It's peculiar how different game engines portray the work we do. I was looking at some P-40 pics at IL-2. Very nice as usual. They can do close up better than we can. But my screenshots are a lot better. Could be just the video card or the POV or dumb luck. But I see it over and over again. In flight, Thirdwire games look like flight. Since I come from an aviation background, that is what I was looking for. People secured to the ground are looking for things someone on the ground sees and IL-2 is tops at that. In the air, I think it looks like what a guy on the ground thinks flight looks like. I admire the art in all their stuff but for me, TK's engine, clunky as it is sometimes, look like objects in the air and in motion in Deuces environment, it is uncanny sometimes.
When we perfect showing a hell of a lot of battleships in one place at one time without choking off a fluid dogfight into a slide presentation, we will have bragging rights. I would much rather start at Wake Island or Rangoon where we can stuff the monitor with high res objects and not worry about the results.
I get the funny feeling that everyone who has ever contemplated a realistic Asia/Pacific war scenario has been hit with the same technical conundrum. Tom Hanks can film some guys on the back lot and the TV will run it...but he cannot put you into the seat and mind of the man who flew the combat missions.
I am testing attacking the Akagi with torpedoes in a TBD knowing the outcome we are seeking...knowing what happened in that attack in detail. The result is a shock...seeing the carrier getting larger in your windscreen...seeing your squadron mates flaming into the ocean...watching the tracers and flak as you bore in...letting the fish go only to have to dig in...and then hope to fly over the carrier and never making it beyond that point and knowing that we have created the last thing all those men saw that morning.
Eerie. There is a responsibility to get it right that a first person shooter does not have.
Okay. Enough thinking. Back to Photoshop.
Last edited by zerocinco; 03/13/10 11:40 PM.