Tell me what you think of this...
You know when you return crippled from a great bombing run and miscalculate your descent rate or lose control of yaw(Rudder damage, etc) and you plane bites it hard and skids on its belly? Or how boats react when dropped from 50 ft in the air?(Probably not, its neat) Or even how the GVs will realistically handle landings when the slope of the cliff you're sliding down at 80Mph suddenly increases by 15 degrees and you fly for a few dozen feet?
It's all the exact reason I first tried, and still am with AH. (No joke) There's no doubt Hitech knows their physics. But in my opinion, they're not fully taken advantage of.
Here's my philosophy on the visual side of game-creation. The ideal eye-candy really only needs 3 things:
1. Good texture work
2. Good view-distance/polygon count
3. Good physics/animation
Then there are the lesser, (but not unimportant) visual tricks like gouraud shading(AH uses it) and fancy reflection maps, etc.
AH has 2 1/2 of the three I listed (Textures sort of lack, sorry)
But the phyisics, damn they're good.
But then to ram my PT ashore at 30mph....and die...makes me sad. You can see that just for a millisecond, the boat wants to realistically slide up the shore and beach itself. But it's not meant to be; any contact with land at any speed in a PT kills you.
Or how about when you are in the process of botching up that bomber landing I mentioned above. What happens when you really get off course and your wingtip catches the edge of a hanger? You wing doesn't rip off, you die. AH has the capability to detect specific object-to-player collision points and rip up your plane accordingly. If it were a crappy collision engine, the Whole plane being destroyed would be acceptable....but AH physics are far more advanced than that. So why this? Imagine the times you flew through a hanger for the hell of hit...and have your vertical stab catch on the roof and kill you. There's no arguing that just having your stab rip off, allowing you to continue without it, would be alot more fun, realistic, and rewarding(Instead of instantly going back to tower, you have the challenge of surviving while crippled)
And if your wingtip hits terrain or a stationary object? wouldn't it again, be fun and realistic if your plane's wing/wingtip ripped off and you were sent into a deadly flat spin? If you wonder what I mean by "rewarding", I mean that a whole slew of possibilities and situations would become possible with correct collision modelling, adding to the game.
It doesn't matter if the collisions I mentioned are not survivable; that's not the point. But more attenton could be given to the results of fatal decisions. After all, isn't death a part of living? So why isn't crashing a part of flying in AH? Lamely said, but true.
Implementing these sort of things would mean allowing for some sort of leniency towards collision-related deaths. And maybe instead of an instant teleport to tower, a few seconds of viewing time after death would be an incredible addition. What I mean is let's say you DO hit the runway at -7000 Feet/minute and you kill yourself, why not allow 3 seconds to actually see you plane burning and tumbling in pieces on the runway? Or even spawn a small pop-up that has a "Return to tower" button below a few flight stats. It could appear while you still see your wrecked plane in the background. Too gamey, you say? I won't even start to go into all the things that are far more gamey about AH. (Not referring to next arena, of course) I don't see how it could be a problem.
What I'm suggesting here doesn't tax AH's performance at all, AND it adds realism, imersion, and simply great eye candy, even with the limited graphics engine. And with the CTD bugs completely fixed, I see absolutely no reason to not do this. If anyone disagrees or agrees, write it below. Thanks.
