HT et all HTC staff, for many betas since the new lighting effects came into place people have been complaining everything is to dark. Thus, the ambient lighting was enhanced - but still, people complain.
The colors of the sky, previous to the recent change, was IMO much more softer and realistic, and yet, people complained(rightfully so) that it made things to hazy and fuzzy and dark - thus, the sky in AH2, despite it's amazing ability to fine-tune the exact colors, has reverted to the old single-tone blue sky of AH1, which is IMO
"cartoonish".
As such events have surpassed, it got me thinking that perhaps there is some other way to significantly increase the overall quality of AH terrain-landscape, without suggesting any engancement in the graphic engine itself.
Obviously, many people think that the main contendor of AH as a WW2-era aircombat sim, is Forgotten Battles, from 1C:Maddox, distributed by UBI, which looks like this:
Ofcourse, this game uses two CDs and hundreds of megabytes to its disposal to depict such things. AH cannot match that toe-to-toe. However, the one absolute advantage AH terrain holds over FB, is that
it is based on tiles and texture squares, which can be arranged to let the players hold the freedom of editing it to one's will. While terrain editing in FB is severely limited, AH is totally free. One can make the surface of the moon, or even something like Mars, with orange skies, if he wants to do so.
However, that comes with the cost of quality - but what I have been thinking is, does the quality really have to suffer so much?
Can there be not some other way to bring up the detail/immersion level of AH terrains without losing any of the traits the AH terrain system holds?
Well, that kind of led me to some experimentation and creation of mock-ups, such as this:
The picture above, is the default terrain of AH2. Obviously, no matter how the lighting effects are done it will still look too dark, because, the
"darkness" comes from the land tiles itself, having nothing to do with the lighting effects!
Literally, the land
IS too dark - it was made that way!
The bottom half of the picture is the mock-up I've created. None other than purely the terrain, has been retouched. The sky and the plane holds its original colors. No external lighting effects or such has been added.
One may be able to notice that with a correction in brightness and contrast of the land tiles, the AH2 terrain looks totally different!
This, is my suggestion:
Please enhance the textures used in the land/sea tiles(my suggested values, as seen in the pic, is a correction of Brightness +40, Contrast +53)...!!
You don't even have to create a new texture - just engance the brightness and contrast accordingly, and it will literally make AH2 terrain something totally different!
...
Here is another mock-up which is also done in the same fashion:
As said, the sky and the plane is true to its colors. Only the textures of the land, sea, and trees have been touched. Notice how significantly better it looks with just a minor color correction.
Another feature which might greatly enhance immersion, is the mock-up beach I've added to the coastline.
Again, my point is that the little stuff, though we may not realize it, is actually profoundly responsible for how we gamers perceive the virtual world AH2 has created. It is basically a band of sand applied to the coastline tiles meeting the sea. The difference, which you may note by comparing the upper half and under half, speaks for itself.
.......
So to sum it up, here's my suggestion:
1. Increase the Brightness and Contrast levels of the land tile textures.2. Though I am not aware of how the tiles are produced for the coastline area, it will bring significant increase in immersion if merely beaches are added to the coastline. If the coastline is made up of individual tiles in the traditional way, then please add a band of sand in the textures - even if it is crude, it will still look better than what is current.
If there is a separate system or code which "generates" the coastline, then I might suggest to add in another code, which creates a "sand layer" of certain width which is automatically created for every land tile which meets the sea tile. (I admit I have no idea if this will be hard or easy).
These suggestions, I am confident, will increase the visual quality of AH2 terrain without any change in the graphic engine, utilizing only what is available.
- K
