Friday 2011-01-28 Dev. update and Discussion

[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.