Oooh yes, coloration is very important. Drab greys and browns of the stormy South Atlantic and barren landscapes are very important. No shiny bright greens and blues, wash out the saturation as much as practical.

A great example of this was the original EF2000 which did a very good Norwegian overcast. IL2 is a little too bright and primary colored (as are the screen shots of BofB).

Dull clag and low-down turbulence gets me much more excited than bright sunshine and smooth skies.

Great to see some news and an interview though, nice work guys!

Cheers, Spinner

I hate to say it, but I agree. A few years back JT looked like a modern flight sim, but with the punishment of time it doesn't look as dazzling as it once did. Maybe you could release the code, let the community develop it, and when you can find a publisher, sell it. Just like they did with EECH2. Maybe even self publish?

Cheers

I think the plane looks good enough, but the carrier is ugly. However, the only graphics issue I'd like to get fixed before initial release is the unrealistic bloom. IMO, it's better to concentrate on the campaign, bug hunting, multiplayer, physics, optimization, avionics, user interface etc. as the graphics aren't that bad. Additional graphics improvements can always be released in addons or patches later on, provided that your engine supports higher definition models and textures.

Yup, this is exactly what we're doing now. All game development books tell that is better to have a very fun game playable with boxes and other abstract test stuff, than to have perfect spot-on models layed over a totally unplayable, buggy foundation. Graphics can be easily changed later. Our models are all 2005-2006ish now, but as History Channel tought they were good enough for a full lenght documentary(as aired this last week), we left them. But seeing Lock On: Black Shark and Rise of Flight, I agree that for a final release as an AAA title we must re-model them all in a higher polygon and texture detail.

One of the things that I personally think is very strange, is the green flight deck of the Argentinean carrier. Our argentinean experts are telling that it is like that, but I still can't get used to that color, because we're so used to grey carrier decks in the jet era. I remember reading some Oleg update or comment, in IL2 Forgotten Battles time, that they received the model of some new russian plane to be added to the game but they had to tone down the cockpit interior colors, because in russian fashion they were painted in full bright blue or lush green - in the final game after toning down the colors it ended looking more towards typical grey with a small tendency towards blue or green...

The shaders were just added, they're overdone indeed, specially the water specular. All to be tweaked and toned down. We're looking more for HDR type lighting and with this, any temporary bloom will be out (bloom is so 2005 isn't?

Focus on the cool stuff

I spend all day with a mouse in my hand. I don't want to come home and click on stuff.

i agree, i sometimes wonder if for artistic reasons the carrier should be made what the colour we expect it to be :-)

but then authenticity is important.

latest screenshots. got shaders for seas which we've been missing in the past.

I've prefer this one:

nice, very nice

Mmmm, I want to swim in that water.

Would you have high-resolution versions of these pictures ? They would make a very fine wallpaper for my desktop...