Friday Development Update - September 20
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Hello everyone,
The update pace has slowed down, as I?m sure you?ve noticed. We?re scrambling to shift gears; we've had a whole campaign written out and put together. As the kickstarter got started we realized it was all wrong, since we were doing something for people new to flight sims, expecting an influx of people who have never flown a plane in their life. Now that we've realized that this project can only succeed if we work with the dedicated flight sim fans, we're redoing and scrapping everything to give you guys what you need. We know the clock is ticking, so it's not a pleasant feeling.
We?re working on a large comprehensive video about aircraft. The part that is taking too long is the aircraft footage. We?re working to have some videos of the FW.190D-9 flying and fighting showing the cockpit, but some of the gauges are not yet working so that?s causing some delays. We really hate releasing stuff that does not look great. We also cannot afford to become a screenshot-taking and video-making project, so this makes juggling priorities rather difficult.
I?ve literally worked around the clock to have it ready today, but now that I?ve slept on it, it just does not look impressive enough. I think I?d rather spend a few more days adding more footage and changing a couple of other things rather than release the most important video of the project that I myself am not happy with it, and go out with a whimper.
In the meantime, here?s what we?ve done with the terrain over the last week.
We did a few more tests, and made a PSP runway and a pseudo-airfield with some parked P-51s. Have an annoying problem where static P-51s have issues with a transparent canopy.
We?re pretty much done with various terrain tests, and we?re ready to move on and start building it properly. General to-do is as follows:
1. High-res textures and terrain "noise"
2. Color correction
3. Go through the list of high-detail areas and recreate terrain from period sources.
4. Create and place proper 3D objects (buildings, hangars, fortifications, etc)
Tasks 3 and 4 will last well into 2014, especially 3D objects, which will keep being created and added all the way up to beta.
The first two tasks are quicker, but they will also not finish by the time the KS campaign does. Color correction is especially important. I find it difficult to release screenshots with it not done, but whatever time we spend doing it now will be wasted. There are a lot of components that need to be corrected and tested together. Terrain textures, tree textures, and vegetation, are all stored in different areas, and the colors are also affected by distance. Just making sure that trees look good at all distances and aren?t all the same shade of green while at the same time not looking like a circus is a long painstaking process.
We won?t do it now because we?re still working in the terrain editor. The terrain editor is simplified not to contain the atmospheric model. That really affects the in-game colors. Atmosphere, obviously, adds hues to everything. With a 24-hour day-night cycle, this makes color correction a huge chore. Think of it as trying to balance 20 spinning plates while riding a unicycle. You get the distant trees all nice and murky at dawn, and some trees become purple when viewed up close at noon. That kind of thing.
So, a few more points about the current terrain:
Textures are low-res placeholders
PSP runway is a quick test to see how a huge number of tiny holes interact with the underlying terrain and grass. Not final!
P-51s are the same P-51s that currently fly in DCS World, but they?re not flying here. They are just parked. You will be strafing these helpless static objects, nothing else.
As you can see, their canopies are opaque. That?s temporary, and only a feature of the terrain editor. Obviously, they will have beautiful transparent canopies in the final game, just as they do in the P-51 currently flying in DCS World.
Thanks everyone! Stay tuned for the killer aircraft video.
34 comments Like
Hello everyone,
The update pace has slowed down, as I?m sure you?ve noticed. We?re scrambling to shift gears; we've had a whole campaign written out and put together. As the kickstarter got started we realized it was all wrong, since we were doing something for people new to flight sims, expecting an influx of people who have never flown a plane in their life. Now that we've realized that this project can only succeed if we work with the dedicated flight sim fans, we're redoing and scrapping everything to give you guys what you need. We know the clock is ticking, so it's not a pleasant feeling.
We?re working on a large comprehensive video about aircraft. The part that is taking too long is the aircraft footage. We?re working to have some videos of the FW.190D-9 flying and fighting showing the cockpit, but some of the gauges are not yet working so that?s causing some delays. We really hate releasing stuff that does not look great. We also cannot afford to become a screenshot-taking and video-making project, so this makes juggling priorities rather difficult.
I?ve literally worked around the clock to have it ready today, but now that I?ve slept on it, it just does not look impressive enough. I think I?d rather spend a few more days adding more footage and changing a couple of other things rather than release the most important video of the project that I myself am not happy with it, and go out with a whimper.
In the meantime, here?s what we?ve done with the terrain over the last week.
We did a few more tests, and made a PSP runway and a pseudo-airfield with some parked P-51s. Have an annoying problem where static P-51s have issues with a transparent canopy.
We?re pretty much done with various terrain tests, and we?re ready to move on and start building it properly. General to-do is as follows:
1. High-res textures and terrain "noise"
2. Color correction
3. Go through the list of high-detail areas and recreate terrain from period sources.
4. Create and place proper 3D objects (buildings, hangars, fortifications, etc)
Tasks 3 and 4 will last well into 2014, especially 3D objects, which will keep being created and added all the way up to beta.
The first two tasks are quicker, but they will also not finish by the time the KS campaign does. Color correction is especially important. I find it difficult to release screenshots with it not done, but whatever time we spend doing it now will be wasted. There are a lot of components that need to be corrected and tested together. Terrain textures, tree textures, and vegetation, are all stored in different areas, and the colors are also affected by distance. Just making sure that trees look good at all distances and aren?t all the same shade of green while at the same time not looking like a circus is a long painstaking process.
We won?t do it now because we?re still working in the terrain editor. The terrain editor is simplified not to contain the atmospheric model. That really affects the in-game colors. Atmosphere, obviously, adds hues to everything. With a 24-hour day-night cycle, this makes color correction a huge chore. Think of it as trying to balance 20 spinning plates while riding a unicycle. You get the distant trees all nice and murky at dawn, and some trees become purple when viewed up close at noon. That kind of thing.
So, a few more points about the current terrain:
Textures are low-res placeholders
PSP runway is a quick test to see how a huge number of tiny holes interact with the underlying terrain and grass. Not final!
P-51s are the same P-51s that currently fly in DCS World, but they?re not flying here. They are just parked. You will be strafing these helpless static objects, nothing else.
As you can see, their canopies are opaque. That?s temporary, and only a feature of the terrain editor. Obviously, they will have beautiful transparent canopies in the final game, just as they do in the P-51 currently flying in DCS World.
Thanks everyone! Stay tuned for the killer aircraft video.
