Little Quiz

[HappyHaddock]

I don't know if others out there think they have a good eye for detail and can distinguish pictures of real life from ever more "photo-realistic" video games, but by way of helping me refine my long term WIP project to overhaul the natural world in IL-2 I've posted in the above  thread a second (and hopefully more difficult) little challenge for fellow cloud watchers.

 

I'd be grateful for anyone willing to take a look, your answers will help me refine things further.

 

EDIT: just for reference if you click the main subject heading of the above link it will take you to the start of the first page of a lengthy thread, if you click the part at the very top where it says HappyHaddock replied to a post it will take to the relevant section of this long thread with the quiz/pictures

 

Merry Christmas HH

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by HappyHaddock

[ZachariasX]

Love your work, really!

 

Of the 3D pictures, I find G and D most obvious, while the other ones are strikingly good. There are two thinks that I use as "give aways" from 3D clouds, that is when small details can make a lot of contrast (D) or when you have an odd situation, namely bright blue sky somehow showing through from above a discrete dense cloud layer (G).

 

As for the rest, simulator cloulds today suffer from not being specific 3D entities that upon entering are intransparent. I mean, you can't see farther than one meter in a could, they shroud your wings. This also keeps them from being clearcut 3D objects (like a building) that can ou can fly around. You can really see the "edges" of the cloud from up close. In games, we have thois perpetual distant view.

[HappyHaddock]

39 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

Love your work, really!

 

Of the 3D pictures, I find G and D most obvious, while the other ones are strikingly good. There are two thinks that I use as "give aways" from 3D clouds, that is when small details can make a lot of contrast (D) or when you have an odd situation, namely bright blue sky somehow showing through from above a discrete dense cloud layer (G).

 

 

Hi, thanks for the reply but since I intend to give others time to play along I'm not yet saying whether the images G and D you mention are actually real, 2d flat textures or 3d models... you might be right you might be wrong.

 

however could I encourage others to post their replies in the above linked thread where the actual images comprising the quiz are shown.

 

HH

Edited December 22, 2019 by HappyHaddock

[ZachariasX]

2 hours ago, HappyHaddock said:

G and D you mention are actually real,

Ha.. got me there indeed.

 

My main point being that the difficulty is in having clouds close up, to be able to navigate through and around such a cloud. If I had such discreete shapes, could I look at them from many angles? So far, we can't. Clouds appear as planes did back in Lucasfims "Their finest hour", namely as sprites that are exchanged depending on the angle you look at them and you have maybe a dozen or so of sprites to represent view angles. That is what bugs me the most obout current "cloud tech".

 

Other than that, any "real picture" in the end is an artifact done by your camera. Depending how you develop your image, you can give it any kind of look. The "D" picture for instance is something you can get from photocameras when the algorithm in the camera creating the jpg from raw tries to make the picture look "nice" and you're globally adding contrast. But real, it is.

 

Look, "things that can happen if your world is not flat":

 

(Edit: from here)

Edited December 22, 2019 by ZachariasX

[HappyHaddock]

As mentioned before I am not saying yet which images from my little quiz are or aren't real but I am with you in terms of the fact that jpeg photos of real life are in many respects subject to many of the same processes that digital images in games are, so they don't always look the same way real life viewed through your own eyes does.

 

In terms of my biggest bug-bear with the current cloud tech in IL-2 is largely, as you yourself say, the ability to define edges to clouds, there just isn't the resolution in the cloud models meaning you either apply a lot of softening blurring to the noise applied to break up the shapes of the clouds such that they look good from distance but poor up close. Alternatively you cut out the noise and apply sharpening to get clear edges but accept the fact that the underlying shapes look very , for want of a better word, "unreal".

 

Plus you've got to allow for various different user defined graphics settings, so what you create to look got under one setting may then look atrocious to somebody else running different graphics settings.

 

Cheers

 

HH