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182 Hello virtual pilots, Today I have the honor to write a Dev Diary. My name is Evgeny Isaev, I'm the lead map maker. I want to tell you a bit about our work and share some good news. The Stalingrad map was the first in our project. Time has passed and now, thanks to our lead programmer Sergey Vorsin, we have new technologies, instruments and methods that allow us to reach a new level of quality. In addition, the recent changes in the engine for almost four times visibility distance increase caused visible artifacts on maps that were most apparent on the Stalingrad map. So it was the time to re-visit and improve our first map. This wasn't planned initially, but we ought to find the time for this task. The main issue was the repeating of terrain textures that was much less noticeable before. Even with very large textures, visible tiling is inevitable with the new far visibility distance. To solve this issue, we used our new tech that was created for mountains on the Kuban map - procedural texturing. This allowed us not only get rid of the tiling but also emphasize the map relief and make each area unique. Nature itself helped us in this task - we used the real-world satellite heightmaps. We ourselves were surprised at the end result. We read your comments on the forums and know that some of you put up some valid points regarding the maps, for instance, that the Stalingrad area is a steppe and therefore it should have much less agricultural fields. We knew this since we always do a thorough research on the areas we recreate in the game, but this implementation was mandatory. It's pleasant that you notice smaller things. Now, the most part of the updated Stalingrad map will be a steppe, making it more true to history. Thanks to our increased experience and new methods at our disposal we were able to achieve a much better result - the ground surface became much more vivid, its microfeatures are different on cliffs, ravines and plains, contributing to the feel of the world scale and allowing to estimate your altitude easier. You can see some screenshots of the updated summer map below (update 3.001 will include the updated summer and autumn seasons). The old version of the map (but with the new visibility distance and sky) is shown on the left for comparison, while the updated map at the same lighting conditions is on the right. We hope you'll like the new version of the map and it will give you new emotions from the flight in our simulator. You can discuss the news in this thread

118 Dear customers! IL-2 map department is proud to show you the first Moscow map screenshots. This is a kind of summing-up for us in this year. Most part of the work is done at the moment. Forests, rivers, fields, roads, settlements and airfields are already on the map in almost final form. Of course there will be finishing touches, as always. A couple of comments about several things. Most of the airfields flight strips and structures are placed according to historical documents when such data was available. We analyzed the data (air photographs and other documents) we had to determine a typical airfield layout in this area and created the rest of the airfields using it. There are concrete and unpaved landing strips, but there are temporary airfields without visible landing strips at all, a little more than simple grass fields with little infrastructure. Each type of airfield have numerous different configurations. Two-track railroads are much more common in Moscow area than near Stalingrad, where they were mostly single way. There are five big towns in the area (in addition to Moscow itself which will be visible, but not reachable): Vyazma, Rzhev, Kalinin, Klin and Serpukhov. They were made huge thanks to the new technology. Its basic idea is to use standardized landscape textures, which allows to make as many cities and towns as needed (unlike Stalingrad map that has only one). The cities and towns were created using WWII aerial imagery, so their layouts are correct for 1941. We can increase the number of cities for future maps if needed without any strict limits. Other departments are also finishing they work for Battle of Moscow, so our second project in IL-2 Sturmovik world is almost done. Here are WIP screenshots of Ju 88 A-4 bomber. We hope you'll enjoy them as well. Dear pilots, we'd also like to wish you a Happy New Year on behalf of the entire IL-2 development team! You can discuss the news in this thread

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