I am impressed with this imaging technique, but not especially with IL-2. Using this technique with AH gets results comparable to IL-2. The photos look especially good with a Voodoo 5500 in x4 anti-aliasing at resolutions greater than 1024 x 768.
Like IL-2 with the correct angle against the best background, digital photos of AH screens are almost indistiguishable from actual photos.
The trick to making AH photos look good:
1. Use terrain with photoreal textures: both the land and the water in Europe look great if you don't catch any of the sharp ridgelines and repetitive patterns.
2. Choose angles and ranges that hide AH flaws, such as blockhead pilot and octagonal looking cowlings.
3. Choose aircraft that have photoreal textures. The P-51B and F4U-1 are my personal favorites.
4. Tweak your camera settings to get the optimum exposure time, focus, etc.
The results can be staggering.
I wish all the AH planes had textures as good as the P-51B and the F4U-1. Sadly, the most popular American planes have also been around the longest and therefore have the most cartoonish textures. I hope someday HTC makes some time to bring some of the older aircraft graphically up to date.
