Civilians?

[Borsch]

Sounds awesome! Keeping fingers crossed it actually happens

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Borsch

Sounds awesome! Keeping fingers crossed it actually happens

this is one snip of info oleg previously provided to related questions (there are many related bits he released over the last few years on this)

the question to him was (in this forum):

2) will there be civilian road and rail traffic in BoB ?
- right now in il2 when you see a truck or car on the road it is always military (even the bicycles), same with the trains they are always a military target. if we have some civilian road traffic (few buses and cars maybe doing a programmed "loop" journey) and trains in england (and they existed in ww2 period) then points could be deducted for destroying innocent civilian objects, and that means we need to correctly identify a target before engaging it, not just shoot at anything that moves !

oleg's answer

2. It is possible. Probably we will minimize it in release, becasue of hit to resources, but in general Buses already now can travel by their own trajectory in a city and make stops as well cars will try to find place for parking in a end "waypoint". It is working already. Just would repeat the amount of such action probably we will need to minimize due to resource eater feature. But for Editor we will offere to use it for enduser to modify scenery, etc...

[zapatista]

some more snips along a similar vein (the greater plan for BoB)

question:

99) Oleg I have seen that models of planes and vehicles have hinges that can be manipulated. Is this also a feature that the player will be allowed to use? Like opening hatches on a tankturret or opening the cockpit of a fighterplane?
And will this feature also be applied to human figures? So the player will be able to position the arms and such of the body?

oleg's answer

From the beginning we are making all things openable... I dopn't know how many of these features will go in final reelase... but as with Il-2 this means we will modify the code that to use the BASE input at initial development. With the release we will have AA-guns controlbale by player... this is intersting for Online, but it will also works in a single missions, if you only like to create such.

And as I told... the code will be partially open in terms of modification with the use out of normal fixed parameters and code servers...

In time I think we may see even U-boat controlable The water is transparent in engine.

[SlipBall]

I had a favorite mission that I had made in IL2. It was a ground based mission that had 50 vehicles on the road. They were jeeps, buses, fuel trucks all on the roads as singles, through out the scope of the map. My machine seemed to handle it well, but I had a hell of time finding many of those moving possible target's. Its a big map, with lots of roads and eyestrain, looking and searching non stop. But when one was found, it sure was fun to make an ID with a low pass, and if one of ours I would tip my wings and move on. If Oleg could offer human figures in the objects list, I think it would add a lot to the map, while not causing too big of a PC hit. The vehicles could always be just added by the mission designer.

[artjunky]

I think it was about 4 or 5 years ago that I brought this up last time...it seems to have a better reaction this time.

To add to what others said, having no life in the game is a killer and with how beautifully this sim looks, it's too bad that it's not complete.

I've heard Oleg's remarks about the buses and I'm TOTALLY for keeping the number of "civilians" to a minimum. Of course it would be great if they were actually 3d with natural movement on paths like the buses but even if the are stationary, I think that would work pretty well.

I also think humans would help put things into better scale. When flying over cities, at times, the buildings seem somewhat out of scale and to have people near them, it might make it more natural.

I would really like having people out on farms.

It would also be interesting to be able to build columns of refugees leaving battle areas. Of course, in WWII Concentration camps put people on Death marches and it might be interesting to be forced, as a pilot, to pay attention to details and not just shoot everything on the roads.

Again, I keep coming back to the using civilians to make it a more interesting by creating an incentive NOT to kill civilians.

I've been reading "The Monuments Men." It's a historical book about the Soldiers who were put into action to guard the irreplaceable monuments and artwork of Europe. As The Allied Soldiers move in through Europe, the Germans were moving artwork out of France and then through Germany. There was actually a Burt Lancaster movie called "The Train," that followed part of this story. In this case, it was a train and the French underground (in the movie) painted the top of the cars with artwork, white so as to warn the Allied bombers.

Anyways, I think it would be VERY interesting to set up scenarios like this.

Oleg, please make this available.

[Novotny]

Originally Posted by artjunky

it's too bad that it's not complete.

It'll never be complete, old bean. When someone finally builds the absolute-universe emulator, you and I will both be dead and will not care for one.

Why do people find it so impossible to understand that at current technology levels, we cannot implement the world, or even a fraction of it.

What we do is reproduce enough in a player-experience to try to give that person the impression they are, for instance, flying a plane. Over England, say.

For the love of God, would people please stop asking for detail that is beyond this decade's processing power?

[AndyJWest]

Originally Posted by Novotny

It'll never be complete, old bean. When someone finally builds the absolute-universe emulator, you and I will both be dead and will not care for one.

Why do people find it so impossible to understand that at current technology levels, we cannot implement the world, or even a fraction of it.

What we do is reproduce enough in a player-experience to try to give that person the impression they are, for instance, flying a plane. Over England, say.

For the love of God, would people please stop asking for detail that is beyond this decade's processing power?

Well said.

And can people also note that just because a feature could be modelled in SoW:BoB, that doesn't mean it will. It isn't just a question of processing power, other resources are finite too.

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by Novotny

When someone finally builds the absolute-universe emulator, you and I will both be dead and will not care for one.

But, at least you'll be emulated...

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by artjunky

I also think humans would help put things into better scale. When flying over cities, at times, the buildings seem somewhat out of scale and to have people near them, it might make it more natural.

agreed ! the good news is:

1) oleg seems to have listened/been-aware of the large amount of "feedback" about the problem with incorrect proportional sizes in the il2 series (buildings / vehicles / humans / pilots / objects). i think some were "out" by around 30% iirc. for BoB the rules are much stricter, and all indications are that proportions/sizes will now be correct (i have seen screenshots of foo'bar the german modeler using human figures next to the buildings he created for BoB, but cant see them on his website anymore)

2) most of us really should only fly 95% of the time in il2/BoB with the correct FoV setting for our individual monitor sizes, so it is set to the exact field of view the monitor occupies. that way you would get the correct/realistic "sensation of speed" when flying at low altitude over the scenery. with many people flying in a more zoomed view (to compensate for the severe "distant object" visibility problem in il2), this completely distorts the sense of distance to objects, and our aircraft speed in flight. by all indications this will be resolved for BoB

Originally Posted by artjunky

It would also be interesting to be able to build columns of refugees leaving battle areas.

the more i think about this, i cant really figure why modeling groups of "individuals" moving together would be such a problem (to keep it simple, lets say an infantry group of soldiers on a road). surely modern game engines for fps/driving/flying sims dont constantly draw/display each individual object no matter how close/far it is to the player/viewer.
for ex for the group of 50 soldiers marching i would have expected a game engine to use
- in close up, display/draw/calculate each individual soldiers skeletal movements
- at medium distance: have the soldiers together displayed as a single object for which only one position/movement is calculated (similar to what is done for an aircraft)
- at far distances, use the old "dot" method

iirc in the old 486 cpu days, one gfx card (powerVR) had as its great strength that it only used gpu power to draw/display what the player could physically realistically see from the position he was in on the "game map", it wouldnt waste gpu power on drawing objects and scenery "over the horizon" or out of view. most other cards at the time (3dfx voodoo etc) would actually draw the whole game world iirc, yet the player was only in one part of the map. and that is over 10 yrs ago.

surely in 2010 most modern gfx cards do something similar to that powerVR card now, so having 30 or 50 soldiers marching on a road should not be a waste of cpu/gpu when you are flying an aircraft miles away. the game engine should imho only keep track of the overall game plan and mathematical position of variables inside the game world, and objects would be grouped into a single variable once out of view.

as one poster mentioned in another recent thread here, one core of the cpu could deal with the campaign engine, another core draws the game world we see etc...


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[zapatista]

Originally Posted by SlipBall

I had a favorite mission that I had made in IL2. It was a ground based mission that had 50 vehicles on the road. They were jeeps, buses, fuel trucks all on the roads as singles, through out the scope of the map. My machine seemed to handle it well, but I had a hell of time finding many of those moving possible target's. Its a big map, with lots of roads and eyestrain, looking and searching non stop. But when one was found, it sure was fun to make an ID with a low pass, and if one of ours I would tip my wings and move on. If Oleg could offer human figures in the objects list, I think it would add a lot to the map, while not causing too big of a PC hit. The vehicles could always be just added by the mission designer.

exactemundo !

there are several problems with the current empty and dead il2 world we have now, and by the sounds of it oleg recognizes this to and is in the process of addressing both elements

1) for the lifeless empty world of il2, oleg is now adding "life"
- some animals will be added as static objects and have been confirmed (? cows, horses, sheep in fields ?). and some bird groups/flocks will fly around and exist as "objects" you might hit (bird strike)
- i hope this will include some further objects like tractors moving around in fields, some civilian cars/trucks/bicycles on roads (driving a preset trajectory or loop probably). civilian ships on the water to, fishing boats have been seen in screen shots already.
- airfields will have a certain amount of AI ground activity now, probably jeeps and trucks driving around. ambulances and fire crews responding to damaged aircraft landing is likely. refuel and rearming on the ground will get some sort of animated ground crews

2) the other aspect is having to identify ground targets before you engage them, so it isnt the current "shoot anything that moves".
- even over enemy territory there should be civilian traffic, and penalties for hitting them (even some civilian air traffic ?)

about having individuals modeled and function in an animated form, we already had the single cyclist modeled in il2, having more of this type of single human action should be a logical progression for BoB (farmer in field, a pedestrian walking around in town, single mechanic/technician/pilot walking around the airfield, civilian cyclist on road ?). the articulated skeleton oleg developed for pilot and aircrew could be adapted to function in that role i presume (maybe in a lower detail mode, like the ships/vehicles are lower detail then the high polygon aircraft.
- i havnt seen oleg post much about it so far (other then as human animations he is planning on for refueling/rearming etc), but if it is possible in the new engine and he adds a few "active" objects like this, then it can be added on or expanded on later (3e parties being able to develop this further ?)
- modeling groups of individual humans marching/moving will probably be the most difficult from a technical point for programmers and seems unlikely for a while. like troops marching on their way to the front, columns of prisoners, roads clogged with refugees, etc .. and would be the most cpu/gpu hogging.

what i am hoping for in BoB, and there are direct confirmations that oleg is adding several of these elements already, is to get a living breathing active world to have our air war in.

to take this one step further, i am hoping we will also be able to fly some transport and resupply missions in unarmed or even civilian planes (mail, parts, troop transport etc). i initially this might be missions like flying supplies into Stalingrad for the germans, air dropping some allied supplies to the french resistance at night at a specific grid position (with points obtained depending on accuracy), picking up downed pilots from french fields, etc.. other missions might be flying photo reconnaissance over enemy lines etc

hopefully eventually the dynamic campaign engine will be able to "task" missions like that in the same way that combat missions are available for fighters and bombers.