There's still a couple more planes left.
The Fw190A-5 is one of them. The cockpit of the Butcherbird, seems to be no different from what we have, and it is quite a disappointment for people who expected it better. But remember, this is only the beta! The modernistic, "Benz" or "Chrysler"-ish classy look of the cockpit can't be that far behind, when you look at the amazing changes seen in the Bf109G-10.
The 190's a clean design, with no special protrusion or 'characteristic' forms, so the externals don't look that impressing when compared with the old 190 - but the textures, like in the case of the SpitMkIX, make some good, pleasurely differences to the eye:
Now, the other one, is the Spit MkV... which I don't like much! So you'll only get to see it through it's aiming reticle. But that doesn't mean I haven't got anything to say! It was when I fired through this plane, I really noticed the changes in the tracers. Oh no, I'm not talking about the twisty tracers - I'm talking about what happens to tracers after you shoot.
The pic, unfortunately can't describe even half of what actually happens, but it seems, another feature change, is the tracers are a lot less visible when they leave a certain distance. It looks like a bright patch of small dots, and it really gives you the feeling that a burning white lead is flying through the air. Will this effect the long-range gunnery aspect of AH, even in part? Who knows, we'll just have to find out.
...
Another delightful change, is with the M-3 halftrack.
Brings a whole new meaning to the word 'steer', I'd say.
The Panzers and Tigers didn't seem much different, but the new interiors were nice. Then it wasn't until I looked through the gunner's sights, that I noticed a smile running across my face.
Not only do they have a new, cool-er looking aiming reticle, but the new terrain features of AH offer a lot more fun in tank battles. Now that's what I call a 'View to Kill'.
However, I do notice some problems with that - as shown in the picture with the Tiger tank. I recall at some point before, HT himself has shown a lot of interest in the way IL-2 rendered their forests. The method of placing 2~3 layers of textures to produce a 'forest', looks fantastic when looking from the air. No doubt, it feels the same in AH2.
But IL-2/FB never had any tank battles for players to enjoy, and it seems that from a tanker's perspective, the forest lines look like circles hovering in thin air. This should be addressed in some way.. maybe placing a vertical layer of 'forest' texture around the horizontal layers might do..?
..
And last, but not the least, the ever-important sun.
The sun is very well done, but I couldn't help but notice in my trial flights, that the icons remain every bit as visible whether the sun is blinding me or not. I'm sure the sun wasn't put there just to hurt your eyes - will the icons be rendered invisible, or very hard to see, with the finished version? Let's hope so.
..
There are more minor changes overall. For one thing, the new FM seems that it'll need some time to get used to - I never thought I'd ever see the day I'd crash a 109 in take-off in AH.. well, I did that in AH2. Also, the Spit9 seems to roll slower, and the Fw190A-5 seems to roll faster.
The 'hit sprites', unfortunately, remain unchanged, but it seems that it got smaller overall, or at least, the range where the hit sprites are displayed larger, seems to have decreased. As this is just the beta, we might be able to see better hit sprites in the finished version.
Ofcourse, some of the features, are quite doubtful. In my case, I felt really uncomfortable with the 'twisty' smoke trail the tracers are leaving. At first I thought all I needed was some time to get used to it.. but no matter how I toyed with the new beta, I couldn't feel any more comfortable.
Personally, I was hoping for a generally more 'smoky' and 'faint' version of the current AH tracer - where it looks like a straight, grey laser beam. If it looked more faint and sparse, like how smoke should be, that would have been enough. I think HTC went a little too far, and now, I'm sorry to say it looks like planes spewing spaghetti noodels - especially the planes armed with multiple MGs such as the P-51D - man, it looks terrible!
My suggestion for the tracer is, leave the 'twisty' tracer for the cannons only (if that is possible) , and if possible, make it a bit more voluptous - it looks too thin. When a thick trail has a faint essence of a spiral - as you can see in FB - that looks nice. But if you have a grey thin line going in spirals, it does look like a noodle!
So, make it thicker, and reserve it to 20mm~40mm cannons... and let machine guns have a different type of tracer smoke! That be my suggestion for today.
...
Overall, it certainly isn't what we expected. Some of us may had our hopes up a little too high, some of us may have not expected anything special at all. But AH2 beta, is a taste of what to come, and there are a lot more things to be carefully seen, to figure out.
It's admittably a little 'weak' for a 'beta' build. A little too good for an alpha build, too
. At a scale of 1 to 10, I give AH2 Beta 8.5
