Friday the 14th Development Update

Originally Posted by zapatista

ahh tree again with his lies and personal insults, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

i really hope for your sake you are putting on an act, because if this is really the best of your deductive reasoning effort after 1.5 million years of evolution, we might as well let climate change run rampant and have it flush your genetic line away

correction 1: as previously documented i was given a copy of the sim shortly after release (when i already had made the decision to delay purchasing it because of the large amount of problems reported)
correction 2: i been right here tree, since 2007, its you that's been gone for extended periods because you keep getting banned, found those interruptions confusing ?
correction 3: i still bought the sim once patches were released that indicated improvements to make some small token act of support to something i believe in, and yea baby, since the last beta patch its actually playable on my mid range pc and starting to look good

now just make sure you ignore facts tree, spread your little lies, keep thread crapping and keep misleading people in flightsim forums, and ........ make sure you blindly and doggedly ignore anything good or positive about SoW

lol,

[kendo65]

Zapa, I try to maintain a neutral stance in your long-running dispute with Tree and Furbs but, really, your description of the issues below is incredibly rose-tinted. Given your characterisation of so many of the issue as 'easy fixes' I have to ask why they haven't been fixed 18 months after release?

Originally Posted by zapatista

No AA ? not important in the grand scheme of things (right now), can be dealt with later

Quite important to me actually, though I agree not a deal breaker.

Originally Posted by zapatista

No X64bit ? most russian customers pc's still run on 32 bit hardware/software
No DX11 ? most russian customers pc's still run on dx9 (see earlier stats quoted by B6). some of us here seem to forget the il2 and SoW series are primarily aimed at the russian/east-block market, having it released to the west is a very secondary aspect. we will get 64bit and dx11, it just wont be very soon for these obvious reasons, and stomping our little feet on the ground about it wont change anything in that regard.

I'm not sure it's true that the sim is aimed primarily at the Russian market, in fact I doubt it is. (Certainly a BOB sim would be expected to sell more in the west.) Some people have stated this a lot recently but I don't think the developers would want to alienate or write off any market that may purchase their product. Given that, DX11 and 64-bit while again not being dealbreakers, are certainly desirable options.

Originally Posted by zapatista

The clouds ? yeps we all want/like nicer and newer clouds, not a show stopper (as long as terrain and cloud masking works for AI's)
particles, smoke ? eh buy a bigger and better pc if you want those, its high end eye candy for the rich

Are you really saying that smoke in a flight sim is an optional extra for the rich?

Originally Posted by zapatista

hit affects are still not working as intended ? easy fix

Hope so. Expect it will be sorted in final COD patch.

Originally Posted by zapatista

Tree's and shadows still flicker and shimmer ? tree collision models is probably a resource issue, right now we have more visible trees in a very large landscape then any other flight sim and we just aint got the pc's to crunch that number. i suspect that might not be solved even by BoM release (hope it will), just remeber you are buying a flight sim, not a tree sim the shimmer and flikker is a gfx bug, relatively simple to fix and will be done (since other speed tree sims dont have this problem)

Just a personal reaction here, but I'm really tired of people passing off missing features of the sim with lines like that. I know it's not a tree sim, it's also not a cloud sim, or a weather sim...but they'd be nice to have!

Originally Posted by zapatista

View range for aircraft is still way too low, with mid and far LOD's that are horrible ? yups i find that a MAJOR issue, but it is relatively easy to fix. CoD uses up to 10 LoD models versus the 3 in il2-1946, now the gfx engine is fixed altering the visibility of the more distant LoD models is fairly simple (not that i trust luthier to understand its importance, and be willing to direct this as a priority fix that will have a big positive impact on gameplay.
Ground object view distance is terrible and make bombing missions almost unplayable ? is linked to LoD models and a temporary byproduct of the new and improved gfx engine, again relatively easy to fix
Craters and far objects still show through landscape and cockpits ? annoying yes, but technically a minor issue to resolve, easy fix

Hope so. My reaction above stands though. If so easy why not done?

Originally Posted by zapatista

Mirrors still dont work ? real men dont need mirrors ! you should be chasing the enemy, not let him chase you ! j/k, easy fix obviously (other then it being a resource hog, so must of us wont be able to switch it on even if it works)

Obviously another easy one that they could have fixed anytime at all in the last year and a half, but chose not to.

Sorry Zap. Please don't take it personally. I just can't go along with most of your take on things.

[Walrus1]

Originally Posted by Redroach

Could someone kindly point me to the area where, excluding engine sounds and tracers, CoD got better in any way over those 18 months?

I believe that there is pretty broad consensus that the current patch of the sim runs better, with higher framerates, less CTD and other bugs on a far greater majority of machines than at release.

[furbs]

Originally Posted by kendo65

Zapa, I try to maintain a neutral stance in your long-running dispute with Tree and Furbs but, really, your description of the issues below is incredibly rose-tinted. Given your characterisation of so many of the issue as 'easy fixes' I have to ask why they haven't been fixed 18 months after release?



Quite important to me actually, though I agree not a deal breaker.



I'm not sure it's true that the sim is aimed primarily at the Russian market, in fact I doubt it is. (Certainly a BOB sim would be expected to sell more in the west.) Some people have stated this a lot recently but I don't think the developers would want to alienate or write off any market that may purchase their product. Given that, DX11 and 64-bit while again not being dealbreakers, are certainly desirable options.



Are you really saying that smoke in a flight sim is an optional extra for the rich?

Hope so. Expect it will be sorted in final COD patch.


Just a personal reaction here, but I'm really tired of people passing off missing features of the sim with lines like that. I know it's not a tree sim, it's also not a cloud sim, or a weather sim...but they'd be nice to have!



Hope so. My reaction above stands though. If so easy why not done?


Obviously another easy one that they could have fixed anytime at all in the last year and a half, but chose not to.

Sorry Zap. Please don't take it personally. I just can't go along with most of your take on things.

Cheers kendo, and the point was not if these features or affects are easy to fix(not if you ask Luthier)...the point was if they are working now.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by furbs

Cheers kendo, and the point was not if these features or affects are easy to fix(not if you ask Luthier)...the point was if they are working now.

If they are so easy to fix Furbs why havent you modded them in yet?

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

If they are so easy to fix Furbs why havent you modded them in yet?

er.... Krupi, Furby isn't saying that, go back and read the thread.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

er.... Krupi, Furby isn't saying that, go back and read the thread.

Well he said they were easy to fix, I suggest you read them again.

[furbs]

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

If they are so easy to fix Furbs why havent you modded them in yet?

Not sure what your on about precious?

[2033cyborg]

GEE Luthier one has to admire your confidence , buying a sequel after a first such a poorly develloped product , i have to give it to you my friend you are a true believer or a fool...

i bought COD following IL2 Sturmovik serie ( i have got all of them) like most of the other cod owners i guess... the difference was each of the sequels were an improvement over the previouse one , BUT a sequel over COD and expecting people to buy it! i don't know...

it is not that cod is bad it just feels as an infinished product or worth a try one for future developements ...

we waited years for it then we waited even more patches after patches but for what , i still got the most booring campaign ever designed in a sim , i still flight with stupids AI who crashes more often than not , i still can fly through trees and take off and land on empty tarmacs it feels so empty.

The planes are terrific and i love the graphics but i cannot really use my radio ,sometimes i can fly for hours in empty space and if i fly over villages and towns there are empty even of gosts .
I won't even start with the technicals some other seniors are doing a much better job at that .

And then something which has been nagging me for sometime : a russian sequel i believe why ? why not the Malta campaign or the African one , anyway i will wait for the next patch not expecting much ....

For the sequel i will wait , i will read the forum and wait for reviews it will be up to you to prove to us that you have been listening...

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by kendo65

Zapa, I try to maintain a neutral stance in your long-running dispute with Tree and Furbs .

just remember that all those years of swiss neutrality only ever ended up producing a Cuckoo clock clock as its greatest feat

Originally Posted by kendo65

Given your characterisation of so many of the issue as 'easy fixes' I have to ask why they haven't been fixed 18 months after release?

you already know the answer to this untill the main faulty core of CoD was fixed (gfx engine), none of the other issues mattered much, and there are several reasons for this:
firstly, because many of them are secondary elements to the gfx engine itself (lod model visibility, tree shimmering, clouds etc), so its a waste of time fixing things in the old game engine while the new one is being developed.
secondly: because there was no financial reward in spending most manpower on fixing the old problems while all hands on deck were required to stop the axe falling on the whole project, for that survival a soonish BoM was essential (and still is)

Originally Posted by kendo65

Are you really saying that smoke in a flight sim is an optional extra for the rich?

i was mostly responding to the big issue of dust clouds during takeoff/landings issue, and the high level eye candy for some smoke effects we saw during early development, most of these effects are very high demands on system resources to see them in all their glory, and only very few here have reported playable frame rates during some of these effect. of course we need decent (but relatively low detailed) smoke and dust effects, but unless you have a very high end pc and they make a major leap forward in code efficiency those better effects are probably a luxury we cant afford for most of us.

Originally Posted by kendo65

Just a personal reaction here, but I'm really tired of people passing off missing features of the sim with lines like that. I know it's not a tree sim, it's also not a cloud sim, or a weather sim...but they'd be nice to have!

sure, i'd love to have them to, and you can add to that a decent dynamic campaign engine and some complex and detailed AI ground vehicle routines providing supply lines to forward troops and airfields etc (already discussed by oleg during development)

sadly the more realistic priorities right now are to get some improvements in AI behaviour, some decent frame rates for mid end pc's on medium settings, better flight models and performance for allied/axis fighters, control and gauges errors fixed, and have the LoD visibility problem solved. that is what my perspective is based on, if we get those elements solved, and sadly there is no indication luthier recognizes the priority these fixes should have to stem most complaints and provide us at least with a functional product.

and that is why i see behavior like furbs and "the foliage one" to be so self defeating and contributing to the current problem. instead we should make a concerted effort to have a list of priority fixes created for luthier (with specific detail on the exact problem, for ex quantify the distant LoD model visibility problem for various FoV's etc). instead some seem focused on this destructive merry-go-round of indulgent self pity and false indignation at a lost few $ you would never worry about in other circumstances. its not as if this was a planned faulty release that was conceived in some evil scheme, what is being done to fix it in the last 12 months is the best the small current programming crew can do to fix things while still trying to ensure the survival of the series, and if anybody here has any hope of getting a decent ww2 sim we better wake up to this.

and i really do believe the major crisis in game performance is over. since the last beta patch i can actually run the sim on my mid livel pc (dual core i5 @ 3.5, 5770 1gb gfx card and 8 gb ram etc), which was impossible at initial release time. that improvement only occurred with last months patch, so it seems appropriate for luthier and Co to now further polish its performance while starting to address the main bugs that hinder game play and normal use.