Is the art and effects in CoD dated?

[Rattlehead]

Not to me it isn't.

To me CoD looks beautiful...especially so at dawn or dusk. The aircraft models look fantastic and those cockpit shadows are something I never stop marvelling at.

Thing is, it's easier in my opinion to make a fps look better...much, much reduced draw distance for one thing. Look at Metro 2033 - a beautiful game, but 90% of it was underground, in tunnels. They could not get away with such pretty graphics in a game with vast, open scenery.

[Dano]

Little to no lighting? LMAO!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDaVHGfC2Ss

Yer, no lighting there at all...

[seiseki]

Well it's all true, compared to games like Crysis 2.

The difference is it's a flightsim, and it still looks really good at high graphics.
And the cockpit is quite high poly and looks very real with the reflections and shadows.

Technically, I guess all the shaders and such used in CloD existed in 2006, but no one would be able to run a flight sim using it at that time.

Not sure why anyone should be offended by this, the game still looks very good. Just wish it would run better..

Originally Posted by Dano

Little to no lighting? LMAO!!!
Yer, no lighting there at all...

Seems quite basic too me..

[Bricks]

Originally Posted by Dano

Little to no lighting? LMAO!!!

Yer, no lighting there at all...

Nobody says it's bad.

It's just very little difference to IL2 (if there is any, especially in this video).


So, yes, you may ask the question why the old engine was abandoned, a whole new engine was developed, why "nothing was taken from old IL2 except the experience" and it still looks like IL2-1946?

WIP? Placeholder? All of it?

[Dano]

Originally Posted by Bricks

Nobody says it's bad.

It's just very little difference to IL2 (if there is any, especially in this video).


So, yes, you may ask the question why the old engine was abandoned, a whole new engine was developed, why "nothing was taken from old IL2 except the experience" and it still looks like IL2-1946?

WIP? Placeholder? All of it?

What more would you expect? They tried to simulate light as well as they could in IL2 and they did the same with CoD, why would there be a massive difference? Did you want them to add all sorts of over the top special effects like most fps games do?

I'm really not sure what they could add to make it much more realistic other than a better night sky?

[Bricks]

Originally Posted by Dano

What more would you expect? They tried to simulate light as well as they could in IL2 and they did the same with CoD, why would there be a massive difference? Did you want them to add all sorts of over the top special effects like most fps games do?

I'm really not sure what they could add to make it much more realistic other than a better night sky?

Not at all!

In fact, I'd rather have the exact feature, that makes a FPS different from a flightsim: The believable rendering of an atmosphere!

As you can especially see with this video, this is simply not present. Rather than a constant change of the temperature of light, it's very bright until noon, then changes within a few hours to orange/red until the sun sets.

Also the little dusk on the horizon is clearly static, does not increase or decrease with daytime. This would be a simple graphics feature that would add a lot to a flightsim.

[philip.ed]

Dano, whilst I largely agree, the top cloud layers in CloD look little different from Il-2, and I have always found them to look quite dated by todays standards.
Many features of the game are extremely similar to Il-2, and although Il-2 is excellent, I think we were expecting many areas to be completely new. For example: objecting loading. Really, there is no excuse why buildings load up sporadically. WoP models this way, and TBH once in flight, no one is looking closely enough to monitor the complete transition. In CloD as it stands, it is extremely noticeable.
Then there's the sounds...are these the revolutionary sounds based n a 3-D sound engine that we were 'promised'?

My main gripe, though, is where is the BoB? All of this development time, but no campaign to match BoB2?
I think that starting the engine from scratch clearly took a heck of a lot of work. Because the CloD shown in those early build shots and videos doesn't look far off from the current game.

[Dano]

To be fair the video lost a lot of detail in compression so judging the lighting based on it will be flawed, and I have to agree about the cloud layer, though it's only noticeable really with accellerated time.

[Dano]

Originally Posted by Rattlehead

Not to me it isn't.

To me CoD looks beautiful...especially so at dawn or dusk. The aircraft models look fantastic and those cockpit shadows are something I never stop marvelling at.

Thing is, it's easier in my opinion to make a fps look better...much, much reduced draw distance for one thing. Look at Metro 2033 - a beautiful game, but 90% of it was underground, in tunnels. They could not get away with such pretty graphics in a game with vast, open scenery.

It's also very very noticeable how bad the graphics are in Metro in the outdoor sections in comparison.