Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Citabria on December 22, 2003, 07:22:36 PM

Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Citabria on December 22, 2003, 07:22:36 PM
ah1 used circular blends on the borders of each tile with forest and farm tiles bleeding over to make more circular patches that disguised the blockyness well. i fly in FesterMA with ah1 on old beta tiles and it looks amazing especially in the parts i detailed most with clouds and valleys. I fly the same spots in festerMA in ah2 and with the dull looking foged over sky and bland and depressing cluttered tiles... im not at all impressed once i get above 2000 feet agl. above that altitude ah1 looks superior even without trees and clutter.

why has this good looking fps friendly method been abandoned for a mthod that requires several layers and frankly looks very bad from higher altitudes.

i cant even see the ground in level flight from the cockpit at 16k with default fog settings.

and with the fog rolled back to 17miles the blocks look severly... well blocky.

and what of the sky? somthing that takes artistic ability but is not framerate intensive like tree covered terrain has been ignored except for some slightly improved sun effects.

please work on the sky, the fog etc.
Title: Re: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Tilt on December 23, 2003, 03:48:25 AM
Do you have transitions enabled in AH2?

It seems now that AH2 transistions are available from all tiles to all tiles. I looked at the beta terrain and assumed that basically the transition stuff just "needed more work".

The dull aspect given by the layered clutter is concerning me too.

Again I hope that this may be over come by compensating for the shading effect by choice of brighter base tiles.

Totally agree re fog. Human psyche is "cheered" by blue skies and a clear view IMO and the use of fog to reduce depth of field to save FR means that never again would AH players enjoy those clear blue skies.
Title: Re: fog
Post by: Grayarea on December 23, 2003, 04:16:44 AM
I don't know how many people here fly IRL, but the visability we have in AH1 is in my experiance, a once a year event in the UK aviation (alright maybe a few days 3-5?), in mid august it would be pretty normal to have about 6 miles of visibility.

In fact the level of fog now set as default in AH2 is much more realistic for a british summers day :), AH2 also needs an inversion layer to totally hide the ground above say 6-8k to be realistic.
Title: Re: Re: fog
Post by: Tilt on December 23, 2003, 08:09:44 AM
Quote
Originally posted by Grayarea
I don't know how many people here fly IRL,  


I travel (as opposed to fly) in planes a couple of times every month and am sure the effect of fog as in AH2 is not as in RL.

Sure when there is a cloud layer......... there is cloud layer. But even at this time of the year I will fly over the Suffolk coast and  pick out detail from 10k plus.......... and spot ships and their wakes over the North Sea.


Besides its always foggy over Eire you would think its normal...........
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Citabria on December 23, 2003, 09:15:05 PM
well as a matter of atmosphere visibility color and general looks of the sky and ground...

I prefer ah1 over ah2 by far

the planes look better in ah2 and the ground looks good when driving vehicles, but after that ah1 looks and runs much better.
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: F1Bomber on December 23, 2003, 09:51:53 PM
Its beta, dont try to review it as a full game or the end product.

Everthing is due to change or not change..
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: vorticon on December 23, 2003, 09:59:30 PM
Quote
Originally posted by F1Bomber
Its beta, dont try to review it as a full game or the end product.

Everthing is due to change or not change..


without feedback how are they gonna know what needs to be changed?
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: acepilot2 on December 24, 2003, 09:33:13 AM
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/ah_134_1072279934.jpg)

This was taken in beta1, but the trees are still square now...
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Sway on January 01, 2004, 07:15:11 PM
That pic looks really cool, besides the square blocks of trees.
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Swoop on January 01, 2004, 09:10:57 PM
Are you kidding?  


That picture looks awful.


The sun is still waaaay above the horizon but the ambient lighting looks like it's after sunset.  This really annoys me about a lot of games, why is it dark when the sun is still up?  


(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-9/48257/20029211530-0-Swoop.gif)
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: mrblack on January 02, 2004, 02:15:17 AM
Looks good to me:aok
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Replicant on January 02, 2004, 06:08:23 AM
Quote
Originally posted by Swoop
Are you kidding?  


That picture looks awful.


The sun is still waaaay above the horizon but the ambient lighting looks like it's after sunset.  This really annoys me about a lot of games, why is it dark when the sun is still up?  


(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-9/48257/20029211530-0-Swoop.gif)


Yup, sun doesn't get much higher than that in Scotland during winter yet it's much much brighter than that.
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: acepilot2 on January 02, 2004, 12:01:26 PM
I didnt take the pic to look nice..i just took it to show the square trees.
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Kevin14 on January 03, 2004, 02:02:00 PM
Isn't the sun a circle also? :confused:
Title: Re: Re: Re: fog
Post by: Grayarea on January 05, 2004, 07:36:53 AM
Quote
Originally posted by Tilt
I travel (as opposed to fly) in planes a couple of times every month and am sure the effect of fog as in AH2 is not as in RL.

Sure when there is a cloud layer......... there is cloud layer. But even at this time of the year I will fly over the Suffolk coast and  pick out detail from 10k plus.......... and spot ships and their wakes over the North Sea.


Besides its always foggy over Eire you would think its normal...........


This time of year is winter, which is well known for clear air. However during summer most of the time there is an inversion layer over the ground, this traps pollution and creates a very short visability.

The vast majority of my flight was done at shobdon in hereford, the old hauser training airfield no less :)

Any way don't take my word for it, look at some squadron logs and see how many days had no flight operations due to bad weather.
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: simshell on January 05, 2004, 01:33:59 PM
ITS BETA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU DOLTS:rolleyes:
Title: HTC: ah2 looks like square blocks from higher altitudes.
Post by: Wilbus on January 05, 2004, 01:57:17 PM
What Swoop said. Wouldn't get that dark untill the sun is actually bellow the horizon.