New Water

[mensa180]

Delta,

Keep in mind there's different terrain sets for ETO and PTO setups. If you've been playing in NDIsles...well...let's just say there weren't all that many hedgerows in the Pacific Islands. Although I would like to see denser vegetation for jungles.

I haven't flown in Baltic enough to know if the hedgerows are there still. Or perhaps because hedgerows were a feature more of the Northwestern France battlefields there may be a terrain tile set for that and we just haven't seen it yet?

mensa,

Yeah, because it's really hard to, y'know, glance down for a split second to check your instruments.

Sometimes it really is.

[DaveJ]

So people will now learn to try and avoid fighting at altitudes where your propeller would dip the water surface.

 Better eye-candy, plus, better situational realism, too.

 
 I call this a win-win scenario.

 
(ps) There's a little something called "altimeter" in your plane. It looks like a clock and corresponds to your climb/dive movement. Perhaps its a good idea to actually use these thingamabobs, since someone obviously took a lot of time to install one of it in your plane.

(ps2) Also, there is another something called "instrument flight". Apparently, it seems that real life pilots also get confused about at which alt they are actually flying at, especially when visuals are impaired due to weather conditions, or does not provide enough relative markers to get an accurate perception of altitude - typically over large surface of water, desert, or plains, at which the lack of visual markers and a grand repetition of dull, singular terrain often fools people. Therefore, people are trained to read the thingamabobs called "altimeter"s, which, remind you, look like a clock.

So it's probably a good idea to look at those stuff before trying stupid things like pulling a split-S over water at dangerously low altitudes.

You still have said nothing about the problems of the "new water" that many people are having. ONCE AGAIN, there is a real issue with depth perception and contrast that causes these close calls/augers. People aren't making these stories up, you know.


And by the way, nobody checks their altimeter in the middle of a dogfight near the water.

[Nutzoid]

We didn't lose anything, we gained sexy looking water.

Wasn't we talking about the new water textures?

Hummm....... Can't fly water.
.

[Delirium]

If the current water had a couple white caps per tile, it would help immensely. Something like this..


I like the changes except for the water, I realize that the the new graphics give HTC something to work with when coming up with new terrains and such.

[Baumer]

Depth perception over water is a real life issue, sure it would be nice to have some whitecaps but that will not solve the problem.

We are all going to have to get better at judging altitude and yes that means an occasional glance at the altimeter.

Here's a good article about spatial awareness issues;

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/The_Disorient_Express.html

[BaldEagl]

Keep in mind there's different terrain sets for ETO and PTO setups. If you've been playing in NDIsles...well...let's just say there weren't all that many hedgerows in the Pacific Islands.

Hmmm.  The only hedgerows I've run into so far are some very low one's on NDIsles.  There are none on Baltic.

[Delirium]

Baumer brought up a good point. Is that lack of depth perception by design?

Is the water able to be altered by a map designer? For example, could you make a map that had some white caps in it and it would be accepted for general MA use? Could you also make trees with a little more brown and red to reflect fall in Europe? Can you make snow and make trees free of leaves except for the pines? Or would all these be defined as 'custom terrain's and not useable by the MA servers?

If map design is now very broad, I'd like to change my mind and say it is a great beginning.

[gyrene81]

If you're having a problem with depth perception try these:

[Saxman]

Baumer brought up a good point. Is that lack of depth perception by design?

Is the water able to be altered by a map designer? For example, could you make a map that had some white caps in it and it would be accepted for general MA use? Could you also make trees with a little more brown and red to reflect fall in Europe? Can you make snow and make trees free of leaves except for the pines? Or would all these be defined as 'custom terrain's and not useable by the MA servers?

If map design is now very broad, I'd like to change my mind and say it is a great beginning.

There's already a difference in the look of the water in Baltic as compared to NDIsles. NDIsles is much bluer and uniform in color, whereas Baltic is slightly grayer, and there's a bit more color variation. I loaded up the Coral Sea terrain and the difference is even MORE pronounced. The shallows are much greener, fading to a darker blue (with the same color variation as is present in Baltic) away from shore. Incidentally, even the land tile set for Coral Sea is different.

It looks like there's going to be a LOT more variation in water effects and terrain appearance available to map-makers than what we had under the old terrain.