F.L.A.R.E. Revived
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Hi,
when can we expect an update?:rolleyes:
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Hi,
when can we expect an update?:rolleyes:
I posted one in another thread…
We’re still working on it. Fulcrum completed the city tiles, Jammer is doing the inner coastal/river tiles, and I’m still working on the bases that didn’t already have FLARE tiles and elevation. Japan is done, South Korea is almost completely tiled… North Korea still needs some work.
Not much to post right now as this is the boring part where we just do lots of tiles :). When we have something new to show that isn’t already shown in the videos/screenshots posted in this thread we’ll post it here, or when we have an ETA on finishing it. Dema was nice enough to share his tiles with us so we’re seeing if we can include those.
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Thanks for the work
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A-mazing work!
I’ve been waiting for this since I knew about F.L.A.R.E.All BMS fans are used to a “release drama”…. but is there any educated guess as to when can we expect to see the first release?
As I said a simple “not before XX/XXXX if everything goes as planned” would be enough to calm our nervesKeep up the good work!
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Tough to say Ghost because like anything else here its “work” that we do between real life work and schedules/priorities fluctuate. If we give a date and miss it everyone will be upset. Safest bet? Before the end of the year. Best case scenario? Maybe 3-4 months from now. We’re trying some new things but progress has been slow. Hopefully we’ll get it figured out soon. Trust me though, we’re working on it (no need to me PM me guys because we are already in contact with the people who can help :)). Hope to show some progress soon.
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Tough to say Ghost because like anything else here its “work” that we do between real life work and schedules/priorities fluctuate. If we give a date and miss it everyone will be upset. Safest bet? Before the end of the year. Best case scenario? Maybe 3-4 months from now. We’re trying some new things but progress has been slow. Hopefully we’ll get it figured out soon. Trust me though, we’re working on it (no need to me PM me guys because we are already in contact with the people who can help :)). Hope to show some progress soon.
After the hilarious comment : 2-3 weeks
Here is the updated one : 3-4 months
Looool Demo
BB
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Not to sound like a whining bitch, but does this really look better? I got this feeling of what Il2-sturmovik’s ground textures from 1999 looked: Washed out, a bit blurry and unclear, and every place on the ground looked almost the same. It also gives me this gloomy and dark feeling like it’s from WW2 or something.
I rather look at sharp and bright / photo realistic textures. One sim I really liked the ground texture of was Jane’s USAF: http://www.combatsim.com/htm/june99/jpg2/usaf-f15.jpg
I know it doesnt look like much today, but when it came out I was blown away and really wanted to explore the land and fly different places. Every place felt different.
And you got a feeling of flying over real land. -
Not to sound like a whining bitch, but does this really look better? I got this feeling of what Il2-sturmovik’s ground textures from 1999 looked: Washed out, a bit blurry and unclear, and every place on the ground looked almost the same. It also gives me this gloomy and dark feeling like it’s from WW2 or something.
I rather look at sharp and bright / photo realistic textures. One sim I really liked the ground texture of was Jane’s USAF: http://www.combatsim.com/htm/june99/jpg2/usaf-f15.jpg
I know it doesnt look like much today, but when it came out I was blown away and really wanted to explore the land and fly different places. Every place felt different.
And you got a feeling of flying over real land.FLARE looks much better than any photorealistic stuff. GE textures are nice as long as you fly higher than 10k + feet. At low, they are very ugly and weird. The test videos clearly have shown this.
If creators have the necessary skills the FLARE can be adapted with slight (?) changes for another theaters. With photoreal. textures lots of manual work is required and have to be done for all theaters. I rather see a generalized better looking terrain which is functional everywhere than unique textures which look strange at low alt. Of course even with FLARE some texture still be unique but should not be the way creating hundreds of thousands of unique tiles. Some part of the map can be “landmark”, objects and texutres can be mixed to achive this. Kunsan and Kimpo are the perfect examples for this concept.
In short I prefer better but generalized terrain than trying achieve “100% match” with RL. Cities in DCS are not real, but they fulfill their purpose. There are uniqe objects, but “standardized” cities with textures and objects make possible to give relative location of targets or use them as a reference position.
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Fully agree with Molni. And FLARE will (maybe) have another strong point in the futur.
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Well, non photorealistic tiled terrain can look great made well.
I am into this a bit (although not much time lately) so i would love to recommend those applications.
Maybe some inspirations and time-saving elements can be found here.Genetcia: http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/gallery.htm
Tiled: http://www.mapeditor.org/If you want to create artificial terrain and split into tiles from there then:
Terragen 2: http://planetside.co.uk/products/terragen2
Wordmachine: http://world-machine.com/but on the other hand there are tons of great looking terrain tiles as templates available on the net already if you dig.
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@AS
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Yeah, Terragen is also used in the movie industry, but that kind of gfx we can NOT implement, lol.
Nevertheless, you can create plane terrain (quickly) and export that and “tile it up” if you like.Genetica is really great to create amazing looking tiles which are seamless i.e.
Genetica is “King” if it comes to textures.
(sponsored by priatebay lol)
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Not to open too much of a separate debate here, but there is a problem with seamless tiles in that they still repeat. Just look at the latest Balkans tiles - great seamless joins, but the tile is still a repeating pattern. You need to randomize and have a large number of variations for it to work properly. And you also need variety in the tiling - not much good having seamless expanses of the same texture, it looks terrible. Real life scenery has lots of variation ( not desert etc obviously) so the challenge is to mix in enough variety of textures and patterns of textures, to make it look plausibly real. FLARE is looking good, indeed great, but to me, too much of the same texture showing in large areas to look as good as photoreal scenery. Obviously I don’t know what you guys are working on, I imagine this one one of the areas you are trying to improve. And hopefully the L2 limitation as well…. !! Thanks for all your hard work and efforts!
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Not to open too much of a separate debate here, but there is a problem with seamless tiles in that they still repeat.
Terragen and fractals
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FLARE looks much better than any photorealistic stuff. GE textures are nice as long as you fly higher than 10k + feet. At low, they are very ugly and weird. The test videos clearly have shown this.
Well, at what altitude do most us fly almost all the time? For me it’s for sure above 10,000 feet. And with todays technology and computer hardware I think we could get really nice looking photo realistic textures, even below 10,000 feet.
I just remember in USAF when I was pretty high up I didn’t have to look at my HUD altitude meter, cause I just got that hight feeling by the look of the terrain. And everywhere I looked it looked so different, and I got a pretty good directional feeling too, so I didn’t have to look at my compass.
But as long as Falcon BMS doesn’t turn into a gloomy / dark sim I am happy. I hope in the future, if BMS incorporate the Flare it will be optional to install.I searched a bit more and found this (not sure if its’ Falcon BMS):
And this is for me just pure gold! I love that type of photo realistic terrain (I could fly all day long :D)More here (scroll a bit down:) http://tactical.nekromantix.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21540
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Also this tool can give for free super extra fine detail lever from Google Earth and it auto covers the Google letters and logo at the bottom of the pictures…
http://freesmartgis.blogspot.gr/
It’s a bit tricky and some times GE doesn’t respond but closing it and reopening it from this tool works just fine and u can continue.
And a vid how it works:
If we could had more then 4096 tiles (or maybe if it would load 4096 tiles at time) then with this tool u can have your map in Unbelievable photo real detail in just a few days…
Any one knows a tool that can auto tile (cut a big picture in tiles) except Photoshop?
I used Monters Terrain Editor tool and I ended with the tiles that are already in the theater not with tiles from the pic I loaded… Strange…
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Sometimes we forget to be happy with what we already have. I’m the lucky one, i have never flown falcon 4 or AF. I jumped straight into BMS. Recently I did a little flight to compare and it is amazing what BMS does for falcon. It felt rewarding. From that perspective i think with a bit patience it is interesting to see what the future will bring us, in all sorts of disciplines. I think many do, and passionately share their opinions about it. But sometimes so much that i perceive them to be as unrewarding towards the people trying hard to make a difference for us, the community. Just wait and see, there is nothing definitive yet. Perhaps in a couple of years things merge or change again. In any case i think both flare or photoreals will not spoil BMS, when do you really have the time to look out the window and peacefully enjoy scenery, besides the couple occassions? I much rather see the community push towards playing more with weather settings…all those youtube vids with the best of the best weather…and then discuss what terrain ought to look like? Just my 2c’s, devs and modrs, thanks for making the difference, it cannot be said enough!
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@venom - it probably depends on how safe you feel in the small arms envelope - I am rather fond of NOE flight - to a fault. yes, the terrain looks much better from Angels 20 than it does at cherubs 2. the obvious exception being that water - where it is flat, I really like it.
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Also this tool …. then with this tool u can have your map in Unbelievable photo real detail in just a few days…
I think with this tool you’ll never be able to have your map in Unbelievable photo real detail,
because you’ll get crazy before you finish your work. (clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick)
Better use SbuilderX or FSEarthTiles to get an defined area loaded at once.Any one knows a tool that can auto tile (cut a big picture in tiles) except Photoshop?
Why not PSP (and it’s slice tool?)
Ummpf, … we are
once again.
Cheers,
LS