I have noticed alot of screens from other sims that look soooo nice but once ya pick them apart you start to notice what is similar and different between them and AH. and after ya look and compare its hard to see what make some of these screens look so nice (better than ah) I have and i think the best sim I have seen is IL stumavik (sp) but I also think AH could look just as good, here are in acending order the 4 things that could make AH look as good or better than the best screens. 4 being he lest important 1 the most)
Number 4. Weather and lighting effects, multisource lighting, lense flair and the likse of that stuff.
number 3. better damage/hit modeling, nothing much different than what we have here now, but a few tweaks, such as ships showing visable damage when hit, bullet holes in surfaces, little things like when a planes hits the ground in crash its bombs come off and fly through the air.
2. TERRIAN! not that the textures are bad or not cool or anything but its the fact that they are so ridgid, the terrain doesent roll it is kinda jagged ESPECALLY around water!, also some tree lines (ala apache havoc) would make ground war and low level air combat and attacking bases much more immersive, and interesting.
NUMBER 1!. computer scalability!!, you cannot up the graphics to much of a degree and still sustain a costomer base without some graphical options. Such as smoke levels, rendering levels (sharpness) weather effects and damage effects and of and different levels of all of them. Im sure anyone with a decent machine say a p2 350, voodoo3, and 128mb ram could easyly make use of most of these at lease a medium level. When ya look areound you will notice that AH has VERY low system requirements compared to most of the stuff coming out now.
Look at all the things AH has going for it!
solid FM
the aircraft models look graphically stunning!
its not just air war, it land/sea/air war, which in and of itself is a major achievement.
The things that lower the "oh my my god" feeling for me are.
1. ya hit a ship with a bomb but dont sink it..you see nothing as of damage to the boat, no blast mark on the hull, no twisted turret barrels, no smoke, no list. nothing.
2. when a pilot bailes after you shooting them down their aircraft disappears, this especally annoying when using fleet guns and ya knock off a wing, I mean half the fun is watching the smoking hulk plummet to earth.
3. I hate it when you hose a plane and it vaporises into chaff i could see reducing it to tin foil if hitting it with the 8" guns but not much else, I would like to see a big BOOM and then see say 3 or 4 flaming pieces falling twords earth leaving smoke trail behind them.
4. hit sprites for rockets and heavy guns, the sprites are fine for anything up to say a 40mm but after that the little flash is kinda lame, i think a hit with an 8" gun (he or ap) would yeald quite a large blast and debris flying about, id like to fire at a carrier with the h-cruiser and see a big blast on its side and a big puff of smoke and some chunks fly up in the air.
dont think that in any way I am dissing AH, only having 4 gripes about an entire game says quite a bit about the quality of it, I could find a dozen or more for most any other game.
