KOTS Screenshots!

Spring brings forth eternal hope (Gengoult Airdrome, Toul domain, France 1918).











Much more to come!

Last two look great.

Wow!

(those are fake! KotS doesn't exist! Everyone knows that!)

I'd be remiss if I didn't say that there's something in the air.

Don't lose your compass heading, or you might need to make a quick left turn at Verdun (maybe over that distant ridge line):



The environs around Toul:







These screenshots reflect terrain and environmental work in progress, which will be improved upon before the sim's release (like the cloud look for instance).

Get a LOD at this:

Thanks for the reference-post update Dave.

(Actually, where the heck did you get these? You're in some clandestine beta program aren't you?)

Nice to see cloud shadows cast on the landscape. If they're on the landscape I'm hoping they will be cast on the planes as well which is very cool.

The atmospheric tint on the draw distance is well done. I don't see any crappy draw-clipping either.

Looks like a subtle curve on the horizon too.

Looks like terrain detailed enough for a simmer to actually navigate by.

Nice Gennadich, very nice indeed.

S!

Kevin, I'm sure the KOTS Team and NEOQB as well are interested in your impressions here.

Check PM

Nice to see rivers relative to elevations that aren't 2d!

Very nice. I had to do a double take on the first pic. Almost photo realistic. Any idea if there will be river bank elevations...I know they plan them for SOW.

~Salute~
Chivas

I will go to the bottom of our stairs

Sumptuous, practically edible. We didn't realise just how hungry we are to climb in and fly this <rumbling from central food-processing area>

Ming

Aerial perspective spot on, artist at work, there may be water vapour. Just needs a red triplane in every shot please

Btw, since Ming seems hungry for more (there's more to come).

Chivas, I wonder about those river bank elevations too!

Can't wait to fly in this game, those high altitude shots look great. My new computer is waiting

Wibble...

Proper river banks must wait until the upgraded Il-2 engine for BoB I think FR but those banks look very good in that last shot - thanks!

The BoB terrain engine has the possibility to have sharper-turning polygons IIRC whereas Il-2 vertexes can't turn sharply so everything (acceptably!) rolls. The idea perhaps being that one can't see these sharp edges from a fast plane anyway so Oleg optimised for framerate (less vertexes to process) which is no bad thing

Red Arrows flyby the London Eye tomorrow to celebrate the RAF's 90 birthday. Camera batteries will need charging they can shift a bit

Ming

OOOOOOOOOOH! Thanks FR, stunning shots. Now can we have some more?

PS: the rivers are not 3D, but...

...you still like it?

ooh yes! we like it very much VikS, a thousand thanks to you and the gennadich team

3D isn't all it's cracked up to be, illusions in 2D created by sympatico artists are called trompe l'oeil: fools the eye. Your artist's work is very good and eminently suitable for the Somme. It ended up very flat by the time the gennadich team arrives on the scene didn't it

We wait to see what you will do when you get your hands on a licence to develop sims under the Storms of War engine... wow and question two can we have an armour sim please too. WW2 thanks

Ming

wrong answer (c) - right now we are neoqb team







you saw there 3D rivers or something?



well, youll need to wait till 1939

nice shots, good to see you're still working on her!

Ming, Viks and the team are nothing to do with Oleg and his team or the Il2 engine. It's a totally independent venture. I think that has been mentioned a few times now. I reckon yer noggin's feeling it's age

....and what stunning shots...
Wibble indeed....x2

Вот блин - медведь превед - наконец-то вылезли. Продолжайте веселить аборигенов красивыми картинками :))))

That's easy for you to say

Ming

Yeah I know Brigs

All part of the plan laddie.

Ming

Wow, this will be the time when I hit my head on a bridge, because I will fly with my head way out of the cockpit.

Beautiful, thanks for the pictures!

Thanks a lot neoqb team

The terrain looks absolutely great from up high. Don't know if I like the ground textures down low though, they seem very uniform to me. Maybee some grass which is blowing in the wind ?

Great to have updates again, can't wait to get my hands on this!

Well the clouds need some more work imo..

I can help .

yep, these ones are temparary made, clouds will be much better.

PS: any help are welcome

Mmmmm.. Yummaaay!

Love the clouds, looks insane.

Great to see an update. Pics look quite beautiful to me. As someone noted, just need to see a triplane in the view. I so hope to see this in 2008.

Viks good to see you again..
I'll be up and running with new PC in a week or close too.

Tell me the help you need..
PM me or go to http://www.gozr.net/iocl ( the oldy good site )

I can open a special private corner and really start something.

I can open a special private corner and really start something.

Or we could just do the barbeque have you tried FR's recipe for jugged hare?

It's no use fighting it, all threads eventually end up with food

Ming

Excellent idea Ming, I think we're planning on fryin' spam.

Hey, how about another screenshot:

Freycinet had mentioned in the recent Triple Triplanes video thread that the forest looked a little dark to him, and I like the 3D forest colors, but the LOD-out colors of the woods in the distance does appear a bit darker than the foreground colors look.

What do you guys think?

Yes, good example of the issue, especially since far-off features would naturally be lighter-coloured due to the atmospherics...

The brightening effect is present in the above screenie, but only a bit further out. Anyway, this is really nitpicking, and I am not even sure that I'm right...

I think the colors are quite good... especially in the distance.

Below a small sample of an aerial photograph above the same area:

It's looking excellent. The only thing that stands out to me is that the rivers contrast far too heavily with the land. Rivers are never that shiny.

Agreed. The rivers need a bit of texture to make them duller. They are looking good geographically though - far better than those in IL-2; the KotS landscape is looking very real.

That purple keeps creeping back in ominously FR and the wispy cirrus layer looks as if the cirrus-texture is placed at a strange perspective rather than on a sky dome, clouds' edges are much too sharp not wispy. Nit-picking only yes I'd buy it in a shot

To have a 'correct' colour palette one needs some object in shot of a known colour for calibration. Like the ceramic tiles under the camera on the Mars Lander. Without the key-colour object all colours are 'correct' and in the purview of the artist and one woman's opinion is as important as anyone elses. I have a feeling that gennadich/whomever will want to have a naturalistic colour palette and so do we of course.

Nothing in Nature is purple that's why it's the Emperor's colour. Well apart from purple shamrock and er, a couple of other things

The distant purple colour may be cribbed from colour photographs, colour film is rather unreliable one should get up there are make a colour sketch rather than depend on allegedly panchromatic colour stock. Or study the work of Constable. No not Turner aaaggh!

Ming

Once again - the rivers are w/o any reflections (thats why they look so "liquid metal look"), river banks are 2D, and clouds are temporary made

But evolution comes all the way;)

PS: Ming, stop all that english slang-talking, my lamp-mind are fried every time i read smh from you!...
"Heres a rifle, theres a target - just shoot it!"

LOL...

But VikS, we love Minglish!

(btw, I think I probably need to turn down the contrast on my monitor here)

What I think I'm seeing is the high-lighting of the 3D trees in the close viewpoint, and a color difference between the switched-out appearance of
the forest as it transitions into the background. Here's two illustrations.

In this sceenshot I can't see any color variation between the foreground trees (1), and the connected forest as it switches into the background (2):



However, in this one, and perhaps because of the greater intensity of the light-source (and by the shadows cast on the rolling terrain), the foreground trees (1),
seem brighter in color than the connected background forest (2):



You're probably right guys, it is kinda nit-picky, and the evolution between near-shot and far-shot views is working really well.

I probably need to turn down the contrast on my monitor here

To view a shot yes but not to take a shot, where altering the monitor's colour balance will have no effect on the screenshot

If they are simply shots you are viewing FR can you ask the source of the shots to please turn on FSAA to at least x2? If not can you turn on FSAA please? These long flat polygons are suffering huge aliasing - like the lakes in Black Death

The rivers are beautiful VikS and look correctly slow-moving and muddy waters to me and Blind Lemon Jefferson. As we are looking at water margins though it would be better if FSAA is enabled when taking shots. I think that the water of the Somme in that period might have been slightly churned-up and muddied? Just a little

stop all that english slang-talking

Never, what about that Russian guy I can't understand a word of it but I don't complain

Ming

is that about my english or about my russian ?

Sim said earlier-


Your English is impeccable VikS.

What did he say btw please

Ming

Something about eating pancakes with bears while looking at beautiful pictures of Aboringines.

(you're right Ming, the conversation does always seem to turn to food)

I'm rolling on a floor here

Sweet! When the gennadich forum disappeared, I thought KOTS was history but it's still alive here! WooHoo.

I even wrote neobq and they replied saying:

"We plan to launch developers blog in may and Knights of the Sky Forum in autumn 2008 (closely to the game release)."

Good to see you here too Buddy, and you bring good news!

A release date! Wonder how reliable it is? Autumn of this tear would be REALLY nice .

autumn of this tear.... that's poetry!

autumn of this tear...

dunkelgrun, you could make lots of money writing lyrics...

...for Tom Jones...

OMG I`ll go nuts waiting for this dream come true (yes, as a kid, since I got my first C64 I dreamed about somethin like this)...aaarghhh

LOL!!! I'd have to write them all with my eyes tight shut then!
The curse of the fat finger strikes again!

Now there's a title for a song if I ever heard one!

Very Morrissey-esque

...or in a different reality, a Morrissey song/Two Ronnies Sketch.
"The curse of the fat finger strikes again!...in old London town" :raspberry

Guys, it looks like they are Neoqb is making progress on that blog they promised. Check this.

http://www.riseofflight.com

Cheers!

a joke?

LOL, not a joke Sim.....we've been looking at that "place for rent" for over half a month now:

http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2568209&fpart=1

(I think they're trying to negotiate with Ming for the English text version)

LOL. I reread what I wrote and it makes no sense. LOL.

Of course I meant to say "Guys, it looks like Neoqb is making progress on that blog they promised..."

I almost can't contain my excitement either Buddy

Ming

http://www.riseofflight.com seems to be down for some reason, hopefully its the strain of adding loads of new content