Korea. IL-2 Series Dev Blog #17 / Brief Room Episode 15: Progress and Evolution

[LukeFF]

Dev Blog #17 is now live: https://il2-korea.com/news/dd_17

 

 

 

 

 

[354thFG_Leifr]

The inland river looks nice, but the sea is still a gentle roll; any news on a working Beaufort scale actually generating an interesting ocean, or are we doomed to an easy caress of waves against the side of the carriers forever?

 

Video of the MiG looks great.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

Xbox controlers could be a good way to get new people into the game, but do you have any idea yet how gamepad and joystick controls would perform against each other, and is there a way to enforce joystick only, or gamepad only servers in multiplayer if people decide the 2 don't mix well?

[=621=Samikatz]

Controller-friendly menus means we'll probably be able to bind HOTAS keys to menu navigation, right? Sounds really helpful for sim-pit havers and VR people

[Han]

4 minutes ago, =621=Samikatz said:

Controller-friendly menus means we'll probably be able to bind HOTAS keys to menu navigation, right? Sounds really helpful for sim-pit havers and VR people

Yep, you got it right, that is the secret goal of this development ))

31 minutes ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

Xbox controlers could be a good way to get new people into the game, but do you have any idea yet how gamepad and joystick controls would perform against each other, and is there a way to enforce joystick only, or gamepad only servers in multiplayer if people decide the 2 don't mix well?

There will be no realy advantage, so no plans to divide the community while its allready not super-large. There will be no autoaim or something what can force to do that.

[Rjel]

The engine sound of the MiG was odd I thought. It sounds more like a hard rain at the beginning. Very distorted. Only at the very end of the video did it sound like a jet engine. 

[[CPT]Crunch]

Really good stuff, like the idea of different levels of and for controller inputs.  There's a lot of different set ups in hardware these days including high resolution devices with extensions, and having that mode specifically tailored is a dream come true.  Don't mind one bit flying against different hardware input systems since its basically the same flight model, great if we all can get the maximum performance out of our hardware, low end to high end.  Good job recognizing one shoe won't fit all types of controllers and giving us options.

 

I'm excited most about the increased resolution in ground attack, the lovely objects to hit and more damage depth and details, that airfield with a rail terminal built right in is bringing a tear to my eye.   

[76IAP-Black]

Great Dev Blog, thanks team for the comparison shots, explanations ...

[Hoss]

Without Panthers, and Skyraiders, with their Carrier we can't have this....

 

 

[Avimimus]

Well, technically, the Panthers, Skyraiders, and even the F7F were also operated form land bases... but I suppose the Toko-Ri raids were carrier based? The lack of carriers would impact most the British FAA (Sea Fury, Firefly, Seafire) as they didn't operate from land bases.

 

Part of me would prefer the efforts went into developing radars instead of carriers - the F-82G, F7F would be nice to see in an simulator someday. That said, they need to finish the carrier tech for the Pacific... so that probably makes more sense.

[Trooper117]

Carriers will be a must, and as they will be doing carriers for the Pacific, I'm sure they will be doing a carrier dlc for Korea, (fingers crossed)... Radar? for me, I'm not fussed.

[LukeFF]

Well, the F-86 is planned to have a radar-ranging gunsight, so we're already heading down that path. 

[TempestV]

DLC Radar 😁

[Hoss]

17 hours ago, Avimimus said:

Well, technically, the Panthers, Skyraiders, and even the F7F were also operated form land bases... but I suppose the Toko-Ri raids were carrier based? The lack of carriers would impact most the British FAA (Sea Fury, Firefly, Seafire) as they didn't operate from land bases.

 

Part of me would prefer the efforts went into developing radars instead of carriers - the F-82G, F7F would be nice to see in an simulator someday. That said, they need to finish the carrier tech for the Pacific... so that probably makes more sense.

LOL, the Essex served in WWII and the Korean Conflict. Build it now, and you can have it for the Pacific later.  At the beginning of the Korean conflict, the range was too far from Japan for the aircraft to remain on target. The situation changed once the Carriers arrived with Panthers, Corsairs, and Skyraiders. Without them in the game, you won't be able to reenact any of the early air war. Or the Inchon invasion, either...

IMHO.

 

Without carriers, I don't think I'll buy this iteration of IL2. I don't understand their aversion to building them. Whoever built the aircraft carriers in the old IL2 is desperately needed for this game version. There is too much left to the imagination on the plane sets for me to decide if it's worth the money and disc space.

JMTCW

 

[FuriousMeow]

3 hours ago, Hoss said:

Spoiler

LOL, the Essex served in WWII and the Korean Conflict. Build it now, and you can have it for the Pacific later.  At the beginning of the Korean conflict, the range was too far from Japan for the aircraft to remain on target. The situation changed once the Carriers arrived with Panthers, Corsairs, and Skyraiders. Without them in the game, you won't be able to reenact any of the early air war. Or the Inchon invasion, either...

IMHO.

 

Without carriers, I don't think I'll buy this iteration of IL2. I don't understand their aversion to building them. I'll buy Combat Pilot for its carrier Ops when it ships. 1C would be nearly finished if they had started building their aircraft carrier when Jason did. Whoever built the aircraft carriers in the old IL2 is desperately needed for this game version. There is too much left to the imagination on the plane sets for me to decide if it's worth the money and disc space.

JMTCW

 

 

 

Building carriers is fairly simple, floating runway. Been done plenty of times. These devs don't want to just redo what's been done. I don't know what they're full ambition is, but it's clearly not just do what's already been hackily done before. 

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, Hoss said:

LOL, the Essex served in WWII and the Korean Conflict. Build it now, and you can have it for the Pacific later.  At the beginning of the Korean conflict, the range was too far from Japan for the aircraft to remain on target. The situation changed once the Carriers arrived with Panthers, Corsairs, and Skyraiders. Without them in the game, you won't be able to reenact any of the early air war. Or the Inchon invasion, either...

IMHO.

 

Without carriers, I don't think I'll buy this iteration of IL2. I don't understand their aversion to building them. I'll buy Combat Pilot for its carrier Ops when it ships. 1C would be nearly finished if they had started building their aircraft carrier when Jason did. Whoever built the aircraft carriers in the old IL2 is desperately needed for this game version. There is too much left to the imagination on the plane sets for me to decide if it's worth the money and disc space.

JMTCW

 

 

We've said it a few times now that we are planning to build carriers. 🙂

 

Also: no discussion about CP in this topic or anywhere else in this part of the forum. We have a dedicated topic for that project over yonder in Free Subject.

[Aapje]

8 hours ago, FuriousMeow said:

Building carriers is fairly simple, floating runway. Been done plenty of times.

 

The current implementations in DCS and MSFS do seem to have quite a few issues, so it doesn't seem all that easy.

[LuftManu]

On 12/6/2024 at 11:14 AM, Avimimus said:

Well, technically, the Panthers, Skyraiders, and even the F7F were also operated form land bases... but I suppose the Toko-Ri raids were carrier based? The lack of carriers would impact most the British FAA (Sea Fury, Firefly, Seafire) as they didn't operate from land bases.

 

Part of me would prefer the efforts went into developing radars instead of carriers - the F-82G, F7F would be nice to see in an simulator someday. That said, they need to finish the carrier tech for the Pacific... so that probably makes more sense.

With radar sights coming, I think it's a matter of time at least have a simplified but working radar. 
Nightfitghters are really fun! and could make great collectors, be it for Korea or WW2.

[BlitzPig_EL]

F82... We own the night.

[LuftManu]

27 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

F82... We own the night.

And could be used as a day figher witouth the radar, as decicted during the first phases of the war 😁

[BlitzPig_EL]

Indeed LuftManu, they also were used in the ground support role.

[Avimimus]

2 hours ago, LuftManu said:

With radar sights coming, I think it's a matter of time at least have a simplified but working radar. 
Nightfitghters are really fun! and could make great collectors, be it for Korea or WW2.

 

I totally agree it would be great. There is a bit of an issue in the fact that 1950s radars were quite... idiosyncratic? Lots of odd behaviours to simulate. In many ways it'd be simpler to do WWII night fighter radars, as the radars were generally operated by a dedicated crew-member - giving information to the pilot verbally (similar to ground controllers, who were vectoring the fighters as well) and those systems were even simpler. I remember talking to someone who used to maintain CF-100 radars and they needed tuning between each flight!

 

6 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Indeed LuftManu, they also were used in the ground support role.

 

The same is true of the F7F - they operated off land bases, were used for daylight close air support on some occasions, and often as night time interdictors or night bombers... impressive armament options too.

 

However, I'm not sure if they ever had their radars disabled/removed - whereas I've read that several F-82G had their radars removed when converted for ground attack.

15 hours ago, Hoss said:

Or the Inchon invasion, either...

IMHO.

 

Without carriers, I don't think I'll buy this iteration of IL2. I don't understand their aversion to building them.

 

5 hours ago, Aapje said:

The current implementations in DCS and MSFS do seem to have quite a few issues, so it doesn't seem all that easy.

 

As mentioned by LukeFF, they are building carrier technology.

 

In fact, one of the briefing room episodes mentions that they already have a prototype. However, it is more than just a 'floating runway' if you want to have things like realistic simulation of arrestor cables, simulation of the physics of landing an aircraft with suspension on a pitching and rolling deck at higher sea states...

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

If they ever do night fighting how would people know their display and sound settings are tuned accurately? Not even counting people who just purposely max out their sound and gamma to find enemies easily, I'm sure most people would naturally set their settings to something that's easier than real life without even knowing.

[BlitzPig_EL]

People jack with setting online now to gain advantage, they have for ages.  Run at lower resolution to increase spotting ability.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

I know, it would be naive to try it in online PvP except MAYBE in a private match with people you at least believe you can trust, but I was thinking it might be fun to try in single player or maybe coop with realistic settings.

[Avimimus]

There is always the issue that people are using different monitors under different lighting conditions (e.g. not everyone has an HDR monitor). For single-player it is possible to provide in-game calibration tools (the SWOTL night fighting mod in the 1990s did this, as does every horror game).

 

For multiplayer - yes, a lot of people will tweak settings to increase visibility. However, I'm not sure if this is bad from a gameplay perspective. It would mainly increase the likelihood of both opponents spotting each other, rather than one ambushing the other... which means more dogfights. It isn't as historically accurate to have most fights not start with an ambush, but PvP multiplayer is often less historically accurate than single-player (or co-op) anyway.

[Trooper117]

The issue is that any online game, will have a bunch of maggots who will do anything they can to get an advantage, and that includes flight sim games.

Most of us hopefully have high standards, a good code of conduct and morals, but unfortunately, there are always going to be others who do not live to a higher code.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

5 hours ago, Avimimus said:

There is always the issue that people are using different monitors under different lighting conditions (e.g. not everyone has an HDR monitor). For single-player it is possible to provide in-game calibration tools (the SWOTL night fighting mod in the 1990s did this, as does every horror game)

That would work.

 

5 hours ago, Avimimus said:

There is always the issue that people 

For multiplayer - yes, a lot of people will tweak settings to increase visibility. However, I'm not sure if this is bad from a gameplay perspective. It would mainly increase the likelihood of both opponents spotting each other, rather than one ambushing the other... which means more dogfights. It isn't as historically accurate to have most fights not start with an ambush, but PvP multiplayer is often less historically accurate than single-player (or co-op) anyway.

To a point yeah, there's normal settings tweaking and then there's a subjective line that takes it too far like using reshade to make the game have ridiculous colors where planes are too obvious. But the whole point of night fighting is the hard mode spotting factor, so when people max their gamma, its not even night fighting anymore, its just day fighting with darker colors. So unless some tech gets developed that would somehow force monitor and game settings on people (I dont think this is possible), then online night fighting is impossible, because it will inevitably become day fighting with darker colors. 

[Avimimus]

Well, technically you could have people buy encrypted cameras which they point at their monitor (over the shoulder) and which capture the screen in real time and adjust the colour balance. That'd be the only way to do that (I believe some artists use a similar system to help with colour grading?) I doubt very many people would buy additional hardware for just this purpose thought.

 

1 hour ago, =MERCS=JenkemJunkie said:

because it will inevitably become day fighting with darker colors. 

 

To a degree. There are a couple if caveats:

- The aircraft would be different (e.g. night fighters often fly very differently than day fighters)

- One could simulate loss of night vision from muzzle flashes, moon glare etc. There might be some room to simulate this regardless of monitor settings.

 

Note: By night vision, I mean the WWII 'mk.1 eyeball' kind of usage of the term... which is a mixture of eye dilation and risk of depolarisation of rods within the eye due to bright lights being encountered suddenly (when the eyes are fully dilated). I am not talking about hardware which is used to amplify light levels.

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

I'd like to believe there's a way to force realistic night settings on people, so I hope stuff like that could work, but I'd put my money on people figuring out how to exploit things.

[Aapje]

It's impossible to control user's devices in that way. Also, screens and headsets differ; and realistic night settings are often not even possible. Unless people have OLED or such, they won't have proper blacks.

[Avimimus]

Of course that is somewhat true of daytime as well - the dynamic range is less than it should be, and the resolution is much lower than a real human eye would have.

[tattywelshie]

Interesting info on the career mode, looking good. Just wondering, in terms of stats available to the pilot, is there a way these could be more in-depth to what we currently have? So, instead of simply saying under kills "xx heavy aircraft" - have instead the actual type of aircraft. So "xxx Mig 15" for instance? Just think that adds a nice level of realism. Not sure if this is something that is already planned, if so, great, but would be nice to have  

[Aapje]

34 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

Of course that is somewhat true of daytime as well - the dynamic range is less than it should be, and the resolution is much lower than a real human eye would have.

 

Very much true, although the issues are worse at night.

[Zooropa_Fly]

40 minutes ago, tattywelshie said:

in terms of stats available to the pilot

 

Yes, they're terrible as is.

Still don't even get shooting stats after all these years.

[tattywelshie]

43 minutes ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

 

Yes, they're terrible as is.

Still don't even get shooting stats after all these years.

It's one of the things that would really add to the immersive-ness really. Surely it's do-able, pretty sure PWCG has this feature hasn't it?  

[Zooropa_Fly]

They are recorded, just not displayed.

Back in RoF, shooting accuracy stats were the one metric that I could use as a barometer for improvement.

Except in a multi-seater of course, where someone in their wisdom decided that gunners shooting stats should be lumped in with my own !

[tattywelshie]

16 minutes ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

They are recorded, just not displayed.

Back in RoF, shooting accuracy stats were the one metric that I could use as a barometer for improvement.

Except in a multi-seater of course, where someone in their wisdom decided that gunners shooting stats should be lumped in with my own !

Fab, that would be great if that data was available for pilots, your own, and those of your squadron buddies as well. And then to see those stats improve as they become more experienced, a bit like those in B17 The Mighty Eighth game. 

[FuriousMeow]

On 12/7/2024 at 5:56 AM, Aapje said:

 

The current implementations in DCS and MSFS do seem to have quite a few issues, so it doesn't seem all that easy.

I suppose it depends on what they are trying to do and where the issues are.

AOTP, PAW1942, WarBirds, Aces High, Pacific Fighters that was then wrapped up into Il2 1946, and more have had the carrier functionality I'm referring to.