Non Friday 2010-04-15 Development Update :)
 

Hi,

probably tomorrow I'll need to be absent, so small update would be beter to post today.

Remind you, this is WIP, shown in tools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpX5kCnrL-8

Some or the animation various. Unfinished, non polished.

That looks great, just fantastic clarity, thanks
Oleg, the pilot has no control of the chute, correct?

Very nice work.

What a surprise! Love the animation, looks very realistic.

it begs the question though, can we land in trees and get attacked by the home guard? Or go to the pub for a pint :D

That looks very promising!

so detailed. looks nice.
In LOMAc cf2.0 the pilot back to the base walking. If the british guy land with the parachute in english field, will back to their base walking or in a bicke?

if tomorrow you gonna upload a video , i hope that make this in HD 720 :grin:

Is the parachute affected by weather? Can it be shot at, and can the pilot get hit (but not the parachute) and start to bleed?
Also, if we played as Douglas Bader, would the bail-out sequence be a lot longer ? :P

Looks great, for the first time on a ww2 sim we will have a pilot that land more realistic with its chute.
Looks like a very good detail to improve immersion.

In tools - no. In a sim - probably will be affected.
We plan to open chute with separate button (as option probably).

We don't plan to make such sequence. However I don't knopw yet how to finish the scene :) To allow pilot to walk home..... probably not the best choice for future additions of the sim. And to swim in the direction of home beach and then walk home also probably not the best solution :)

:grin::grin::grin:HOORAY!!!:grin::grin::grin:

Just let the pilot walk/run controlled by the player i think would be nice, and helpfull for movie making.

My wish would be that in multiplayer to allow the player to climb on another plane that is landed by other player having this way the the oportunity to get back home. Of course this would mean that you must have some place that can allow you to land the plane, like a road ro very shallow field, if there is any, well if you land most likely you will brake the aircraft. Them the downed pilot walk to the plane and climb on it.

What happen´s with landed aircraft when the downed player is on the cockpit?. Well, several results:

1) Increase on aircraft weight.
2) Downed pilot can see like seatd on the cockpit but don´t have any control over the aircraft
3) Pilot of the aircraft have´s limited control of the plane (decreased stick movement), as a penalty for having another "person" inside the cockpit. Also limited point of view movement.

I wouldn´t make that you will see a pilot side seated on the cockpit because it wouldn´t be very pleasent, and would be too gay :D.

S!

Nice. So it seems the parachuting has been modelled in more fidelity, taking in account landing etc. Nice.

Thanks for the update Oleg. A nice, unexpected surprise!

It would be nice to have some function over the pilot; e.g if landing in the sea to speed up time and see if any ships came near to rescue the poor chap.

Oleg, will the parachute be able to get tangled? e.g on the plane as you exit if it is a messy bail-out? Also, if the plane is on fire, could the parachute get affected and so you'd become a 'roman candle' whereby the chute sets alite (not a nice business).

May I propose an optional dialogue message on a chute landing that states MIA / KIA / CAPTURED / RTB with the option to continue mission or exit?

Then in the case of continuing the mission, the pilot then heads home (if alive) .. ? Of course this would be purely for the users pleasure to see their man walking home, interaction would be nil.

(Of course I have no idea if you have a GUI interface tied in with the flying part of the game that can do this)

In CFS3 the pilot simply walked out of the frame. It seems that people would really like the guy to go all the way home however. Before he starts, he might just light up a cigarette. He's been through quite an ordeal. ;)

Very nice, I get more stoked every time I see an update. There are so many little things that will enhance the "feel" of SOW, I have little doubt that it will be fantastic.

LOL, I suspect I'd start smoking again too.

Are you actually suggesting the guy pull on his risers to Slip is chute like in real life?

I think people should put the 'walking home' idea to bed now.

It's just not realistic to have a pilot walk back to his home base through miles of deserted countryside and it's not possible to program in the kind of real-life interactions that would make it seem real.

All the accounts I've read show that a parachuting pilot acts like a beacon for anyone in the vicinity - so you get civilians, the local constabulary and Home Guard making up a 'reception committee'.

For an RAF pilot road transport would then likely be arranged back to his base, or if injured a spell in the local hospital. For a Luftwaffe pilot almost 100% certainly it would be a POW camp.

In the absence of any means of simulating all this the best option is to end the sequence after the pilot has touched down just as is done in il2.

Thanks for the update Oleg.

--------
Edit: All comments above refer to England, Summer 1940

Maybe if the out of plane people stuff is important---you should leave a way open in code for 3rd party to include all the out of aircraft people stuff. How can you ever think what everyone might want?

Climb in tanks, climb in planes, climb in boats, climb out of planes, climb out of tanks, run from crashed airplane, walk to home base, etc.

I think most of us are pretty happy with what we had in IL2. I know you have already fixed some of those things.

That is not exactly my case, but considering that i play multiplayer the most, if i get shots down i would very much like to be able to walk or run in first person perspective and continue on the mission and see the show of the combat.
Also considering other scenarios beside BoB, it would be cool to run and see the ground combat, if there is any.

Walk to your homebase would be practical only when you crash on take off or crashland near your airfield.

OT here's a video slideshow including screenshots from 4/15 :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f3wAWaPMSc

Fantastic work as always Oleg, looking forward to the next update / video :D

one question :

for ejection , in Bob how will be the camera view ?

as il2 ( a camera view of the pilot's body in the air ) or another possibilty : the camera view will be the pilot view ( the same as when you are in the cockpit ) .

thank you

No, I did not suggest that. Just curious if there was a surprise to be told about control, certainly not needed

Smoking
 

I personally think that the best idea is to let the pilot smoke his cigarett just to have some ending of the parachute sequence.

I believe Oleg has stated that the British parachutes in-game had the possibility to be steerable (as in reality) while the German ones didn't.

Though I think he was unsure as to whether this feature would actually be in the release.

(Sorry, can't provide a link to the quote)

Oh man thank you. And again, that pilot looking better than you Oleg. :-P

Incredible 6*/5

Looks marvellous, thanks. Love the lighting.

Must say, I've been following the recent interest in changing this flight simulator into an actual universe simulator with some interest.

When the pilot meets terra firma, will the grass bend and/or break realistically? My real concern is the speed of this interaction corresponding with the compactness and, indeed, moisture content of the soil.

Will this be modeled correctly? Can I lose a flying boot in a freshly ploughed field? If there are cows in the field, will they react? Is there a bull? What if the bull was depressed? What if the bull was depressed, but thought I was a german?

If I lose a flying boot, how will this be modeled as I make my way through the 1940's fields? Will a depressed bull taking a grudging interest in the chase? You're probably motion-capturing men doing this right now in some kentish field. I can make an allowance for the bull, stock footage will probably suffice. Can't expect everything I suppose.

How are the socks modeled? Can you cite references?

Sorry if this have been asked before:
Will be fixed the main issue of the IL2?
The form which uses IL2 to decrease the size of the planes when they are far and the became erased before with AA on?
Also this happen with resolution, someone with 800x600 will see before the contacts than someone with a resolution of: 1920x1080-1920x1200
Thanks

If we are german do we get to try to hide and evade are way back to the channel and our base in France?

If the british guy land with the parachute in english field, will back to their base walking or in a bicke?

Flipping heck - can we just have the game without more daft workload added on?

Seperate button for chute opening is nice though.

awwweesssssommmme

you should be able to control the pilot after he bails out. That is to say just control him running around. If you can make it back to base an RTB message would suffice, doesn't need to be detailed, just something to goof around with, It'd be great fun to see if you can survive the strafing that would ensue - and to be the strafer

I like the idea of ending the sequence with the pilot sitting down and lighting up a smoke- unless, of course, an enemy plane flys by, in which case he should shake his fist at them.

Great update!

This should only be at players command. It could be dangerous if the pilot has been doused in petrol from a leakyfuel tank! Also in many cases a pipe would be more appropriate.

Cheers!

looks excellent. can we flirt with french women and join the resistance on landing?

oleg,

thanks for the update, the pilot landing sequence looks very good and realistic (he even keeps his feet together during the landing as instructed in training :) )


oleg, please consider these suggestions on how to finish the pilot landing scene:

1) once pilot has landed in friendly territory the game player can hit "refly", but..
a) same ejected pilot name/character should not be available on "new fly" roster board at friendly airfields for several hrs/days (depending on approximate distance he landed from home base, this can be 3 choices like close, far, very far)
b) if no "refly" key hit by player, then downed pilot might get 10 or 20 min to "walk around" and be able to be "rescued" by other friendly player landing close to him (in field or on road). parachuted pilot should be able to walk/run to friendly plane that landed to help him
c) if no friendly planes comes to rescue (only really for landing in enemy territory) then pilot should be able to walk to nearest road (and from then pilot's can only walk in open fields, and on roads and railway lines maybe ?, to keep game coding more simple)
d) any friendly AI vehicle on a road (can be factor programmed with random delay) that passes the location of the pilot will trigger scenario "pilot picked up by friendly civilian in vehicle" (or friendly military convoy etc). this triggers cut scene animation sequence of pilot climbing in vehicle, fade scene, and final scene with pilot arriving back at home base (with game clock moved forward 1 hr or 1 day etc), pilot name can then be seen on flight board register at home base again and used by player.

2) above sequence should take minimal coding time to add and has advantages off:
- parachuted pilot can for now only walk/run in open fields and on roads and railway lines (which are already programmed to allow movement of AI vehicles etc, and have no "obstacles" for movement). this means you dont need to allow pilot walking in a complete "ground world". if even this is to difficult because to much time is need, allow "pilot walking" only as hidden easter egg future, so people dont "expect" it to be perfect.
- in real life BoB downed allied pilots could sit/stand and watch the air battle continuing for a little while, adds realism
- allowing parachuted pilot to walk to nearby road (or towards friendly plane landing in same field) and wait for AI friendly vehicle adds continuity in scenario and increases game world immersion for players
- if player crashes his plane on landing or takeoff (and survives it), the pilot is so close to home base he should be able to walk back to the control tower or briefing are, or walk to a fresh plane available. the immediate ground area near the home base airfield can then also be used as a "test zone" to work on pilot interaction with "ground world" (open/close doors, climb over fence, get in/out of vehicles or AA guns etc)

3) current AI ground activity (buses, cars, truck convoys moving on roads) is already coded in the game in significant detail (going by your previous posts on this topic), it should be fairly easy to add some simple categories for landed pilot to trigger "encounter" with AI road traffic for ex,
- landed in relatively empty area wait civilian AI traffic scene 1 hrs,
- landed in more busy area is 10 min,
- landed in very busy or built up area = 3 min

we dont need a pilot walking home for 2 hrs like in lockon2 right now, but some control over the pilot and some interaction with ground AI activity like vehicles/objects would be great. we also need the right time delays added to the campaign engine for the shot down pilot who bailed out, so he doesnt instantly can relocate t a friendly airbase 100's of km away and instantly have a fresh new plane, it must have a time delay added before he gets back to base, and adding in some video cut scenes can be used there

later when ground vehicle control is more developed, the control and interaction with the pilot behavior and movement can be improved/increased

edit: for german pilots landing in england, and pilots landing in sea

4) german pilots landing in england (note: german pilots landing in enemy territory probably should not initially have freedom to walk around, because more complex to create interaction with "local" AI activity ?)
- landed in relatively empty area, after a delay add video clip of off pilot capture/surrender to home guard, or farmer with pitch fork etc..
- landed in more busy area: is 10 min,
- landed in very busy or built up area = 3 min

5) for all pilots landing in the sea
- if very close to friendly coast line, 90% chance of "rescue by local fishermen" , add short video clip
- if in sea farther from land/coast, and friendly enemy ship nearby (1 km ?), ship changes course or launches small rescue craft, add cut scene pilot recue'd/captured after 30 min. when later on we get control over some small ships (as you before have mentioned wanting to add at some point, some players will enjoy doing pilot risque missions at sea when controlling sea craft)
- if no ships nearby, allow for some possibility for rescue by rescue planes for next 6/12/24 hrs (while pilot sits in small inflatable dingy, maybe even give later pilots a flare gun ?), and pilot can be restored to flying roster after several days
- add random % chance of pilot killed (lost at sea) or MIA and never appears on pilot roster again

i suspect scenes with smoking cigarettes wont be added, in the same way that blood and gore is limited.

showing smoking in action games like this could be interpreted as encouraging young people to smoke

Amazing attention to detail - wow!

My "two pennies worth":

I think that it would be great to have the initial egress from the cockpit in the "first person" view (remember it in EAW? ... where your view rotated around the sky/horizon a bit, as you descended) - a button to open the 'chute will be brilliant!! - and a mandatory switch to "exterior view" on landing - get out of the parachute harness and as one is doing so, the scene zooms out - end of mission ... with some appropriate music!
I think that the "first person" view on the bail-out is very immersive - one can have a loud (wind) whistling noise as one opens the cockpit canopy, a "small library of different "grunts" added for the moment the parachute opens and a hard "thud and grunt" on landing!
Hehe! I guess Oleg and his team have already settled on this sequence anyway!

Keep up the brilliant work Oleg!

This is a joke right, this dude can't be serious?
Oh boy you're gonna get disappointed at launch.

After landing your parachute

1. If you land in friendly zone, you have the options to choose "Return to base" but enemy planes can still shoot you if they spotts you.

2. If you land in enemy zone, you have the options to choose "Surrender" or just wait to be captured or killed by enemy units if you're not able to walk into friendly zone? :) just some suggestions

I'd never thought I'd see such a verbose discussion about how to code the pilot's movements after he parachutes and lands safely. :rolleyes: At most, show the pilot land, unbuckle the parachute from his harness, and be done with it. Anything more IMO is a waste of time and development resources.

Ha,ha, thats the best PLF ive ever seen anyone do , I know this is still WIP but the canopy and rigging lines look very rigid ,will they have more flex and flutter in final versions? , one of the stills also hints at the pilot being draged is that also on the animated cards ?

in the road vehicles that move iirc (? and aircraft ?) the tires will flex/compress and the suspension moves, so maybe they can even eventually add rope like behavior to the parachute strings instead of having them behave like sticks

I resubmit my vote for letting us run the pilot around until some ungodly bastard comes along and fills us with lead

or until we hit refly

/done

I think this is a good idea - if we don't model the entire universe then navigation in nighttime bomber missions will be farcical and silly.

Oleg should model all the stars and constellations out to 40 million light years, and adjust the pilot's viewpoint based on latitude / longitude.

Anything else is a total cop-out.

;)

Me think that when you're doing detail like that, the rest of the game should/must be well advance. Have faith people!!!!!! :)

Back in the real world - strafing aircrew who had parachuted into your territory from a crippled aircraft would have been a court-martial offence in the RAF, and probably still is.

B

Exactly my thoughts ;)

It was mentioned that we won't see everything until it's finished, but if so much attention is put into such details, imagine what the rest of the simulation will be like. :cool:

Thanks for the video Oleg. You've captured the motion really well ;)

I think that's the best 3-second YouTube video I've ever watched. Thanks! ;)

I made a 10sec version :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWohMyI9Hbc

cool video

Thank you for the video and the photos.
These look really great!
Will there be a first person view while falling to earth in the parachute or just a 3rd person view like we have in Il2 right now?

Thank you Oleg and team!

The good news is:Oleg is working in the details of the game,a sure signal that the main part is already done.
I believe that if you really want a new and revolutionary game, the answer will be in the details.

of course, but you can already shoot pilots in IL-2, the only difference I'm suggesting is that you would have direct control over the pilot and be able to RTB or wherever else you may want to roam. You could even run for cover if you see a plane about to crash/bomb/strafe your location.

GREAT WORK!!! Looks lovely Oleg. Really anticipating this title... It would be wonderful to have:

1) 1st person POV during eject/freefall... Lots of tumbling/noise/etc... Perhaps a defective chute .01% of the time by 3rd party mod...

2) Run around after reaching ground... Imagine being chased by a few 109s and then dumping out over a small village, and watching the remaining battle while taking cover behind a barn or tree...

I don't know why but watching the video made me think of the following idea:

HOW ABOUT AN OPTION TO MAKE CAMERAS VISIBLE FROM THE COCKPIT?

This would be great for moviemaking... Maybe just a bright red arrow showign location/direction so that the "perfect Hollywood flight" could be done by "seeing" the cameras and flying through them...

Had a good laugh at the thought any bailed out pilot/aircrew would be "roaming around" in Southern England in 1940. For people who don't live here, we are talking of only 27 miles to England from France at the narrowest point, add another 70 miles and you're more or less in the centre of London. Same distance wide, no, say 100 miles square, and that's where nearly all of the BOB took place. Only 2/3 of that was land. The British had 9 divisions (900,000 troops!) in Southern England, add to that The Home Guard, local police, farm workers and finally the local population, and any wandering would have been minimal at best. Often the locals, if they got there before the army, administered first aid and tea, to aircrew, or something stronger. Bomber crews who crash landed were often in bad shape, broken limbs and bullet wounds, etc., and were probably just glad to get out of the plane before it blew up, and grateful for any assistance offered. Even if they made it to the coast, they'd have had to be good swimmers! Given the British sense of humour they have let them swim out ten miles before collecting them.

Really looking forward to SOW, Oleg and Co. doing a great job, keep it up!

Again British humour ... the "something stronger" was a good beat I suppose.

Maybe with only 1 button?
I mean you can press, for example, "a" key... well, if you press "a" when the pilot is in plane, then jump out, and if you press the same key later, when the pilot is in air, then open chute. Two actions with only 1 key, better to use with hotas/joystick ;).

Thank you for updates, keep good working (and forgive me for my bad english...).

Maybe, but I highly doubt that that pilot would be sentenced ... the uncle of a friend of mine was hit by AAA and forced to bail out above Malta while strafing an airfield on his Cr.42 in 1941; the AAA gunners killed him while hanging from the parachute ... These gunners were released on the basis of some sort of temporary mental inability due to psychological stress or whatever... which is after all understandable. Theory and practice are often very different matters.

Insuber

look! the today oleg video promise!
Storm Of War : Korea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYVG...eature=related

in the last wwords said "thanks Oleg
:cool:

That's IL-2. Why you're trying to deceive people, I do not know.

Um , thats one of my vids and it is made with IL2 and I always thank Oleg at the end do you have a point or are ya just larkin around...

The latter m8 ;)

Thanks Oleg, great attention to detail as always.:grin:

Ha,ha...now ... who's watchin who:mrgreen:

:mrgreen:

I'm one more who really likes this vid, despite the somewhat rigid look of the chute.

Would be fabulous if we stay with the 1st person perspective during bail-out. Never really liked the Il-2 3rd person view of a body flying through the fuselage (but of course that was made due to the then computing power limitations).

Pressing CTRL-E should start a sequence with: A deafening roar upon opening the hood, a scramble to exit the cockpit, a violent tumbling of the horizon. Then the parachute deploy command should result in the usual violent tug, maybe a short tunnel vision thing, and then hanging calmly under the canopy.... Would be lovely, especially if "failure modes" are put into the sequence. Stuck hood. Death upon hitting empennage. No parachute deploy. Randomly having a few of those would be good.

One thing about the animation; I am not sure the pilot would be getting up so quickly: he'd be trying to get his chute sorted out to so he could get it back to the AM :D

I woudn't mind if SoW: Korea would look like on this IL2 vid :) Great job!

so?

then roam around in the center of London, I'd love to take the time to see the building/city modeling from close up from ground level

as someone mentioned before it would be handy for movie making too

stuffy in here

Could we have downed pilots picked up by Catalina's as a mission?

http://www.directart.co.uk/mall/images/b0031.jpg

Just a quick few questions. With the dynamic weather, will parachutes be effected by the wind? Will we bailout over a field only to get blown in the woods or out to sea? Will be get blown along the ground in a strong wind and have to release our harness to stop?

Cheers

Sorry to add a discrepancy note, but I do not find the parachute behaviour realistic, once the pilot is on the ground.

I am really impressed by the pilot animation, a real textbook landing acording to 1940's doctrine.

Nevertheless, once the parachute is not suporting the pilot's weight, it should float on the air as a silk scarf would do (a parachute is nothing more than a huge silk scarf in the wind) and fall over the pilot. If wind is present, the parachute keeps its bell-like form and falls aside the pilot and, if the wind is suficiently strong the parachute drags the parachutist around. The procedure then is to pull the bottom parachute lines to desinflate the canopy and let it fall, or get up and run to either side of the lines so the wind incides the canopy sideways and it collapses.

Here in the animation, the parachute canopy appears to be a heavy object that falls to the ground like a rock, instead of floating once free of the weight of the pilot.
Mi respects for the developers, but as former paratrooper I strongly believe that this animation should be corrected in pro of realism, if that is the original objective.

Either way, I can't wait for SOW:BOB to come out.

That all depends if there is a wind present. The parachute is never free from the pilot in this short video and won't billow down unless there is no wind.

+1

Looking great there !!!

Very nice tumble action and all ...

does the airspeed play any role on how fast the pilot puts away his parachute?

Are we going to see pilots or gunners being draged away by strong surface wind blowing?

Does the pilot cary a sidearm he can shoot with?

Are we almost done?

Can we have the game this year?

just what i was thinking Gaga...jeez...its a flight sim and i want to play it sometime before i pop my clogs :)

So? Someone gives a barrel-full of great reasons why your preferred choice is unrealistic, and your response is "so?".

And what you describe as "stuffy" is the desire of some of us to have the game actually reflect the reality of the situation.

It might be fun to have a pilot stroll around the English countryside avoiding strafing planes, commandeering passing vehicles, swimming the channel back to France - it might be fun to have invisibility shields and F15s in 1940, but it isn't realistic.

People need to make up their minds whether they want a SIMULATOR or a first person shooter.

looking great Oleg and team.

This debate about what a pilot does after they parachute to land is getting stupid, if it's friendly, they're ready for the next mission, if it's enemy, they're a POW. The real debate should be what happens when they land in water, remember many brave and skilled pilots were lost to Poseidon. The Germans put a lot of effort into rescuing downed pilots with sea planes and ships but Britain kept trying to destroy them.

I have an old book on the BOB, printed just after it happened, it shows the methods British coastal command used to rescue pilots. Here's a picture of a "rescue station" and patrol boat.

(I cannot load the picture, I don't have a Photobucket account, but I can email it if someone’s interested?)


And another thing, a good alternate mission might be to fly a lysander into france one moon lit night to supply arms to the resistance. Lets see who can land onto a small field at night?

He111.

ahh and maybe so we can also pick up the 2 British airmen from allo allo ?

:) :)

Finally some consructive critisism pertaining to the actuall update.

+1

Other than that it looked great.


I can however imagine it to be very difficoult and takes a lot of work getting it to look realistic (affected by wind and so on). Hope not.

@Gadget: your criticism is polite, however I think you may not realise the complexities of what you're asking for.

Have a glance over this article discussing cloth simulation within a 3d title:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...-for-3d-games/

Whilst it's certainly technically possible, it's very difficult, so we once more come round to the problem of finite resources. Making a game is all about balancing compromises. I'd be extremely surprised if SOW is not feature-complete at this stage. if Oleg is still deciding on implementing possible features at this stage then I couldn't possibly see the game coming out within the next year or two.

You've got to decide what sort of features are most important for a flight simulator. If this was a game about the linen industry, then accurate cloth physics would probably be high up the list of important effects. I want almost all of the development work to go into the feeling of flight, the representation of terrain and the believability of the AI. I wouldn't be prepared to sacrifice any development time from these areas for what I feel are less important factors.

That's easy...the pilot kisses the ground:-P

I agree that the ongoing debate about these nitpicking details are redicilous.
The pilot becomes a POW if landing i enemy territory, if not his rescued what do i know, and frankly i don't care why simulate any more?

Bottom line here guys SoW will still be much more realistic than IL2.

Just because you can; if you have the option to have it, then why not? ;) It would be quite call, but maybe as an add-on.

In my mind the bail out sequence in its entirety is one of the core elements of the game , one of the the most complained about sequences of il2 was the very same for its unrealism , lets get it right this time so that it still looks beleivable in 10 years , im not realy interested in him once he has landed ,thats not what this game is about , how he bails , how he pulls and how his canopy behaves in flight and on landing is what is important and if its done right it will add 10 fold to the imersion of the sim.

Ps.Oleg , I know you will, im just thinking out loud.

I agree that there's nothing wrong with hoping for things, but it's not as if a lot of the requests that people make are 'options'. I really do think people generally misunderstand how tricky programming sims/games is. What may seem like a simple thing to implement may realistically be very difficult.

Someone else - forgive me, I'm paraphrasing others - spoke of the harmonisation of experience. Probably TD. As a game maker, you do not want one part of the experience to have a better fidelity than another - it breaks immersion. One part becomes ok, the other part not good enough. In other words: you can't stick in bits that don't gel with the overall experience.

Another point I have made before is this: people really do tend to think that their personal ideas are new and never-before considered. If it's a good idea, don't you think that someone, in an entire team of people - professionals, I might add, not hobbyists - who are actually working at this flight-sim full-time, for years on end: don't you ever think that they might have considered this too? By all means bring it up, ask about it, but not in a manner that suggests you're bringing enlightenment to the ignorant. It's very rude.

Someone else again (!) also advised that if Oleg & Co are asking for feedback, it's not about how good you think x/y/z is. It's about whether there's been any errors with historical accuracy; acquiring more accurate data; getting old and difficult to find pictures.

I just wish people would be less vociferous in their demands and more appreciative of what we're getting. If I were Oleg, I'd think this community a bunch of know-it-all-do-nothing smart-arses.

Fortunately, he seems to be a better man than me :D

edit:: I should add - I'm not getting at anyone particularly in the thread. The comments I'm making are aimed at a generally large part of the community.

Cloth simulations are difficult if you don't know what your doing. However cloth simulations are not that difficult to implent, the difficulty is whether Oleg has the resourses or will to put it in a parachute.

Cloth simultaions have been around for years and are readily availabe in many common Physics / GPU API's:

nVidia + CUDA
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/d...imulation.html

ATI + Havoc
http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=havok-cloth


Here is a realtime cloth demo using Flash 7 ;)
http://www.custom-logic.com/exp/cloth/cloth.html

Well yes: what I wanted to highlight was the difficulty in implementing these things & the associated cost in development time. To my mind, this workload could probably be better allocated to other areas of the sim - but it's just my opinion. I wouldn't refuse any of it. If it comes, excellent. It's just, I think, highly unlikely for the initial release.

recalling how much a single core cpu bogged down with many parachutes in the air, and believing that there might be more than a few animated crew descending softly by chute in SoW gives me pause. I hope this feature can be turned off. Good for a few giggles and grins, and maybe a few wows, sure. But if Oleg is going to release a sim that, at full tilt (as some suspect) will bring even a modern gaming rig to it's knees, then wanting a downed crewman to wander about while the battle above still rages above just seems to scream single-digit frames. Maybe the unfortunate sot could steal an enemy plane and escape? How will this be implemented in single player or multiplayer for that matter and still render acceptable frames per second. Maybe better to just have the pilot run, duck and cover just like before in IL2. After all, everyone else will be too busy flying about to watch what happens to those who have already left the aerial arena. Why waste the cores, threads or cpu cycles getting animated figures to do this or that? Hey! Maybe if I were to get shot down that would be how my online and offline flight ended, if enabled? I mean I hit the silk online and I no longer can see what's going on with the rest of the mission. All I can see is what my avatar-pilot is doing. No outside views of other craft/players. Just me gathering my chute and trying to outrun Socialist-indoctrinated Rottweilers and there square-headed handlers. A whole new facet of the sim whereby the whole power of my gaming system is redirected to my pilot (as in an FP-Shooter) trying to get back to base. Of course I could just end the mission, and respawn for another go at the brutes. ;)
Flyby out

S!

Flyby. Exactly my thoughts. You bail = game over. You might get rescued if over channel, POW if over England, slight possibility of escaping if over France depending on side you fly of course. Tons of parachutes will bring the system down.

Even those multiplayer flight sims like Aces High 2 get a dip in FPS if there is a lot of them. Some even used it as a way of making defence harder, dropped hundreds of paratroopers bringing the lag and FPS down to single digits. And this game can handle hundreds of players normally, but look at graphics. It all comes with a cost ;)

Quoted for truth, hands down best post in the thread.

But tons of parachutes, with the added possibility of a failure, has already been modelled in BoB2 without fps loss, so I don't really understand your worries? Yes this sequence is more complicated, but technology has moved on: look at WoP.