Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by kendo65

I don't really think this is a 'problem' - ie something that needs to be 'fixed'

A side-effect of running a monitor with higher resolution is that you get a more realistic experience - in this case distant aircraft are rendered more precisely.

The result, of course, for those who value the competitive gaming experience is that they suffer a disadvantage in being able to spot enemy ac.

For those who value realism over getting a competitive edge there is no problem.

you are incorrect there kendo, but maybe you just didnt put enough thought into what you wrote.

first, when the original il2 came out most monitors were 15' or 17' crt's, using resolutions similar to 1024 x 768, and that is exactly what il2 was designed to display these "distant dots of aircraft" correctly on (being for ex 2 black and 2 grey pixels combined in a 4 pixel dot). the scenery might not have been all that high rez and pretty, but at least you could spot the bogey at 2 km correctly (approximating visibility in real life)

fast forward 10 years and run the same game engine (and dot display method) on a nice 30' lcd at 2560 x 1600, and the scenery might look great but that same 4 pixel dot at the very high resolution is now much harder to find (because these same 4 pixels are MUCH smaller now). hence many people with those large monitors will 1/2 their resolution to 1280 x 800 to play online and be competitive, and suddenly those distant dots have become 2x easier to spot.

additionally, however good lcd's and other flatscreens are now, they still are not as good as the original crt's in displaying sharp clean video (unless you have some high grade professional ips lcd), so trying to find a small moving dot against a background of forest and other landscape is significantly higher now. further, the most distant lod models in the original il2 did not have "3D volume" to them, they were simple flat clumps of grey and black pixels, making them MUCH harder to identify then a real 3 dimensional object in real life at the same distance (when viewed on a less then perfect pc display technology). the end result is that on a modern pc system in il2 you are flying in a myopic mini bubble of SA which is 2/3 smaller then what it should be, compared to the historical visibility real pilots had to deal with in ww2 aircraft. "harder to spot" might be one ignorant persons idea of playing a game online which is "difficult" , but it is not simulating the environment and visibility real pilots had to deal with in ww2 (and after all most of us here are interested in the "simulation" part i presume).

all this has been extensively discuses in the main il2 forums over the years, and oleg is well aware of this problem and has tried to address it for BoB/Sow. as you might have noticed in some of the early video clips we have seen, distant LoD models now have "volume" to them, and these distant aircraft stand out much more as a result. additionally instead of 3 LoD models there are 7 or 8 iirc, so the transition to having pixels represent a distant object is much better

there are major compromises we still have to deal with in pc games in 2010/2011, and one of those in BoB/SoW will be "pretty" versus "realistic distant aircraft spotting distances", and obviously the focus should be on the latter.

in your statement of "....running a monitor with higher resolution is that you get a more realistic experience - in this case distant aircraft are rendered more precisely..." you were incorrect in assuming a prettier landscape and "more precisely rendered" also meant aircraft were more realistically displayed at far distances, which has never been the case in il2 from FB onwards (when oleg reduced the dot sizes, and the earlier uglier big dots were replaced with "prettier ones" which were MUCH harder to spot).