Atmospherics/weather effects

A couple of new screenshots showing our latest work in atmospherics and weather effects:

Afternoon and haze:








Sun glare:




stratus cloud formations:









Meanwhile, some important corrections are being made at the code, specially subobject collision check and its stability.

All the screenshots look good Dante, even the ground textures look improved!

I'd like to see more of the cloud formations though (always seem the toughest effects to convincingly produce IMO).

Looking Good....

so any other updates you like to share with us...

Beautiful!

Very nice!

Great Dante

Please keep on pressing.... just a few more months.

The sky and the atmospheric effects are beautiful, the colors are also pretty AND realistic at the same time (not like in the over-saturated Il-2 or Lock-On, with the strange blue color of their skies). Very good also to have low-sun conditions without über-funky colors!

Just a comment on the cockpits: in the final version of the game, will they have a little more polys? Especially for some more depth on the instruments (I'm waiting at least for the standard of Lock-On).

P.S. Another thing on the cockpit: would it be possible to have a virtual camera for the pilot'view without any distorsions, more precisely with round instruments which are seen.... round and not ovoid?

Maybe with an ortographic projection camera, but then everything else will look funny (reduced field of view/no sense of depth/no vanishing point etc etc etc)

This ovoid effect is quite inevitable, when I worked at a space sim mmo it was a typical complaint that planets and other 3D spheres getting near the corners of the screen started to look ovoid..... a quick googling and the explaination:

Perspective projection distortion is the inevitable misrepresentation of 3-dimensional space when drawn or "projected" onto a 2-dimensional surface.




We plan to add normal-mapping to make the cockpit instruments less flat and keeping the polycount not that high - it also will look really good in shaded relief with the light moving through the bumps. Ah, the Skyhawk's cockpit frame will be re-modelled with more polys, it's quite obsolete now (and obviously missing the mirrors and other details).

Hi Dante, thanks for the explanation about camera, very interesting.

And great infos for the cockpits :-)


"it also will look really good in shaded relief with the light moving through the bumps."

Is it about the same method that is used for getting a high-details map from Zbrush or Mudbox?

Btw, I can' wait until this sim is out!!!!!

That looks specfreakingtacular! Can't wait!

Any word on release date?

Yes, quite the same.

Looking as good as ever.

Looks very good!

I love haze effect.

Looks Amazing!

Looks amazing Dante, JT, and all!!!

ps will you be adding real-time shadows?

It does indeed look beautiful, possibly the best skies I've ever seen in a simulator. As mentioned, Lock On: Modern Air Combat and especially IL-2 had funny sky colors. In fact, IL-2 was positively wrong in that the sky got deep blue, almost midnight blue, at about 40,000 feet. That's wrong. In reality, the darkening is almost imperceptible at that altitude; it's like Oleg Maddox was trying to play astronaut.

Jet Thunder's skies, on the other hand, look very realistic. The only thing I don't like about these screenshots is the canopies; they look like they're going to share Lock On: Modern Air Combat's problem of being too badly scratched up. I've never seen a real aircraft canopy that was nearly that bad.

Benny, yes that canopy scratches that still remain now in 2008 are overlooks - I've did that years ago and they will be replaced with better canopy textures as the engine programming advances and new transparency/material effects are available.

Really looking forward to this, looks great.

Looks nice. How many people are working on this project?

Five.

While you're clearly working on the project (unlike Gennadich who seem to have not touched theirs for months), I'm concerned that Thunderworks will be unable to get Jet Thunder out before the technology used is long out-dated. What do you think of this concern, Dante?

Outdated as compared to what? All the uber new sims with their shiny brand new engines??? Oh yeah there are none of those...

You are right about there not being a great deal of good simulators being made, but there are a few developers who keep pushing the boundaries. Thunder Works is one of six companies I can think of that create, or are attempting to create, simulators with complex and realistic flight models (Microsoft, obviously, is not on that list, and neither is Jane's Combat Simulations).

Whenever you realize it or not, in a few years it's quite possible that the technology used in Jet Thunder and the other simulators of this generation will be surpassed by technology developed by companies such as Gennadich, Eagle Dynamics, and Hitech. I would put 1C Maddox Games and Xtreme Simulations International on the list, but they've always been a bit behind (especially 1C Maddox Games, who have always insisted upon using a hilariously antiquated engine with severe limitations instead of making a new one).

And then there is Laminar Research's X-Plane, which is extremely innovative as far as flight models are concerned. However, that's not a combat simulator, and the rest of the simulator is quite dated (such as the graphics and damage model).

Great something new will come out...I'm all over it...until then I'll be fighting the Falklands from the air from both sides of the conflict. Where's the problem here?

[Frown.] If you had read my post more carefully, you would have noted that my concern is that we may not "be fighting the Falklands from the air" before "something new will come out." My concern is that Jet Thunder may be out-dated by new technology from other simulators in development (or their sequels) by the time it is released.

It's not that I see any solution, though. I'd rather see Jet Thunder released years from now than see it released months from now, incomplete and hacked up at the hands of an unethical and uncaring publisher.

Which "next-gen" products do you think will beat JT to market? None that publicly discuss development seem to be as far along as JT.

everything that will come out will be America/Russia Vs .......
not U.K./ Argentina/Fr/GER/IT....

right...
...take that "next-gen" engine!

I would guess that Gennadich's Knights of the Sky, Eagle Dynamics' Black Shark, and 1C Maddox Games' Storm of War: Battle of Britain are the "next generation" simulators most likely to be released before Jet Thunder. I hope you are right, however.

Xtreme Simulations' Fighter Ops doesn't look like it's going anywhere, and I don't think Hitech has even thought about Aces High III yet. These five companies are the only real competition that Thunderworks has in the "serious" aerial combat simulator market, as far as I can tell.

Black shark is current-gen...it is just the normal lockon with new flyables and an updated ME. As for your other candidates, I prefer to fly jets so...