Developer Diary, Part 175 - Discussion

[dburne]

Are you freaking kidding me??

 

Wow, this is so awesome! It is going to look fantastic!!

 

Absolutely incredible!!

[Eldur]

Fi-na-lly!

 

Now just reduce the haziness of the haze a bit and it's perfect

 

Go and have a cider

 

[616Sqn_Tyggz]

These screenshots look gorgeous! This is the kind of thing that makes me happy that I've followed the BOS series since its early days.

 

 

[Blooddawn1942]

I'm afraid that we have to wait until the December update to witness the enhanced technology in its full glory.

[=GW=reiljuin8892]

i'm more interested in how far i can see others planes,tanks,AAAs and buildings...

[Stlg13/Sgt_Schultz]

Damn these updates are exciting   Cannot wait!.

 

This will mean navigation efficiency will be improved... the ability to see the shape of the ground well ahead will be a huge bonus!

 

Agreed! navigation in fine weather will be a piece of cake now, and more enjoyable.

Edited October 14, 2017 by Stlg13/Sgt_Schultz

[Recon]

Thanks everyone - one question:

 

Will this apply to bomb site as well ?   one of the more difficult challenges of level bombing is sight distance.

[EisenWaffel]

i'm more interested in how far i can see others planes,tanks,AAAs and buildings...

 

Agreed extending the landscape range will make the 10km object limit even more apparent

[TG-55Panthercules]

OMG - great news!  Been looking forward to (i.e., hoping for) this development for a while now, and to have it show up out of the blue is just so cool.  Thanks for another great Friday surprise

[BladeMeister]

Those screens look Fabulous! Nice work, but it is a long wait until December. It is what it is, Christmas will be good this year for BOX it looks like.

 

S!Blade<><

[ShamrockOneFive]

This is outstanding work! I know it was mentioned a few weeks back as being something the team was starting on but it looks like its come a long way very quickly.

 

Nice job!

[616Sqn_Johnny-Red]

Beautiful enviromental work. Puts me in mind of the days when my elderly relatives would see my PC screen and enquire "is that a film?" and I'd proudly tell them it was a flight simulator..

 

This will really add something for visual navigation; and a deeper sense of realism to the experience of high altitude flying. A most welcome enhancement.

[deleted@31403]

Just Amazing. This is the best sim out there.

[HippyDruid]

Lovely! 

[sinned]

I look fwd to the new scenery in VR.

 

Pacific will kick ass.

[Feathered_IV]

The Pacific certainly will be a treat. Sighting ships and land on the horizon will be so much more exciting now.

[ZachariasX]

Wow... this is more than just a step forward, this is a leap! Fantastic job!!

 

Now we can only beg for multi thread...

[FlyingNutcase]

What a huge step forward; just stella. Well done chaps, you're great at putting a smile on our faces.

[JG4_Sputnik]

WOW! One of my biggest gripes I had for this sim -> eliminated!    It adds so much to realism!

Now I hope the next "surprise" in the dev diary will be AI overhaul... 

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

I've been waiting for this for a long time....

 

In the infamous words of the emporer: Goooooood

[MrNoice]

wow I shpuld stop trolling because thats just amazing....

 

Now its a Complete flight sim for me...

 

the nasty haze and low view visibility was really bad. but now its really really cool

 

I hope it will not take that long to get the update for the new view distance

[Field-Ops]

The best part of this is that land navigation should be a lot easier, needing less time to go back and forth between the map to check what limited surroundings you can see. Awesome job Dev team!~ And thanks Jason for always prioritizing the important things on the list.

[MrNoice]

I think pacific will be easy in terms if map borders... just water all around ^^

[MrNoice]

but one question to the devs. why you didnt start the pre order for the new bf109g6 and la5fn ? because many people including me would like to support you that way

[ST_ami7b5]

Great job!

[=EXPEND=Tripwire]

Wow, that some significant improvements to the amount of haze!

 

[Finkeren]

but one question to the devs. why you didnt start the pre order for the new bf109g6 and la5fn ? because many people including me would like to support you that way

My guess is, that it's coming at the end of the month.

[56RAF_Roblex]

Yes, I too wonder if aircraft sighting distance has been increased with these improvements. 

 

Right now no. Maybe later on we can do something about it, but for now no. That's not a promise though. Everyone underestimates the difficulty in that request.

 

Jason

 

Jason,  can you just clarify your response to that question on one of the biggest problems remaining in this groundbreaking game?   

 

When you use phrases like 'maybe later' and 'not a promise' are you really saying that the 10km visibility might *never* be improved? That is quite a shock hidden amongst the good news!       For aircraft the bug restriction is sometimes annoying but for level bombing, even from only a couple of thousand metres,  the inability to see ground targets is a major issue.   Even if you only managed to double it to 20K it would be a huge improvement in gameplay.  Is there even a way to render placeholders like tiny dots at a greater range?      I will admit though that the better landscape distance might might it a little easier when a bomber pilot already knows roughly where the target is in relation to a river etc.     Does the better landscape rendering also mean that the towns themselves (the ground patterns without buildings) will show up more clearly?

Edited October 14, 2017 by 56RAF_Roblex

[MrNoice]

that would be nice but I think decades to programm ^^

[Guest deleted@30725]

Another good step forward. Glad you guys had time to finally get to this.

[coconut]

Looking forward to playing this in december. It's looking fantastic. Congratulations to your 3d engine developer, what he achieved this past year is impressive: dx11, VR, support, improved terrain texture filtering, improved hit rendering on planes, mirrors, extended tree range, better clouds, better shadows and now this. Much of this without losing FPS! And if I understand it correctly, he's also responsible for other areas in the code, including AI and UI? He's a champ!

Edited October 14, 2017 by coconut

[Royal_Flight]

This is class. The pictures showing the difference are brilliant.

[CCG_Pips]

Thanks a lot for your great job!!

[56RAF_klem]

You've got it backwards, the haze is what we currently have, they're getting rid of it. Take a look at the pictures again, the ones titled "work in progress" are without haze, the ones titled "current version" have the haze.

 

I'm glad he asked the stupid question It saved me asking it. I read Jason's post three times trying to find out which was old/new.

 

Nice job btw.

Edited October 14, 2017 by 56RAF_klem

[TP_Jacko]

Right now no. Maybe later on we can do something about it, but for now no. That's not a promise though. Everyone underestimates the difficulty in that request.

 

Jason

I admit to not understanding. Maybe in a dev update it can be explained. For me the fighter size aircraft at 10 k is ok as they are small. However the He 111 is quite visible at 10 k and vanishes suddenly. Maybe that aspect can be worked on.

[Nocke]

Its rather easy. Double the radius, and you get four times the number of objects to draw.

[Antiguo]

WoW....fantastic...nice job

[IckyATLAS]

Visibility in a sunny clear day (with mild temperatures to avoid too much water vapor in the air, and high pressure and low wind) you have easily the 150 kilometers true visibility when you are up in the blue yonder. So I really applause this graphical improvement because now flying and looking at the environment becomes much more realistic looking. So I really applaud the technical feat if this improvement does not impact much the FPS, but as we all are running on "Quad SLI TitanX"  systems this is a nice detail (  joke here). 

 

I hope we get it as soon as possible as a quick hotfix (just that nothing else)  .

 

Now that this is done, let's look at another detail. The famous circle of life. Yes this is the circle where we have full animated detail around the point where the camera is looking.

 

By the end of the year a new generation of graphic cards (Volta series at Nvidia) will maybe allow to improve even more the visual quality by increasing the radius of the circle at which the details on the ground like animated grass, or  in the sky the trees and forests, or in the sea the waves are rendered. This circle varies with the planes position or with the camera position and is a very visible effect. A new challenge for 2018 to be implemented with the next BOX.

 

Thanks to all the dev team for your fantastic efforts.

[ZZ15_dasSofa]

I am happy about every improvement of the game whereby some are necessary to keep up with other games and to stay in the market. Unfortunately the developers still used in 2013 dx9. I am very pleased, that the step was taken to convert it to dx11. Thanks a lot for this hard work!
Any improvement of the Client is good and makes the Game better and better but where do they stay these for the dserver? The possibilities of the Missionbuilder are awesome, however because of the bad performance of the dservers they didnt take account.

If the dserver gets improved, I am hyped as hell, because i miss hardly good programmed events like in IL1946 which cant be done now with the dserver performance and a lot of Players.
As a big Sim lover and a comparison to Sim's like Arma, Cliffs over Dover, DCS ... this Game is far away to be called a Simulation. The Plane balancing and damge model (left engine damage but right engine smoke's. Rata flights without O2 Mask's n 6K) make's it to a Game.

Whether it's called a Game or a Simulation it is fun to play it.

Thanks for the improvements!

Edited October 14, 2017 by I./ZG15_dasSofa

[56RAF_Roblex]

Its rather easy. Double the radius, and you get four times the number of objects to draw.

 

Not strictly true.  Double the radius and you *potentially* might have 4 times the objects to draw but only if you are flying over a map with a constant density of objects for 20km all around.  In reality on our maps it might be anything from zero increase to two or three times max.   Feel free to correct my faulty logic but if there is only one airfield (or town) with 3d objects within 10km but one more within 20km then doubling the radius only doubles the the number of objects to draw.  OTOH, if there are four more within 12km, not on any servers I have flown on,  then increasing the radius by just 20% will increase the number of objects by 400%.    I know on the Finnish server where I mostly fly there are airfields next to towns so even at a the present 10k radius there can be a doubling of objects as you get within 10km of them.  we need to look at the current popular servers to see what the maximum number of objects there could potentially be within a 20km radius circle to see what the maximum real impact is likely to be.   Off the top of my head I cannot think of many places where more than two major targets are within two grid squares of  each other.      The change just announced regarding the terrain *did* increase the work by 400% inland as that is pretty uniform.

Edited October 14, 2017 by 56RAF_Roblex