Please remove the scripted terrain roughness.

[LColony_Kong]

Tank crew appears to have a baseline terrain roughness that causes the tank to act as if it is going over a constant series of rather significant bumps even though they do not actually appear in the terrain. This has two undesirable effects.

 

1) This unrealistically slows down tanks when they are going cross country. The loss in speed comes from the artificial bumps causing the tank to act as if it is actually encountering much rougher terrain features than it actually is. It would be one thing if the tank was actually going over a bump or thick mud etc, but this instead appears to be a artificial off road mechanic designed to make tanks drive at "offroad" speeds. In reality it doesn't work like this. I have some experience driving light tracked armored vehicles off-road and they do not constantly lurch about unless you are going over some rather substantial bumps. The vehicles are heavy enough that smaller bumps simply get flattened due to ground pressure etc. Additionally, average bumpiness appears to throw in a great many very sharp bumps, which prevents even smoothly driving over modestly undulating terrain. Instead, driving everywhere is somewhat like going over a series of speed bumps with some averaged frequency.

 

2) The constant lurching about even when traversing seemingly even terrain results in it being much harder to observe threats when you are on the move. Again, this is not accurate. It is possible to encounter severely bumping terrain that would produce the oscillations we see in game, but it shouldn't be applied as an assumed factor simply because you are offroad. In many cases the ground is flat enough that a tank can pretty much haul ass offroad without bouncing all over the place. Additionally, even when the terrain is rough, the effect on the ability to see while moving is exaggerated. This is for several reasons. Namely, in the real world your body and eyes automatically stabilize your vision to a degree. Second, the low frame rates used in computer games (even high fps 120 etc) result in the image perceived to be much more janky than the mental phenomenon would seem IRL.

 

My hope would be to see the automatic terrain roughness substantially reduced or removed, and for the head bobbing in game to be reduced as well.

 

The point of the videos below is to demonstrate that driving offroad does not necessarily result in constant extreme oscillations. It is not the point of the videos or this post to claim that tanks are never slowed down by terrain, or that severe oscillations cannot occur at high speeds over rough terrain. The point is that the the way it is done in il2 is too dramatic and applies a rather extreme average so that relatively smooth terrain (as may be encountered on a steppe or plain) is never the case.

 

 

[[SN]_Reaper_]

I completely agree. At the moment, the behavior of the tank when driving off-road looks unnatural. If we replace land with water and imagine that the tank is a ship, it will be very similar. Excessive pitching and rolling

Spoiler

 

 

P.S. The last video is super, thx 

Edited April 24, 2021 by dragon_7611

[Fritz_Faber]

Absolutely correct, behavior of tanks is like they are didn't simulate the weight correct.

The bumpiness is overdone, in a Tiger for example you doesn't feel the 56 tons, he is jumping offroad (downhill with high speed) like a ping pong ball.

[MajorMagee]

Quickly fixing this could just be tied to the graphical settings for terrain roughness by a simple scaling factor (0%, 33%, 66%, 100%).

 

The way it is now when the terrain roughness is turned all the way down you can see the tracks bumping up and down over empty space all the time, rather than riding smoothly over the surface.

 

On the other hand, the lack of mass related soil penetration physics, and friction effects related to different surface types/conditions, would be much more difficult to address. The map would need a location specific database added to it that would change dynamically with the weather, and the amount of previous traffic over any particular spot.

[ShampooX]

What Major said.  Terrain roughness can be adjusted in Settings.  Try that and see if if helps.

[moustache]

indeed, adapting the roughness in the parameters is good, but, by playing a simulation, we would prefer that the system be more pointed, realistic ... that it takes into account the weight of the tank, the type of track, that this roughness is different depending on the soil covered (difference between crossing a country lane, a wheat field, a forest, or even a marshland ...) the system is not bad, it is just badly used and too binary, not sharp enough ... not enough simulation, in fact ...

[SCG_judgedeath3]

I would say I prefer this terrain feature more than what we had in the past where you could drive and shot at the same time which was a hopeless task in ww2 tanks, although it wasnt as bad as in warthunder where your speed and turning and ground effect dont matter if you are on road or offroad....

But yeah the ground and suspension needs some tweaking but its getting there. Would love to have bigger impact when driving inside a forest and on farmland etc but have to see if the developers can and game engine allows it, the maps are huge so rebuilding them I doubt is possible.

With the new terrain I like that the T-34 is as jumpy as it was from books and videos when on the move.
Can see in this video and others from barbarossa and france how the Panzer IV and III is shaking and jumping when moving on pretty flat terrain, and same happened when I drove a stug here in the local museum, far as smooth as my leopard 2 was but now Im getting off topic:
 

 

[LColony_Kong]

14 minutes ago, SCG_judgedeath3 said:

With the new terrain I like that the T-34 is as jumpy as it was from books and videos when on the move.
Can see in this video and others from barbarossa and france how the Panzer IV and III is shaking and jumping when moving on pretty flat terrain

I didnt say that tanks cannot oscillate over rought terrain. But the game is excessive because it simply applies it all the time as a scripted mechanic. Also your own video shows that the tank that are making large oscillations are going over very large terrain changes, such as a ditch or steep and sudden dip in the ground. This post is about how the tanks in the game unrealistically behave as though they are going over such rough terrain features all the time, when in fact they are not.

[SCG_judgedeath3]

1 minute ago, LColony_Red_Comet said:

I didnt say that tanks cannot oscillate over rought terrain. But the game is excessive because it simply applies it all the time as a scripted mechanic. Also your own video shows that the tank that are making large oscillations are going over very large terrain changes, such as a ditch or steep and sudden dip in the ground. This post is about how the tanks in the game unrealistically behave as though they are going over such rough terrain features all the time, when in fact they are not.

But yeah the ground and suspension needs some tweaking but its getting there. Would love to have bigger impact when driving inside a forest and on farmland etc but have to see if the developers can and game engine allows it, the maps are huge so rebuilding them I doubt is possible.

 

Wouldnt say the part of the video of them driving over farmland which is flat is rough terrain, same for other videos of barbarossa where you see them shake and oscilate up and down as they move on open flat farmlands.But yes: it shouldnt be like that everywhere and would depend on terrain, weight, type of suspension etc like you and others have said.
 

[MajorMagee]

I loved the tank factory scenes at the beginning of that Panzer III video!

 

I saw the Anniston Army Depot tank plant operating with M-48, and M-60 tanks on the line in 1983 and the process didn't look all that different from what the Germans were doing in the 1940s.

Edited April 25, 2021 by MajorMagee

[stupor-mundi]

I agree with the OP. I don't have experience with driving tracked vehicles, but I feel confident adding this aspect:

When driving fast over terrain, the commander looking out of the open hatch, has now pretty impaired situational awareness.

First, it makes sense to me that the commanders body wouldn't shake like that, due to the vehicle's mass. Secondly, even if the body did shake a lot, the head would shake less, and the eye's visual aparatus would remove even more.

The shaking reminds me of, let's say, riding a bike fast down a forest track, the bumps transmitting from the handle through the arms to the head, where you really do have impaired vision.

I think it's fair that the bumpyness has an effect when using the binos, and also when looking through the gun scope. But the commander looking out of the hatch should have no trouble holding the horizon steady.

 

 

[BlitzPig_EL]

This game engine has had issues with properly dealing with vehicle weight from day one, long before ground vehicles became a thing.

 

It's been a contentious issue for years, mostly because the vast majority of sim pilots have never actually flown a real aircraft, much less a WW2 single seater with 1000+ bhp.  They naturally assume that anything that makes operating a vehicle harder must be more real, which is a false assumption.

 

I have, sadly, never been on a tank, but I have seen several WW2 AFVs on the move at reinactments.  Shermans, Stewart's, M24 Chaffee, US half tracks, and M3 scout cars, a Hetzer, and the Czech copy of the German half track, all moving over rough/plowed fields.  The Stewart can fly over that terrain, as it was quite fast for it's time, and visually they were not exhibiting the exaggerated motions we see in the sim.

 

Still I think some patience is in order, this is the dev team's first foray into ground combat after all.  Those of you with first hand experience should make a polite, well documented case to the dev team about this.    They do indeed listen. But if you come off like a hard ass and make demands, well, you have no chance with them.  They are people, just like you, they work hard and long to bring us the toys we like.

 

Wow, wasn't planning on writing a philosophy paper.  I'm just a flyboy that really likes tanks, and wants to see this title succeed.

[JG1_Vonrd]

Driving on a railroad has the same rockin and rollin... how do the trains not derail?

[TIGRE88]

in the streets of cities and villages it also poses a problem of realism  , the tank moves like a boat .  

[LachenKrieg]

On 4/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, LColony_Red_Comet said:

I didnt say that tanks cannot oscillate over rought terrain. But the game is excessive because it simply applies it all the time as a scripted mechanic. Also your own video shows that the tank that are making large oscillations are going over very large terrain changes, such as a ditch or steep and sudden dip in the ground. This post is about how the tanks in the game unrealistically behave as though they are going over such rough terrain features all the time, when in fact they are not.

I think that is the main problem. It doesn't vary at all as you travel over different terrains.