[Lionman]

Originally Posted by Dowly

No, I didnt know they are using a whole new engine. Judging from the screenshots, it looks very similar to that of IL2. For example, the ground's underlayer is almost identical to IL2s in the latest shots of BoB where it shows the new dials. But if they are indeed using a new engine, then that explains the 2 year delay from the 2006's release date.

The new game engine will be most "visible" in the flight models, damage modeling and dynamic weather but I entirely agree with your misgivings about the ground mapping, which I too think looks as lame, unrealistic and "cardboard" as in the whole IL2 series so far. Olegs team seem "object focussed" as opposed to "ambiance focussed" and IMO they have NEVER paid enough attention to making the place you start every flight from, fly over throughout and have to land on again, as realistic and "immersive" as the air combat and sky. Oleg's buildings look like kids building bricks on a fuzzy focus carpet picture - which is BAD just like the earlier days of MS Flight sim.

Another pet hate of mine is the "empty cockpits". From the outside you see pilots (but not in ALL the aircraft) while once inside and flying, you become a ghost with neither legs, arms nor hands, in an "empty cockpit". This instantly RUINS the immersion for me and is almost criminally stupid given the "rivet by rivet" attention paid to the mechanical environment inside the cockpits in SOW. Hell there are even splinters in the WOOD GRAIN on throttle handles, yet the pilot has no legs or hands! I think they have been doing it for so long like that, that they have "forgotten" how unrealistic it is.

I would like to see not only an animated pilot's body below me in the cockpit, but internal reflections of my head in the cockpit glass under the right conditions (perhaps when caught in searchlight beams!) and above all a nifty little utility to enable one to easily give one's pilot avatar one's own face! You CAN do that already with a little graphics skill, but it could SO easily be offered in a low-overhead built-in utility.

As a sim pilot who always flies with track IR 4 Pro, these tiny details would make a massive difference to my immersion. Hey I want to be able to look at my WATCH when I'm flying and have it show the real game-time! [I'm the guy who lobbied for seagulls in SH III and who has since lobbied for shoals of AI fish and even the odd shark and whale in SH IV!]

IMO the difference between "full/dull-real" and "utterly immersive & gripping" in any simulator is the creative ambiance that helps to induce a feeling of really "being there" in the player. It's the same as the difference between a professional but dull "training film" and a gripping block-buster thriller. It's all in the lighting, the detail and the overall "feel" of it all. Sound is also incredibly important and I must admit that BOBII has IL2 beaten hands down in the air combat directional sound effects. Hearing a Spit or a 109 fly close past your cockpit in a dogfight in BOBII is SO realistic that I often instinctively duck!

Although we all think it has come such a long way, this is still a medium in it's infancy, relatively speaking. About where film was in the 1930's. IMO NONE of us will be satisfied until we have photo-realism, motion capture movement of avatars, our own faces on our avatars, and in-game lip-sync & facial expressions mimicking those we actually have, via face-tracking SW through our live webcam! Don't laugh because ALL those things are going to happen.

Using Track IR 4 in ARMA (the only infantry combat FPS to support all 6 axes of motion so far), you can already nod and shake your head to other players and look in any direction you like without moving your hands or weapon. These sounds like small things but trust me, walking down a road with your gun relaxed in your hands, scanning the surrounding sky and hillside and buildings without having to change the direction or pace of your stride suddenly makes everything a 100% more "real" and immersive. Riding into battle perched in the side door of a Blackhawk, tracking the ground with your chain gun, and being able to glance over your shoulder at the other infantry filling the main cabin and the pilots in the nose, seeing peoples head's and face move and all with live comms coming over the headsets that you can SEE everyone's avatar wearing - THAT'S immersive! Right down to not being able to make out what people are saying over the noise of the chopper, and dropping the last meter to the ground and sprinting for cover with fire ricocheting all around you. It all really helps to get the old adrenaline pumping.

So I want to be able to scamper through the submarine, opening and closing hatches, and turning valves as I go and I want "cone" surround sound, related to my viewpoint, glance direction and head position, such as some leading sims in other realms already have.

Above all I want to BELIEVE the faces of the avatars around me are real people, not lego men made of cardboard. I want to see panic in their faces , sweat running down and the seawater washing of their oilskins as they skid down the conning tower ladder before a crash dive. ALL these things are already possible and its just a matter of making our collective wishes heard long enough and loud enough for the developers to slightly alter their agenda and priorities. We don't need new theatres of war or new game genres, just FAR better realism, DRAMATIC immersion and "interactive realism" in the realms we already have. I want campaign badges on my uniforms, bandages on my wounds and some avatars wearing glasses that can fall off or get broken! LOL

I even want mugs of tea that can roll off the table and spill during a depth charge attack! And I'll take out a contract on any idiot who (Still) says "but that's all just eye candy"! The difference between an amatuer 8mm home movie and an epic medieval Japanese battle directed by Kurusaw is ALL "eye candy" and "sound candy". In other words ART!!!!!

Yes, this simulation realm and its virtual worlds are a whole new ART FORM and people like Oleg are its pioneering directors & producers. Look at the realism we can already now see in SH IV with the best ocean and weather MODs! The biggest single change we will all notice as time goes by will be due to ever increasing bandwidth and ever cheaper RAM. There is little point in a 400 Kilometer square map (as in ARMA) when there are less than 40 people in it 90% of the time and you spned half your time trying to find other players in an deserted landscape! But take a 50 man server in Red Orchestra on a far smaller map and suddenly the realism takes a giant leap, purely because you are surrounded by so many other people frantically doing stuff and reacting to the same situation alla round you. That changes everything. But there is no short cut. A full squadron of B-17s with escort fighters can mean approaching 1000 men in the air and that's before you ever include the enemy but one day, we will have that and rmember that I said it this early on.

Our collective appetite for realism is driving a whole industry's software, hardware and design philosophy and producing ever more advanced military applications as a by product, which in turn feeds back into the development curve. As TV is to movies, one day we will all be doing all this in real-time, in a full hollo-deck, surrounded by an apparently "real world" in every detail. It won't be a physical room, it'll be a lightweight version the old headset/visor devices but a super-Rolls-Royce version of that, (perhaps even built into contact lenses - which is already being done as a new direction of display technology) with a small platform on which one can sit, walk, run or sway, whilst remaining on the spot in reality. But in-game, everything surrounding us will be as "real" and convincing as you can imagine. Those days ARE COMING. You only have to imagine describing what we already now have to somebody at the dawn of computer gaming. They would NEVER have believed the level of realism we take for granted now and the Victorians would have been convinced it was all sinful witch craft! LOL

Todays fantasy is tomorrows reality and that is the lesson of all history.