A few quick personal observations for Creaghorns preview movie.
The more I see the goggles, rain, and dirt effects, the more I like them. This is a brilliant immersion factor but as shown in the video, great also that it is optional to be on or off.
At just 26 or so seconds in, the Spads on the ground looking around, it appears as if it's foggy. I'm wondering if that's supposed to be foggy goggles or actual fog outside?
Over and over again throughout the new video, the new terrain is magnificently redone. It was always great. Now it's kind of jaw-dropping at times.
At 41 seconds, the slight wind buffeting of the Spads flying in formation is awesome. Gone is the "on rails" experience some have been unhappy with in the past. To me, it looks very realistic.
The new tracer effects are wonderful. Not too large or small and should be a big help in guiding one's aim. Curious if these are all through the war or only show up once tracers actually got implemented?
1:10 in they show the ability to select your own aircraft. Hurray!
1:15 or so seems to show that when you zoom in close to the engine, it no longer has graphical clips. Nice fix!
1:23 seems to show some dirt on the goggles of the DR1 pilot. Does the dirt keep getting built up over time during the flight and is there a way to wipe it off?
The animated engines and pilot heads at the 2:00 mark are fantastic. It does so much to add to the feeling of real men in real planes fighting for their lives. At 2:11 the Baron gets his man. Hell of a shot killing the pilot while missing the observer!
At 3:26 you can see the drum of the top-mounted gun on the SE5A rotating as the pilot fires. Just as he stops firing, the pilot's head looks up at the other combat going on around him. Watching him look for and track targets and threats is amazing!
As mentioned before, the scenery, especially at 4:16 out the side of the DR1 is breathtaking.
4:30 seems to show the engine over-rev and shudder when the planes go too deep into a dive. Really nice feature! Not just for immersion but for tactically know when to back off.
5:17 shows changing out the top drum and how it pulls down so the pilot can get at it. Nice added effect to have to do potentially in the middle of combat.
6:15 shows the individual parts of the damage model in action, breaking away wingtip by wingtip. This is a huge improvement over the entire wing structure exploding away all at once.
At 6:57 You can see the Fe2b rear gunner firing away even though the plane is going through some intense maneuvers! This will make hunting 2 seaters deadlier than ever...and flying them might have a better chance of survival.
7:11 New maps AND mission playback features! I have no doubt many screenshots of this will be shared in the future.
7:25 just shows oil on the screen but it reminds me that vision can now be massively obscured between oil, dirt, blood, cracked glass and fog. This can add significantly to the challenge of getting out of a dogfight alive presuming labels are turned off, etc.
Thank you Creaghorn for taking the time to do this and helping them with Beta testing. Thanks to OBD for so many amazing improvements and additions to the sim.