Friday 2010-07-16 Dev. update and Discussions about the update ONLY!

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by Chivas

Well I don't know anything on how CGI works, but Oleg has mentioned that he hopes to have cinematic graphics and use the SOW engine in the movie business.

i interpreted that oleg statement as meaning BoB visuals would be good enough to be used by the movie industry for documentaries, for ex to illustrate specific aircraft or combat events. the computer programs and grafix used for this in the last few years has been rather rudimentary and looks somewhat primitive. i dont think oleg's BoB is intended for major hollywood movie productions

personally i dont like the whole CGI visual effect used in so many movies these days, it always looks very artificial and easy to spot. also gives the impression the producers were to cheap or hurried to "get the real thing". no substitute for creating the right atmosphere with vintage planes,vehicles and ships, and actually have it filmed in the real physical location it is intended to represent

[brando]

Originally Posted by zapatista

i interpreted that oleg statement as meaning BoB visuals would be good enough to be used by the movie industry for documentaries, for ex to illustrate specific aircraft or combat events. the computer programs and grafix used for this in the last few years has been rather rudimentary and looks somewhat primitive. i dont think oleg's BoB is intended for major hollywood movie productions

personally i dont like the whole CGI visual effect used in so many movies these days, it always looks very artificial and easy to spot. also gives the impression the producers were to cheap or hurried to "get the real thing". no substitute for creating the right atmosphere with vintage planes,vehicles and ships, and actually have it filmed in the real physical location it is intended to represent

Unfortunately, that ideal is made very difficult by the physical changes to the landscapes over which many of the war's air battles were fought; certainly in Europe at least. Modern buildings, telecommunications towers and, most especially, modern road systems (and reduced railway lines) would make the earthly background to aerial combat quite anachronistically unreal. There is just too much new 'stuff' to ignore.

B

Hi,

I dont wanna open a new thread because of one little question.

Is there a list out there which planes will definately be in SOW BoB?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by zapatista

[
the real question is going to be about the degree these fires (and smoke) will vary in BoB depending on what parts on the aircraft are damaged, and how long the fires will last, and if the fires and damage spreads etc.. so we get some variation in small fires and big fires, mixed with variations of smoke effect, and maybe some aircraft exploding mid air when bomb stores or fuel containers are affected by fire. from other snippets oleg has provided in the past, he is taking account of that to some degree, so fires in aircraft in general look very good to me so far.

Exactly. Gettin a minor flame every single time is just like getting the same colour of smoke or a huge flame every single time. It's not only boring, it's also unrealistic. Just look at the youtube video of the modified Corsair, that thing has a constant smoke stream which varies in colour depending on what's burning, plus an intermittent flame stream which turns into a permanent one, then cuts out again when the plane goes inverted and finally gets extinguished as it picks up speed in the dive after the pilot bails out.

That doesn't mean I expect the development team to include a load of painstaking and FPS-costly calculations to do this according to what material is burning on the release version. I'll be perfectly happy if they only have 5 different fire types and 5 smoke types that randomly change from one type to another or cut out under some simple triggers. For example, "if airspeed>400mph then flame=0", simple stuff like that.

Things like fluctuating instrument needles, engines that run on the same power settings and yet they develop different temperatures, fuel consumptions and problems, all it takes is randomizers and we'll get a much more believable experience. This doesn't have to be 100% real, unless we somehow get cray supercomputers to run this, it just has to feel real and make you feel like there's things working under the hood. Later on, when we get more powerful PCs, it's just a case of replacing the random functions with precisely detailed ones that take more things into account. Like i've said in the past, we didn't have water=3 and perfect mode when IL2 was first released but we got it eventually. Show the guys who are coding this a little bit of faith, they've earned it after all these years

I like the screenshots in this update and i think they are good portrayals of "catastrophic damage, GTFO out of the plane" type of fires. Supposing that SoW will have a life as long as IL2 and the fact that it will be open to modding from the start, all we need is provision for certain effects and triggers. I can bet my right thumb that within a week of releasing the 3rd party tools there will be a few hundred modified flame textures for us to pick and choose from, let's not worry about things that will be easily fixed according to our taste. It's like buying a car and basing the decision entirely upon the color of the models that the dealer has in stock, without even considering what's under the hood. Just like this, it's the underlying structure of the game engine that matters most for long term updates and development. I can live with reduced detail in a few things while waiting for stronger PCs to come, as long as the important stuff is there (FM/DM, campaigns, AI, user-friendliness, moddability) and i know the engine has spare room for extra "modules" to be "plugged in" at a later date.

As for the comparison between IL2, SoW and WoP, correct me if i'm wrong but i think that WoP's maps are tiny compared to the ones used in IL2 and SoW. It's no wonder they can cram so much detail into it if they have a similar CPU/GPU to run it on that only has to render 50% the map sizes. When the 3rd party tools come out i bet we could see a BoP-level object density map, it would just probably be that tiny stretch of the channel between Calais and Dover in order to maintain acceptable framerates.

In retrospect, criticism and fancy ideas are always good to have for the long run, but when asking for things to be included on the release version let's at least try to keep it in perspective a bit. We need the dreamers with the wild ideas just as much as we need the totalitarian accuracy nazis and the guys who will compromise for less, so that the new sim will not only have the drive to evolve and improve, but also the revenue stream needed to fund this evolution. Just my friendly 2 cents as usual

[Lucas_From_Hell]

Oleg, Ilya and co. have stated over and over (and over, and over, and over, and...) that they will NOT show the big picture until the final release, for the surprise effect.

What we see on these updates are tiny details - the kind of details that show why this game will be 100 times cooler than anything ever put together before.

I'm pretty sure they've referred to this question of terrain and map specifically as well countless times.

They won't show anything in its full glory. They want you to use your imagination, just to make you think of something "good" and then blow you away with something a bit "HOLY SHIT! *jaw drops*"

If they show everything it won't be fun to wait for friday hitting F5 anymore...

Originally Posted by Lucas_From_Hell

Oleg, Ilya and co. have stated over and over (and over, and over, and over, and...) that they will NOT show the big picture until the final release, for the surprise effect.

What we see on these updates are tiny details - the kind of details that show why this game will be 100 times cooler than anything ever put together before.

I'm pretty sure they've referred to this question of terrain and map specificially as well countless times.

They won't show anything in its full glory. They want you to use your imagination, just to make you think of something "good" and then blow you away with something a bit "HOLY SHIT! *jaw drops*"

If they show everything it won't be fun to wait for friday hitting F5 anymore...

No pressure then.....

[Zorin]

Originally Posted by Hecke

Hi,

I dont wanna open a new thread because of one little question.

Is there a list out there which planes will definately be in SOW BoB?

Player controlled:

1. Spitfire Mark I
2. Hurricane Mark I
3. Blenheim IV
4. Gladiator II (maybe)
5. Tiger Moth
6. Bf109E-3
7. Bf110 (not sure which version)
8. Ju-88A-1
9. He-111H-2
10. Cr. 42
11. G. 50
12. Br. 20
13. Bonus Su-26 aerobatics plane
14. Ju87B

AI:

RAF

Vickers Wellington
Short Sunderland
Westland Lysander
Bristol Beaufighter
Supermarine Walrus
Avro Autogiro
Boulton Paul Defiant
Avro Anson
Bristol Blenheim IF

Luftwaffe

Do17Z
Do215
Ju52
Ju52 seaplane
Fw200C-1
He59
He115
Bf108B

[Fireskull]

1C: Maddox Games,


That was a great decision to release images of the seagulls first. They are mostly white and easy to model. It is good to start small and develop more difficult things later.


Good thinking!

Thank you for considering my endless requests for birds!

"Remember: Birds are everywhere!", but there are some other things that are everywhere, too!

[nearmiss]

Of course those birds would be a plus, it takes just about as much in math processing to provide flying birds as flying planes.

To those with the super fast (expensive) computer systems the birds probably won't make much difference.

Marginal or not so hot computer systems will have a tough enough time with the higher quality 16 poly graphics.

Then again if birds, sheep, humans or other critters moving all around are to be included there should be a switch to turn them off to save on FPS.

[Fireskull]

nearmiss,


Yeah, birds would be great, but I am sure that they could be done with little impact on Storm of War frames per second. Remember how the pilots in IL-2 could be reduced in quality with a graphics setting change? This made the pilots have less impact on IL-2.


In Storm of War, I trust that the Maddox Team will make many things available with variances of detail setting. How far this will go, we do not know at this time.

Like many things with all simulation or game developers, features tend to evolve with time. Perhaps a day will come when we can choose the number of extra features, such as setting the number of birds, leaves, dolphins, insects, dust, debris, and so forth generated in the simulation for customization.

...Just a dreamer's thought.

Maddox Team: Have huge fantasies about your simulation! I hope that you really have fun in developing it.