Friday 2010-02-12 VIDEO and Discussion Thread

[Sutts]

Thanks for the update Luthier, work in progress or not, it's looking great.

I'm really pleased you've started showing us some real game footage, it's increased confidence no end.

I realise the ground textures are still being worked on but one little point I'd like to confirm.....I thought I saw a few fields with modern day tractor "tram lines" - parallel lines in the crop designed to allow tractors to more easily apply fertiliser and sprays. I'm certain 1940s era fields would just have appeared from the air as a uniform crop since horses were still very much in use and the few early tractors were certainly not working the fields in the same way as they do today.

I realise you are probably quite aware of this. I just thought I'd mention it as it was the one thing in the Memphis Belle movie which looked completely wrong to me - I have spent a good deal of my life on farms though!

The 1940s British landscape looked quite different to today as the hedges were generally much higher, the fields smaller and less uniform in shape with many more lanes which have since been lost to the post war field enlargement scheme. Also, at the time of the Battle of Britain, wheat stooks and traditional pitched hay stacks (loose hay - no bales) would have been an obvious feature in the landscape. Self propelled combines and balers were only just appearing so neat lines of straw and stacks of bales would have been a rare sight in those days.

I'm sorry, you probably know all this but just in case. I do appreciate this is a flight sim and at the end of the day it really doesn't matter but if the textures are still in progress then it can't harm to get these little 1940s details right. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has read about BOB pilots belly landing in wheat fields during the harvest or crashing through a hay stack.

A couple of pictures of stooks and haystacks:

Thanks again and please don't take this as a criticism.