F.L.A.R.E. Revived
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What you see in the pics and that video are what Gio did. That’s all tiles that were completed before we got the files.
We’re are in the process of adding more variety (where we can) and incorporating more satellite imagery. However, our main priority is to just finish it. If we try to do too much the likelihood it gets finished decreases dramatically. So we’re in the process of balancing the two goals. Once it’s done it can always be improved upon, but at least all the time consuming grunt work will be completed.
I will say though that there is a trade off when you do a lot of satellite imagery. At lower altitudes it looks wrong, and if there are 3D objects, it looks wrong if they don’t line up or the scaling is off. We were already doing tiles in Korea before we got these files from Gio. I posted a pic in the screenshots thread of KOTAR that Fulcrum did with the actual satellite image of the KOTAR range. It looked amazing above 10,000ft or looking straight down at it but when you did a straffing run or dive bomb and got close to it at lower altitudes it just looked strange because the POV is obviously off. Whereas with the FLARE tiles they look great at low altitude. But for example, we’re adding more satellite imagery to the mountains to give them more definition and we are adding some more variations throughout the generic tiles (ie Bog, farmlands, etc…). Since the majority of tiles are done, we’re able to go back in fill in certain spots with new tiles.
PLEASE, no more satelite shit , please. We don’t need fake buildings (flat citys ) or fake farms. It just makes ground targets disapear in mess of pixels … Some times less is more.
They should serve purpose, not try to be eye candy…
Thanks.
-haukka81
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PLEASE, no more satelite shit , please.
WOah, cool your afterburner there, Turbo…
lol, just kidding (i’m quoting someone from the FF forum here, don’t remember who but it was hilarious )Everything needs balance, but don’t you think current city tiles are a mess of pixels too? Back then, those tiles were trying to be “photorealistic”.
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Sorry if the map is covered by that same texture you lost me. If you talking 5-10% maybe.
Am I the only one with reservations.
Regards
No you’re not. The released pictures and movie clips show a kind of uniform dark green landscape without much detail. It doesn’t appear to be very immersive to me. But I won’t judge it before release: maybe the end-product is much better than what is shown here.
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No you’re not. The released pictures and movie clips show a kind of uniform dark green landscape without much detail. It doesn’t appear to be very immersive to me. But I won’t judge it before release: maybe the end-product is much better than what is shown here.
pretty sure the point is that there is not too much detail - so that at very high altitude, there is less repetition, and less detail, and at low altitude, there is still less detail, and less repetition. if those things bother you, then default korea will be fine. not as pretty for NOE flight, but better for high altitude flight.
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No you’re not. The released pictures and movie clips show a kind of uniform dark green landscape without much detail. It doesn’t appear to be very immersive to me. But I won’t judge it before release: maybe the end-product is much better than what is shown here.
Point of FLARE is not to be more imersive… but to reduce the tiling effect.
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Point of FLARE is not to be more imersive… but to reduce the tiling effect.
I understand that. But to me immersion is the key factor in a simulation. Getting rid of the repetative effect of tiles is a good cause to work on. The balance between that and a proper amount of detail is a tricky one.
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meh. I dont think higher resolution terrain texture helps immersion that much per se, with the terrain heights the way they are.
Oh I know what would improve immersion… an Occulus Rift VR headset.
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I understand that. But to me immersion is the key factor in a simulation. Getting rid of the repetative effect if tiles is a good cause to work on. The balance between that and a proper amount of detail is a tricky one.
Anyway…. Demo will choose what is good or not for FLARE. We will be free to use it or not.
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Shadow, do I understand you correctly as questioning that such large areas are covered by one type of tile? Or what looks like one type?
In a way, I can see that is a potential issue, but unavoidably perhaps, a result of doing away with the tile borders and repeating effect. It would be great if a way could be found to introduce more variety of terrain and textures, to better reflect real life. But I don’t know enough about the process to comment really.
That’s one reason why I wondered earlier in the post, how this process (or parts of it) and the other advances in tiling made by the Balkans team guys, would be of use to each other in improving both projects.
Cheers, Mark
Yes Mark I do, but dont get me wrong with their attempt to improve falcon but as long as were stuck with a limited tiled map and a very limited hight map resolution its all a compromise.
What the guys did with Israel was/is great, the inclusion of satellite maping and its blend into the surounding tiles was very refreshing. But its still Falcon and we fly above manpads most of the time.
In 98 on a Voodoo5 it looked great, when I came back in the late 2000s with FF/AF it still looked great, high tiles I got used to. I still think it looks great.What i do hate is rivers running up hill and doggy water elevations. But unless some one comes up with wages for a team of skilled devs for 12-24 months were stuck with it.
Unles Tagnight has his wish.Regards and gratidude……Shad
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Anyway…. Demo will choose what is good or not for FLARE. We will be free to use it or not.
I agree, we will.
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I understand that. But to me immersion is the key factor in a simulation. Getting rid of the repetative effect if tiles is a good cause to work on. The balance between that and a proper amount of detail is a tricky one.
There’s going to be some type of repetition, no matter what. That can’t be helped unless you want to go to goggle maps/earth and use a different satellite tile for every area (and we know what constant use of sat tiles look like) or become an expert graphics artist and draw the tile yourself from scratch. They key with FLARE with subtle differences in the layers of the tiles. As well as the look and smoothness of it. We focus a lot of tiles on BMS because there just isn’t an abundance of 3D objects in the 3D world to give the tiles variety. Speaking of 3D, tiles weren’t the only thing worked on. There are a plethora of 3D objects that were modified art wise to match the tiling. Along with some weather DDS file changes as well.
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Gotta agree with Shadow and Snail. Everyone has an opinion and mine is in line with theirs.
And yes, we all are free to use it or not. My choice would be to not use, as it just doesn’t look realistic or immersive to me. I keep seeing it posted that it looks way better in game than in pics??
Ive seen other theater makers post their shots of terrain work and it looks fine in pics. How come FLARE pics that are posted don’t??
RAM22
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The lack of repeating patterns and borders, IMHO outweighs most of the inherent other disadvantages that we have working within the current falcon terrain boundaries. I don’t know about you guys, but down pretty low in certain areas, the existing tiles and textures can look pretty good. But as soon as you go high, the lines and repeats and patterns just destroy any semblance of reality. So for me, the way that FLARE appears to have removed that, is a massive plus. If it comes at the initial expense of less varied terrain and textures, then so be it, as Demo said, this can always be improved.
Finally, what Haukka81 said……seriously??? like this crap satellite stuff here? https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12025-New-Texture-Balkans&p=191178&viewfull=1#post191178
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I know its not realistic in the current time line, but is there room for some % of flare intergration in to the current methodolgy.
Or does have to be one or the other ?? Some of those textures have got to have a place some were, at times they fit & look so right.
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Probably the best would be a mix of photorealistic and carefully crafted tiles as “filllers”
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Probably the best would be a mix of photorealistic and carefully crafted tiles as “filllers”
Are you in here too, time I went to bed.
Wiper :nosep:
Sorry back to topic….what he said.
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The lack of repeating patterns and borders, IMHO outweighs most of the inherent other disadvantages that we have working within the current falcon terrain boundaries. I don’t know about you guys, but down pretty low in certain areas, the existing tiles and textures can look pretty good. But as soon as you go high, the lines and repeats and patterns just destroy any semblance of reality. So for me, the way that FLARE appears to have removed that, is a massive plus. If it comes at the initial expense of less varied terrain and textures, then so be it, as Demo said, this can always be improved.
Finally, what Haukka81 said……seriously??? like this crap satellite stuff here? https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12025-New-Texture-Balkans&p=191178&viewfull=1#post191178
Yes, it looks pretty but will be blurry/un real looking when you go low (below 5000ft, pov broblems etc…) and cas missions are pain in ass, because there is lots of “false targets”… This is broblem even dcs… it has 3d towns but it still uses 2d city textures too so it looks like crap and makes bombing pain in ass.
Satelite textures are ok for high alt fly but no go for cas or any sort of ground attack. Buildings painted in ground just broke all immersion so easily, even just couple 3d buildings is better than painted city.
I really hope that we get some kind forests…even il2 style would be great. And even simple small towns made of 3d buildings is great improvment if we just get rid of those fake citys. Hell even stock F4 amount of 3dbuildings are ok…
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Perhaps F.L.A.R.E is designed by way of future iterations of BMS that will render some SAT tiles not appropriate.
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Biggest problem, which I think FLARE has vastly overcome, is that when using satellite tiles (especially city ones, coastal, etc) they tent to have shading that in no way corresponds to the shading in the game or time of day. Like a sat photo taken at 4PM with shadows on buildings or, and google maps/earth is a big offender of this, an entire portion of the map will be shaded a different color than a portion right next to it.
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Don’t forget, all the textures we currently use and have are satellite image derived….just all the same small photo. So the same applies about going low. except, that in these new versions, the resolution is 4 times as good( 2048 x 2048 as opposed to 256 x 256 in most cases) so it looks 4 times better. You have to pretty damn low , say under 1000 ft, for it to start to show. Look at this photo over the Spain theater mountains, about 1500ft altitude. looks pretty damn good to me…:
I use photoscenery extensively in FSX and personally don’t like the autogen 3D objects on top. Here is a shot of FSX : Just to show how it can look. The only autogen in that shot is teh tall tres, all the rest of the depth and sense of reality is generated by the actual images, with their shadowing etc. OK, so the shadows are only right once a day…But I will live with that…
Photoscenery is where it’s at for sure. And there is no other engine such a sin DCS being developed for Falcon, so this is the best way we have to improve our scenery. the possibilities are very good and improving ever quicker as various teams learn more and more…