Wondring

[earl1937]

  Just wondering why FSX, War Thunder and some other flight sim's can have clouds without killing frame rates, better defined  terrain features, more "eye candy" for players to enjoy their surroundings, etc! Just wondering if it is different type of servers, network limitations, cost of installing some of these features? I for one, would be willing to pay a little more each month for some of these improvements to our game, say, 19.95 a month, just wondering?

[curry1]

It probably has something to do with the scale of Aces High.  However, it has more to do with our graphics being outdated.

[Karnak]

Unless I am gravely mistaken those normally have far shorter view distances than AH does.

[titanic3]

Lower view distances but they have a nice fog/background texture to cover it up and make it look nice. They also don't have 300+ people in a map. However, they tend to have the same amount of players in a similarity sized area as in AH (ex: a AH furball might have 30-40 people in a 10x10km square, a Rise of Flight furball might have the same amount).

AH is also using the same engine from 10 years ago while these new games are made to take advantage of the latest technology. Jumping from a 5570 to a 6870 might not gain you much in AH but it certainly does in other games.

[olds442]

Unless I am gravely mistaken those normally have far shorter view distances than AH does.

Completely false. As I recall There is a BF3 map that is 40*48 miles or so and you can see almost all the way around it. AH needs fog and less details at range and more details close. And the funniest part my i5 2500k at 4.8ghz and 660ti at 1.2ghz core can run BF3 maxed out on that map at 1080p never going below 50fps yet it will drop to high 30s in AH XD

[titanic3]

Completely false. As I recall There is a BF3 map that is 40*48 miles or so and you can see almost all the way around it. AH needs fog and less details at range and more details close.

Uhmm no, you're talking about Bandar Desert, largest map in Battlefield's history. And it is nowhere as large as you make it out to be.

Edit: quick google search tells me it's 5 square kilometers. "Bandar Desert is the largest map in Battlefield history, being around five square kilometers large, approximately two and a half times the size of the large map Caspian Border. The map is also shown to have a seven flag variant of Conquest on PC."

[titanic3]

I think the biggest reason other games looks better than AH even though they have a smaller map size is because of well placed textures/meshes that seamlessly blends from one area to another. So up close, you get your full HD textures but as you get farther away, low quality textures replace the HD ones to save performance. However, those low quality textures still looks pretty decent so that your eyes fool you into thinking it's a part of the HD textures. Especially true in flight sims where zooming by at 300mph, the ground is already a blur (Rise of Flight excluded).

AH's textures are just pop ins that completely ruins any sense of immersion. And even the ones up close aren't that great besides the newly added planes (even then their quality is pretty low, ex: you can't read the warning signs and labels on certain planes). Other games also tend to have great lighting that covers up areas with low textures or direct your focus to areas of interest/beauty. AH's lighting is near non existent besides a yellow circle that acts as a determinator for where the shadows will fall.

[olds442]

Uhmm no, you're talking about Bandar Desert, largest map in Battlefield's history. And it is nowhere as large as you make it out to be.

Edit: quick google search tells me it's 5 square kilometers. "Bandar Desert is the largest map in Battlefield history, being around five square kilometers large, approximately two and a half times the size of the large map Caspian Border. The map is also shown to have a seven flag variant of Conquest on PC."

Well silly me i mean BFBC2 but that statement is false if bandar desert is the biggest. Exact size of the BFBC2 map heavy metal is something like 34 miles long.
But you hit the nail on the head on this statement

I think the biggest reason other games looks better than AH even though they have a smaller map size is because of well placed textures/meshes that seamlessly blends from one area to another. So up close, you get your full HD textures but as you get farther away, low quality textures replace the HD ones to save performance. However, those low quality textures still looks pretty decent so that your eyes fool you into thinking it's a part of the HD textures. Especially true in flight sims where zooming by at 300mph, the ground is already a blur (Rise of Flight excluded).

AH's textures are just pop ins that completely ruins any sense of immersion. And even the ones up close aren't that great besides the newly added planes (even then their quality is pretty low, ex: you can't read the warning signs and labels on certain planes). Other games also tend to have great lighting that covers up areas with low textures or direct your focus to areas of interest/beauty. AH's lighting is near non existent besides a yellow circle that acts as a determinator for where the shadows will fall.

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[dedalos]

Just wondering why FSX, War Thunder and some other flight sim's can have clouds without killing frame rates, better defined  terrain features, more "eye candy" for players to enjoy their surroundings, etc! Just wondering if it is different type of servers, network limitations, cost of installing some of these features? I for one, would be willing to pay a little more each month for some of these improvements to our game, say, 19.95 a month, just wondering?

I guess the community has changed after all.  If you tried this post 4 years ago you would have been burned and your ashes spread all over the AH sky for asking this 

[titanic3]

Well silly me i mean BFBC2 but that statement is false if bandar desert is the biggest. Exact size of the BFBC2 map heavy metal is something like 34 miles long.
But you hit the nail on the head on this statement

Just nitpicking so don't get offended but Heavy Metal wasn't that big either. If anything, it was maybe 2km long at most. I'd be surprised if it was over 1km.

[LCADolby]

Need some more artists and coders. 

[Karnak]

Completely false. As I recall There is a BF3 map that is 40*48 miles or so and you can see almost all the way around it. AH needs fog and less details at range and more details close. And the funniest part my i5 2500k at 4.8ghz and 660ti at 1.2ghz core can run BF3 maxed out on that map at 1080p never going below 50fps yet it will drop to high 30s in AH XD

Besides the other errors that have been pointed out, I'd also add that map size and view distance are two entirely separate things.  AH has maps that are 512 miles across, but you certainly can't see that far.  You can't even see a 20th of that.

[gyrene81]

aside from their graphics engine, which i haven't found out what is being used...one of the newbie flight sims has some nice tweakable graphics settings.

[Brooke]

To me, those other pics look very unrealistic compared to the AH pics (as if they were paintings, not real life).  Some games go for an over vibrant, Hollywood look, which isn't realistic.  I think that our perception of realistic look in AH is heavily dependent on clouds/weather (having some realistic clouds and, if winter, sky color makes a significant difference -- see many clouds setups below), terrain (depends on terrain designer -- see Stalin's Fourth shots below), and skins (of course).

Stalin's Fourth





Weather and other terrains

[Arlo]

“Man never has what he wants, because what he wants is everything.” - C.F. Ramuz

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty” - Socrates

“It is better to want what you have than to have what you want.” - ancient proverb

“Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase” - John Balguy