Friday Update, April 13, 2012

[bw_wolverine]

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

That brings us to another factor, we as virtual pilots NEVER DIE. We learn from our mistakes, we all have more than 5 Victories (an ace) and more than 10 (Experte )... We live to fly another day! We have the knowledge of the best tactics that those who did this for real did not. So its not all down to the plane, which in this Sim - should be as historic as possible and the rest is up to us.

This is true but it leads me to another conclusion.

Since we don't die, we all gradually inch towards complete "mastery" of our respective machines. If the 109 is by a margin the better fighter, won't the 109 pilot eventually have complete 'by a margin' advantage over the Hurricane/Spit pilot?

Just an analogy to help the point: I've got a Mazda 3 Sport and I drive it every day. I drive it so much that I think I'm pretty good at pushing it to its absolute limit. Now my buddy gets an Audi r8. While he's brand new at driving it, he spins out in corners or whatever and I pass him. It's an even race...up until he gets skilled with it. No matter how well I drive my Mazda 3 Sport, as long as he doesn't f it up in the r8, he wins. Because we've spent all the hours we need to get mastery with our equipment.

Just sub in a Hurricane and a 109 for the cars.

This isn't a casual game. I doubt we've got too many online pilots who just play a few minutes here and there and will never make their skills improve.

[Major Marvel]

Originally Posted by BlackSix

Good day everyone!

We're very glad to announce that the beta patch is largely done. It's going into wide internal testing today, which will last through the weekend and probably a couple of days more. After we make sure nothing is amiss, we'll make the beta patch available to everyone

We're ready to release details on some of the improvements you'll see in the patch. Here we go:

Performance

We've performed a huge amount of work improving both average and minimum FPS in the game. Most recommended-spec machine will see a roughly double average FPS and a significant reduction in the micro-freezes that had previously plagued the game. Their frequency, duration, and overall FPS impact will be greatly reduced or completely redone.

Some of the changes include:

• Completely rewritten rended pipeline, which reduced CPU load;
• Rewritten texture manager, reducing stutter when loading new textures;
• Moved landscape geometry generator to its own CPU core, reducing stutters;
• Optimized tree code, reducing stutters when moving across landscape or rotating camera;
• Moved grass generator to its own CPU core, decreasing stutters during low-level flight;
• Moved all building and vehicle damage models to be pre-loaded, rather than dynamically loaded when they are destroyed. This increased mission loading times and memory usage, and reduced stutters when blowing things up;
• Improved multithreading in many other aspects of the code, improving minimal FPS on most multicore machines.

Finally, we need to mention the launcher.exe crashes. This was a very hard issue to address as it wasn't caused by a single 100% reproducible bug, but rather rare combinations of various uncommon events. The work described above, coupled with a huge volume of general bug-fixing performed, should have at least minimized the number of instances that lead to crashes. We haven't encountered one in months, but determining whether that'll be the case for the general player base will be one of the leading goals for this beta test.

Flight Model

We've performed a tremendous amount of work testing and improving flight models in the game, as well as improving various aircraft engines. We used actual pilot's notes and flight testing data during the process (thank you Sean!). Unfortunately some deeply-set limitations in the engine code do not allow us to minimize the margin of error at altitudes about 7 km (21,000 ft) where most aircraft begin to perform worse than their real-life counterparts. Fixing this requires more extensive code rework and will therefore only appear with the upcoming sequel. However at lower altitudes most flyables will perform much closer to real life. We also have to note that some aircraft, most notably Spitfire Mk.II, had better performance than the real thing. Others, especially their engines, had reduced performance. We've addressed these serious issues and made our planes fly much closer to the real thing.

More specifically:

G.50
Temperature models of the engine were wrong due to incorrect data. The engine could not get up to required power at all altitudes. We've also added +100 boost for WEP mode.

Spitfire Mk.II
The aircraft's speed performance was too good at all altitudes, sometimes 60 mph better than the real thing.

Spitfire Mk.I
Fixed the top speed dip above 18,000 ft.

Hurricane Mk.I
Speed performance was also too good at all altitudes, similar to the Spit II.

Blenheim Mk.IV
Had many problems with the engine model. The engine overheated at normal RPM, the plane could not get up to stated airspeed at all altitudes. Maximum allowed airspeed was too great, and the plane could get up to 560 mph in a dive. A huge amount of work was performed to improve the plane's FM and bring it up to speed.

For a better example, here's a comparison of the old and new speeds of the Fiat G.50. The data was taken by a special internal module that tests speeds at a range of altitudes using optimal engine settings. Human players will likely not be able to set their engine precisely the same way, or fly exactly level at the exact altitude, so testing this for yourselves may give you slightly different results. The vertical axis is the speed in kph, the horizontal is the top speed.


Artificial Intelligence

Partial list:
• Fixed some non-working orders, removed others from the list. There are no more orders available to the player that the AI does not follow.
• Added a request for available targets;
• Turned off friendly fire for ground battles (improving FPS);
• Added the ability to query current waypoint for scripts;
• Told AI pilots not to commit ritual suicide when their leader crash-lands;
• Fixed out of turn take offs for AI pilots;

And there's lots more!

Finally, we continue to introduce you to the upcoming sequels. Here's some more village landscapes, showing the few churches still left around 1940s Russia. Once again, these are all coming from an external team that is very eager to do a great job and please the community. We'd also like to remind you that parts of the landscape such as the grass and the trees are temporary placeholders and will definitely not be a part of the final landscape.

Have a great weekend!

Very good news,cant wait to give it a try

[philip.ed]

Ben, I completely agree, but this isn't new knews: just regurgitated and rephrased old news. Luthier has been very good at this: he's been 100% honest about the development of CloD from day 1 of release. It's just the same as all previous Il-2 games.

I think it's good. No offence to the team, but I think they are much better placed modelling the Eastern Front: their previous experience and knowledge will be excellent. The same can't always be said for the BoB. They had a good stab, but they're limited in their location, and have access to less resources than we do.

I think the BoB aspect will be handed over to the community, and this will be a good decision.

Obviously one can view this as annoying: we bought a BoB game and were delivered a channel scrap. Hopefully when the team (or a team) goes back to the ETO, they will incorporate the community work and help shape this growing simulation.

#overlyoptimistic?

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by Falstaff

David Hayward said:

>>Consider yourself fortunate if they don't add a forum ban surcharge. <<

Oh be quiet. Would you like a big stir-spoon to go with that comment?

Now, back to the fact of Clod being quietly dropped off the radar.

You don't even see the irony, do you?

[Tavingon]

Very happy, I had a feeling something good would surface from the morass today!

[michcich]

Personally, I can live with things being imperfect while they`re patching CLOD, this may well be the testing ground.

For BOM however, the bar is going to be raised high and the devs should not expect any leniency (as they`ve received plent of it over the last year) - this needs to be ROF of the WWII theatre, anything less will be disappointment.

[David Hayward]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

and have access to less resources than we do.

You got any examples?

Philip_Ed...actually I completely agree (seriously).

My main jab is not at the dev team (though I think it could have been made more transparent earlier on...) but at the apologists. Now that I've got that out of my system I also think it's quite logical as far as game dev is concerned. Still, it's a shame for what might have been. But clean slate and all that. There are very few dev houses that can handle the albatrossissues and the funding of supporting an old app.

Ben

Hayward said:

>>You don't even see the irony, do you? <<

Yes, but the post outweighs it.

Now, your turn. No, I insist, after you....set high horse to canter, trot....

Originally Posted by addman

First off, thanks soooo much for fixing the G.50! Look at those curves, that's what I'm talking about. Thanks B6, I hope the G.50 manual helped you a little. Really nice update. A question though, will there be one big patch with all the things you mentioned in the update or only the graphics/performance part? Thanks again and have a nice orthodox Easter!

P.S Oh, the outcry when the Spit II will be nerfed, oh dear indeed.

Good job Addman for providing the credible source for performance information! Keep up the good work and please provide more valuable insight for the stuff you are well versed in the future also...