Visual Effects Feedback Thread

[ATAG_Flare]

I posted this over at ATAG (https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28901&p=312957#post312957) but I thought I should post over here as well to get some other opinions as well.

 

I'd like to offer some feedback on what I think is one of CloD 4.5's worst areas, visual effects.

 

In the development of patch 4.5, many of the effects were re-done. However, a majority of these effects were re-done it seems just for the sake of re-doing them. In my opinion, really only the contrails received an improvement. The rest was either not changed even though it needed improvement, or changed even though it was already quite good.

 

EFFECTS THAT WERE BETTER IN 4.3

 

Fuel tank fires. The smoke was thick and lasted a long time. The fire was the correct size and looked good from up close or afar. The current effect has smoke that looks like a little cloud of smoke is appearing every frame. It's thin, and it doesn't last for a long time. If a plane is venting at the same time you can hardly tell that it's on fire because the smoke just blends in with the radiator leak. The flames in the current one look like a tiny flame from a candle, match, or campfire but scaled up to the size of a fuselage. Also, it has no sense of being on a plane going at 200-300mph and being blown back by the wind, it just has these rounded flickering campfire flames. It looks quite odd. However at least the colours are still good and the total size of the flame is pretty good.

 

Recommended: make the smoke thicker and last longer like in 4.3. Make the flame look more appropriate for the size that it is, similar to the (really good) 4.3 effect. 

 

4.3 Effect: 

 

Radiator leaks aka "venting". In 4.3 it looked like a nice trail of vapour, smooth and realistic. If anything it was too thin and hard to see sometimes. In 4.5 it looks like a stream of tiny puff balls coming out of the radiators every frame. On the plus side, it looks thicker, but the puff balls look very silly and unrealistic. Also it looks really weird once you've landed with a broken radiator and have these 1 metre wide cumulus clouds floating up through the wing and spinning. Also, it seems that it doesn't leave a very long trail, this was an issue in 4.3 as well.

 

Recommended: make the effect smoother like it was in 4.3, while keeping the thickness and opaqueness of the new effect. Make the effect leave a longer trail.

 

4.3 Effect:

 

Bomb Explosions: The 4.3 effects were some of the best I've seen in a flight sim. They left big columns of dirt that were lit up by the initial explosion. The shape was great, the colours were great. The outwards flying streaks of dirt that showed up were super cool. The 4.5 ones are just lame compared to these ones. Not enough of a dirt column, too firery, too smokey. The new effects that were shown off were really weird, they had the same radiator puff balls, but grey, and just floating on the ground spinning.

 

4.3 effect:

 

Recommended: just revert to the 4.3 ones. They did not need improvement at all and were perfect as is.

 

Engine fires. These look alright, they did in 4.3 as well, all I can say is make the smoke trail more visible and last longer, similar to the fuel tank fire smoke trail.

 

EFFECTS THAT HAVE ALWAYS NEEDED IMPROVEMENT

 

Oil radiator leaks. I have just always thought that the oil leaks are way too thin and hard to see. Shouldn't it spray into a thicker trail like the water radiator leaks (but not as much since it's probably not boiling.) Also, sometimes when you get oil radiator perforated, your windshield covers in oil. That doesn't make sense on the Spit, 109, or Hurricane, as the oil radiator isn't in front of the windscreen!

 

Recommended: Make them a little bit thicker and last longer.

 

Fuel leaks. Same issue as oil radiator leaks. They are awfully thin. The fuel should spread out into more a vapour trail rather than what it is.

 

Recommendation: Make them thicker and last longer.

 

MISSING EFFECTS

 

Some effects that should be in the sim just aren't there.

 

Water tank perforated. The glycol tank was a very vulnerable target and it often gets hit say when attacking bombers, but there is no effect to show that it's leaking. Pilots often described their cockpit being filled with glycol fumes and the plane would have a trail. This effect could be the same as the radiator venting effect just emitting from the engine area where the glycol tank is.

 

Oil tank perforated. Same as above but with oil.

 

Various types of engine damage, like oil gasket failure, cylinder head failure, etc. Basically anything that makes the engine shake. These could make the engine trail black oil fumes out of the exhaust. A large majority of combat reports from the BoB that I've read include the target emitting dark smoke, in CloD you only get smoke if you get a fire. Damaged engines should have some sort of visual cue and a dark oily trail would be great for this.

 

Like the 110 in this piece of art:

 

Or this scene from Battle of Britain:

 

I think TF has the potential to really make some great effects but they need to move away from the "puff balls" that are currently used on fire smoke, radiator venting, and even bomb explosions now! I hope that some improvement can be seen in future updates for the effects. Some just don't look that great compared to how they used to look, and some of the poor effects that have stayed the same since initial launch could use some improvements.

 

I'm just trying to offer some constructive criticism here so please don't take offence, you might not agree but I hope that the effects are looked at.

 

o7

Flare

[Sokol1]

Agree,  for me no one game nail this effects - specially water/fuel leakage like original game - require only a bit of tuning.

 

I really don't understand the need of changes in this area, even if motivated by CloD endless "FPS quest"...

 

But now I think that "fight" for this is:

 

 

 

 

[InProgress]

hmm i have never seen old explosions so close. Looks cool on screenshots but comparing it with new ones, I think new looks great too, you still have this dirt going up like real explosion but you get like 3 seperate effects. That static explosion of dirt that goes up and 2 diffrent smokes, one seems like seperate dirt and other like just smoke. Maybe it's not super extra effect but i think it still looks great and that 2 smokes actually move with wind.

 

You can see dark and lighter smoke, just like on new effect. Yea they have bubbles in CloD and it's not perfect. But i still think it's better than just dust going up like on your screenshot (that dust still is there but now you have that smoke effect that stays in there for a while and moves with wind)

 

I think it would be cool to have diffrent kind of effects of smoke

 

You can see that not always there was huge smoke.

 

 

In my opinion it would be cool to have few effects, once you see huge dark smoke, once just a little, sometimes there is then gone and again smoke etc.

 

That leak, i dont know. If they made it shorter then probably because fps. Leaks are often effects so probably many planes with them at once can hurt your pc. But black smoke? That's really rare and would last just a bit until it crashes. So yeaa, that could be improved i think.

Edited May 15, 2018 by InProgress

[Sokol1]

6 hours ago, InProgress said:

hmm i have never seen old explosions so close.

 

I have see, hundred of times - almost weekly since April 2011, why I say that CloD visual effects are not steeping forward but backward, or if prefer steeping "towards War Thunder".

 

Original explosions looks more close to the one in your link than the new effect, in what the dozen of dirt(?) "puffs" floating after explosion is completely out place:

 

CLoD (2011) explosions:

 

 

 

You linked video (in Germany):

 

 

What are wrong in new effects - the floating  "puffs":

 

 

Same backward in aircraft fires - collateral effect of changes in ground fires:

 

image uploader

 

This frames is for the same video - for "It's CloD!" reasons in the first second after hit the game use the original fire effect, then load the new, that looks - for me, fire on paper, not in fuel. 

 

Original CloD recreate what you see in this RL video very well:

 

https://youtu.be/msb8OdvBBjU?t=42

 

Same for this leakage spray effects:

 

https://youtu.be/msb8OdvBBjU?t=103

 

Now radiator leakage looks like... "puffs of smoke"...

 

BTW - I understand that CloD engine use limited effects, so make fires on ground looks good cause that fires on aircraft looks bad, or change smoke columns on ground fires makes that smoke on bombs explosions looks weird.

 

The particles in old (good) effects may cause FPS hit in the new 64 bits engine. It's CloD "traditional" struggle for FPS, since day one...

FYI - I am demanding nothing, it's just disappointment, understand the 'eat what you have'... after all, who keep with CLoD since 2011 is used to this.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Sokol1

[InProgress]

Old CloD is just a bit of dirt going up... it looked cool but new effect is more realistic. I think it's going to side way too fast tho, would be better to make it slower and more BoX like. You see how box look like, there is no just dirt going up in line. It's explosion full of smoke.

 

 

Arty shells but similar effect. And you can't see it on video but if there would be wind and some more time then all this would swim to the side like new effect, but way slower. Yeaa that bubbles don't look that great, maybe in time they will upgrade it, for now i still think it's more realistic, just wish it was not going to the side so fast.

The old effect seem to stay a bit longer too, so that was really cool.

 

So all together, old one is just some dirt going up, new one gets actual thick smoke which is more realistic, even if it does not look so great. I hope for it to get a bit slower, stay longer and maybe in time upgrade smoke so it will look more  like box as one cloud and not bunch of small one pilled together.

 

btw. even on that german video of 500kg bomb, you can see that it moves to the right and does not stay in 1 place like old clod effect.

Edited May 15, 2018 by InProgress

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

2 hours ago, InProgress said:

Old CloD is just a bit of dirt going up... it looked cool but new effect is more realistic.

 

-snip-

 

No, it's not.

 

See how easy that is?

[InProgress]

1 hour ago, Space_Ghost said:

 

No, it's not.

 

See how easy that is?

I don't think anyone here takes you or your opinions seriously. Don't you have anything better to do? People here post something, put screenshots, videos, photos to back their arguments. And you come here like "hurr durr

No it's not, see how easy? I am so smart..."

 

Dude if you have nothing useful, smart or meaningful to say, just stay quiet.

Edited May 15, 2018 by InProgress

[No.54_Reddog]

 

 

What we see now is markedly worse than it has been in multiple people's opinion. Additionally, it shouldn't really have been a top priority to touch those effects. (But then we get into an argument about who does what for free in their own time etc..)

Edited May 17, 2018 by No.54_Reddog

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

On 5/15/2018 at 2:11 PM, InProgress said:

-snip-

 

Dude if you have nothing useful, smart or meaningful to say, just stay quiet.

 

Shake as much metaphorical fist as you want, bud... The effects aren't "more realistic." They look like ****.

[TheVino3]

I posted this over on the ATAG forums but I'll post it here too:

 

Ok so to reply to the suggestion of rolling back to the 4.312 explosions, I will use this direct comparison between the old explosions and the new:

As you can see the old ones are quite a lot larger than the new ones, which is unrealistic. If we were to roll back to the old ones I would have to spend time resizing them to make them a realistic size.

Not only that but there are several other problems with them. The texture they used isn't very good quality, they are too bright and they are "stretched" artificially by the game to make them look taller. This leads to another problem with them:


They stretch through the ground and create these quite unsightly straight cuts. 
There are also problems with them leaving particles floating strangely mid-air and other things like that. They are not "perfect as is".

So, I would not be comfortable simply just "rolling-back" to the 4.312 explosions, for both historical accuracy reasons, as well as visual reasons. If we were to roll back, I would have to spend a fair amount of time fixing up the old ones anyway.

However, the concerns with the new effects by many members of the community are definitely being listened to, and the bomb effects are by no means "finished". They will be having a lot of work done on them to make them historically accurate and visually pleasing 

[Sokol1]

10 hours ago, TheVino3 said:

historical accuracy reasons

 

WW2 era propaganda newsreel, but don't look that they use "Hollywood special effects":

 

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Sokol1

[TheVino3]

That is actually a video I have used as reference for the new explosions, as you can see, the explosions in that video look much more like the new effects than the original ones, thanks Sokol 

[Buzzsaw]

As Vino said, work continues on the effects... we hope to improve them for TF 5.0.

 

Thanks to everyone for their comments.