S~ back atcha!
 

Flanker35M I never played Aces High 2, but it's nice to know (nice?) this FPS problem was not limited to IL2. I don't know that SoW will have a solution for that which won't result in lag and single-digit FPS. It may, but as you say there is a cost (not just in lag and low FPS but in $$$$ in trying to build a system that won't choke on it). What's an Oleg to do? Can't put the genie back in the bottle. Here's to luck.
Flyby out
PS I did like the video, but it made me think of a mission I crafted where the troop transports were to be shot down in time. That didn't happen, and they disgorged their passengers, and brought that online COOP to it's knees. Not pretty, and a little embarrassing since I created it.

wow, looks great, but i didnt see AA, this new game support AA?

Guys, as I said before, BoB2 supports hundreds of A/C and with this, of course, there will be tons of parachutes in the sky in a big dogfight. The sim handles this well, and with the right PC there is little in way of fps loss (at least to make a difference to the human eye).

This is a flight sim, not a parachute sim so that should be definately left out of the agenda and put that time on FM and DM.

Yes sir , three bags full sir , ill get right on it sir , will there be anything else sir...:rolleyes:

no offense, but you've seen "tons" of parachutes in BoB2? I've seen somewhat less than that in IL2 and it was a slide show. I'm only going by that as a concern when the parachutists are so articulated as in Oleg's video. I used to own Rowan's Bob, and can vouch for seeing tons of aircraft, though, and without a frame hit on a single core processor. I hope we see that many in SoW without a frame hit. ;) I can live with a simplified rendering of many 'chutes in the air, but if I ain't one of them I hope to be too busy to count them! :D
Flyby out

are you being serious?

Bearing in mind the plane is in a state the chaps can get out, then yes! ;) It's all dependent on the amount of planes.
Of course you have a slight fps hit, which increases on lower systems, but compared to Il-2 the amount of planes you can have is in another world. If BoB is your thing, then it knocks Il-2 for six, even a modded Il-2 :D

You could do it in Combat flight-sim 2 so :rolleyes:

who said anything about first person or commandeering passing vehicles or swimming the channel? - I certainly didn't, you're confusing my posts with other posters.

I'm talking about adding simple 4-way controls to what may already be an existing run animation for the pilots - that's it. Your imagination is getting the best of you, lmfao @ equating being able to walk after a successful bailout to having "invisibility shields".

This sounds like the best option, seen other flight sims do this.
kind of like a roll the dice whether you land safely, make it back to base, get KIA, MIA or captured, instead of having to go through a long walk back to base (unless they want to do that).

That is already included in Il-2. Makes me wonder if you lot actually ever really played the game with 100% attention...

:grin:

Oleg, aside from parachute concerns, did you say SoW was coded for 64bit? I've been searching, but apparently not using the correct search words. can you please clarify?
thanks,
Flyby out

Of course you have a slight fps hit, which increases on lower systems, but compared to Il-2 the amount of planes you can have is in another world. If BoB is your thing, then it knocks Il-2 for six, even a modded Il-2

So philip.ed, how much did that 16 core 6.6GHz, 5Gb Cache rig with the 64Gb memory and nVidia 97000GTX (dual) cost you?

Big risk is that with so many options enabled, including billowing-silk simulation and the mutli-horde cross country escape chase there'll only be about 5 people able to afford the rig to run it. SoW servers could be pretty empty while they all pile back into Warclouds :-0

Seriously, when are we going to get the flipping game and why delay it with this peripheral nonsense?

Yawing player aircraft
 

Oleg

I recall reading where British Pilots during the BOB would YAW their aircraft during combat to throw off attackers.

When player is flying at YAW to left or right it would be a help, if AI were deceived.
Now the AI follows the programs mathematical trajectory of the enemy aircraft, regardless of YAW. YAW means nothing against AI attackers. Yawing can work Online, where real people are shooting at each other.

This way, if enemy was attacking them the pilots wanted the enemy to plan on targeting ahead of the aircraft by viewing the way the aircraft was positioned more than the actual path the aircraft was flying.

If the attacker wasn’t paying close attention, they would not get good shots on the aircraft they were attacking.

If player turns YAW position then application would cause Ai Attackers to plan attack on the player at the place expected from the direction of the YAW the player is facing, not the mathmatical trajectory the program describes.

I don’t think this would be necessary, except in the case of the player or player flight.

This way evasive maneuvers would be enhanced for the player, similar to real world situations.

My rig is a dual core 2.0ghz with a 512mb 4650 ati card! :D so not the best rig you can get! Maybe even below average.
However, the BoB2 engine can take this. I mean, if I have 100's of A/C on screen at the same time then my fps will frop to a low number, and maybe the game will become a slideshow, but it is playable because I find these circumstances quite rare. ;)

You need to read my original post, which describes a situation that IL2 does not provide.
BTW I have over 1,000 flights in IL2 averaging 45minutes each.

LOL, does that mean that soon you will be able to fly for a civilian airline :P

Gee I admire people keeping a flight record... or it's just an estimate?

you guys should take the arguments to PM or go to the zoo to duke it out :)

This is the new zoo, unfortunately.

First of all, terrific set of animations in this update. Thanks Oleg and team.


It's not that far fetched, since stars are so far away they deviate from their paths only by a few fractions of a degree per year. It's been already done in Silent Hunter 3 back in the day and the night sky changes as the time passes.

It's not entirely essential, but it's a nice backup in case your compass gets damaged on a night raid, you would be able to navigate back to friendly airspace by using the stars. In real life there were sextants used to take accurate measurements and some hardcore SH3 fans used to navigate by stars, but the combination of radio navigation aids and smaller maps in a flight sim might make this redundant.

In any case, you don't need the entire universe because it's not visible from our night sky. The simplest way to have an accurate rendition would be to have a moving set of the major constellations, maybe add the most visible nebulas too, and superimpose them on a static backdrop/wallpaper of night sky. This way, the amount of objects is reduced sufficiently while still allowing for recognition of constellations and navigation by stars. Movement is also very simple, it all rotates around the north (or south, depending on your hemisphere) opposite to the earth's rotation as the hours pass, it's nothing fancy really.

Well, if it was something big and totally unnecessary i might agree, but it's just an extra keymap with a trigger. Not much time to save for FM and DM, since coding the "parachute open" command is about as much work as coding the "landing gear down" command.

It's just a separate keypress and it will enable people online to fall below the action before pulling the chord, with all the added benefits it brings: less chance of getting shot while hanging from your chute, less chance of having to fly through others' chutes or get lagged by them as well.




I think i'm going to go ahead and agree with this ;)

Cool post - though for God's sake! Stop trying to increase the bloody workload!

I think the navigation thoughts are really sweet, though it seems pretty 'mod' or 'add-on' to me.

Also, press to bail (ctrl&e) but then a further key to deploy parachute - excellent idea.

Isn't it nice to hear realistic suggestions?

Considering that Oleg had one guy working on just air currents and such inside clouds for two years, I'd find it hard to believe that the stars would not be accurate enough to navigate by already.

It's amazing to what extremes opinion on various aspects of the game go to. It makes me appreciate Oleg's level headed approach to development all the more.

I could be wrong BadAim, however I think it's likely that if he had a programmer working on air currents and clouds for two years, it wasn't exclusively. If that made sense, then he'd have many individuals similarly employed in all others aspects of similar import: in short, there'd be dozens and dozens of specialists working on many aspects - all being well paid!

As ever: resources, resources resources.

I'm sure the area was looked at for the time mentioned - Oleg wouldn't fib. I just doubt that he meant that dedicated programmer(s) were on it for 24 months full-time, to the exclusion of all else.

You mean he hasn't had someone dedicated to researching London bus timetables for 1940, to ensure an authentic model? Cheapskate...

I hope so.
I still dont understand why they make 32bit programs:confused::-x

I'm just recalling what Oleg said, I believe it was in Mystic Puma's interview (I'm usually pretty good with that stuff). The fact of the matter (accuracy of my statement aside) is that the lions share of resources are going to make SOW the baddest flight sim in the land, bar none. I for one have no doubt that any side roads the project might take will have little or no effect on that goal.

The rest is all details.

That was my point. :)

Edit: actually, that was my second point, my first point was that Oleg is putting maximum resources into the sim environment, and that should include both the day and night sky. It's relative effort I'm speculating about, not specifics.

I need more coffee.

Because not everybody has a 64bit OS? :confused:

Yes I know.....
that's that that I dont understand. Why people are still picking 32bit OSes if the 64bit give more thing for the same price ????? :confused:
And because there is still 32bit OSes, 64bit is not developping as fast as it should :(

Because is we have the OS at home, why would we want to spend extra money on a new one? When I bought my laptop, the 64 bit version was a fair-amount more expensive.

I just checked 5mins ago, and 64bit is 3$ more than 32bit......:rolleyes:
I'm not saying that you must upgrade to get 64bit, but if you upgrade.... why still chose 32bit.... non sense to me:confused:

It's a fair point though - why buy Windows 7 32bit? I don't know.

Big deal? 64 vs 32 bit performance wise isn't anything to cheer about anyway.

ram?

Sure , yet no game(s) really benefits from 3+ gig ram in any significant way.

Although a little bit extreme, Metro 2033 recommends 8gig ram. Normally you keep your O/S some time, so you must think of the requirements games will have in 1-2 years.

DCS: BS, FC2 can use up to 4GB on x64 OS, because they are "Large address aware". Also, if I recall correctly, FSX SP2 is in the same group too.

you know that the graphical memory in your graphic card is share with your RAM......

so if you have 3gb of ram and and a graphic card with 1gb with a 32bit OS, you wont have acces to all your memory.

Yes we're talking extreme cases once again, but sure Crysis and Metro are rare but very beautiful and demanding games developed with the future in mind.

Most games are developed for the 360,Ps3 as a lead platform hence the slow development of requirements within PC gaming. 4870x2 with 2GB runs both Crysis and Metro smooth on highest on a 32 bit system without any problem.(tried yes)
Whilst you will obviously benefit if the game supports more, once again as i said to no significant extent yet, maybe with Olegs sim or future games but truth to be told 90% of the games rarely require or demand more than 2gb.
Add a very good processor and a good GPU on top of those two gb of ram and it will run just fine on highest settings with a little longer loading times.

:oYes, that is completely true. I wish that had been the same when I got my laptop! :P

Crysis has wide jungle areas that are likely to require a lot of different high-resolution textures to look convincing - don't you see the parallel with a flight-sim there?
There's also a lot more going on in a flight sim than in those games where you rarely see more than a few people on screen at once and where their AI routines rarely have to do anything more complicated than establish a place where they are out of your line of fire when they aren't firing at you.

Agree, flight sims has a lot more going on, wither that be advanced ai, damage models, etc but it totally depends on the architecture of the engine and how much it stress the clients.

Aye, although I suspect that SoW might be one of those that does so at higher settings. Judging from Il-2's engine it will be quite scaleable, though. PS: You need to update your upcoming hit titles in your signature cause two of them are already out. :p

Nooo! forgive me, don't have time to politely argue with either of you, but nooo! you're quite wrong.

Rethink what you're saying :)

It's on my to-do-list of 2010.
Cheers :-) m8.

people are still weary of driver issues and of course, software availability

Hopefully, once ww2 is over I plan to do some commercial flying for one of those newer companies I heard about. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

That is actually an estimate, but I do save the records created by IL2 (DCG) for my completed campaigns where each missions time is kept. It's nice to revisit old missions from a logbook.

---

Thanks for joking over my point guys. It's coo..

---

Flight sims don't do "more" over "other" games. AI is AI, Terrain is terrain, objects are objects, etc.

Consider Oblivion, or Fallout 3. Games with weather systems. (And stars of some sort..)

It's really not a question of can it be done, it's simply will it be done. For the most part I believe companies try to avoid fine-tuning and feature adding because of the Duke Nukem Forever (r.i.p.) scenario. True perfection is a bad thing.

Correct, when it comes to current 32bit applications running on them. When 32bit is done away with and programs and games start coming out in native 64bit there will be a difference. It's the needless hanging on to 32bit OS that is slowing down the 64bit software advancement. I think windows 7 should have been 64bit only. Hopefully the next version of windows will finally kill 32bit.

no i think its good to be able to run legacy code, and i hope 50 years from now, we'll still be able to run 8 bit code on whatever (quantum processor) type dealy we're using (assuming i haven't kicked the can by then)... the only thing holding us back (since windows XP 64 and the pentium 4 640) is people actually developing 64-bit appz (in most cases, 32bit is plenty enough, so why make a 64bit version?)

if you can still buy 32-bit processors, not outta some old warehouse, and not second hand, then your wasting your money, nowadays ALL pre-built machines are 64bit capable, and all motherboards/processors are 64 bit capable as well, again assuming their not a half a decade old...

I think that's rather the point - all of those games have benefited heavily from having an excess of RAM compared to more shallow games, which was what we were discussing. In any case, how do you think the physics systems of FPS games compare with contemporary flight-sims, generally? How much do you think the AI of such a game needs to consider compared to that of a flight-sim? The AI in Oblivion and Fallout 3 is an absolute joke, and the promise of Radiant AI never came about, the AI in Oblivion and Fallout from the player's point of view is exactly the same as that of Morrowind - essentially "start combat if you steal my stuff, hit me or I hate you enough and have a high enough aggression number, run for help if you hurt me too much" - with the exception that people are to be found in different locations at different times of day and that they can pick up weapons from the floor if they feel like it.
I don't really see what weather systems have to do with it, either. The weather system in Oblivion and Fallout is simple (I don't know how much modding you've done of those two games), all that happens is that each exterior cell in the overall game grid is assigned to a region, and that region has a particular percentage chance of each weather type assigned happening when the weather changes every few hours after what amounts to a dice roll that chooses the weather. It's not really a weather system as such.
As for stars, it's simply a series of domes with different textures applied with varying transparency that rotate depending upon the season/time of day/etc. No atmospheric modelling as we see in the screenshots Oleg showed of the Stuka at various times of day.
The point is, both these games needed huge amounts of RAM and powerful CPUs to run well at high settings at release, even with such simple AI and weather systems and so on. Comparing flight-sims to FPSes, even in Il-2 we require some fairly complicated modeling of aerodynamics and ballistics occurring essentially non-stop (although realism in ballistics is usually attempted in FPSes nowadays, it doesn't have to take such account of factors as relative wind), we need to have an AI that can effectively fly an aircraft without a) exceeding critical angles of attack constantly b) flying past the physical limits of the pilot (the AI are limited to 4G maneuvers, I think) and c) that understands how to effectively maneuver to a good firing solution given the capabilities of the aircraft it's flying and the position and capabilities of the opponent. Compare this to the average 2010 FPS AI and we're already talking about a more demanding AI in the 2005 4.01 incarnation of Il-2, never mind SoW. And crucially, given the focus of the next game on the Battle of Britain, Oleg and team are almost certainly aiming to have the game running reasonably on medium settings with a lot of aircraft on screen at once, after all the Battle of Britain was primarily about small groups of fighters intercepting large groups of bombers and fighters. How many FPSes do you see with more than a handful of people on-screen at once nowadays? The only FPS games that approach flight-sims in terms of difficulty of implementation would be tactical shooters (lots of fairly complicated decision-making AI and a basic physics engine), and how many of those often have lots of people on the screen? Only one that I can think of, ARMA 2, and that devours PCs even on medium settings.
So yeah, no wonder there are only a few flight-sim developers left, and thank God they have the dedication to work within such a difficult genre. :)

Eheh, you make alot of really good points, if I was gonna quote you it would be the whole post :) You're not wrong especially when it comes to first person shooters eating computers alive these days!

However the level of difficulty for creation of the game types is still the same.

Physics is physics no matter how you roll the dice, its the implemented design that brings you flaws and limitations, not the type of game. I've used physics libraries that are powerful and fast and can be used for any game type. Aerodynamics is something else on its own, but with programming its not any different than say the basic ai: "if this occurs, do this".

Speaking of AI. FPS games do have really sad AI. Any AI is difficult. But the truth is in il2 the AI is the same as in FPS games. When I had the chance to peak at the AI code for IL2, I was amazed at how simplistic it was. I also saw code that seemed to give AI an unlimited and unreleastic "afterburner" (I believe that is exactly what they called it in the code, too)

Simplistic is not wrong, especially when it comes to programming, its always the best solution if its simple. :) But the AI you talk about and that actually exists are far from each other, flight sim or first person shooter.

The truth: The AI basically have pre-programmed flight manuevers and "characteristics" that are "executed" whenever a given situation exists, it is not "greater" than any fps AI, it's the same thing actually.

This is why the AI can go all wonky or do nothing at all independant of skill level, because they get caught in a situation not pre-programmed.

I was also surprised (but not completely..) to see in the code that the AI always were given the player's exact speed, location and altitude and maybe some other stuff as well, for all levels of ai skill (rookie, average, veteran, ace).

And if you watch the AI land, you can clearly see they are not actually "flying" like you and I would be flying.

FPS AI does the same thing. They get pre-programmed things to do in certain situations, but of course, and more common these days, they don't receive enough programming and therefore lack the neccessary reactions for many situations they run into.

FPS games these days are sad, focusing only on fancy shader/graphic technology, slamming the gpu with wasted effort just to put out a mediocre (or less) game that looks "pretty".

AI has not evolved much in games, no matter what type it is.

Don't get me wrong, AI is not easy, but again, the AI you talk about and the AI that actually exists are not the same.

I should wrap this up, so again, my point is the same. What it really comes down to is the game company and how well they pay their programmers.

I'm an atheist but Thank god 1c maddox is on il2 and sow :)

Also for an example of a non-pc killer fps game, check out Darkest Of Days was a history channel game, it uses a good physics engine, and for the most part has lots n lots of enemy on screen (and friendlies sometimes too) Of course the game isn't that great, but fighting off 100 or so enemies with a musket and a six shooter is ALWAYS fun. I run that baby on a CELERON (worst of them all!) 2.4ghz oc'd 2.9, 1.5 gig mem, geforce 850 or something like that, i forgot its model name, anyway, the same system i run il2 on and il2 still has comparable trouble with more than 8 planes. (not to mention ground units) and I've tweaked il2 as far as I can. Anyway.. time to switch class!

Oh yes, of course, much of what the AI do is just reaction-based "if this happens, do this", but like I say, the complexity involved is quite different. In an FPS you have "point gun at player and shoot" then "oh no you're out of ammo, walk behind a wall" (if you're very lucky!), where in combat flightsims there's quite a lot more involved in producing an AI that even vaguely challenges the player.
What I think would be an interesting experiment would be to run a neural networking AI through playing a game, and then take snapshots of this AI at various stages in its development and use these snapshots to produce a rule-set for the actual game's AI implementation with each snapshot being a different difficulty level or "personality" of AI. Although I have no idea how feasible that idea would be.

Interesting.. Don't forget even Quake3's bots had the programming to "collect armor if low on armor", "get ammo", "run away if hurt and find healing, avoid player", and I believe the bots even stuck with teammates if their teamwork level was high enough. Also capture the flag has a completely different set of rules that older games ran all the time! Stuff you don't see anymore.. The same bots could play capture the flag, team deathmatch or free-for-all. Anyway.

I have no clue as to what neural networking AI is.

I can't wait to see what they did for sow.

It's sad isn't it, how generally AI has declined rather than improved - have a read about neural networking if you're interested. Obviously it would be necessary to give the AI a much more complex starting point that the robots which learn not to crash into things or whatever. Looking forward to seeing SoW's AI as well, although I'm not holding out that much hope since the quality of the AI stayed pretty much static for all of the Il-2 series.

I can understand that AI not improving over the il2 series, basically each new "game" was simply a mod, just added content. Generally you wouldn't expect too much engine-revision in mods like ai-programming. They did let the AI stay in the lower-end aspect of game improvement. However its good to know Daidalos has already done some AI improvements for 4.10 .. I wanna lose ai in clouds so bad it hurts :)

I read the wikipage, I get a basic understanding. I might read more cuz it kinda makes me want to give it a try. I've always tried to program ai systems, never really getting much out of it, 10 years ago. maybe I've learned something since then.. The hard part is recognition of adaptative (?) changes and adapting.

Oleg should just state, SOW is 64 bit, end of story, you want da best then upgrade! i know I would, I actually plan to buy 64 bit computer soon. I suspect many here would upgrade too! Oleg could then get ahuge kick-back from DELL computers or Microsoft! (joking)


Another disturbing point on chutes, I just watched a doco on the Luthwaffe's desparate act of ramming enemy bombers late in the war ... apparently American fighters would gun down german pilots in their chutes, who were lucky enough to survive the collision!! .. made my blood run cold.

.

To the best of my knowledge, "kill the pilot" was standing orders for US escorts for a time (I don't believe the method was specified), which kind of makes sense in the horrible math of war. It's a testament to the Moral fortitude of these guys that it wasn't a more common practice. (I think it's safe to say that the average warrior won't do to his enemy what he doesn't want done to him, if he's thinking that far ahead)

I believe there were chute-shooters on both sides in that war. No one can say which side started that practice first. Enough blame to go around, I suspect. If you want to think about making your blood run cold, think about the airmen who parachuted safely to the ground from burning fighters or spinning bombers only to be captured and killed by hostile civilian mobs. War is Hell. It should make your blood run cold. A chance to kill an enemy was just that, and both sides took advantage of it. That's the reality of it.
Flyby out

The heck are you talking about? Have you looked at the stickies or searched for posts made by Oleg?