Major feature - Modeling the Sea

[IckyAtlas]

Getting it right to model the sea is an extremely important element in a Pacific Map with 80% sea water.

The water dynamics, with flat calm sea to tropical cyclones you name it. How the ships will move through water is as important here as how planes move in air. Water sprays, transparency of the water, and the right sky color reflection. Behavior of waves according to wind direction and speed.

Coral reefs seen through the water from above when the sun is high in the sky, same for submarines at periscope depth, and torpedoes.

One important elements is the sense of weight and mass when ships plough through the waves. 

And finally here we will have the pilots either with a Mae-West or on a dinghy floating nicely on the sea calm or with waves.

A Catalina (must have plane) will gently land and pick up the stranded pilot. Yess!

So many elements that well designed will contribute to create the right believable environment and ultimate sim success.

[CG_Justin]

+1000000000 for this!

[CG_Justin]

While I feel the islands would look amazing even in "the other sim", with such small landmass and such vast seas, they really have an opportunity to spend some serious GFX budget on water here. But lets be realistic. Isn't rendering water just a dance of crazy polys and vertices? Sim creation has always been a balancing act for the wrestlers of polys and the warriors of the vertice. Needless to say, I'm sure under Jason's lead everything will be stunning.

[Gambit21]

55 minutes ago, CG_Justin said:

While I feel the islands would look amazing even in "the other sim", with such small landmass and such vast seas, they really have an opportunity to spend some serious GFX budget on water here. But lets be realistic. Isn't rendering water just a dance of crazy polys and vertices? Sim creation has always been a balancing act for the wrestlers of polys and the warriors of the vertice. Needless to say, I'm sure under Jason's lead everything will be stunning.

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. 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Gambit21

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

2 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

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.

I don't think that's quite correct. IL2 uses 3D water. It may be that the vertices are only generated in the shader, and I think it does depend on graphics settings, but it's 3D water nonetheless.

Anyhow, I don't think IL2 uses 3D water *physics* and that's where the real challenge is. Making a surface look like water is one thing, making objects actually interact with it in a realistic manner is quite another.

[Gambit21]

17 minutes ago, ÆþelrædUnræd said:

I don't think that's quite correct. IL2 uses 3D water. It may be that the vertices are only generated in the shader, and I think it does depend on graphics settings, but it's 3D water nonetheless.

Anyhow, I don't think IL2 uses 3D water *physics* and that's where the real challenge is. Making a surface look like water is one thing, making objects actually interact with it in a realistic manner is quite another.

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.

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

3 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

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.

Nope, it isn't:

Very clearly 3D. This may depend on graphics settings, and it's probably done in the shader so purely a graphical effect, but 3D nonetheless.

[Gambit21]

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

 

 

[Gambit21]

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. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Gambit21

[ÆþelrædUnræd]

1 hour ago, Gambit21 said:

Here's a basic representation of what I'm talking about. The shader applied is apart from the geometry.

Actually, shaders like this create their own geometry 🙂 They're 3D just fine, but instead of using wave geometry that was created in the normal update loop on the CPU, they themselves create this geometry in the vertex shader on the GPU. Which makes sense, since GPUs are pretty good at performing the type of calculations needed. Getting this data back into the CPU memory is a hassle (and most probably in the wrong format anyhow for what you'd want to do with it in the update loop) so that's not usually done; therefore for all purposes other than display it's indeed a 2D surface. The display part is purely 3D though and happens before the fragment shader which actually paints the surface, therefore the fragment shader "sees" a surface with thousands of vertices where there were only a couple before 🙂

There are ways to create 3D effects while keeping a 2D surface even in the shader, such as normal, bump or parallax mapping. That's not what you see in the screenshot I posted above though.

Volume is quite hard to do, really; it's rare to see actual volume shaders where they aren't absolutely needed (e.g. volumetric clouds). In the case of water, you can get pretty good results by just taking a "pseudo volume": you know the height of the vertex under the water surface, and you know the world space angle from which you look at the vertex. You can then approximate the length of the under water part of the view ray by simple trigonometry, and adjust the colour accordingly.

Transparency itself is rather simple, but water is also refractive which is a major problem, actually. Unless you're using raytracing (which for almost all other purposes is extremely inefficient), you're likely much better off doing an approximation in screen space.

 

Anyhow, my money's on them doing a healthy mix of "real" 3D and "shader" 3D. Real 3D created in the update loop for larger waves that ships (and aircraft, should you be so unlucky) should react to, and shader effects for smaller waves and ripples.

[Gambit21]

20 minutes ago, ÆþelrædUnræd said:

Actually, shaders like this create their own geometry 🙂 They're 3D just fine, but instead of using wave geometry that was created in the normal update loop on the CPU, they themselves create this geometry in the vertex shader on the GPU. Which makes sense, since GPUs are pretty good at performing the type of calculations needed. Getting this data back into the CPU memory is a hassle (and most probably in the wrong format anyhow for what you'd want to do with it in the update loop) so that's not usually done; therefore for all purposes other than display it's indeed a 2D surface. The display part is purely 3D though and happens before the fragment shader which actually paints the surface, therefore the fragment shader "sees" a surface with thousands of vertices where there were only a couple before 🙂

There are ways to create 3D effects while keeping a 2D surface even in the shader, such as normal, bump or parallax mapping. That's not what you see in the screenshot I posted above though.

Volume is quite hard to do, really; it's rare to see actual volume shaders where they aren't absolutely needed (e.g. volumetric clouds). In the case of water, you can get pretty good results by just taking a "pseudo volume": you know the height of the vertex under the water surface, and you know the world space angle from which you look at the vertex. You can then approximate the length of the under water part of the view ray by simple trigonometry, and adjust the colour accordingly.

Transparency itself is rather simple, but water is also refractive which is a major problem, actually. Unless you're using raytracing (which for almost all other purposes is extremely inefficient), you're likely much better off doing an approximation in screen space.

 

Anyhow, my money's on them doing a healthy mix of "real" 3D and "shader" 3D. Real 3D created in the update loop for larger waves that ships (and aircraft, should you be so unlucky) should react to, and shader effects for smaller waves and ripples.

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. 🙂

 

 

[Lusekofte]

21 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

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. 🙂

 

 

I also gonna talk about the PBY as many times I can. That make it mandatory to implement 

[Majakowski]

@Lusekofte

And never ask of it like "if it is implemented.." but rather "when you implement it, will you consider..." just to get some mental conditioning.

It is hard work for us, too!

[IckyAtlas]

On 5/24/2023 at 11:02 PM, Gambit21 said:

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.

Yes and no. When you have the sea state at 6, which is big waves and you look at the ships from average distance and from say the beach or low altitude, they seem to jump in the air on top of the waves. It is really a very bad visual effect.

There is also the fact that only a circle of a maybe 300 to 500 meters radius or so is animated with big waves, and not the rest, which makes it weird again at low  altitude because at a distance the ship seems in a calm sea.

[Mysticpuma]

It will be interesting to see if it's a new engine or a customised one from an existing engine.

For water and cloud simulation, Unigine looks pretty good:

Clouds

 

 

[HerrMurf]

This is a follow on from my reply to @Mysticpuma in regard to how detailed the weather should be here: 

The WWII air war was largely fought in good to middling weather. In terrible weather the aircraft would be lashed, aircrew would be below decks, while the rest of the fleet would be buttoned down and puking their guts out. WWII pilots are simply not flying in the majority of poor weather and sea states.

I want boats and seaplanes to interact with the water in a convincing way. Landing on a rolling deck should be white knuckle inducing. I want weather to look somewhere between very good to excellent and be reasonably accurate to how it was during actual operations. Great modeling of the boats and how they interact with the water will be the most critical interaction, outside of aircraft, in any CFS simulation to date.

As an addendum: PBY's were, generally, prohibited from landing on the open ocean. Even a moderate sea state is enough to destroy the aircraft while landing upon it. A case in point is the one that rescued dozens of sailors from the USS Indianapolis. It was broken upon impact with the sea and became, essentially, a medical barge from that point forward. Heroic pilot, broken plane. PBY's could land on the leeward side of reefs or islands, in lagoons, and harbors where the seas are much flatter. That is why MTB's, surface vessels, and submarines were so critical in pilot rescues in the Pacific.

[Mysticpuma]

19 minutes ago, HerrMurf said:

This is a follow on from my reply to @Mysticpuma in regard to how detailed the weather should be here: 

The WWII air war was largely fought in good to middling weather. In terrible weather the aircraft would be lashed, aircrew would be below decks, while the rest of the fleet would be buttoned down and puking their guts out. WWII pilots are simply not flying in the majority of poor weather and sea states.

I want boats and seaplanes to interact with the water in a convincing way. Landing on a rolling deck should be white knuckle inducing. I want weather to look somewhere between very good to excellent and be reasonably accurate to how it was during actual operations. Great modeling of the boats and how they interact with the water will be the most critical interaction, outside of aircraft, in any CFS simulation to date.

As an addendum: PBY's were, generally, prohibited from landing on the open ocean. Even a moderate sea state is enough to destroy the aircraft while landing upon it. A case in point is the one that rescued dozens of sailors from the USS Indianapolis. It was broken upon impact with the sea and became, essentially, a medical barge from that point forward. Heroic pilot, broken plane. PBY's could land on the leeward side of reefs or islands, in lagoons, and harbors where the seas are much flatter. That is why MTB's, surface vessels, and submarines were so critical in pilot rescues in the Pacific.

That's a fair point.

I remember speaking with and interviewing 325th FG veterans who discussed taking off USS Ranger as they headed to North Africa.

This footage shows them taking off the deck and the water was quite choppy. Some parts you can see the front of the carrier rise and fall when compared to the horizon line so it wasn't easy to time the take-off (they had to make sure they got to the end of the carrier when the bow was rising).

 

I appreciate though that storms would not see aircraft take to the skies but maybe Single Player missions could have timed events where the weather changes and you need to get back to the carrier before it becomes impossible to land?

[HerrMurf]

6 minutes ago, Mysticpuma said:

I appreciate though that storms would not see aircraft take to the skies but maybe Single Player missions could have timed events where the weather changes and you need to get back to the carrier before it becomes impossible to land?

This is in line with both of my replies.

[migmadmarine]

9 hours ago, Mysticpuma said:

That's a fair point.

I remember speaking with and interviewing 325th FG veterans who discussed taking off USS Ranger as they headed to North Africa.

This footage shows them taking off the deck and the water was quite choppy. Some parts you can see the front of the carrier rise and fall when compared to the horizon line so it wasn't easy to time the take-off (they had to make sure they got to the end of the carrier when the bow was rising).

 

I appreciate though that storms would not see aircraft take to the skies but maybe Single Player missions could have timed events where the weather changes and you need to get back to the carrier before it becomes impossible to land?

What did catapult launched floatplanes do for landing? Just restricted to especially calm seas? Thinking about that clip I've seen of an Arado losing it's engine due to sea state I saw a while back. 

[Plurp]

48 minutes ago, migmadmarine said:

What did catapult launched floatplanes do for landing? Just restricted to especially calm seas? Thinking about that clip I've seen of an Arado losing it's engine due to sea state I saw a while back. 

From Memoirs of a Stuka Pilot (in a He 60 on the pocket-battleship Admiral Sheer.)

"We usually had to ask for the duck pond.  This she would produce by performing a sharp 30-degree turn to port; the turbulence of her wake would smother the heavy swell to create a relatively calm patch of water within her turning circle."  

Edited May 28, 2023 by Plurp

[Trooper117]

Great little video that, thanks...

[Boba Fett]

It’s fascinating the snippets of knowledge you can pickup here.

[Boom]

Some examples of just how wild weather can be in the Pacific.

[Canvas25]

Wow!!!

[Trooper117]

Yes... I've been in that type of weather a few times when I was working on the ships...