Those darn weird portrait pics and robots....

[Rommel1717]

I want to start off by saying I love this game I always have and I think I always will.

 

I really like the fact that you guys, meaning the devs always try to improve upon and upgrade this game and all those tweeks and improvements have really paid off to make this by far the best WW2 flight sim ever....

 

However,  if there are two things I would love to see changed in the career mode would have to be

 

#1: Those darn ugly weird portrait pictures of all the different flight crew of all the different nations those are some of the weirdest pics of pilots I have ever seen ....please figure out something a little better to look or that looks a little more realistic even if it where pics of the IL2 Ubisoft team in WW2 flight gear it would look so much better than what we currently have in game. 

 

#2: I would really like both the English and American voice overs to be changed so they don't sound so robotic and unnatural, I find it really takes away from the immersion of the sim, the American voices especially some of them sound like they are 12 years old. Some of the voice overs are just a little on the bizarre sounding side of things.  

 

Anyways my two small suggestions to help improve the game a little and make it a little more immersive. 

 

Thanks and keep up the great work! 

[Talon_]

You know those English and American voice actors are some of your fellow community members ??

[tattywelshie]

1 hour ago, Talon_ said:

You know those English and American voice actors are some of your fellow community members ??

I never knew that! Well, for diversity, I'm Welsh, there are no Welsh accents in the game, I'd be up for some voice overs!

[Oyster_KAI]

These massive English/American voice have already been recorded, and re-recording could be a brutal money-burning operation for this small team...

But I think it's easy to tune the voice pitch tune down half note through the post mix so it sounds like +10-20 years old. (like i did for german radio voices)

Also, the current English/American voices are too clear, sounds like using a cell-phone with LINE.
Therefore, these voices need to be distorted and have a little noise floor.  
In the presence of powerful modern DTM mixing software, these tasks are 100 times easier than re-recording.







 

[Guest deleted@219798]

I'd have to agree about the career pilot photos. It's like somebody deliberately went out use the ugliest and weirdest photos possible. There's supposed to be female Soviet pilots, but even for the Night Witches unit there aren't any female pilot photos. Maybe they're some of the ugly ones? As far as I know women flew most of the VVS planes not just Yak-1 and U-2. Quite a few Pe-2 crew for instance.

[Mtnbiker1998]

I personally love the career photos, I make it a point to get the goofiest portrait I can when I make a new pilot.

 

There have been some real lookers for sure. The German pilots in particular have some fantastic mustaches

[LukeFF]

The American and British ones are alright and the Soviet ones are passable as well, but the German ones are absolutely horrendous and bear little resemblance in most cases to German pilots of WWII. Hopefully at some point they receive the desperate overhaul they need.

[oc2209]

It's not that the German are so bad (once you find the right combination of features), as much as it's harder to get one that's decent. You need to regenerate them dozens of times.

 

For anyone who hasn't studied them, it seems to me that the features are randomly stuck on a randomly-shaped face (to clarify: the selection is randomized, the features/face shapes are presets), essentially like Mr. Potato Head.

 

So the issue with the Germans could be an improper placement of the features on a given face, or some of the preset features need to be tweaked.

 

Here's some of my 'artistry' at work:

 

Spoiler

 

The above aren't carefully picked. I gave up after a while, and figured they were good enough.

 

Some Allied pilots here:

 

Spoiler

 

More Allied:

 

Spoiler

 

Some redundancy here, but Hermann on the far left is the best German portrait I've seen (among my own pilots, anyway). The basic face shape is less blubbery than most German ones available. Overall, it looks plausible enough:

 

Spoiler

 

You'll also notice that Hermann's head/face is the same template that Balthasar uses in my first screenshot, but the two pilots have different face features.

 

The best/simplest fix that I would suggest, is allowing us to cycle through the features and heads individually, rather than leave it randomized. It appears as though noses, eyes, and mouths (and mustaches) are all separate, and placed on an empty face/head. Hair styles are also randomized on the heads.

[Irishratticus72]

All I know is, he's a demon in the air!

[Ram399]

52 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

essentially like Mr. Potato Head.

 

Almost exactly like a mix and match Mr. Potato Head actually, though if you think the in game portraits are bad you should see some of the Lovecraftian creations my cousin came up with after finding the photo assets in the game files:
 

Spoiler

 

[Jaegermeister]

On 9/13/2022 at 11:05 PM, Rommel1717 said:

#2: I would really like both the English and American voice overs to be changed so they don't sound so robotic and unnatural, I find it really takes away from the immersion of the sim, the American voices especially some of them sound like they are 12 years old. Some of the voice overs are just a little on the bizarre sounding side of things.  

 

Thanks... That makes me feel almost as good as when I get carded buying beer LOL. Jason did one of them also.

 

The reason they sound chopped up and unnatural is because they are. The sound tracks are cut into separate words and the program splices them together with a very short delay between each word to make different radio calls. People don't talk like that under stress, and only a very few are actually a recorded sentence. It has been a fairly major complaint for a long time now but it has been posted that to change them would involve revamping the entire radio system and is a ton of work they just don't have time for.  

 

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Jaegermeister

[Guest deleted@219798]

18 hours ago, LukeFF said:

The American and British ones are alright and the Soviet ones are passable as well, but the German ones are absolutely horrendous and bear little resemblance in most cases to German pilots of WWII. Hopefully at some point they receive the desperate overhaul they need.

They bear little resemblance to human beings!

[Blitzen]

The German portraits are simply awful!!!!

[HankCzinaski]

On 9/14/2022 at 5:05 AM, Rommel1717 said:

#2: I would really like both the English and American voice overs to be changed so they don't sound so robotic and unnatural, I find it really takes away from the immersion of the sim, the American voices especially some of them sound like they are 12 years old. Some of the voice overs are just a little on the bizarre sounding side of things.  

I love the British voices! So calm and calculated.

Germans always so loud and angry though... Quite annoying.

Edited September 20, 2022 by HankCzinaski

[LukeFF]

18 minutes ago, HankCzinaski said:

Germans always so loud and angry though... Quite annoying.

 

[Noisemaker]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

 

 

[oc2209]

11 hours ago, Ram399 said:

 

Almost exactly like a mix and match Mr. Potato Head actually, though if you think the in game portraits are bad you should see some of the Lovecraftian creations my cousin came up with after finding the photo assets in the game files:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Not bad, for a German.

 

Seriously though, it looks to me like one problem German portraits have, is the scaling of their features relative to the face size. If you made the features smaller, then reposition them on the face accordingly (with slightly greater spacing between the features), they'd look more natural.

 

Coming up with entirely new features would be nice, but also more labor intensive. Just rescale and reposition the ones we have.

[oc2209]

My above statement regarding German features might be wrong. Some are so bad that they should be scrapped altogether. Beyond salvation even with rescaling.

 

Something else I noticed is the profusion of Dumbo-eared pilots in the RAF and VVS. It tends to reinforce the mutant Gollum looks that some pilots can have. By and large, though, and as others have said, the Germans are the worst.

 

There's a few common bonds between the worst offenders. Observe:

 

 

 

The droopy stroke-mouth is located way too high relative to the nose. It's practically intersecting the nose. Also, what the f*** is going on with the last one's hair? Christ. It looks like he's wearing a toupee on the side of his head.

 

Next up, is the ugly eyes series:

 

 

In all 3 of the above, note the way the bridge of the nose does not properly intersect or mesh with the eye socket. Hence the mutant gargoyle result.

 

And in the final act of our freakshow, we have what I like to call Doppelkinner. Or, the man with two chins:

 

 

The chin almost looks like the head should be looking directly at the camera (it would still be a chin wide enough to put an ultra-alpha-male jet fighter pilot/lumberjack/firefighter to shame), but instead the face is placed on the head at an angle, which then just makes the pilot look fat and blubbery. Even Göring waited to get fat until after he retired from active duty.

[oc2209]

In contrast to the above monsters, here's some Allied pilots.

 

Starting off with a guy who looks like he just stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting:

 

 

Hair and scaling is a little odd, but compared to the Germans, this guy has a functional face. He's so midwestern looking, you can almost smell the apple pie.

 

Next up is Captain Squarejaw McGee:

 

 

Again, the scaling of the face compared to the head is flawed, but the composition of the face is much more 'normal', especially if you squint and don't stare at it too long.

 

Here's a few Brits:

 

 

Decent. Nothing too wrong. The head's at an awkward angle relative to the neckline, but otherwise fine.

 

 

Bit of a pretty boy, but otherwise okay. Unlike the Germans, the features are plausibly meshed and coherent.

 

Now for some Russians:

 

 

Same facial template, but different features and hair. Overall, pretty normal looking. Adequate scaling.

 

Here's the RAF/VVS Dumbo ears I was referring to:

 

 

It's bad, but not as bad as the Germans. The faces themselves are still more coherent, if you can get past the ears.

[I./JG52_Woutwocampe]

Ah yes, the portraits. They are mostly horrible but it came to a point where I almost appreciate them and their goofyness.

[danielprates]

4 hours ago, oc2209 said:

My above statement regarding German features might be wrong. Some are so bad that they should be scrapped altogether. Beyond salvation even with rescaling.

 

Something else I noticed is the profusion of Dumbo-eared pilots in the RAF and VVS. It tends to reinforce the mutant Gollum looks that some pilots can have. By and large, though, and as others have said, the Germans are the worst.

 

There's a few common bonds between the worst offenders. Observe:

 

 

 

The droopy stroke-mouth is located way too high relative to the nose. It's practically intersecting the nose. Also, what the f*** is going on with the last one's hair? Christ. It looks like he's wearing a toupee on the side of his head

 

 

These three are from the "been punched in the face, not happy about it and it shows" collection. Or maybe they are mad about the haircuts.

 

If you look closelly you will notice they all have the same mouth. It looks as it doesnt belong to either ot them to begin with.

[oc2209]

1 hour ago, danielprates said:

 

These three are from the "been punched in the face, not happy about it and it shows" collection. Or maybe they are mad about the haircuts.

 

If you look closelly you will notice they all have the same mouth. It looks as it doesnt belong to either ot them to begin with.

 

They look like they've been socked in the face, sucked a lemon, and are suffering a grand mal seizure at the same time.

 

Or, to put it more succinctly:

 

 

I mean, these are supposed to be skinny, 20 year old men, on average. Not much reason they should resemble a much older Brando with prosthetic jowls.

[Talon_]

15 hours ago, oc2209 said:

Here's the RAF/VVS Dumbo ears I was referring to:

 

 

It's bad, but not as bad as the Germans. The faces themselves are still more coherent, if you can get past the ears.

 

I'm surprised the UK bothered inventing radar

[oc2209]

4 hours ago, Talon_ said:

 

I'm surprised the UK bothered inventing radar

 

"20 degrees left, Nigel!

 

No, your left, your left!

 

He's out of alignment with Basil, we're losing the signal!

 

Go get Johnny to stand on that hill; he's got a set on him that'll put these to shame."

 

 

--excerpts from the early radar experiments. The truest story never told.

[Rjel]

Some of those pics could stop a clock. However, they make me feel much better about myself...

[oc2209]

2 hours ago, Rjel said:

Some of those pics could stop a clock. However, they make me feel much better about myself...

 

Okay, here's another:

 

 

He could still hear the taunts of his fellow schoolchildren echo in his ears, drowning out even the engine's drone.

 

"Fivehead, fivehead, Fyodor's got a fivehead!"

 

'They won't be laughing when I come home with an HSU star on my coat,' he laughed, grimly, as he belched cannon shells at his foes.

 

No one will ever laugh at him again.

 

Except for that time, just last week, when everyone in the mess hall said his mother must've been a rusalka.

 

But, you know, aside from that.

[IckyATLAS]

Human faces have become more and more a difficult legal subject. Our society has become extremely legalistic and every opportunity to make money will be taken. How to make faces that are realistic human faces without entering into some legal issues. If you use real human faces, then you must get a legal authorization from that person to accept that his or her face is used, and this can cost money if you use professional models.

Now let's say that you build a face too good to be true and somebody considers that it is too resemblant to itself and can complain by saying you used his face without permission, or that the use made in a context of war is against his personality etc. etc. By distorting the face, you largely avoid that risk in general.

What about the skin color, better black and white picture so no color issues here. Better artificial robotic distorted faces (probably generated from real faces) and have no problems. 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

1 hour ago, IckyATLAS said:

Human faces have become more and more a difficult legal subject. Our society has become extremely legalistic and every opportunity to make money will be taken. How to make faces that are realistic human faces without entering into some legal issues. If you use real human faces, then you must get a legal authorization from that person to accept that his or her face is used, and this can cost money if you use professional models.

Now let's say that you build a face too good to be true and somebody considers that it is too resemblant to itself and can complain by saying you used his face without permission, or that the use made in a context of war is against his personality etc. etc. By distorting the face, you largely avoid that risk in general.

What about the skin color, better black and white picture so no color issues here. Better artificial robotic distorted faces (probably generated from real faces) and have no problems. 

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

[IckyATLAS]

8 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

Here the face may be a digital creation, but the risk is high it resembles somebody, and frankly when I look at it, I have the feeling I have seen such a face.