I have seen the future (patch) and verily, it is GOOD

[hein-kill]

Oh my good giddy grandfather

I just gave the 2.04 beta patch a run after just having joined the test program for the first time.

Before that, a typical (virtual) day of campaign play for me involved saving before and after every frag, and one or two CTDs per hour of play.

Within the first five minutes with the new beta my pills dropped. Contrails! Tracers from the 303s! Tracers from the bombers so you can actually see them shooting! New bullet smacking sounds. Heavy smoke rising on the horizon from my burning airfield. Engines stuttering when they've eaten some lead. Flack bursts you can feel!

And...was I just imagining it? Seagulls crying over the cliffs of Dover?! I opened the canopy and stuck my head out and I'm sure I heard seagulls!

As mentioned, I am a campaigner, so I started an Aug 12 RAF campaign and played the full day through. Tallied 15 Frags, including Me109, Ju87, and He111 intercepts. Two landings back at base, 8 Alt-x back to the map, one bailout, one submarine imitation, 2 airfield landings (Hurris, didn't try a Spit), and one landing out of fuel in a field running gently uphill. Six kills (****e, I know), with a Ju87 exploding, He111s heading home smoking, or crew bailing, and a 109 that rolled onto its back and hit the sea. No strange/miraculous AI manoevres to report. AI engaging as expected and disengaging as expected.

I have no crash log to post, despite three hours of flying and multiple frags. Frame rates were nice, even circling Dover radar station when it was getting a pounding from 30 Ju87s with heavy escort of Me109s in the area, dirt fountaining in the air, buildings burning, aircraft falling into the sea...

Only one freeze to report, which happened on the map screen while assigning patrols. Had to CTRL ALT DEL out and restart.

As far as I'm concerned, the patch team is close to having nailed it. WOV is now what it promised it would be, and more.

Bye - got to get back up there!

[EURO_Snoopy]

Wait!! before you fly off into the sunset please drop off a few reccy photos of the landscape and aerial action, we could use some updates here at AW HQ

[hein-kill]

Plenty of visual goodness here

http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/v ... &start=510

Although none of these pics can describe this:

I'm climbing full throttle to intercept some Ju87s and I'm at 10,000 feet with the Merlin hammering (they are at 14,000 and I can just see them on the horizon). I go to an outside view and pan around, and directly above me, at 20,000 feet I can see the contrails of about 30 Heinkels, and above and in front of them, the contrails of another 30 aircraft. Hmmm, are they Heinkels too, I wonder? Sheesh, someone is going to get a pasting...

Then suddenly the contrails of the leading group of aircraft all head diagonally down across the sky like an exploding firework - they are Me109s and we've been spotted! I forget the Stukas, bring my nose around as the 109s close the 10,000 foot gap incredibly fast. Before I know it I am head to head with two Emils, I fire, they fire, and their cannons are shredding my wing, the cockpit glass is a mess. Lose aileron control of the right wing and spin to a watery doom...

For me, that is as good as a Battle of Britain sim can get!!

[MaXMhZ]

Thanks for the link! Looks indeed like WOV is on the right track. The landscape looks a whole lot more convincing than the empty grass field they started with I wonder if the plane flightmodels ( had a simular improvement...

Better stay in that beta team lol.

[Seavee]

Wait!! before you fly off into the sunset please drop off a few reccy photos of the landscape and aerial action, we could use some updates here at AW HQ

Screenshot Credit: Lewis Bloomfield


Screenshot Credit: Scott - Shockwave



One from me. In this case alot of image quality was lost in conversion to JPG and to reduce file size, the original is a huge 1920X1080 due to the resolution of my 37" LCD monitor. The original in-game image is stunning:


BTW, the terrain shots from Pelican72 in the link in the post above are NOT part of 2.04. Those are some beautiful photorealistic terrain mods he is working on and hopes to have substantially finished by the end of summer, '06.

For 2.04 there will be significant terrain improvements however - including the addition of NASA satellite height mapping in much of the game environment.

Very large degree of user-adjustable sky, cloud, sea colour settings including cloud cover, cloud and rain density, etc.

For 2.04 there are some incredible new tracer, fireball and revamped explosion effects. Thus far there are no public screenshots of these as I think the devs don't want then to get out prematurely. Trust me - they are very, very impressive. the tracers no longer look like "flaming golf balls with a tail". The new ones and their trailing smoke particles look the best of any flight sim tracer effects I have seen.

As far as FM changes there has been significant work done on the Bf109, in particular the auto deployment of the wing leadign edge slats. Some changes to the Spit landing and takeoff are also being looked at (currently IMHO the Spit landing is the most difficult of ANY flight sim available) but may not be in 2.04. There are already some easy mods of the Spit landing gear stiffness and damping but are not yet offical releases. For 2.04 the AI behavior is much improved. Bugs where they would warp and jitter and jump have been fixed.

NOT in 2.04 but likely in the very near future: Total overhaul of the flyable A/C cockpit textures incorporating much of the amazing work Shockwave has done with the Wings of Power MSCFS models. I will ask Scott if I can post a screenie of an Me109 WIP... Jaw dropping.

Overall, this upcoming 2.04 patch seems to be an order of magnitude removed beyond what 2.03 was. It almost could have been designated 3.0. Release is now likely a question of days, not weeks as they are in the final testing phases.

I can't wait to see whats on the wish list for 2.05