Friday 2010-01-29 Screenshots AND Discussion Thread

[drafting]

Now that's awesome! I've wanted bailouts like that ever since I first started playing flight sims!

Now, I have have to ask... That's probably hand animated and not using something like Euphoria (or is it??), so how do you account for all possible situations?

Like, say the Spit is missing its left wing and is spinning down... The pilot probably wouldn't step out on the wing in that situation! He'd possibly get flung out spinning through the air...

or say the elevators were jammed full down and the Spit was violently nosing over... would the pilot get lifted up and out?

Of course, that might just be the 'get out of the plane on the ground' animation (but the 'Arrrgg!' suggests otherwise?) and you can ignore my post.

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by drafting

Now that's awesome! I've wanted bailouts like that ever since I first started playing flight sims!

Now, I have have to ask... That's probably hand animated and not using something like Euphoria (or is it??), so how do you account for all possible situations?

Like, say the Spit is missing its left wing and is spinning down... The pilot probably wouldn't step out on the wing in that situation! He'd possibly get flung out spinning through the air...

or say the elevators were jammed full down and the Spit was violently nosing over... would the pilot get lifted up and out?

Of course, that might just be the 'get out of the plane on the ground' animation (but the 'Arrrgg!' suggests otherwise?) and you can ignore my post.

This whole subject (animated bailout) is something I've been hoping to see done really well in SOW. Judging by the video it will be, but each new tidbit released by Oleg throws up a whole set of new questions.

The answer, I think, to your question is that differing circumstances will require different animations, for example, a situation where the aircraft is nose down and out of control will have the pilot almost 'ejecting' vertically out of the cockpit as he pushes off with his legs.

The issues for bombers are even greater - with different escape hatches on different parts of the ac. This is something where il2 really fell down - it had (afaik) just the one standard bail out sequence optimised for fighters, so in bombers you would see the crew 'materialise' mid-fuselage in sequence and then even fall through the ac body on their way down.

This video shows the standard that will be possible in SOW. My only reservation is whether there will be time to produce a full, diverse range of bailout animations for the release date.

Oleg has said they are prioritising aircrew and AAA crew for the initial release. I understand the difficulties involved and personally would be happy to even go with a slimmed down 'generic' set of animations for initial release - presumably more particular and varied animations could be slotted in later..?

[Freycinet]

Originally Posted by kendo65

This is something where il2 really fell down - it had (afaik) just the one standard bail out sequence optimised for fighters, so in bombers you would see the crew 'materialise' mid-fuselage in sequence and then even fall through the ac body on their way down.

"Fell down", if you expect a program to be able to show everything, totally disregarding the hardware limitations. There was a reason for the animation being rather crude, you know...

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by Freycinet

"Fell down", if you expect a program to be able to show everything, totally disregarding the hardware limitations. There was a reason for the animation being rather crude, you know...

I know - wasn't meant as a criticism of il2 (difficult to cover all the details when you're focusing on making your point). Totally right - in its time and with the hardware available il2 was great (and still is ...back-covering ).

It's just that 10 years on things have changed and its inherent visual 'compromises' start to grow more irritating in comparison with more modern games.

[AdMan]

from previous posts I'm under the impression there will be certain situations (as in real life) where the pilot won't be able to bailout, I'd imagine a high G spin might be one of those. Taking that into account 3-5 different bailout animations would suffice, hopefully we get something like that or more. Less would leave players wanting something more sophisticated.

[AndyJWest]

I think it is a bit misleading to look at this animation in too much detail, and suggest that it is 'wrong' for say an inverted bailout. The whole thing is less than a second or so long, so in real time, you will hardly notice the finer points - it is a lot better than IL-2, anyway. It's nice that the sim supports this sort of detail, but things that only occur very occasionally are less important than getting the basics right - though nothing I've seen so far gives me any reason to doubt they will.

Once again, impressive stuff. I wonder what we'll see next week? I'd like to see a dogfight, but more likely it'll be something more esoteric, like a close up of the Bolingbroke undercarriage as it retracts, or 'before' and 'after' closups of the fabric patches on Spitfire gunports...

[BigC208]

I also think that the animation is going to be used for a deplaning on the ground with the aircraft at a full stop. I used to fly skydivers and even flying around 80 knots they had a hard time getting out of the plane against the wind. Let alone doing it at 200+ mph. Love the aninamation and to see what wil be possible with moving crews. Real immersion enhancer.

[drafting]

It'd be amazing if Euphoria could be blended into the hand-drawn bailing out animations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae3fgj2x1aI

That way, you wouldn't have to hand-animate all possible situations, and you could still have things like the wing blowing off half way through the animation, and the pilot responding accordingly... or if the pilot bounced off the horizontal stabilizer, he'd tumble realistically.

It'd definitely produce some eye-popping 'I can't believe I just saw that' kind of situations.

[AdMan]

Originally Posted by drafting

It'd be amazing if Euphoria could be blended into the hand-drawn bailing out animations:

That way, you wouldn't have to hand-animate all possible situations, and you could still have things like the wing blowing off half way through the animation, and the pilot responding accordingly... or if the pilot bounced off the horizontal stabilizer, he'd tumble realistically.

It'd definitely produce some eye-popping 'I can't believe I just saw that' kind of situations.

indeed, that is some sick technology they have there

[airmalik]

First off - awesome video! Never seen anything like this in a flight sim before! I'm starting to feel a lot better about the landscape now. If it's on par with the animations we've seen, it'll be truly astounding.

Originally Posted by drafting

It'd be amazing if Euphoria could be blended into the hand-drawn bailing out animations:

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

Some main from the start. Some - probably after. Also I hope the third party developers will be able to add a lot in future....

This is SO encouraging! Opens up the possibility of a third party developer creating a 'euphoria' add-on to extend the base animations developed by Oleg's team. This add-on could start with these initial animations and then blend into euphoria based animations which react to the environment. For this bailout sequence, the pilot could climb out as normal and then be ripped off the plane by the wind, maybe bounce off the h stab, tumble towards the ground and if the pilot is still conscious, the chute could open at which point the animation switches back to Oleg's hand made animation.

Depending on the attitude and speed of the plane, the euphoria based animation could take over from the canned animations at different points of the sequence. In a dive, for instance, the pilot only gets to pulling himself up off the seat and then gets sucked out of the cockpit courtesy of euphoria.

I can't imagine this add-on being cheap due to licensing costs but I'd definitely get it!

Oleg, is something along these lines a possibility?

cheer!