Graphics engine from original IL2 utilised in CloD. So what hope for BoM?
 

So I'll qualify the title by asking those who played the original IL2 to remember the following;

Ground objects popping into view. Textures being drawn onto objects as if there was a large bubble around the players aircraft and once inside that 'bubble' the textures were rendered, showing a pop-up effect as they 'appeared'. Clouds 'popping' into view in the distance.

The 'new' smoke effects are barely discernible from the smoke effects that have been created in modified installs of the old IL2 game engine (just check the new effects for 4.12 by Gurner?).

Effects present in old IL2 have been removed from 'new' CloD.

Example? Just check the effect when an aircraft hits the water or ground. Old IL2, aircraft exploded and scattered, new CloD...aircraft vanish at point of impact (game pauses maybe 2 frames then continues), just watch any aircraft you shoot down collide with the ground/water...they disappear.

Effects that were present in the 'new' game engine have been removed/stripped right back just to get any performance.

So now, we have to sit and wait for BoM.

Now the way it goes is that we are either getting fixes for CloD after installing BoM over it, or fixes for CloD stand-alone once they are working in patches for Bom (the latter is highly unlikely) but lets look at the Graphics Engine they are working with.

It still has horrendous 'pop-up' on ground textures. Fly over London, look down and the ground is visibly drawn in front of you...it looks 'S**^'. The annoying thing is, when you are chasing an aircraft low on the deck, it's hard to concentrate on the LoD (when it is visible) as the background popping into view is just rubbish, especially when other games do it so well.

If they can't do it successfully, then make smaller maps! Sorry, but after reading of Bomber Pilot troubles as the objects don't appear because of the 'draw distance bubble', I would suggest the first thing that 1C do is actually destroy the crappy legacy IL 2 engine and start from scratch.

My feeling is that IL2 1946 is the single best WW2 simulation ever, but CloD tried to hang onto the apron strings and take the plaudits of it's parent!

Time has shown it has failed to do that with Multiple bugs still unresolved and the graphics engine, tweaked and spruced up from the original has not enabled the Developer's to create the vision they hoped.

I wonder if they will be brave enough to admit they failed with the 'new' Graphics engine and actually re-invest in one that works?

Just asking?

Cheers, MP

I have no doubt that if the series survives the graphic engine will evolve even more than the original series graphics did. The whole reason they built the new game engine was too make it easier to add/change features and evolve with advanced computer graphics. There is no doubt that there are still way to many problems, but nothing that can't be overcome with the existing engine. Many people think they can't, because they won't see beyond the unfinished game engine, that was forced out the door way to early.

SpeedTree/Shadows/Shimmer/Collisions and Cloud/Smoke particles are major problems that really needs addressing before the Sequels release. I would like to see a user option to set the LOD building popup distance for those with more capable systems.

There is simply no time, or even more importantly money, to build a new game engine. If the existing game engine can't be repaired and evolve, the series and development is doomed.

Some other developer will have to take up the challenge, and I see no other developer close to picking up the WW2 aircombat simulation batton. Gaijin has a chance, and I hope they are making the effort, but their last effort has me concerned they will, or even want to deliver a simulation.

Why? Who are you asking? No one outside the Dev's knows what is going on and after reading Luthiers "answers" it seems they're not completely sure either.

Puma, you've met the man. Why not e-mail Oleg over at his new company and ask him? Lets face it, he's the one who f*cked this up big-stylee in the first place.

Infact, I think you can reach him here;

http://vizerra.com/forms/contact-us

Salute

I think there naturally had to be some evolution from the old IL-2 1946 engine, there were many positive elements in that code, it handled many aspects of rendering and drawing very well.

I am not a programmer, and haven't had access to the code, neither has anyone here, so anything we say is speculation, however I would guess the issues they had when the game was released with the code not properly making use of multiple core processors is a clue as to why we are still seeing the engine limited in its ability to draw distant objects and their appearance smoothly.

It would seem the basic structure of the original release of CoD was not advanced much beyond the old IL-2 single core standard, and when the release made its appearance to near universal condemnation of its failure, they had to cobble together some sort of addon to make partial use of the number of cores in current processors. This was an addon, not a complete revision and we are likely not seeing the efficiency we should.

It's true we do see some multiple core use now, but how effectively? As you say, we still have the issue with distance draw, handling multiple aircraft, pauses when approaching objects, etc. etc.

Perhaps that is one of the major reasons they are doing a big rewrite for BoM>?

Sorry to be sarcastic but how on earth should a graphics engine work that loads all objects and textures on a map like the one in BoB from start?

Remember Falcon 4 and the "Player bubble" slider? Ahh - they only load textures and do collision detection and detailed AI for objects in bubble around the player - thus IL2 uses the Falcon 4 graphics engine! ;)

The graphics engine in CloD is NOT the same as the old OpenGL/Dx8 one used in IL2. It uses the same mechanism as all other flight sims with a "bubble" and due to the density of objects in the new engine it is much more noticable over London for example. True. And if the render engine was more effective they could make the bubble larger so you don't see it - but it will still be there. Be sure ;)

EDIT: And do you remember what happened when you set the F4 bubble slider to far on the rigs we had when F4 was released? Slideshow. Maybe they should offer a "bubble slider" in CloD (or rather the seqel) for the ones that are so annoyed by seeing the bubble that they rather have a slideshow. I think it would be good for the ones with beefy systems... The problem of making of making a bubble larger was however discovered long ago by the greeks...

EDIT AGAIN: And yes it's Friday night after a though week and a couple of glasses of red wine so my sarcasm it a bit over the top - sorry for that :)

+1, common sense (A rare thing on these forums) ;).

Sorry and not offense, but I have to say you have not even a clue about what you are talking about.

He's right. You can find quite some bugs in Clod which have made their appearances in original IL2 ever since its release. The most compelling proof is the high altitude performance bug. Apparently Oleg had migrated some systems (and hence bugs with them) from IL2 to Clod.

nonsense !

what is true is that some of the aircraft flight physics parameters have been re-used from the late il2 series, and why wouldnt they ? they already had the data needed for a number of aircraft, do you really think they would tell their new people "burn all the old stuff and go out again to search for all that data from scratch" ?

what IS different in CoD is that there is a new gfx and game engine to represent/display/model that data (and new information available has allowed them to refine it further), hence it would behave much more realistically and true to life.

regarding the high altitude aircraft performance, luthier already stated there are reasons why in CoD this is not working correctly, and it will require a significant rewrite of some of the code to correctly implement (so not a "limitation" of the new game engine), and they havnt had the time to do this for the CoD rewrite so far, but hare intending to include it for BoM.

Of course though, why invent the wheel twice? ;) It's cheaper, albeit somewhat slower to innovate (due to all the bugs and limitations) than if they had just wrote a new engine completely from scratch (because then they would really know what is going on inside and debugging probably wouldn't be so tedious).
This thread actually makes it seem like they really did just take portions of the old engine, updated a few things and then split it into modules.
A bit like Apple really; no inventions, just cramming the best together and adding an "i" to the name and slapping on an outrageous price and calling it revolutionary. :)

Although I am very optimistic for BoM because many patches back, I had decent performance after finally figuring out the best settings for my rig

My advice to everybody on here:

"Be a pessimist, and expect the worst because then life can only get better."