New Texture Balkans
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Sims like IL-2 or Rise Of Flight do not have to calculate as much as Falcon and can afford a more detailed scenario (especially Rise of Flight or Cliffs of Dover).
Can anything be compared to Falcon4 as far as what is going on in the program behind the scene? And this IS that very MAGIC of it and thats simply all it is to that.
@Tom
U right about importance of the playability.
This should be goal of the terrain making too. Terrain should complement the combat action and preferably not distract from it by offering nothing but just fake and technically impossible to achieve illusion of detailed life under. It is a fact, that ATM we are making just attempts and tests wether such an illusion is possible and appears to me personally that it is not.Therefore, our energy and creativity should be directed to something which would support current state of Falcon development and its playability= fun using it. Running development of the terrain into something, which is without practical use for maintaining playability is IMHO rather missed cause and perhaps should be avoided.
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Yes, putting 16 or more PR textures in the row with the road or river is possible and in a way could be called new “supervariation” technique. Looking forward to your results :headb:.
However, bear also in mind, that PR despite its power and appeal is not the only answer to everything. To contrary, if used in limited number (because of some code texture limitation) only amplifies the difference between PR and traditionally tiled part.
Moreover, even 100% PR theaters like Guam do not seem to be what this community is looking for, or expecting. Maybe there are other factors in play, I am not sure.
What I am sure of is, that a lots of time goes to make tiles and final result of the theater may depend on keeping very careful balance between PR and regular tiling (all in good coordination with heightmap), keeping out of clashing colors, tone and contrasting transitions in very tight and carefull selection and choice.
I beg to differ there, my friend…the “Artiste”…;)
Every week since the re-tile of GUAM has started, and remember I was annoyed by the “scaling” of the tile in Falcon 3D… ;( NOT our ALPHA work.
I have been digging into the NVid .dds SDK to find suitable solutions to some of our texture woes in Falcon.
As well, re-mapping the MAP wire frame to a resolution more friendly to the L2 has helped.
I am going to post some pics to help explain what I’ve took the time to “Learn” in the past 5 weeks or so:First, you may see your Seatiles in a totally different perspective now.
Second and again what we see OTW due to the F16 model is HDR Blurred around it for an immense area……;(
BUT the tiles just outside of that Model’s…AHemmm “Booble” are sharp as a tack. Think we went a little extreme there Gent’s…LOL!!!Here is a view from the pit, and in this we can see that the tiles are blurred under the models foot print, but no longer pixelated. And that those ahead are rendering nicely @ 500 feet or so
As far as GUAM having no or little appeal to the Falcon community, I think 1000+ DLd’s with only 2 CTD’s would argue that point……;)!!!
Sorry M8’s…:tjacked:
Back to Topic… -
Well I think what we are getting to now, with Rudy and the teams work in Balkans, Joe’s work in Spain, and Daves work in Guam, is probably a quantum leap in realism and quality of the terrain from what we are used to. IMHO, its starting to look as good from altitude as FSX , which is saying something (although with FSX we have the lovely 5m mesh….) Sure, we are still working within limitations of the old engine and code, and the fact that its a tiled system, but look seriously how much all those guys mentioned above have learned and progressed in the last few months. It really is one of those “great leaps forward” that you get in technology etc in real life. Now, if there was some way of bringing everyone together and sharing and disseminating this new knowledge down to a slightly bigger team, we could have korea re done in months…It really is exciting stuff and I truly hope that this will spur people on to get together (BMS team included) and really make sure this gets integrated properly into the sim.
Bravo to all you guys and thanks!
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Yes all looks very impressive indeed !!!
Expectedly it looks like my comments have been met with strong opposing view. That is fine and this is why we have this forum. However, despite what has been said and shown in the form of the screenshots, I frankly find this discussion little low on substance and skimpy of NEW! practical information anyone else can use. Noneless the results shown on those few screenshots, I repeat, are impressive no question asked.
I tend, however, to agree with Mark about lack of of true cooperation to develop efficiently new theaters not because we do not want, but because we all now are discussing and dealing with ONE only facet of terrain_making and theater_making, which are PR visuals. I do not need to tell, or remind, that there are many more of aspects requiring time and hard work and dedication to make new theater trully 100% working and sucessfull with true and loyal follow up. I have had a honor and pleasure to meet dedicated people and hard working teams (here and @ FF) acting in unison on one common and realistically established goal.
Do not mind me this …. I am old grumpy fellow and this post is too short to tell it all and I am too lazy. :uham:
Good luck to us all and perhaps we need more time to see where we can get Falcon BMS terrain and theater making from here.
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Do not mind me this …. I am old grumpy fellow and this post is too short to tell it all and I am too lazy. :uham:
Good luck to us all and perhaps we need more time to see where we can get Falcon BMS terrain and theater making from here.
X2……:D!!!
Dave
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Hey, I’m lazy and also a little grumpy (that’s a franconians nature anyway)
… so x4.
Cheers,
LS -
I frankly find this discussion little low on substance and skimpy of NEW! practical information anyone else can use.
Oh, I don’t know Ted, I was thinking of several new things: The new techniques of variations and supervariations that allow photo real based tiles to be used with virtually no discernable repeats etc. The way that this allows the use of photorealistic tiles despite the 4096 limit. The way that Dave & Lazystone are able to tweak the L2 height variations as shown in the threads in Guam & POH. And the way the tile surface details can be made more 3D. Finally, There is the work on the 3D side of things that Arty etc has been doing to improve the look of cities .
While strictly all not new, but just improvements on what we already knew and had, the combination of these together should be enough to make a massively improved terrain for the different theaters. And if the code limit could be adjusted by the BMS devs, then we will be even happier with the results. Throw in some progress on the tile painting side of things, as you mentioned and……
Some people are pinning hopes on a totally new type of terrain, but realistically, I don’t see this happening (although it should not stop people trying. Does for example anyone else apart from the guy who was doing it, know how the FLARE project worked ? maybe that knowledge / technique could be incorporated as well if that was the case…) - I think the way it is progressing now is achieveable and a fantastic improvement.
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Keep hype and enthusiasm high Mark. Sure there is progress, but only time will show how significant all this is. I am not Falcon4 oldtimer, but have been already around log enough to have a sense of momentum. What you find optimistic and so rosy “quantuum leap” progress - I find, with some exceptions, little rehash of old things.
This is not to say again that there is no artistically creative and pretty impressive examples, but unfortunately not much which would tell me “we are getting to some new frontiers”. I know that many other major players, whom that progress we are talking here about may be contingent and dependant upon, are not currently involved much. At least, not to the extend and scale they had been before. FLARE is one very good example of that…. funny that you mentioned it. We ought not to blame anyone -there is RL besides Falcon & BMS. (BTW the main principal theory behid FLARE has been explained by the author on his blog) .
Again, time will tell. I am involved too in little something, so my ramble is not just empty whining without factual work. I leave at that…
EDIT: Back to topic:tjacked:
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Update cost……
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I love this terrain!
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Can’t Wait to Fly it, Very High Quality Work Bravo :bowd:
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In that case, get Mystic all revved up on sorting the campaign out for it!!! And if he needs any volunteers for manual superfluous object removal etc, let me know. happy to help. If he don’t mind explaining how.
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@Fighting:
Update cost……
You are my inspiration
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In that case, get Mystic all revved up on sorting the campaign out for it!!! And if he needs any volunteers for manual superfluous object removal etc, let me know. happy to help. If he don’t mind explaining how.
Dado from 117th is already working on the campaign in cooperation with the guys who are developing the terrain
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I am so happy, I think I am going to cry……!!!
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Ex ugoslavia * kossovo
For the moment the work is completely manual ( retilling manual ) ……:mad:
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Do you have a signature … very sexy :)))))