Friday Update, January 27, 2012

[Chivas]

Originally Posted by klem

True Chivas. It was more a comment on the way the game market has gone, how MS have moved away from the strictly aviation-geek-build-my-cockpit market to the gamers and how 1C seem to have recognised that market change when they were well down the development road of OpenGL CoD. That could have led them into a large hole and loss of the quality they had forecast using OpenGL. I think it wasn't a case of someone stealing the code but rather the jump to DirectX would explain the sudden drop off between forecast product and what was delivered. But even so, I'm only surmising.


btw I understand there will be no SDK for Flight, it will remain firmly under the control of MS. I wonder.... with it's SDK could CoD/SoW/whatever be stretched across to the civil world of aviation and take over where FSX left off? Now there's a thought.

I agree and was disappointed when i heard that the sim was going to use DX, as I prefered the quality of Open GL. I presume DX is a better medium for the market. MS Flight not providing an SDK is good news for the new IL-2 series, to gain market share inroads in the civilian aviation market.

[Codex]

Just to through a spanner in the works, I saw over a SimHQ forums a P-51 was added to Eagle Dynamic's A-10 simulator. Don't know if it's in a patch or a mod, I can't access SimHQ forum from work.

Are they also going to take a stab at the WW2 genre?

[Thee_oddball]

Originally Posted by Chivas

I agree and was disappointed when i heard that the sim was going to use DX, as I prefered the quality of Open GL. I presume DX is a better medium for the market. MS Flight not providing an SDK is good news for the new IL-2 series, to gain market share inroads in the civilian aviation market.

I really don't understand switching to DX for "porting" ability considering OpenGL IS cross platform (ms,mac,linux)

"As John Carmack said when asked if Rage was a DirectX game, "It’s still OpenGL, although we obviously use a D3D-ish API [on the Xbox 360], and CG on the PS3. It’s interesting how little of the technology cares what API you’re using and what generation of the technology you’re on. You’ve got a small handful of files that care about what API they’re on, and millions of lines of code that are agnostic to the platform that they’re on." If you can hit every platform using OpenGL, why shoot yourself in the foot by relying on DirectX?"

MG would have been better off continuing with the OpenGL for the initial release and then taken there time/testing a switch to DX later IF needed.

S!

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

So, it's also a matter of personal priorities. For me things like AA are the least of my issues. If they came to me and told me "hey man, we'll do the patches in the order you say", i would tell them:

"Visual quality is good enough, if it's performing well too then stop working on it for the next 6 months. Then give me a bit of documentation for the libraries so i can start making some C# scripts, fix the FMs,improve the CEM and fix all bugs in the logic of aircraft controls/systems so that we can fly what we have."

Sadly though, for a technical oriented crowd like we flight simmers are, there's a whole lot of "FPS-style benchmarking obsession" going on which leads to missing the big picture. Nothing wrong with other gaming genres, i play TF2 all the time. But the priorities of making one type of game are not the same as making another one.

I want to work on a project for a dynamic campaign some point during this year. I want the mission script to check if my airfield has enough fuel, then top up my tanks and remove that from the airfield's total. When i come back and land i want the remaining fuel to be added to the total. When the airfield is low on fuel, either due to attacks or normal use, i want it to trigger an AI convoy that will bring fuel from the fuel dump to the airfield. If the convoy is attacked and destroyed then sooner or later it's no fuel for you mr. player, spawn at a different airfield.

In other words, i want to make a supply system that will make what you do online matter. And the engine gives me the tools to do it. So, you can understand how much of a shame it is that these tools are undocumented because through all these months apart from the valid performance and stability complaints, the rest have been requests for purely aesthetic aspects like the nature of tracers or a couple of jaggy aerials.

Sure, visuals and sound are an integral part of the immersion process. So is having a proper environment to fly in though, otherwise we would all be looking at photos of warbirds to get our fix.

Excuse my disappointment, but the amount of people who miss the big picture of

a) what the sim tried to achieve and
b) how the complexity of that goal is actually the cause of its problems

is too damn high.

Yes agree...I remember Oleg talking of this utopia, where knocking out a generator, or a rail line and all the associated ramifications...that's game play!!

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

.......I want to work on a project for a dynamic campaign some point during this year. I want the mission script to check if my airfield has enough fuel, then top up my tanks and remove that from the airfield's total. When i come back and land i want the remaining fuel to be added to the total. [b]When the airfield is low on fuel, either due to attacks or normal use, i want it to trigger an AI convoy that will bring fuel from the fuel dump to the airfield. If the convoy is attacked and destroyed then sooner or later it's no fuel for you mr. player, spawn at a different airfield.[\b]
In other words, i want to make a supply system that will make what you do online matter. And the engine gives me the tools to do it. So, you can understand how much of a shame it is that these tools are undocumented because through all these months apart from the valid performance and stability complaints, .....

exactemundo !!

that is exactly the type of technical feature many other il2 old timers here are interested in, and it is incomprehensible they havnt given us access to at least some of these new features, even if it was initially with a basic interface at first and (with a list of the new features/options), so we know what is possible to access and control.

remember oleg's AA gun screenshots with the different ammo type boxes next to it ? at that time (some years ago), he indicated that when certain amo type ran out for the gun, it couldnt fire that type anymore (presumably till resupplied). Additionally the complex AA setup, with an interacting multiple component system involving search light, radar, gun crew, and ammo type available, so that if one element failed, or was destroyed by the enemy (like search light or radar element), it made the AA gun emplacement less effective, or put it out of action completely. Now THAT is what I call progress ! and it is what is needed to lift SoW out of the il2 airquake domain.

similarly discussions took place over the years with the SoW devellopers about what should happen when airfield munitions or fuels stores were destroyed (or runways damaged), and the way that should affect performance of that airfield and its ability to refuels and rearm aircraft landing there. once an airfield like that was made non operational, except for still allowing emergency landing of damaged or low on fuel aircraft, [b]it would/should take a certain amount of time for new supplies to arrive [/b (which is possible to copy fairly exactly from historical events, in the same way that restoring a damaged landing strip can determined).

AND those supplies had to arrive by road or rail normally (only very few came by air except some exceptional circumstances, like Stalingrad or Berlin). this again can be simulated fairly accurately, by having AI truck convoys of a particular size traveling at regular intervals on the road system from point A to point B, and having similar rail supply trains. targeting those in the game would then block the supplies from arriving at destination (for the time you keep being able to find and destroy them) when means the airfield they are designed for stays out of action or only operates partially. additionally, in certain map situations you might be able to cut rail and road bridges, or other parts of the transport network, with a similar result (again having work teams rebuilding those at a given time rate, and unless you keep destroying them regularly they become operational again). as a reminder, Mig Alley, the Korean war sim from 10 years ago already had a significant amount of those features built in, and it was one of the main reasons it stood out from other sims of the same era.

from oleg we know a lot of this, and even significantly more, is built into BoB/SoW, to not have some type of interface for it and no documentation for it is incomprehensible and a major flaw in 1C’s and luthiers management approach. it would set the sim apart from many other products right now, and it would make current users/customers much more tolerant of some of the major flaws they have to put up within the last year (and yes we are happy the project wasn’t canned, and if the buggy release was the only alternative to survival of the series let it be so)

this same AI interface should also provide details on how to control AI activity from road vehicles, rail network, and shipping (including AI bomber and fighter formations being tasked from point A to attack point B etc). ie rather then have some random train travel from A to B as me have now (or having a few people try and edit ini files with a hit and miss approach), we know this can/could be configured by some dedicated mission/campaign interface giving access in great detail for road/rail/sea/air elements active on a map. to have some basic instructions and information on these type of features is essential to keep the frustrated and shrinking fan base interested.

since most of those features are already built in, imo it should only take one or 2 programmers a couple of weeks to provide the documentation and a basic interface for it (even if some of those features are incomplete at this stage, many of them should already be available)

imo for luthier priorities right now should be
1) finish rebuild of gfx engine to get required gameplay performance and improved visual look of environment (he is doing this, but only 1 or 2 programmers are working on it i b suspect)
2) fix major FM DM problems that are know to be an isue right now, and fix distant object visibility problem (for aircraft and ground objects)
3) provide information and means to control ground/rail/airfield/aircraft resources, with implementation of some of these complex "roll on" effects once one element or important object of an airfield or other part of the map (like bridge or railway line) is damaged. Additionally, allow for basic AI routines to be created for vehicles on roads and at airfields, so the maps start to come alive. similarly allow scripting of ground military vehicle actions, eg have vehicle types ABC move to objective XYZ while having predetermined interaction modes with "object" they encounter (engage enemy, avoid enemy, capture objective etc)
4) correct some major scenery errors, and make england look like england rather then some generic map
5) provide full dynamic campaign engine for 24/7 online/ofline gameplay (with partially scripted unfolding events, as we know was olegs choice), so some of the events that historically made BoB so unique can be recreated, having for ex multiple waves of large bomber formations targeting specific objectives etc
only after that can there be talk of doing anything for BoM (other then maybe having some unemployed modelers work on some new objects if there is nothing else for them to do right now).

the only thing CoD is good for right now, is a limited type of airquake in a very buggy gameplay setting, while trying to move around in a virual world in an underperforming gfx engine, its a far cry from what was intended or anticipated, so they need to fix some of these issues SOON !