The Rheinland map

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

20 minutes ago, sevenless said:

 

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.

Nonsens , I have 4 year old PC , running at 3440x1440 with  gfx setting at high and almost all times 130fps to 80 on ground - runways with heavy traffic.. 

[danielprates]

4 hours ago, Uufflakke said:

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.

 

Jeez. Aren't those good excuses?

 

I made a joke above in the sense that PTO/MTO or whatever should be postponed sine die until every damn bridge is modeled correctly. It was sarcastic of course, but I am beginning to fear that some really do think that.

 

Imagine a thread called "what would you change in the BoP map?" (I'm not crazy to do it btw). I am willing to bet there would be thousands of suggestions, tailored to lots of different tastes. Would it be worth the effort? How to choose what is important and what isn't amognst hundreds of bridges and the like?

 

Other than a slightly better Bastogne, most of what I read in this forum is just requested for flavor, and invariably requested by someone who lived there for reasons of personal taste ("I lived in so and so, where is this bridge or road or whatever?"). The game prescinds of all that.

 

 

[ADorante]

6 minutes ago, danielprates said:

Imagine a thread called "what would you change in the BoP map?" (I'm not crazy to do it btw). I am willing to bet there would be thousands of suggestions, tailored to lots of different tastes. Would it be worth the effort? How to choose what is important and what isn't amognst hundreds of bridges and the like?

 

 

Such a thread in the suggestions sub-forum in a format comparable to the main suggestions thread can make sense.

[sevenless]

29 minutes ago, 307_Tomcat said:

Nonsens , I have 4 year old PC , running at 3440x1440 with  gfx setting at high and almost all times 130fps to 80 on ground - runways with heavy traffic.. 

 

But not on a map as detailed as is shown above. So much to your nonsense argument.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Just now, sevenless said:

 

But not on a map as detailed as is shown above. So much to your nonsense argument.

Do not agree with , you know the rest 

[LR.flyingfisch]

32 minutes ago, 307_Tomcat said:

Nonsens , I have 4 year old PC , running at 3440x1440 with  gfx setting at high and almost all times 130fps to 80 on ground - runways with heavy traffic.. 

 

With the stuff people are asking for your current 130fps will drop to 30.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

2 minutes ago, flyingfisch said:

 

With the stuff people are asking for your current 130fps will drop to 30.

Are you a prophet? 

[LR.flyingfisch]

Come on dude, rendering polys takes time, more time to render lowers framerates. You add stuff to a scene, framerates go down. You add a bunch of stuff to a scene, framerates go down a bunch. You don't need to be a prophet to realize that.

[J2_Oelmann]

The Image I posted is from FSX/P3D. Thats quite old now.

Dont ask for a specific street or landmark added. But its a major urban area of the map. 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

43 minutes ago, flyingfisch said:

Come on dude, rendering polys takes time, more time to render lowers framerates. You add stuff to a scene, framerates go down. You add a bunch of stuff to a scene, framerates go down a bunch. You don't need to be a prophet to realize that.

Sure , just look at new AAA games and how much polygons they are pushing at 60 fps. I'm aware of budget they have but this is technically possible , good example is new in development Microsoft Flight  Simulator. 

[Cpt_Cool]

5 hours ago, Uufflakke said:

I have the feeling the Bodenplatte map is a fantasy world

 

This gets 11/10 on the irony scale. 

[Jason_Williams]

6 minutes ago, 307_Tomcat said:

Sure , just look at new AAA games and how much polygons they are pushing at 60 fps. I'm aware of budget they have but this is technically possible , good example is new in development Microsoft Flight  Simulator. 

i don’t have Miscrosoft money or technology or petabytes of 1940s scenery and models? Do you? I also have many would be customers who let the smallest things convince them to not buy our products when so much of it is simply awesome. 
 

Our maps are never going to be perfect or a true 1:1 duplication. Never have been, never will be. Just a fact of life. 
 

I’m sick of the pessimism that still plagues this community after all we’ve been able to accomplish the last two-years years with more to come. Our BOBP map was made by 2.5 guys in about a year. And they were heavily involved in supervising the Arras map which isn’t perfect either and they made the Prokohrovka map and they have to always invent new procedures to speed up map making. Pretty impressive for 2.5 guys in 20 months.

 

Jason

 

 

 

 

 

[JonRedcorn]

8 minutes ago, Jason_Williams said:

i don’t have Miscrosoft money or technology or petabytes of 1940s scenery and models? Do you? I also have many would be customers who let the smallest things convince them to not buy our products when so much of it is simply awesome. 
 

Our maps are never going to be perfect or a true 1:1 duplication. Never have been, never will be. Just a fact of life. 
 

I’m sick of the pessimism that still plagues this community after all we’ve been able to accomplish the last two-years years with more to come. Our BOBP map was made by 2.5 guys in about a year. And they were heavily involved in supervising the Arras map which isn’t perfect either and they made the Prokohrovka map and they have to always invent new procedures to speed up map making. Pretty impressive for 2.5 guys in 20 months.

 

Jason

 

 

 

 

 

You definitely have to stop letting these cry babies get to you, there's far more appreciation here than negativity. Also let's not forget how many people enjoy the game that never even post or go on these forums. This updates great, a few absolutely dreadful souls on a forum on the internet shouldn't bring the team down. The update post is 14 pages long and is filled with 90% positive feedback. The player count is way up, gotta stop focusing on the negativity. These people will never be happy. Just go look at the DCS forums, or Hoggit on reddit if you want to see what a real entitled and whiny customer base is like.

Edited October 3, 2019 by JonRedcorn

[LR.flyingfisch]

Jason,

 

As a software developer, I'm impressed with what a couple of team members have been able to accomplish in so little time. Many other teams get less done with more resources. I really don't think people realize what resources a AAA studio has at their disposal. The Microsoft Flight Simulator example is ridiculous, that was a full team of over 30 developers working on just rendering and map stuff, and it still took them over 5 years to get to where it is right now (and it's not even released yet).

 

I'd also like to remind everyone that even AAA titles often aren't as well optimized as IL-2. Silent Hunter 5 comes to mind.

 

The fact that I'm able to play the game now with similar or better framerates to what I got 4 years ago, while the game continues to look more and more stunning visually is extremely impressive to me. You have a great team and they should be proud of themselves.

3 hours ago, J2-Oelmann said:

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:

 

FWIW I much prefer what we have in il-2 to this. This is mostly flat textures that look ok from high up but horrible at low altitude. I own FSX and I hate how cities look in it. Also with those graphics settings in FSX my rig gets around 40 FPS.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

36 minutes ago, Jason_Williams said:

i don’t have Miscrosoft money or technology or petabytes of 1940s scenery and models? Do you? I also have many would be customers who let the smallest things convince them to not buy our products when so much of it is simply awesome. 
 

Our maps are never going to be perfect or a true 1:1 duplication. Never have been, never will be. Just a fact of life. 
 

I’m sick of the pessimism that still plagues this community after all we’ve been able to accomplish the last two-years years with more to come. Our BOBP map was made by 2.5 guys in about a year. And they were heavily involved in supervising the Arras map which isn’t perfect either and they made the Prokohrovka map and they have to always invent new procedures to speed up map making. Pretty impressive for 2.5 guys in 20 months.

 

Jason

 

 

 

 

 

To yours information In this case I was  arguing about technology (which should be neutral topic but  not good time and place, I see) not particularly about what lacks in il2 new map. I did not started any complains , for sure sometimes I gave  constructive criticism because I like this game.

 

Tom

Edited October 3, 2019 by 307_Tomcat

[danielprates]

1 hour ago, ADorante said:

 

Such a thread in the suggestions sub-forum in a format comparable to the main suggestions thread can make sense.

 

My point was that it would (probably, I guess) be flooded with small suggestions of irrelevant locations, in such way that the dev team would have to abandon future plans just to implement hundreds of bridges - and even after that there would be people complaining about the lack of some landmark.

[Zeev]

On 10/2/2019 at 9:23 PM, jollyjack said:

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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.

 

i7-9700K, RTX2080TI, 16 GB RAM
55" TV.

[JSOflyer69]

It’s better than the DCS Normandy map, and it’s not even finished.

medels all round for the two and a half guys, or 2.5 guys should I say

[Wa99el]

This song is for Jason  

 

 

 

 

[BraveSirRobin]

2 hours ago, Jason_Williams said:

i don’t have Miscrosoft money or technology or petabytes of 1940s scenery and models? Do you? I also have many would be customers who let the smallest things convince them to not buy our products when so much of it is simply awesome. 
 

Our maps are never going to be perfect or a true 1:1 duplication. Never have been, never will be. Just a fact of life. 
 

I’m sick of the pessimism that still plagues this community after all we’ve been able to accomplish the last two-years years with more to come. Our BOBP map was made by 2.5 guys in about a year. And they were heavily involved in supervising the Arras map which isn’t perfect either and they made the Prokohrovka map and they have to always invent new procedures to speed up map making. Pretty impressive for 2.5 guys in 20 months.

 

Jason

 

 

 

 

 

I'm especially impressed by the .5 guy on that team.  Especially if the .5 was the bottom half.

Edited October 3, 2019 by BraveSirRobin

[Sharpe43]

I wouldn't bother too much about the people that consider small things a 'no buy' issue. You can never satisfy everybody all the time. Just one of those things as well, or so I suppose.

 

TBH (and that's brutally honest btw) I was actually (and still am) disappointed when I noticed what the Rhineland map looked like the first time I over flew the part with my home city in it. From an earlier conversation I remembered that I wasn't going to recognize it. Okay, I figured (and know) the place looked a little different in 1944/1945, then it does now. Color me surprised at release!

 

I suppose I could also write a longwinded reply about what else I would have liked to seen in the map, but that's useless (and in line with what I started my response with) as of right now I'm guess I'm just along for the ride and see where it goes...  

[danielprates]

5 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

I'm especially impressed by the .5 guy on that team.  Especially if the .5 was the bottom half.

 

I was wondering about that too. Maybe the third guy is really, really short!

[BraveSirRobin]

2 minutes ago, danielprates said:

 

I was wondering about that too. Maybe the third guy is really, really short!

 

I spent a lot of my time before I retired as 1/2 a programmer, but that's because I spent 1/2 of my time on this forum.

[ShamrockOneFive]

I'm very impressed with the map. It was a kind of dream to see this map and this aircraft set in IL-2 for me and it has finally happened. Frankly I think they did a fantastic job and while it may be missing this town, or that road, or whatever... eh. There's always room for improvement and I always appreciate trying to push the needle forward but there should always also be a taking stock of how far we've come with the series.

 

Last night I only had a few minutes to fly and I captured this while flying over Cologne. Big multi-span bridges down the Rhine River with a detailed city beneath me and to the sides while skimming across the river. Outstanding.

 

[Voidhunger]

Map is nice and im looking forward to autumn and snow covered spring map. If the can  do something with the stutters it will be great.

[LernanRuss]

The way I see it, that game is mainly about airplanes - ground is just an object you can crash into. ?

I mean - some details are nice, but they shouldn't be a too much focus, neither take too much resources. Every map is supposed to reflect some part of the world, most of them are inhabited areas, and there is always a possibility that there will be ppl that will point out that their village/town/city doesn't look like it should. Still - it is hardly expected that everything will be exactly copied from the real world (of the 1940s on top of that) - we are not having a Matrix here.

 

Generally - I like that map, even though the ground is as hard as everywhere else. ?

 

P.S. I've been lately driving a tank on one of the air combat maps - and it still looked better than a "dedicated tank map" in one of the other games. This should count for something. ?

Edited October 4, 2019 by LernanRuss

[4driano]

Airfield near Asbach!

I went to this spot in the map and this is so much fun.
It is an airfield over a hill, kind of hidden. When you take off, it is a bit like in a aircraft carrier, cause you are in a higher ground. I was flying with the P-51, with the canopy open, flying just above the airfield and doing landings-take off training. Go there in the morning, 8:30 am. Magnificent!!!
I came to the conclusion that this Rheinland map is much much superior to the previous ones, even better than the Kuban.
Textures are of higher quality, even close to the ground you still have a nice felling of realism.
The topography seems perfectly crafted to me, the hills and small mountains are so natural.
The size of the map also helps in the immersion, because it is huge, you can easily lost yourself flying around looking at the scenery.
I love to fly just above those rooftops.
In VR it is absolutely stunning.
I will have to buy a better chair.

[EAF19_Marsh]

12 minutes ago, 4driano said:

I will have to buy a better chair.

 

And a bigger boat.

 

That reminds me, though, I really do need a better chair

[322_SQN-Leon_M]

Me and my friends "squadron"  love this new map and our new toys to fly with. Loads of fun and the spinning around because you forgot to lock your tail wheel never gets boring on any map. Good laughs.

[unreasonable]

The industrial areas were very smoggy: much more so than today. Perhaps a persistent grey smog-mist type effect over industrial areas up to x00ms would to an extent conceal, from a plane's eye view, that there is nothing there?  Much easier to implement what is in effect another weather effect than to add thousands more buildings; also easier on our PCs. 

[EAF19_Marsh]

15 hours ago, danielprates said:

sine die

 

Ooooh, check you out with your classical education! ?

[Gretsch_Man]

7 hours ago, ShamrockOneFive said:

I'm very impressed with the map. 

Me too! And that also includes the Arras map.

 

IMHO these latest two maps have brought the IL-2 world onto a new, higher level. Seen a city from the distance now looks just fantastic. And even after closing in e.g. just flying over it, it's still just WOW for me!

 

Great job, devs! Be proud of it.

[FTC_Kriechbaum]

What could do the trick :

 

They could produce more and bigger cities by removing half or more of the 3d-buildings and replace them with less complex ruins (two textures forming two faces of the building still standing) or just the "footprint" of the buildings as textures of the ground.

After all, most of the cities were pretty flat by that time with only tougher buildings still standing.

 

Something like this: 

 

That way, you can stretch out the amount of buildings you want as a more complex 3d-Model for a given area while still maintaining the effect of having a rather urbanized landscape.

 

Stalingrad looks very good, so something like this will totally enhance the look of the rhineland map.

I am sure they will further develop this very large map over time. 

 

Edited October 4, 2019 by KB-Kriechbaum

[Feathered_IV]

That was my thinking too.  Have the craters, rubble and uneven ground painted onto the landscape textures with a bump map and have minimal walls standing. 

[danielprates]

4 hours ago, EAF19_Marsh said:

 

Ooooh, check you out with your classical education! ?

 

Hehe. Woke up feeling fancy af that day. Back to normal!

 

9 minutes ago, Feathered_IV said:

That was my thinking too.  Have the craters, rubble and uneven ground painted onto the landscape textures with a bump map and have minimal walls standing. 

 

Also, maybe the destruction could be limited to only a few cities. The more iconical ones. In the Stalingrad map only the actual city of Stalingrad was detailed in regards of damage, all other towns are just plain intact urban areas - when in reality one can imagine the devastation was much more widespread.

 

I guess my point is, we do not need perfect realism, just enough to create proper immersion. Beyond that we are just overencumbering the development of the game. Let perfect realism be relegatet to where we need it: FM, DM etc.

[EAF19_Marsh]

1 hour ago, KB-Kriechbaum said:

 

Something like this: 

 

 

Still curdles my stomach, sometimes, to see images like that ?

[HappyHaddock]

18 hours ago, Jason_Williams said:

 

I’m sick of the pessimism that still plagues this community after all we’ve been able to accomplish the last two-years years with more to come. Our BOBP map was made by 2.5 guys in about a year. And they were heavily involved in supervising the Arras map which isn’t perfect either and they made the Prokohrovka map and they have to always invent new procedures to speed up map making. Pretty impressive for 2.5 guys in 20 months.

 

 

With all the talk of what has or hasn't been done and how this is a niche community without the mega budgets to spend I think hearing statistics like that is really interesting and gives everyone a much more realistic framework on which to hang expectations and criticisms, though I suppose unless they spend a lot of time designing/producing/modding perhaps they still won't have a reasonable idea of how much or little one person can achieve in one year.

 

I'll be the first to admit that I point out things I feel could better in terms of the overall standard of this sim, but I always try to temper such criticisms in terms of stating I don't know the time or resources available to put into the development of any particular part of a project.

 

Knowing that all three maps are effectively the result of just 4person-years of work makes the results all the more impressive.... 

 

HH

 

[Cpt_Cool]

10 hours ago, danielprates said:

 

I was wondering about that too. Maybe the third guy is really, really short!

 

Did you hear the joke about the midget with the 40 lb testicles?

 

they say he was half nuts ?

[DD_Arthur]

Just now, Cpt_Cool said:

 

Did you hear the joke about the midget with the 40 lb testicles?

 

they say he was half nuts ?

 

Roflmao! 

[J2_Oelmann]

6 hours ago, LernanRuss said:

(...), and there is always a possibility that there will be ppl that will point out that their village/town/city doesn't look like it should. Still - it is hardly expected that everything will be exactly copied from the real world (of the 1940s on top of that) - we are not having a Matrix here.

 

Generally - I like that map, even though the ground is as hard as everywhere else. ?

 

P.S. I've been lately driving a tank on one of the air combat maps - and it still looked better than a "dedicated tank map" in one of the other games. This should count for something. ?

Its not just about my personal village or town missing. I can live with that very good. But my concern is that the Ruhrgebiet was and is more then 400.000km² big urban and industrial area. It's like leaving out the Krim from the Kuban map (Which is only ~26.000km²). Plus it was the main target area of the Allies as it was the industrial heart of Germany. By '44 it mostly would mostly be all in ruins, so as others stated above I would be fine with a greyish version of the no-mans-land overlaid over the map. The larger cities should all be more ruins then intact houses. Collogne was almost completly destroyed be the end of the war:

I am sure framerates can benefit if you use ruins instead of inteact houses. In no way this critic should be an offence against the programmers. But in a fighter simulation the ground is much more you can crash into. Its the base for every scenario.

I am sure the map will improve alot until the full release.