WWII movie and Show looked like that".

What Oleg is trying to do is show you what a flight sim would look like if you were looking out the cockpit glass, and not at 70 year old archival footage.

What I'm saying is that comparing the terrain in WOP to COD is not really a good comparison at all since the WOP environment has been so warped that there isn't a realistic frame of reference in it. Despite what people say about the grass in COD, WOP is more like a cartoon with all the colours and effects set to the extreme. There are no accurate colours in the game, so it's harder to say something looks wrong, meanwhile COD is going for everything looking realistic, so it's easier to find faults, even though it is miles more accurate and realistic graphics wise.

and I'd tend to prefer the cinematic look these games try to put forth.

Why? It simply looks more interesting, gives the setting a different feel, etc.
Lighting is an amazingally important aspect in any medium (photography, film or gaming).

It changes the entire way you percieve the scene, changing the emotions, impressions, and everything inbetween.

Considering CoD has a dynamic day-night cycle, this needs to be seamlessly transitioned between time and weather states. (i.e. different color correction based on time of day and weather)

Do you think there is a single accurate colour in any other game, or film for that matter? Everything nowadays goes through colour-correction - and it makes things much more interesting to look at.


Using Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers as your example is rather dumb, considering the fact that they only use a very light bleach-bypass film process, barely altering colours (mostly just desaturating them slightly).

[kimosabi]

Let's just wait and see what tweaks CoD:IL-2 will offer. I know RoF has adjustable saturation in the startup.cfg file(conf.ini) so you can pretty much use the color saturation you like.

Oh and good luck rendering a photo realistic image in a flightsim in 2011. That's like 20-30 years ahead. I don't see why people would use a photorealistic image as reference at all. Especially when we consider the medium.

Originally Posted by Cobra8472

and I'd tend to prefer the cinematic look these games try to put forth.

Why? It simply looks more interesting, gives the setting a different feel, etc.
Lighting is an amazingally important aspect in any medium (photography, film or gaming).

It changes the entire way you percieve the scene, changing the emotions, impressions, and everything inbetween.

Considering CoD has a dynamic day-night cycle, this needs to be seamlessly transitioned between time and weather states. (i.e. different color correction based on time of day and weather)

Do you think there is a single accurate colour in any other game, or film for that matter? Everything nowadays goes through colour-correction - and it makes things much more interesting to look at.


Using Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers as your example is rather dumb, considering the fact that they only use a very light bleach-bypass film process, barely altering colours (mostly just desaturating them slightly).

1. Most people are interested in COD because it's striving for accuracy instead of "looks more interesting". They want accurate FM, accurate damage, and accurate lighting as opposed to a bag full of effects to get an atmospheric feel and still run on consoles and midrange PC's.

2. I don't know where you're going with the middle portion. I know that "accurate" is somewhat relative and that no game has a perfectly accurate colour for it, but I think that Oleg and Co. are trying for it instead of "washed out" like WOP.

3. Using Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers as an example works perfectly since that's that the WOP guys were going for. Spielberg washed out the colours and used steadycams since that's what you see in archival footage. He toned it down for the movie so the audience would be immersed more in the time period since everyone has seen a WWII clip. WOP went for the same thing, trying to get people to identify the same way since most people who are going to buy a WWII flight sim have watched archival footage as well.

If you prefer the cinematic look, I wouldn't be surprised if there were options in the config file or maybe even the graphics panel to get closer to what you want. And ATI/Nvidia also have soem rendering options that will help out as well if you get the full driver/suite downloads or aftermarket add-ons for their driver suites.

[Cobra8472]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

1. Most people are interested in COD because it's striving for accuracy instead of "looks more interesting". They want accurate FM, accurate damage, and accurate lighting as opposed to a bag full of effects to get an atmospheric feel and still run on consoles and midrange PC's.

2. I don't know where you're going with the middle portion. I know that "accurate" is somewhat relative and that no game has a perfectly accurate colour for it, but I think that Oleg and Co. are trying for it instead of "washed out" like WOP.

3. Using Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers as an example works perfectly since that's that the WOP guys were going for. Spielberg washed out the colours and used steadycams since that's what you see in archival footage. He toned it down for the movie so the audience would be immersed more in the time period since everyone has seen a WWII clip. WOP went for the same thing, trying to get people to identify the same way since most people who are going to buy a WWII flight sim have watched archival footage as well.

If you prefer the cinematic look, I wouldn't be surprised if there were options in the config file or maybe even the graphics panel to get closer to what you want. And ATI/Nvidia also have soem rendering options that will help out as well if you get the full driver/suite downloads or aftermarket add-ons for their driver suites.

Isn't that what we're all aiming for? Immersion?

"accuracy" is - as you mention, a relative term. To me, the current screenshots of CoD are not exactly the epitome of realism either.

You seem to have this arbitrary conviction that "effects" are bad. Why the hell is this? The color correction used in WoP works absolute wonders. It provides a sense of immersion, and sets a mood to the mission/area in which you are flying.

The rendering of trees, clouds, atmosphere and terrain by WoP is unmatched, even by CoD. As someone else mentioned, it has a bag of tricks to make it look good, and as long as it looks good, who cares how many shaders they use, or how they page their terrain.

And no, that is not what the WoP devs were going for. Some of the maps are pushing the colors towards bronze/beige, some are diffusing the whites, but none that I have seen try to emulate the bleach-bypass method utilized by the colourgrader in Band of Brothers/SPR.
Band of Brothers and SPR are very unique films - considering the fact that they do very minimal colour correction.

If you mean to say that they were trying to achieve a cinematic effect by color-correcting the screen, then yes- they were, alas so does every other film in existence.

And that is exactly my point, you say "the same way since most people who are going to buy a WWII flight sim have watched archival footage as well."

Isn't that the whole point?
To immerse ourselves, suspension of disbelief, etc.
Cinematic effects help with this, simple as that.