Developer Diary 295 - Discussion

[IckyATLAS]

Very exciting. Looking forward to try these new clouds and the sunlight effects. 
I hope that the overcast parameter will allow also for overcast patches on the map and not only a unique overcast for the whole map.

[BornToBattle]

Oh wow, where to start? Like fine wine these series just get BETTER with age. New clouds are what we’ve been missing all along AND frame rate increase as seen in the video, the AQMG which sounds super neat without having to delve into the deep waters of instructions, FC Career Mode moving along…wow.

 

I bow humbly to the greatness of all the providing teams associated with FC and IL2. Amazing how lines of code and screen strewn pixels (or in my case, VR headset) can provide so much gratification. Can’t wait to get into VR with the new clouds in a Spitfire and set the AQMB to hunt down V-1’s.

[Pollux]

Good news 

[ScotsmanFlyingscotsman]

Jus know those clouds are gonna hide someone much smarter/quicker than me....but they look great, I'll need a neck transplant surgery to increase the swiveling, to survive in the future, great job

 

[Mtnbiker1998]

Music sounded a bit like an Instrumental of Sabaton's Back in Control.

 

Battle of Falklands confirmed?

[DN308]

Really nice

[JG_deserteagle540]

Great news! 

The new AQMB and much better clouds with a higher fps. This is what the game really needed.

 

[Jason_Williams]

43 minutes ago, FlyingNutcase said:

The difference in the clouds is stunning. Very much looking forward to this. And the AQMG, especially once it's coop-enabled. Great that that's a priority.  Thank you Team.

 

Just to be clear. I have no ETA on Co-Op for AQMG. it's just a wish at this point. If you want to generate Co-Ops with a builder or generator please use Easy Mission Generator and PWCG both of which support this feature. PWCG even supports Co-Op campaigns.

 

Jason

[=EXPEND=CG_Justin]

Love the new clouds! Thats a MASSIVE step forward. The music was friggin rad too!! ???

[[DBS]TH0R]

Liking the video and music taste. ?

 

2 hours ago, CountZero said:

i highly doubt they gna be used in MP,i dont belive 84 players and ground targets will behave same with new clouds as they do with old ones, 8v8 in SP is no test for what we have in MP.

 

Why wouldn't new clouds be used in MP?

[Rapierarch]

Just release it pleeeeeaseeeeeeee! Looks like a totally different game! VR only player here. I can really use that extra fps and beautiful visual feast!

Thanks a lot!

[senseispcc]

Very Great mews, new clouds are or seems fantastic and very realistic for Europe were I live. First thanks!

The AQMG to build easily mission complete and more complete than the actual quick missions, a fantastic news for those how cannot fly in multiplayer. Second thanks!

A new 1914/18 plane is always a great news and a fantastic news! Third thanks!

So littlethanks for such great work.

Edited October 8, 2021 by senseispcc
corrections

[Guest deleted@1562]

So many new and most welcome additions! The new clouds look amazing.

[S10JlAbraxis]

The new clouds are fantastic, really looking forward to them! The AQMG is a also great addition and will definitely make use of it.  I really appreciate the continuous upgrades being added!!

 

Two questions:  Any chance some of the missions shown in the AQMG, such as stop train and intercept transports, can be integrated into the career mode in the future?  Would love to have more career mission types such as these and perhaps destroy river traffic (barges) added.  Also, will the current water droplet and passing mist effects still be included with the new clouds (I really like these effects).  

[ER*Wumme]

new clouds look great..  and we can use VR in IL 2  .. in DCS almost impossible in midquality..  

[Algy-Lacey]

Thanks so much to Developers! The addition of the AQMG will completely change my experience of offline play and the new clouds look fantastic! It's good to hear that Jury/Zeus has said that the new clouds are great in VR also. I second the wish that the cloudbase can be increased from 3000 metres, but it's not essential.

 

One thing that I am really keen to discover is how the new AQMG deals with skill level of enemy AI pilots?

 

@Jason_Williams From the screenshots I can see that for the player flight you can set pilot skill (in the screenshots they are 'random'), but is there a way to adjust enemy AI skill? I can see that you can set 'enemy strength', does this determine the skill level of the enemy AI, or is this the size of enemy flights and likelihood of combat?

 

I would love to see an improvement of how the skill of the AI, especially enemy AI, is set in the existing QMB and new AQMG. With what we have now I tend to set AI to Veteran for enemy flights, but obviously there is no variety. I sometimes set AI to Random, but often find it too easy.

 

It would be great if you could set the AI skill as 'random', modified by 1 of the 4 skill levels determining the average skill. This might not read well so I will explain: Set AI skill to Random Rookie and most of the pilots are Rookie's, with occasional Average pilots and rare Veteran pilots. Set AI to Random Average and most of the pilots are Average with the occasional Rookie and occasional Veteran pilots. Set AI to Random Veteran and most of the pilots are Veteran with occasional Average pilots and occasional Ace pilots. Set AI to Random Ace and most of the pilots are Ace's with the occasional Veteran and Average pilots. This could be done with a simple algorithm and would enhance the realsim of QMB or AQMG combat.

 

Thanks again for this amazing sim and the improvements that you continue to bring to the engine and content.

 

Happy landings!

Algy-Lacey

[ilmavoimat]

New clouds look superb! Perhaps just the tiniest teaser for the Dak before too long???

[JLean]

Huge improvement those clouds and ?  to music choice in video. Much better than normal "elevator music".

 

Great game we have here and its getting better all the time .

 

 JLean

[Mm1ut1]

Very much looking forward to the mission generator !  

[Lusekofte]

3 hours ago, Jason_Williams said:

PWCG both of which support this feature. PWCG even supports Co-Op campaigns.

We fly coop weekly twice using PWCG 

I do not think anything ever will suit a small unit as ours better. 

But for me your AQMG will suit me perfect on single player. This and your new clouds with rain in just some parts is just more that I could ask for. And for free. I would payed 3 times BON for those features. It make this game unique

[Jeronimo83]

New cloud system looks Fantastic. 
 

Jason, can you elaborate on what this new setting will do for overcast weather? Will be it be truly a sky full of clouds instead of one 3D cloud “layer”  and haze as we have it now?

 

 

[Gambit21]

Looking damn good.

Now combine that with some realistic cloud bank margins, and give me a Zero with which to bounce some Wildcats (or visa versa) and we're in business.

 

Looking good in any case though...I'm impressed.

 

 

[Vig]

The clouds look great, and I'm excited about the Breguet 14.B2 - my favorite aircraft from RoF.  That addition may get me skinning and flying online again!

[TheSNAFU]

The new clouds are vey impressive. Looking like a real sky and if they come at no performance hit particularly in vr then all the better. Nice work. Thank you! 

[AKA_Hollywood]

Looks amazing!   All these new clouds and the Razorback 51 in less than three weeks!

 

Thank you Jason et al!!!

 

 

Makes me want to drop some coin in the company store.  Hmmm C-47 or the Sd.Kfz. 10.  ?

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by AH_Hollywood

[javelina]

21 minutes ago, AH_Hollywood said:

Looks amazing!   All these new clouds and the Razorback 51 in less than three weeks!

 

Thank you Jason et al!!!

 

 

Makes me want to drop some coin in the company store.  Hmmm C-47 or the Sd.Kfz. 10.  ?

 

Both!

[Soilworker]

This is looking awesome! 

And the music was great! ?

 

(@Jason_Williams If you want a free video editor that will let you export 4K Shotcut is a good option.) 

[Luftschiff]

12 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

Looking damn good.

Now combine that with some realistic cloud bank margins, and give me a Zero with which to bounce some Wildcats (or visa versa) and we're in business.

 

Looking good in any case though...I'm impressed.

 

 

 

Agreed on all counts, it looks damn good -

-but I'd also love to see some realistic cloud margins/edges. I hope there's a possibility to improve that aspect as well. 

[Jade_Monkey]

3 hours ago, Soilworker said:

 

?

(@Jason_Williams If you want a free video editor that will let you export 4K Shotcut is a good option.) 

 

Davinci Resolve, totally free and pro grade editor. I haven't checked if it exports 4K but I'd be shocked if it didn't.

[Mad_Mikhael]

I'm scared of new clouds ? Devs are saying that "We can now offer A LOT more cloud cover and not smash the framerate that you are accustomed to."

But when you look on what PCs it was tested, it's a powerfull setup. I hope it will run smoothly on worse PCs too.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

9 hours ago, AH_Hollywood said:

Looks amazing!   All these new clouds and the Razorback 51 in less than three weeks!

Did I miss something? Last I've heard is that the P-51B/C will be released in mid-november, and I can't remember having seen an ETA for the clouds yet.

[Jade_Monkey]

49 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Did I miss something? Last I've heard is that the P-51B/C will be released in mid-november, and I can't remember having seen an ETA for the clouds yet.

Didn't miss anything. Clouds have no date as far as I remember.

[CountZero]

19 hours ago, [DBS]TH0R said:

Liking the video and music taste. ?

 

 

Why wouldn't new clouds be used in MP?

i doubt they aint gona have impact when you have more then just 8v8in SP, Mp enviroment is mutch more demanding and i think thi is where PCs will see differance betwen new and old.

[Jason_Williams]

6 hours ago, Soilworker said:

This is looking awesome! 

And the music was great! ?

 

(@Jason_Williams If you want a free video editor that will let you export 4K Shotcut is a good option.) 

 

I think I just need to upgrade my Sony Movie Maker software. I'm not the greatest movie editor. The team hates my videos because I'm not a pro. The version I use is a few years old now.

 

When I have a chance I'll make a more beautiful 4K video showing off the clouds 

 

Jason

[AKA_Hollywood]

7 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Did I miss something? Last I've heard is that the P-51B/C will be released in mid-november

 

Thought I read that the 51 had a planned release of October…

 

I know Clouds aren’t coming out this soon.. just excited for all of it.

 

Is the 51B/C now slated for Mid-November?

 

Quote

The P-51B/C is unfortunately behind schedule and should have been ready by now, but she is getting ever closer to release and likely to be finished next month.  - from the dev dairy on Sep 2

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by AH_Hollywood

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, AH_Hollywood said:

Is the 51B/C now slated for Mid-November?

From Jason's last post in the Briefing Room and Officers Club:

Quote

Then we plan to have an update in mid-November that includes the P-51B/C.

 

[ShamrockOneFive]

13 hours ago, =LG=Mad_Mikhael said:

I'm scared of new clouds ? Devs are saying that "We can now offer A LOT more cloud cover and not smash the framerate that you are accustomed to."

But when you look on what PCs it was tested, it's a powerfull setup. I hope it will run smoothly on worse PCs too.

 

Though not always, its usually the case that if something performs better on a high end system it will likely perform better on a lower end system too. In Jason's split screen video the frame rate is either similar or higher than with the old clouds. Although the scale isn't going to be linear... that suggests good things for people with older systems.

[danielprates]

AQMB is great news! Finally a quick mission builder that is, as the name implies, quick to build flights that do feel like proper missions. To be fair I never saw a sim do this properly, leave it to GB to do it right!

[IckyATLAS]

I have looked into the comparative video in detail and looking at the FPS and the way they compare.

Clearly the new clouds do not impact negatively the FPS and globally improve the FPS up to 10% or more even if the differences depend on the image. There are a few exceptions of a few seconds here and there where the older clouds were a few FPS better but it is negligible.

When one look carefully the highest FPS improvements about 15% or slightly more at times are when there is a combination of clouds and planes, and this is even better because we need the max FPS when there are planes around and in aerial fights between the clouds and not when it is normal flying in blue sky.

 

Post Scriptum

Now when speaking about planes a wish would be that efforts would also go into improved coding so that the number of planes flying be increased before the time dilation effect becomes visible typically by slowing the game speed (and not the FPS which may remain high), which is visible with all the moving object moving slower and slower as the processing load increases. I made missions with up to 75  twin engine bombers and fighter planes with all set to max and ultra and FPS never got under 70-80 FPS but fighters were flying like Tiger Moths (I exaggerate a little here). And if there was combat that means all the planes shooting at each other then the time dilation became terrible. I agree that 60 bombers and 15 fighters shooting all around does make for a lot of processing load, and then you have 50 or more flak cannons shooting at all these bombers, but this is the challenge of the sim after all. If we want to have missions with flying fortresses in numbers, and fighters from both sides in the cloudy skies over Europe etc.  such an improvement will become a must. Who knows maybe with the new Intel 12000K CPU and the coming NVidia 4000 Series (700 watts consumption) things will improve. Beware you will need at least a 1.5 Kilowatt PSU ?

 

[Livai]

How powerful the new cloud tech is hard to tell when the comparison is between average cloud cover ( old cloud tech ) and heavy cloud cover ( new cloud tech ). 

-> Somehow I expected to see something like this,