Gambit21

I'm a fan. 🙂

Yeah...that's just time and money to implement...but sure. "Waypoint" warp would often break scripted logic however. There's a lot of things to consider.

That's the vast majority of guys I think, for many 'real life' reasons.

I'd be surprised if it was anywhere near 10% honestly.

Well they're gong to do what they're going to do, but I respectfully disagree. I'm talking about flight time/playability issues. Nobody is going to fly a Zero for 8 hours from Rabaul to Henderson...yet we want the Solomons. Also a full size slot map is just not going to happen. You can give the illusion of scale and yet scale things down and make the sorties actually flyable. Yes, time compression would solve the problem I suppose...offline anyway. There's more than one way to skin the cat, the scaling the map size down is IMHO the best option all around. Take for example people clamoring for B-17s for so long...how many of them are going to sit at their computer for 10 hours? Almost none. I've wanted PTO again forever...it's my love. Even I am not going to sit for even 3 hours to fly a sortie...I just can't. Yet I want the Solomons. So how does this work? Scaling and/or time compression. That said...I'm not going to worry about it. 🙂 I think a "Generic" islands map is also a desirable option. If designed properly it can stand it for many different things, online and off. We had a great time with the small generic islands map offline in 1946. There are a lot of options here.

Scaling the map and/or distance between the islands is the answer.

IL2 was great but it was missing much of what made EAW so good…because Russian Devs just don’t think about immersion that way. Technically very good - but no soul. You need both for a truly good flight sim. IL2 wasn’t in any way close to a revolution. It was an improvement and a regression at the same time. I switched from EAW because of better graphics and physics, and took a huge immersion hit. Nothing changed for the better in the immersion department with Albert and BoS. Combat Pilot will bring that soul back finally I think.

My favorite thing to do in 46 was grab the most weathered, "this thing is on it's last legs" skin I could find. Zeros' look best like that for some reason.

Huh...I never ran across that one, and didn't know it was possible. Clever.

Well slap my thighs and call me Sally! An expression of astonishment - southern in origin. "well butter my butt and call me a biscuit!"

You guys remember being the first Corsair off the deck (online) while carrying Tiny Tim rockets? Good times.

This

Yeah, it's not really a "wow cool, I have access to neat stuff!" thing. I mean maybe for a minute, but that wears off quickly and it's a matter of just getting down to business and helping the Devs squash bugs, and yes make suggestions. Contrary to what has be eluded to however, we don't have "special powers" to make inappropriate things happen. On the contrary I've posted data on certain things repeatedly and things do not always change. Just how it is, and I'm sure they had their reasons when this occurred. Most of the time they make the change you'd expect. With IL2 I was involved to facilitate building campaigns, where getting access to say the map a bit early was helpful in the workflow, and then spending at least as much time reporting bugs as building missions. Just part of the gig. Essentially though, be careful what you wish for. There's something to be said to booting up a heavily tested, mostly debugged aircraft for the first time. 🙂 YMMV.

Extreme enthusiasm for the subject matter is essential. 🙂

Aye - we need some cheese to go with the whine.

Hmm...Interesting development...interesting indeed. I might have to challenge you on your "utmost seaplane enjoyer status" 😀

I appreciate that...make sense. Thank you. Yeah whatever works...as long as I can see the sharks circling the little guy in the yellow raft as I land in my PBY. 🙂

Here's a basic representation of what I'm talking about. The shader applied is apart from the geometry. I've created water just like this for projects. Water So displaced, animated in the Y axis, so yes "3D" in that sense (the plane is not flat) but no volume or transparency. Really like I said it doesn't matter, because I'm sure a shader that I don't even know about can be applied to make the water transparent etc. Last time I was messing with it in the editor though, it was opaque. I don't pretend to know about the shaders used in the game engine itself. In the end who cares, as long as it works. I think IL2 water works just fine like I said...has served it's purpose. It will be interesting to see what this engine brings. 🙂

Nah get the camera even with with the plane or below it...you'll see. Doesn't matter.

I've had the remote camera down below it, and looked at it. It's an animated 2D plane, only 3D in the sense that the plane is displaced in the Y.

Yep...can't add German troops to Hell Hawks even if I had time. Anyway what soldiers or deck crew eventually look like... cart before the horse at this juncture as I'm sure you'd agree.

I know right? And sour grapes from guys who are not beta testers…so obnoxious isn’t it?

How water is rendered depends on the engine. If the engine (and your GPU) will do it, you can have actual translucent water. IL2 is an opaque, 2D plane with a procedural animation running. (which distorts the plane into the vertical/Y axis but it’s still 2D) Not putting it down, it serves the purpose and is easy on resources. However there are other, more convincing (and resource intensive) solutions.

I know of testers who have been involved with DCS and IL2 at the same time. I’m currently in DCS CB, and no longer actively testing IL2 but I was doing both for a bit. So long as one remains professional there are no problems. It’s sort of like Ugra doing work for both sims concurrently.

Speaking as a beta tester - you have ZERO clue what you’re talking about.