Please add people to this sim

[buckeye747]

For me, this alpha access has been a great experience flying your aircraft over the frozen land.  God, it looks so real.

 

Except...  Just like RoF, there's no one around.  Can you please think about placing stationary people here and there?

Some troops at the airport.   Troops advancing.  Just something to complete the experience.

 

 

[71st_AH_Hooves]

yeah maybe some groups of Sprites attacking a building or running across the ground.  no need to make them high poly.  I agree this would be very immersive and cheap on resources to create.  Hope the devs agree.

[=RvE=Windmills]

Maybe some people running away from vehicles when you strafe them. It was a nice touch in the original.

 

Anything else is a waste of processing power tbh.

[ParaB]

I'd love to see some infantry, too.

 

Could be very basic and even static only but would do wonders for the immersion.

[MarcoRossolini]

Even a guy or two in the control tower would be nice.

[racingslippers]

A fully realised working battlefield over which to fly would appear to be well beyond the stated goals for the sim.

But totally agree that -any- human life that can be added would always be great.

[BigPickle]

+1 I think it missing from most flight sims.

 

I'd love to see something along the line of what Over Flanders Fields did to represent a front line.

[Uriah]

I always loved in in EAW where if you bombed or strafed a bomber on the ground a bunch of guys would come running out and run around and then all run back into the bomber. 

[steppenwolf]

I hope Devs of the future use GTA V's world as inspiration. Flight sims are okay, but world sims are great.  

[Skoshi_Tiger]

Although ground troops would make the environment really imersive, if it came down to performance or having troops on the ground, I'd take the performance any day.

 

Cheers

[71st_AH_Hooves]

Although ground troops would make the environment really imersive, if it came down to performance or having troops on the ground, I'd take the performance any day.

 

Cheers

Hence using sprites as infantry.  super low poly models with basically nil ai power, that just got from "here" to "there".  That can be killed. and when you kill one or two you insert the smaller group of sprites and they keep running.  as well as running from tanks and trucks.  like in IL2 46.  Any other theatre Id say "eh forget about it" but ground attack often occurred JUST on troops.  So I feel it would be a mistake to not model them in.

 

 

At least we can have Vander mod some in that we can use with Mods off. But Id love to see them out of the digital box.

[FuriousMeow]

Those weren't sprites in the old Il-2 series. They were full on 3D models with animation.

 

Sprites are just 2D images, that always face you no matter which way you rotate. The original Doom, or Castle Wolfenstein - those are sprites and they would look horrible.

[FuriousMeow]

I hope Devs of the future use GTA V's world as inspiration. Flight sims are okay, but world sims are great.  

 

 

GTA has been doing that since forever. Fallout series does that as well, and I'm pretty sure the Morrowind/Oblivion do as well. Spawn/de-spawn, but most characters are generic and where the de-spawn and respawn back in will sometimes be in complete different areas for the generic charcters. And then core characters will be left in one building, and you go back two seconds later - they aren't there but are instead half way across town.

 

It works well for those games, but that system just wouldn't do it for an air combat sim.

[71st_AH_Hooves]

Those weren't sprites in the old Il-2 series. They were full on 3D models with animation.

 

Sprites are just 2D images, that always face you no matter which way you rotate. The original Doom, or Castle Wolfenstein - those are sprites and they would look horrible.

I meant the guys running away from trucks like in il2 1946, I know what a sprite is and to keep the resources down that's what Id use.

[FuriousMeow]

I gotcha, thought you meant the Il2 guys were sprites.

 

I dunno, I think low poly models would be better than sprites but I also imagine having soldiers on the ground will bring about a new topic later on "Why can't I strafe and kill the soldiers on the ground?" which could eventually lead to "Why aren't there dismembered bodies and blood?"

 

To be perfectly honest, I've not missed little guys running around in RoF when strafing/bombing convoy columns and those planes fly at a third of the speed these things will be.

[71st_AH_Hooves]

I gotcha, thought you meant the Il2 guys were sprites.

 

I dunno, I think low poly models would be better than sprites but I also imagine having soldiers on the ground will bring about a new topic later on "Why can't I strafe and kill the soldiers on the ground?" which could eventually lead to "Why aren't there dismembered bodies and blood?"

 

To be perfectly honest, I've not missed little guys running around in RoF when strafing/bombing convoy columns and those planes fly at a third of the speed these things will be.

All good points.  From what I understand of Digital Nature, it wouldn't take that many resources to do decent 3d models of dudes. Its he AI that eats processor.  So as long as they dont have complicated AI's and they do very simple tasked with little regard of terrain, like land = yes water = no.

[steppenwolf]

You're right FuriousMeow, GTA has been doing it forever. And todays flight sims don't even have little sprite men.  

[FuriousMeow]

My point is, they are two different things trying to accomplish much different goals. If you threw a flight sim into GTA's engine, the whole thing would fall apart and be awful. And if you threw GTA into a flight sim's engine, it'd be terrible. What works for one type will not work for the other.

 

They could put little men on the ground, but it's a balancing act of resources - and not just the computer's resources either.

Edited December 2, 2013 by FuriousMeow

[Zoring]

I would also repeat my request for 'Occupied Buildings' as an object, for street fighting we can't obviously represent infantry so we need to have houses that shoot at each other, a bit of tracer and whatever, that can be bombed or reduced in steps to show off the destruction. Put a couple helmets poking out of the top of windows, done, lovely.

 

This also would be good for trenches and defence works also. Just so the ground war isn't nothing but tanks and AT guns slogging away.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Zoring

[71st_AH_Hooves]

Thats a brilliant idea there Zoring!  basically just tracers coming out of the building with an "occupied" status so when they get destroyed there can be some points assigned to said buildings. Thats great!  And Id imagine not difficult for the devs to do either.

[Finkeren]

I hope Devs of the future use GTA V's world as inspiration. Flight sims are okay, but world sims are great.  

 

In a way RoF is already doing that - and it's one of the few things I don't like about RoF. I understand it's necessary to keep performance up, but I'm not a fan.

 

In RoF (and likely in BoS) there is triggered spawn/de-spawn of AI aircraft in career missions, just like in Open World games like GTA and Elder Scrolls.

 

There are obvious problems with this, which are pretty evident in GTA style games (set up a roadblock or wreck havoc to an area, take a one minute trip around the block, and it's gone) Problems which become even more glaring in a flight sim, where you move through the world at hundreds of miles per hour. excessive use of spawn/de-spawn is poison to any game, where the action takes place over a large area, often beyond visual range, and it should be kept to an absolute limit in a flight sim.

 

Adding more elements to a simulated world will only increase the requirement of triggers and spawn/de-spawn within an even shorter radius, especially if you wan't these elements to be of the same high standard of physics, 3d models, AI, DM etc as the aircraft.

 

It's simply not feasible with current technology, when we're talking about simulators with realistic physics models.

Thats a brilliant idea there Zoring!  basically just tracers coming out of the building with an "occupied" status so when they get destroyed there can be some points assigned to said buildings. Thats great!  And Id imagine not difficult for the devs to do either.

 

+1

 

Zoring has brought it up before, but it deserves rementioning. It's a simple, elegant solution, which is both limited in CPU-load, easy to build and implement and relatively realistic. It's definately something the devs should consider.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Finkeren

[steppenwolf]

All good points. But I can't watch the video below without thinking something is missing in flight sims now. This team's world makes flight sim worlds look mannequin in relation. And these guys pulled it off on a 360! I know it's extremely difficult and expensive to produce such work, and I understand the logistics. But it can happen. I hope it inspires others, that's all.     

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSrAlbrtiXA

[ParaB]

I'm sure a hardcore combat flightsim with a budget of 100 million $ could look quite awesome. Oh, wait...

 

[FuriousMeow]

Cracked.com has a great article on how great GTA V's world is. You should check it out steppenwolf.

 

Language in the article, but it's a cracked article: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-critics-love-about-gta-v-that-actually-suck/

 

That's just five issues about GTA V.

 

Googling GTA glitches provides hours of endless video, and many of them are core game elements (such as physics).

[steppenwolf]

Okay, have it you're way.

[71st_AH_Hooves]

Honestly the only thing I want out of that video was the camera angles that the chopper has for all the planes in BoS.  Well, and some of the ambient life.

[AndyHill]

Doing groups of troops shouldn't be too difficult and they wouldn't consume more CPU power than for example a truck if they were all a single object and done with few polys. One intermediate damage version and then a dead group based on hits in the area would be a reasonable damage model I think. They would inevitably be bad PR, however, since such groups would invariably do silly things and generally not look very good in close up screenshots.

 

It's a shame really, since at 400km/h and 50+ meters they would probably look pretty darned good enough and liven up the environment quite a bit.

[=69.GIAP=YSTREB]

I would love if they put people as many as possible

[Mogster]

Games like GTA and the Battlefield series have absolutely tiny maps by flight sim standards. Altitude rendering is also a big problem.

 

That said the poor/non existent rendering of people in flight sims is a major block to immersion. Possibly the best are the Orbx sceneries for FSX, but even there the characters stumble around moving strangely, reminds me a bit of an episode of the Walking Dead...

 

I'm sure there are creative things that could be done to add movement to existing maps.

[dkoor]

I'd love to see some killable people in.

Huge immersion factor.

 

They could be really low poly count objects.

 

I think today's processors could manage few of those.

[JG27_Chivas]

People running for the ditches when strafing convoy's was a nice touch in IL-2, without unduly tasking computer resources.  Not so sure a full on battlefield with soldiers would be doable.  That said a few ground crew personnel, performing rearming, refueling duties,  would exponentially increase my immersion, far more than thousands of personnel on a battlefield that I could barely see. 

[1./KG4_Blackwolf]

I always loved in in EAW where if you bombed or strafed a bomber on the ground a bunch of guys would come running out and run around and then all run back into the bomber. 

And cue the Benny Hill music!   I like Zorings idea buildings with guns..just as long as we get ours first!

[HeavyCavalrySgt]

I hope there will be troops -- it is why we are here.   Without ground pounders, what is the Battle of Stalingrad?  Tank duels in the streets of a ruined city?

[Bearcat]

All good points.  From what I understand of Digital Nature, it wouldn't take that many resources to do decent 3d models of dudes. Its he AI that eats processor.  So as long as they dont have complicated AI's and they do very simple tasked with little regard of terrain, like land = yes water = no.

 

Yeah if all they did was dive for cover when straffed like in the video .. it would be great.

 

All good points. But I can't watch the video below without thinking something is missing in flight sims now. This team's world makes flight sim worlds look mannequin in relation. And these guys pulled it off on a 360! I know it's extremely difficult and expensive to produce such work, and I understand the logistics. But it can happen. I hope it inspires others, that's all.    

 

We wouldn't even need such highly rendered animated models to add tremendously to immersion .. I doubt we will ever see bloody dismembered bodies though.. can't say I would want that or that the devs would have a hard time defending not having that ... feature.

 

People running for the ditches when strafing convoy's was a nice touch in IL-2, without unduly tasking computer resources.  Not so sure a full on battlefield with soldiers would be doable.  That said a few ground crew personnel, performing rearming, refueling duties,  would exponentially increase my immersion, far more than thousands of personnel on a battlefield that I could barely see. 

 

The sim is already optimized for multi core PCs.. so maybe it is more doable than we may think. I think the sim is made to run on two cores.

 

I hope there will be troops -- it is why we are here.   Without ground pounders, what is the Battle of Stalingrad?  Tank duels in the streets of a ruined city?

 

Yes... perhaps once they get the sim finished or almost ready for final release they can consider that if they haven't already..

[smink1701]

Yes...people if you please.

[racingslippers]

I would also repeat my request for 'Occupied Buildings' as an object, for street fighting we can't obviously represent infantry so we need to have houses that shoot at each other, a bit of tracer and whatever, that can be bombed or reduced in steps to show off the destruction. Put a couple helmets poking out of the top of windows, done, lovely.

 

This also would be good for trenches and defence works also. Just so the ground war isn't nothing but tanks and AT guns slogging away.

 

Excellent thoughts

[Cybermat47]

Seeing as Stalingrad was mostly an infantry battle, it would only make sense to represent it in some way. Zoring's idea is great!