[Oleg Maddox]

Originally Posted by Freycinet

Luffe, the "pancake" forests you disparage were an absolutely brilliant programming solution to a problem that, up till Il-2, hadn't been solved by any flight sim: how to show a forest cover of large extension. Oleg solved this with four layers of semi-transparent textures that gave an exceptionally good illusion of a forest of 3D trees from just a few hundred meters up.

I think you probably weren't around playing flight sims in 2001 when Il-2 came out, but the graphics blew everything else out of the water back then. And the particular solution for forests is still a very clever one.

You have to know something about programming and system resources to understand why flight sims look the way they do. A handful of teenage kids in this forum haven't got a clue, but most have an idea...

Correct.
And many copied this technology. Some even for clouds .