Clouds and skycolors of IL-2

[Sebjo89]

Just a thought.

I remember playing IL-2 Sturmonivik when it came out a long time ago and it was so amazing at that time.( 2001-2002)  So, I just searched videos of the newest versions of IL-2,  "Cliffs Of Dover, Battle of Stalingrad" and are seeing that the weather, skycolors and clouds representation are fantastic and very well-made. Very impressed.

So, I am curious. Why don´t the newer sims have the same quality, or at least trying to adapt the same engine for weather?

 (IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad is based on a game engine from 2009 and Cliffs of Dover is based on game engine from 2011>)

 

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Sebjo89
Bad english

[nol]

stunning indeed!

Nicolas

 

[vitabutch]

Just a thought.

I remember playing IL-2 Sturmonivik when it came out a long time ago and it was so amazing at that time.( 2001-2002)  So, I just searched videos of the newest versions of IL-2,  "Cliffs Of Dover, Battle of Stalingrad" and are seeing that the weather, skycolors and clouds representation are fantastic and very well-made. Very impressed.

So, I am curious. Why don´t the newer sims have the same quality, or at least trying to adapt the same engine for weather?

 (IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad is based on a game engine from 2009 and Cliffs of Dover is based on game engine from 2011>)

 

[/url]  

Not at all. Il2 battle of Stalingrad has nothing in common in regard of graphics engine neither with il2 nor il2 CloD. It has absolutely new engine made from scratch. It's not perfect in terms of performance though but weather representation is spectacular indeed.

[sundog]

Games often use the trick of focusing a lot of detail into a small area surrounding the player. It looks like that's the case here - the clouds aren't drawn very far from the plane from what I can see, and that allows them to pour lots of detail and quality into a small number of clouds.

The number of clouds you have to draw increases with the square of the distance you want to see them at, so you quickly have to start making compromises in a flight simulator that requires realistic representation of distant clouds.

 

[Sebjo89]

7 hours ago, sundog said:

Games often use the trick of focusing a lot of detail into a small area surrounding the player. It looks like that's the case here - the clouds aren't drawn very far from the plane from what I can see, and that allows them to pour lots of detail and quality into a small number of clouds.

The number of clouds you have to draw increases with the square of the distance you want to see them at, so you quickly have to start making compromises in a flight simulator that requires realistic representation of distant clouds.

 

Yes, and I understand that it is a big step to do the "whole earth" versus a small part of  the earth as in IL-2. But, is it the size or the frames which makes it difficult? Could the default XP clouds be transformed maybe, to the extent that is possible,  for exempel the dynamic clouds in Arma 3?

[JeremyWM]

I think there are two main points here that are fundamentally different between the sims. One is that with IL-2, we are just talking about a relatively tiny section of the world, the area surrounding the Cliffs of Dover and the subsequent air battles that took place there during WW2.

X-Plane however, attempts to depict nearly the ENTIRE PLANET, with as much a detail as can be attained given a finite amount of computer resources and development time. Yes Sebjo, it's definitely a matter of how much visual information a computer can currently draw and still keep a good fluid frame-rate, as well as the time it takes to develop the art assets that X-plane uses in game to depict the world. IL-2 really doesn't have a whole lot of ground detail especially when it comes to large cities, as far as I know, it has been a while since I played an IL-2 flight sim.

My second point, specifically pertaining to the skies, is that I don't think the weather in IL-2 is dynamic. You pick your mission to fly and depending on what you pick, it has a certain depiction of weather that doesn't change during combat. With X-plane, the weather is quite dynamic. It's always referring back to the current METAR'S in whatever area of the world you're flying in and changing the weather depiction accordingly if you have it set to grab real-world weather from the internet.

Are the clouds in ARMA 3 actually dynamic? Do they change with the weather, or do they just spin around and move the way the clouds in Microsoft Flight Simulator do. I doubt that the clouds in ARMA are actually 3-D objects or particles that change with the weather. There wouldn't be a reason to make them so complex in a mostly ground combat simulator, so I think they're just 2-D"sprites" that spin and move in order to a nice backdrop.