The Rheinland map

[Missionbug]

I think it fair to say much has been left off the map, the development team did make it clear long ago there would be compromises to keep FPS at a reasonable level, I flew up to and around Amsterdam last night, surely there should be a airfield there, but no, the population areas themselves are well detailed but not to the level of the real place back then.  Most likely the team has just concentrated primarily on what could be considered the primary targets of the conflict and left more in-depth detail to the mission builder, then again it is still WIP and there might be much to add once they get some idea of how the map is behaving for most of the player base.

 

my brief tests yesterday on both new maps showed a drop from my usual 60 to 35/40 FPS, quite significant for me and my machine is around five years old and specially built for flight sim usage, the eastern maps remain as they were before possibly due to less detail in the main population areas.  I managed a quick four on four on the Rhineland map and that seemed not so bad, not sure how a fully fledged mission from a campaign will behave, then again by the time the final is released some further optimization might have been possible.

 

Both maps do look great though I have to say, considering the huge size of the Rhineland map in particular the detail is truly amazing really although no mans land on the Arras map just does not do it for me sorry to say, looks very R.O.F like.

 

 

8 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

Is the whole map showing everything in an undamaged pre-war state?   

 

The Arras map showed a few damaged buildings near no mans land, not sure if they were there all along or hit by artillery during the flight, the Rhineland one nothing damaged that I noticed, not surprising though really when you consider the level of detail in those damage models from images already published by the team, maybe not the same as for TC but certainly a world away from the old IL_2 1946.

 

Imagine the FPS hit if whole towns had large areas in a damaged state.

 

The poly limit for a simple house in the old game is quite low, lets say 20 poly, the old damage model cloned that building and flipped the faces to give the internal walls and ceilings and attached the two parts together before using the alpha channel to create the holes and such, that simple house might only be 40 poly in total.  Now look at those for this game they appear to model all the roof beams and maybe much more, quite a lot if you have a look in the attic of even a basic home here in the UK, you might now possibly take your 40 poly basic box up to the hundreds of polygons because you added that level of detail, that I think even in the most well managed game is going to bring a mission to a stand still if a they all activate together, my thinking is that those blocks of buildings might only contain a small section that will react to the damage triggers.  

 

A difficult aspect to manage in game I would think, do you have a clean map so it can represent any time period or one that faithfully represents this particular event which would mean having most towns and cities as rubble, not to mention airfields full of craters and the resulting FPS hit for many that might create?

 

 

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Missionbug

[Wa99el]

2 hours ago, sevenless said:

 

I think in the end we all have to accept that even with the final map a certain amount of abstraction will be necessary due to priorisation of gameplay over accuracy. They could edit in 2 dozen of towns and landmarks and there will be still hundreds of areas missing and/or misinterpreted. It is just the nature of the beast of such a gigantous untertaking we see with this map.

 

I would like to see a few historically important places being edited in until final release but then I think it is time to move on, because honestly it is not possible to get everything 90% correct with this map. It simply is too huge and the landscape/towns have changed too much over the past 75 years.

 

Absolutely correct. The reason for this is that we do not want the developers to be taken to a psychiatric hospital at some point because they have succumbed to insanity. It is certainly necessary to insert striking city characteristics into a simulated cityscape. However, not every kiosk needs to be inserted.

 

But you can look for patterns within an urban characteristic. Example: Whether Bochum, Recklinghausen, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund and other cities of the Ruhr: they all have the same character in the housing estates of the working class. Terraced houses, mostly made of brick or covered with a simple gray plaster. These terraced houses are mostly 4 buildings next to each other, sometimes more.

 

Keywords are: Zechensiedlung, Ruhrgebiet, Arbeitersiedlung, Zechenhaus

 

 

 

There was another type with 3 floors:

 

 

Behind each of this 3 floor houses there was a shed. Very often in these sheds there were Pigs, geese, chickens and pigeons.

 

 

The same 3 floor type house with plastered surface. The houses were very dirty on the surface. The reason for this was the coal dust from the mines and industrial districts.

The coal mines were in close proximity to the mines. Because most of the workers did not have a car. They had bicycles. A motorcycle was already a luxury.

 

The windows of the houses were mostly white painted wood. On the next picture the left window is modern and the right window ist original.

 

To be continued.

 

@ Missionbug

 

The objects should be a compromise of number of polygons and the graphical skin. You can save a lot of polygons if you make the skin very detailed. As Flushmeiser and later Claymore graphically worked up the cockpit of the FW 190 in Il-2 1946, the number of polygons was not larger but the overall picture of the cockpit was considerably better.

 

When I was working on the North Sea map in 2010, I had a computer with a power of about 2003. I reached my limits with the computing power. Years later, when I flew with a new-generation computer, I was able to fly through the map even with high graphic resolution.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Wa99el

[CountZero]

Thats why they should do Midway next, no roads no towns no factorys exept few islandsand palm trees, and focus mostly on ships

Maps over heavy populated areas like this will never satisfied all, best to avoid it in future and go PTO carriers vs carriers.

[Wa99el]

14 minutes ago, 77.CountZero said:

Thats why they should do Midway next,....

?

[Sharpe43]

speaking of coal mines... I've yet to see any slag heaps..

[namhee2]

And I have not found a single brewery ....the best proof of an unfinished map

Edited October 2, 2019 by namhee2

[Feathered_IV]

35 minutes ago, 77.CountZero said:

Thats why they should do Midway next, no roads no towns no factorys exept few islandsand palm trees, and focus mostly on ships

Maps over heavy populated areas like this will never satisfied all, best to avoid it in future and go PTO carriers vs carriers.

 

Yep, and the ocean looked just the same in 1938 as it did in 1945.  No thousands of absent bomb craters to worry about when you're out to sea either.  Plus the Japanese enjoyed a great lack of radio receivers, so the painfully dreadful radio comms would not need to be heard.

[Pict]

13 minutes ago, Feathered_IV said:

the painfully dreadful radio comms would not need to be heard

 

wouldn't that be great

[Wa99el]

Video found:

 

[sevenless]

6 minutes ago, Wa99el said:

Video found:

 

 

Thanks. That level of destruction being shown at 3:36 and later is beyond imaginable.

[J2_Oelmann]

1 hour ago, Wa99el said:

Video found:

 

They maybe could "Cheat" a bit by doing large parts like the nomansland.

[JtD]

1 hour ago, sevenless said:

 

Thanks. That level of destruction being shown at 3:36 and later is beyond imaginable.

 

What I find even more beyond imaginable is that this whole area was rebuilt and became the core of the post war German economic boom.

[PatrickAWlson]

4 hours ago, namhee2 said:

And I have not found a single brewery ....the best proof of an unfinished map

 

Breweries in Great Battles are like children in fantasy RPGs - it is unacceptable to destroy them so best not to add them at all.

 

[Wa99el]

2 hours ago, J2-Oelmann said:

They maybe could "Cheat" a bit by doing large parts like the nomansland.

Absolutely. Like I have written, the "arbeiterklasse" houses mostly were 4 in a row. Or sometimes 8 in a row.

Take a look into your aerial view of the Zeche Zollverein. The houses in the background are 2 x 4 houses in a row.

If you know how a workingclass disrict looked like, you can make a so called template. This means you have

a specific texture for the workingclass district and when you texture the map, the buildings later appear automaticle.

The working-class districts are sometimes so similar that you do not know whether you're in Borbeck now or in Gladbeck.

 

 

8 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Breweries in Great Battles are like children in fantasy RPGs - it is unacceptable to destroy them so best not to add them at all.

 

Allied forces would have won the war much earlier if they had bombed specifically the breweries.

 

?

 

Some famous song from my town:

 

Quote

Weisse denn wo Kölle liegt, Kölle liegt am Rheine.
Weisse denn wo Frankfurt liegt, Frankfurt liegt am Maine.
Weisse wo Recklinghausen liegt, an der Köttelbecke,
Wo man trinkt die Halben aus, die so lecker schmecken.
Wo man trinkt die Halben aus, die so lecker schmecken.

Wir sind vom Emscherstrand,
wo meine Wiege stand.
Wo liegt der aller größte Dreck,
da sind wir weg.

 

Do you know where Kölle is? Kölle is located on the Rhine.
Do you know where Frankfurt is located? Frankfurt is on the Main river.
Do you know where Recklinghausen is located? On the Köttelbecke,
Where to drink the half (beer 0.5 liters), which taste so delicious.
Where to drink the half (beer 0.5 liters), which taste so delicious.

We are from the Emscher (river) beach,
where my cradle stood.
Where is the biggest filth,
there we are gone.

[I.JG3_CDRSEABEE]

On 9/30/2019 at 6:22 PM, danielprates said:

 

 

The very first thing I did was to take off from near Cologne to see if the Gothic Cathedral was there. And there it was, in it's full glory. 

 

Yeah. It was there until I bombed it.

 

Love just bombing stuff on this map with unlimited 1800KG stuka bombs.

 

If you want to see damage on the map, drop some bombs.  Wonder is the servers will have collective damage over a campaign.

Edited October 2, 2019 by CDRSEABEE

[EAF19_Marsh]

1 hour ago, Wa99el said:

Where to drink the half (beer 0.5 liters), which taste so delicious

 

Fie, Sir! Take your piddly 500ml and give me a man’s drink (583ml)! ?

Edited October 2, 2019 by EAF19_Marsh

[DerwischGER]

7 hours ago, III./ZG1_HeTzeR said:

I just realize that I live 5min from the Panzerbau 3 ? Borbeck 

Nice! Me too, most of the week! Great place to walk the dogs and fun place for the kids to play with those hidden bunker entrences throughout...the rest of the week I live in Stoppenberg close to Zollverein. Sadly, there is a great gap on the Rhineland map between the small village of Essen and the little settlement Gelsenkirchen right where I am right now. Last time I went down the A40, I pretty sure saw house next to house right up to Dortmund...and I'm pretty sure, most of this already existed in 1944...I think something like that is really needed on the map to capture the feel of this huge industrial area...

[jollyjack]

On 10/1/2019 at 2:12 PM, Zeev said:

For me it runs with frequent stutters at 4K. All the other maps runs smooth without any issues at 60 FPS.
I assume its an issue with either more buildings and larger cities or either performance or both.
I hope they fix it.

 

What system and monitor do you use? Curious, as i want to get some new hardware in the near future ... thnx

 

2 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Breweries in Great Battles are like children in fantasy RPGs - it is unacceptable to destroy them so best not to add them at all.

 

 

And moving WW2 river freight ships loaded with beer barrels would be a nice target ... Play the Beer Barrel Polka while at it.

 

33 minutes ago, DerwischGER said:

Nice! Me too, most of the week! Great place to walk the dogs and fun place for the kids to play with those hidden bunker entrences throughout...the rest of the week I live in Stoppenberg close to Zollverein. Sadly, there is a great gap on the Rhineland map between the small village of Essen and the little settlement Gelsenkirchen right where I am right now. Last time I went down the A40, I pretty sure saw house next to house right up to Dortmund...and I'm pretty sure, most of this already existed in 1944...I think something like that is really needed on the map to capture the feel of this huge industrial area...

 

I won't start about Holland .... It's there alright, that's OK with me, but too many historically important locations and towns are are just fully missing.

But we'll see what future repairs and updates bring us.

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by jollyjack
cosmetic edits

[JonRedcorn]

Wow my house in Dusseldorf isn't even modeled on the map. This can't stand, I am going to issue a charge back immediately. Honestly can't say how disappointed I am. You'd think after 2 years they'd have gotten their stuff together and been able to at least model my house in game. Truly a let down.

[Zooropa_Fly]

Well said Jon, my thoughts exactly ?

[DerwischGER]

32 minutes ago, JonRedcorn said:

Wow my house in Dusseldorf isn't even modeled on the map. This can't stand, I am going to issue a charge back immediately. Honestly can't say how disappointed I am. You'd think after 2 years they'd have gotten their stuff together and been able to at least model my house in game. Truly a let down.

That's not the point. In fact, almost no house in Essen today existed back then. That's because almost the whole city was razed flat during the war. My point is that the Ruhrgebiet did not look close to what is on the map. I think this map is gorgeous, but small settlements with small houses with little smoking chimeys is not what the Ruhrgebiet is about.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

What about paved roads and Autobahn ??, Not to mention electric grid  , this was the West not the barbaric East hehehe just kidding ?

[Fritz_Faber]

Mainz, Taunus rechts oben, Rhein

 

Frankfurt Sachsenhausen, Langener Waldsee rechts, Odenwald mit Melibokus rechts hinten

 

Darmstadt, A5, Melibokus

 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Fritz_Faber

[LukeFF]

10 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

 

Yep, and the ocean looked just the same in 1938 as it did in 1945.  No thousands of absent bomb craters to worry about when you're out to sea either.  Plus the Japanese enjoyed a great lack of radio receivers, so the painfully dreadful radio comms would not need to be heard.

 

Don't you ever get tired of this passive-agressive routine in nearly every damn topic to which you reply? 

[Feathered_IV]

3 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

Don't you ever get tired of this passive-agressive routine in nearly every damn topic to which you reply? 

 

Yeah I do.  Sometimes I just want to let rip.  ?

[BraveSirRobin]

15 minutes ago, Feathered_IV said:

 

Yeah I do.  Sometimes I just want to let rip.  ?

Go for it!

[danielprates]

This thread has opened my eyes. The dev team must absolutelly postpone PTO/MTO/Korea or whatever they were cookin' up. Nothing else deserves more attention than getting every single bridge in the whole of the Benelux exactly right - even if it takes  years and years. How many there could be anyway?

[LLv24_Zami]

Before too much fuss, you might take a moment to think about the cost, the size of the developing crew, the size of the map, the amount of stuff devs have to create and the time within all this has to be made to work.

 

It`s the best they could do in this time and money, and I think it`s pretty good. It will improve in time as have other things done in this sim. So relax ?

Edited October 2, 2019 by LLv24_Zami

[Uufflakke]

13 hours ago, LLv24_Zami said:

Before too much fuss, you might take a moment to think about the cost, the size of the developing crew, the size of the map, the amount of stuff devs have to create and the time within all this has to be made to work.

 

It`s the best they could do in this time and money, and I think it`s pretty good. It will improve in time as have other things done in this sim. So relax ?

 

To each its own but I've heard this mantra too often.

It started years ago when the Stalingrad map got released. Complaints about an empty Stalingrad, 2D sprites representing damaged buildings, etc. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is  new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Then the Moscow map. Not possible to fly over the capital itself. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Now the Bodenplatte map with (for instance) the industrial heart of Germany the Ruhrgebiet not represented. The excuse is: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

 

My main criticism in relation to the Bodenplatte map is that it looks so empty. In between the (not so big) cities there is nothing. Only green textures.

And basically it does not matter so much were I fly, the entire map seems to be covered with the same kind of large green and yellow coloured fields. I can assure you The Netherlands didn't look like that in those days. Not even today. Or perhaps some textures are placeholders untill final release?

My enthusiasm after seeing the many screenshots during development disappeared since I did some test flights.

I  will think twice, thrice to before transfering money for Early Acces.

 

To end in a positive way: I do like the planes.

[Sharpe43]

He's right.

 

I like the planes too, but the map....not so much..

[LLv24_Zami]

26 minutes ago, Uufflakke said:

 

To each its own but I've heard this mantra too often.

It started years ago when the Stalingrad map got released. Complaints about an empty Stalingrad, 2D sprites representing damaged buildings, etc. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is  new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Then the Moscow map. Not possible to fly over the capital itself. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Now the Bodenplatte map with (for instance) the industrial heart of Germany the Ruhrgebiet not represented. The excuse is: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

 

My main criticism in relation to the Bodenplatte map is that it looks so empty. In between the (not so big) cities there is nothing. Only green textures.

And basically it does not matter so much were I fly, the entire map seems to be covered with the same kind of large green and yellow coloured fields. I can assure you The Netherlands didn't look like that in those days. Not even today. Or perhaps some textures are placeholders untill final release?

My enthusiasm after seeing the many screenshots during development disappeared since I did some test flights.

I  will think twice, thrice to before transfering money for Early Acces.

 

To end in a positive way: I do like the planes.

You live in the fantasy world frankly.

 

Facts are there, you can do with it what ever you want. Enjoy the planes.

[Uufflakke]

3 minutes ago, LLv24_Zami said:

You live in the fantasy world frankly.

 

Facts are there, you can do with it what ever you want. Enjoy the planes.

 

I have the feeling the Bodenplatte map is a fantasy world.

 

[LLv24_Zami]

2 minutes ago, Uufflakke said:

 

I have the feeling the Bodenplatte map is a fantasy world.

 

Well, then it suits you fine. 

[Danziger]

15 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Don't you ever get tired of this passive-agressive routine in nearly every damn topic to which you reply? 

Ikr? Where is that horse?

[sevenless]

19 hours ago, DerwischGER said:

...the rest of the week I live in Stoppenberg close to Zollverein.

 

Hey, me and my wife lived in Schonnebeck for almost 4 years. Enjoyed to order our occasional Doener at Dilara and our italian food from Pizza Paolo. And Zollverein is really worth a visit to get an idea how life and work was in the area until back in the 1960s.

[RedKestrel]

1 hour ago, Uufflakke said:

 

To each its own but I've heard this mantra too often.

It started years ago when the Stalingrad map got released. Complaints about an empty Stalingrad, 2D sprites representing damaged buildings, etc. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is  new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Then the Moscow map. Not possible to fly over the capital itself. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Now the Bodenplatte map with (for instance) the industrial heart of Germany the Ruhrgebiet not represented. The excuse is: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

 

Its not a mantra, its what is actually going on. They still have a small team, they still have a small amount of time and money, and we should still be happy there is a good, affordable WWII combat sim on the market. Look at the credits. The main dev team is like 20 people.

The new map is already hard on mid-range rigs. If people got the detail they wanted no one except people with uber-machines would be able to fly on the thing. As in all things, compromises are made. 

[J2_Oelmann]

I am sure. a true scale realistic Ruhrgebiet would kill most computers. Thats why I could live with a greyish version of the no-mans-land. Most of the time you would be high above anyways. But being such a huge, dense populated area its a real shame its not just there in any form. Better a bad representation then none at all.

I know you can't compare other flightsim. Especially non-combat sims.

P3D/FSX Dortmund looks like this for example:

 

[BraveSirRobin]

3 hours ago, Uufflakke said:

 

To each its own but I've heard this mantra too often.

It started years ago when the Stalingrad map got released. Complaints about an empty Stalingrad, 2D sprites representing damaged buildings, etc. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is  new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Then the Moscow map. Not possible to fly over the capital itself. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Now the Bodenplatte map with (for instance) the industrial heart of Germany the Ruhrgebiet not represented. The excuse is: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

 

My main criticism in relation to the Bodenplatte map is that it looks so empty. In between the (not so big) cities there is nothing. Only green textures.

And basically it does not matter so much were I fly, the entire map seems to be covered with the same kind of large green and yellow coloured fields. I can assure you The Netherlands didn't look like that in those days. Not even today. Or perhaps some textures are placeholders untill final release?

My enthusiasm after seeing the many screenshots during development disappeared since I did some test flights.

I  will think twice, thrice to before transfering money for Early Acces.

 

To end in a positive way: I do like the planes.

 

Yeah, those excuses are pretty lame.  Which WW2 combat flight sim are you playing?  It must be pretty awesome.  I’ll buy that one.

[sevenless]

29 minutes ago, J2-Oelmann said:

P3D/FSX Dortmund looks like this for example:

 

 

Agreed. We all would need Intel Core i9 9900K rigs running at 6Ghz with two nvidia geforce rtx 2080 ti in SLI mode to get that running with acceptable FPS in IL2 and furthermore it would take ICGS additional 24 month to build that for half of europe.

 

I´d better see them focussing on the next module and maybe add some yet left out important areas and then move on.

[WIS-Redcoat]

4 hours ago, Uufflakke said:

 

To each its own but I've heard this mantra too often.

It started years ago when the Stalingrad map got released. Complaints about an empty Stalingrad, 2D sprites representing damaged buildings, etc. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is  new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Then the Moscow map. Not possible to fly over the capital itself. The excuse was: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

Now the Bodenplatte map with (for instance) the industrial heart of Germany the Ruhrgebiet not represented. The excuse is: time, money, small team, be happy there is a new WWII flight sim on the market after IL2:1946.

 

I thank the lord everyday that I was born an optimist and not a pessimist.  I look at il2 and see one of my life's happiest past-times and I am damn thankful for it...   people like you see excuses, greed and a shitty map because some "thing" (insert niggle here) isn't represented as you see fit; and the part ruins the whole.  

 

It must be a disappointing existence.  

Edited October 3, 2019 by WIS-Redcoat