Improved ground battles?

[LilBoiJonas]

I love this flight sim as it lets us experience WW2 as pilots, and it does that super well. But one of the key elements that really bothers me is how barren the battlefields are, you barely see any ground battles taking place which is quite unfortunate. You would probably expect seeing Stalingrad being reduced to rubble and tons of infantry fighting, but all you end up seeing are a few fires and maybe a little bit of smoke. I would have loved seeing ground battles progressing as each day passes in the career mode. Now this would probably not be high up on the priority list, but I believe it would be worth it as it makes you feel more immersed and etc.

[busdriver]

Rhut-rho... standby for incoming.

[ShamrockOneFive]

How much are you willing to spend on a new CPU and RAM?

[Eisenfaustus]

And if you saw a lot infantry in combat from a cockpit they'd be doing it wrong ^^

[Sandmarken]

Some of the scripted campains make good use of the mg gunners, anti tank and tanks to make it look like a living battlefield. In Lions of kalin or what it was called i remember some cool missions like that.?

Edited March 15, 2020 by Sandmarken

[PatrickAWlson]

First, the OP is not an unreasonable request.  Why not ask?  And there was no specific request for infantry (critical for WWI IMHO, less so for WWII).  Just battles.

 

Second, on the latest hardware there seems to be much more capability to handle ground units.  After upgrading a few months ago I have had no problems running considerable numbers of ground units (50 or so) in a battle.  For other systems one has to scale back a bit.

 

Last, if we are talking campaign generated missions, placement is really challenging. How can you identify a street in Stalingrad?  As most PWCG users know, ground units routinely end up in rivers or stuck in buildings.  I recently got a PM from @[Pb]Kappa_ pointing me to some work that mapped and identified terrain types.  Have to explore further but that is very promising.  Imagine units intelligently positions and fighting, with scheduled artillery barrages (also possible).  These things aren't easy to do in an auto generated mission but I am beginning to feel that they may be possible.

 

So - performance, data (terrain)  and algorithms .  Not simple but IMHO not impossible.

17 hours ago, Eisenfaustus said:

And if you saw a lot infantry in combat from a cockpit they'd be doing it wrong ^^

 

Concede that if infantry is hunkered down under cover they would be pretty hard to spot.  Attacking infantry would often be visible.   WWI.  Normandy.  Probable quite visible in some eastern front battles,  especially Russian assaults. 

 

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

 Limits of the game engine are known so not much really to be done. But what bothers as well is the always pristine and tidy environment, everywhere. Well, except Stalingrad. German pilot memoirs, for example, stated that Gumrak airfield was like a dirty spot in the scenery. Seen from afar. Supply highway could be seen going thru the landscape as a long and winding dirty trail. Artillery fire and bombings devastated places etc. But all we see is a pristine scenery without a trace of war.

Edited March 15, 2020 by LLv34_Flanker

[Yogiflight]

The first thing, that is missing is a frontline. No trenches, foxholes, wire obstacles and so on. No bomb- and grenade craters, with the ground brownish around of all the dirt thrown out by exploding bombs and grenades.

And the best mission type of the old campaign system, attack assaulting enemy troops, with attacking tanks and defending AT and artillery guns, unfortunately didn't make it into the career mode, and is missing like some other interesting mission types. So yes, there is something missing on the ground, which gives you the immersion to be there in a combat flight simulation and not just a dogfight simulation.

[Zeev]

On 3/15/2020 at 4:45 PM, PatrickAWlson said:

First, the OP is not an unreasonable request.  Why not ask?  And there was no specific request for infantry (critical for WWI IMHO, less so for WWII).  Just battles.

 

Second, on the latest hardware there seems to be much more capability to handle ground units.  After upgrading a few months ago I have had no problems running considerable numbers of ground units (50 or so) in a battle.  For other systems one has to scale back a bit.

 

Last, if we are talking campaign generated missions, placement is really challenging. How can you identify a street in Stalingrad?  As most PWCG users know, ground units routinely end up in rivers or stuck in buildings.  I recently got a PM from @[Pb]Kappa_ pointing me to some work that mapped and identified terrain types.  Have to explore further but that is very promising.  Imagine units intelligently positions and fighting, with scheduled artillery barrages (also possible).  These things aren't easy to do in an auto generated mission but I am beginning to feel that they may be possible.

 

So - performance, data (terrain)  and algorithms .  Not simple but IMHO not impossible.

 

Concede that if infantry is hunkered down under cover they would be pretty hard to spot.  Attacking infantry would often be visible.   WWI.  Normandy.  Probable quite visible in some eastern front battles,  especially Russian assaults. 

 

Analyzing a picture of a map is a good idea that I also though about after seeing one of the threads discussing the generated missions placing units on water.
Thats indeed a good idea, but is it worth the time?
There would be less effort for developers to make an API that your or other software can ask, for example the following input: map x y and get a reply whether its a clear ground, a forest or water or maybe even a hill (so maybe even support z as an input).

This will be win win for both developers and our community, as such API will help the community a lot and from other hand the community will produce a better content for the game.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Zeev

[Halon]

I think a simpler solution would be to create a 'front line' scenery asset instead of trying to model each individual unit. This could be made up of trenches, foxholes, craters, ruins, strongpoints and barbed wire and animated to represent the active zones (where required) with small explosions, incoming and outgoing gunfire, smoke and fires. Used in conjunction with the units in game it could be more immersive.