Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: GreenEagle43 on March 10, 2008, 09:15:56 PM
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This past Friday the History Channel played a Dogfight episode which caught my attention for two reasons. First, the graphics have improved remarkably since the beginning of this series. The Dogfights graphics have now left Aces High behind in the dust. Let's hope this event pushes Hitech to rev up the eye candy on Aces High.
With all the memberships that high tec has should'nt we be able to get them kind of graphics by now.all the new planes and vehicles are great.but wow if we had the graphics like on the history channel what a hell of of a game we would have on line.
LiaisonOfficer:Capt GrnEagle. :aok
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I love the idea :aok but lets not do anything to slow the proccess of the new patch, version, W/E from comming out :pray :pray
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The graphic limitations in AH are there to make the game playable to a wider demographic. Not everyone has or can afford an uber gaming supercomputer. The kind of graphics seen on dogfights takes the kind of rigs you rarely see in a home environment.
I'd rather see them keep on with the development of CT and keeping the game playable for a larger player base than see what would probably end up being half of the population drop out due to hardware incompatibility issues.
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This past Friday the History Channel played a Dogfight episode which caught my attention for two reasons. First, the graphics have improved remarkably since the beginning of this series. The Dogfights graphics have now left Aces High behind in the dust. Let's hope this event pushes Hitech to rev up the eye candy on Aces High.
With all the memberships that high tec has should'nt we be able to get them kind of graphics by now.all the new planes and vehicles are great.but wow if we had the graphics like on the history channel what a hell of of a game we would have on line.
LiaisonOfficer:Capt GrnEagle. :aok
You do realize you were watching a TV show, right?
ack-ack
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You do realize you were watching a TV show, right?
ack-ack
....ahhh but to these young squeekers, what they see on TV is the real deal anyway :eek:
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...I'd rather see them keep on with the development of CT...
Ever think CT might be done considering the recent jump in new Plane, Ground Vehicle, and Ship models?
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It's a whole lot easier to ramp up the eye candy when you make a video
as opposed to coding an interactive game.
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I wonder how long they spent doing the graphics on that anyway. How many man hours to do a 2 minute film? I know some of the big screen shots take 6 months to do a 4 minute scene!
Strip(er)
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Speaking as somebody that's taken 5 3D animation classes, it takes a LOT of time. That's not counting render time, which you can just run and then check back on. The actual model building, texturing, and animating (an trial/error on effects, especially particals, fires, etc) takes a LARGE amount of time.
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And to make it interactive in game, just double the time.I know very well how much it takes.
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The graphic limitations in AH are there to make the game playable to a wider demographic. Not everyone has or can afford an uber gaming supercomputer. The kind of graphics seen on dogfights takes the kind of rigs you rarely see in a home environment.
I'd rather see them keep on with the development of CT and keeping the game playable for a larger player base than see what would probably end up being half of the population drop out due to hardware incompatibility issues.
Ever hear of a detail level slider or the option to turn effects on or off? Saying what you are is a cop out. Its one thing to say, hey, all we have has been put into CT and we let other things slide but its another to say its weak to enable low end machines.
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I can understand the "its gotta work for everyone" gripe.
But thats still bullsnizzle.
Look at games like janes or even pacific fighters, all pre 99' games all out due aces high in graphics totaly fully and completely.
The damage system, the graphics the sounds, everything eye candy wise aces high does not have.
I STILL get the "oh look, his wing poped off without so much as a spark" or how about when a plane smashes into the ground goin' 450+mph and just (poofs) away, no sliding of the engine, no fire..no huge explosion no sound effects worth a crap.
Just (poof)...weee..look..i got another one..weee...joy..wheres the fire?..oh thats right, there is none. We have 15+ fires burning from this now porked field, but people have computers that are too slow to handle it, and yet we still have it.(imagine that) Doesnt make sense, and its not a logical reason, you live in the year two thousand and eight, NOT ninteen ninty eight.
ffs, its all BullZhizzle.
I wanna see my enemy BLOW UP, ffs.
Not change to a sprite and finish off there last days as spawned parts falling down without speed or trajectory.
Blow someone up, its the strangest most pathetic "exsplosion" ever pulled off.
imagine a fly blowing up mid air with a cheesey 1996' flat sprite as the effect, and then imagine watching only the legs and two wings falling down, but without speed or motion, just..like a leaf..tinkle tinkle tinkle,ground.
*sighs* i need coffee.
:Edit: HTC might need to focus on enhancing things people see the most, bullet effects, plane hit/damage effects, so on and so forth.
Anything people see while fighting or playing, thats new* will be (would be) great. Specialy a update on these hit sprites, debree smoke/fire/sparks that comes from them.
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The graphic limitations in AH are there to make the game playable to a wider demographic. Not everyone has or can afford an uber gaming supercomputer. The kind of graphics seen on dogfights takes the kind of rigs you rarely see in a home environment.
I'd rather see them keep on with the development of CT and keeping the game playable for a larger player base than see what would probably end up being half of the population drop out due to hardware incompatibility issues.
I see where your getting at, but thats why they have the option to chose turn the effect off. So if your computer can't handle a sertain setting, just uncheck it or turn the detail down. Not everyones computer could handle it, but mine probably could, and i know alot of people on the game with better computers than mine. I dont think it would be possible yet to get the graphics as good as they are on DogFights, but I think they could be improved a lot.
I really wish they didn't remove animated water from the game. It was an option in graphic details that made the water look great. (A lot better than the water we have in the game now.) When I first got the game, my computer couldn't handle it so I didnt use it, but when I got my new video card, I was able to use it. It made the game much better looking and enjoyable. I WANT IT BACK! :furious
I would like to see the graphics improved because I recomended this game to alot of people, and the first thing they all talked about was that the graphics could be better, and they never ended up playing it more than a day or two.
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I'm going to put this politely, because a lotta folks don't understand (like the original poster).
3D animation like you see on TV is 10000000% removed and mutually exclusive from game development. There is NO game code at all associated with it.
You can create game code that manipulates 3D objects (like Aces High does, with planes and terrain, etc) but you can NOT simply just stick game code into something like "Dogfights" -- not unless you want to play rendering 1 frame every day.
Forget about FPS. We'd have FPD. Frames per Day.
It's not a matter of graphics sliders. It's just mutually exclusive. You might as well ask for AH to play over your TV VHF antenna. Mutually exclusive.
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Indeed krusty, thats why i wounder so much why people think they need code to make objects and such for aces high.
They dont, all they would need to know is how HTC set's up the models, how they split up, so on and so forth.
Have made plenty of models for mmorpg's and not a single one have i needed the code to get working ingame.
Sure i had to assign every bone, and skins .ect
Right now i can honestly say im not sure how aces high handles its models.
If they are all one object, with a bunch of "brakeable" attachments, or if they are done with key frames.
*example* You have a full plane model (un damaged) you make another model (say a p51 wing) with no flap.
Now, if the wing takes damage in that area, it says "wing left (wing with damaged flap)" and thus it changes to show you have no flap on that side, and the code also (spawn flap falling off here) and thus we see a p51 take a wing hit, loose its flap and have no flap to show for on the plane itself.(The wing being the only part* changed out on the p51)
The other option, is to have a 3d model thats pre split up, and held together by the game, ie. body wings, tail stab's .ect
The basic functions would still work the same, but the visual effect im sure would be much much diffrent.
Or maby its a full model, and parts of the model are "switched" to show the damage effects, ither way..it works. :)
uhm..Kinda hard to put it into words with my limited spelling capabilitys.
:Edit: simply put.."ramble ramble ramble ramble ramble." There.
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Put it this way: You need to know the intricacies of how the code works, how it runs, how it will call any given animation on the object, this inner workings of the code is NOT something they (or I!) want to become common knowledge.
The 3d object itself must be set up in a certain way, with a certain hierarchy of animations, and each animation might need special conditions, be they looping, reversing, whatever.
You can't just make a 3D object and expect it to be imported into the average game, because they're very much integrated. Some games go out of their way to code things so that certain objects can be imported (like your MMORPG, like Counter-Strike custom skins, and some others) but a majority of games are much more complex with regards to how they integrate 3D and game code.
It's not an easy proposition. I didn't get into it too heavily, even in my most advanced classes, but my instructor did broach the subject a few times and described a few things to the class regarding a simplified student project (basically making a 3D "Frogger" type game).
It's not so easy as it might seem.
EDIT: AH most probably uses a single model for aircraft.
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I know this. If you rip the RV8s wings off you can still see the Vulcan minigun fall off. :devil
I tend to think parts are turned on and off but I have no real clue.
Strip(er)
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to the fugitive.this young squeeker is 46 :aok
grn eagle out.
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I don't doubt that the graphics could be improved. But there are TRADE-offs for doing so. For example, in Far Cry, you have a WONDERFULLY rendered environment... and about 1 km of viewable distance. In WWIIOL, you get a much more varied and realistic terrain - and a 2 1/2 mile rendering limit, and a stuttering into single digits even on a state of the art system when transitioning into an area where it needs to load a bunch of new textures.
In AH, we get a more vanilla terrain, and about 6 miles of visibility. And a level playing field for a pretty wide demographic of niche players. I'm more than satisfied with the compromises that HTC has chosen.
<S>
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Aces High II view distance is 17 miles. Just FYI.
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Even better! Sorry, I'd thought I read 6 somewhere.
<S>
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Um Hello?
Did anyone here ever play with the Tandy Computer "TRASH 80" we called it back in the late 70s early 80s and did you play one of the first flight simulaters out there?
It was a 5 x 5 or 6 x 6 square world. So you had 30 black and white squares. It was so cool when they added the 2 dimensional mountain range. There was one enemy base with dots for fighters. The frame rate was around 3 Frames per second. You had 2 air fields you could land and refuel at. I think it got pretty fancy when you could look out the side windows.
This was pre any kind of... Well Microsoft haddnt even been formed yet.
So for me? Im completely blown away that we can even have what we have over the internet all over the world with this kind of quality with such a diverse range of technology of machines. It boggles the mind. Any body here remember when we coined the phrase E-mail back on the XYZZY Relay in the 1985 timeframe? We were on mainframe computers. I was at the University of North Dakota then. I remember when we started "uploading" then. Wow what a concept. How you could put a document up to a mainframe from a pc. Now?
The PC you are operating, chances are is MANY MANY times more powerful than that mainframe computer.
:salute to HTC and all you do! Krusty keep up with the cool skins man!
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Oh and one other thing. From a guy who plays with real airplanes? You'd be hard pressed in real life to see anything the size of WWII fighters
any more than 3 miles away. So if we have 17 miles visability here in our arenas it is mucho overkill.
I'd even argue the dots we can see here in the game are a bit UNREALISTIC if it matters. You really dont see things comming like that.
Even at (slow) closure rates of WWII aircraft, You wouldnt see them for as long as we do here in AHII, in the RW. I have better than 20/20 vision and have a few flight hours. Without huge monstro icon, you can't see other aircraft in the air, when you are in the air, nearly as easy as you can here in the game.
Grab a buddy sometime and hit the DA. Turn off your icons and do some ACM. I guarentee you will be amazed at the difference. Only now are you approaching RW for those who want this so desperately to mimic RW.
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Well this is as good of place to put this as any.
Skuzzy, or Krusty?
Anyone? Has anyone heard if we are going to get any new default skins for the panzer and the tigers? So we no longer tend to have brownish orange tanks in grasslands? Its just too easy for the folks who have their graphics down (FOR WHATEVER REASON) :D to see the panzers comming.
My humble suggestion would be the darkest skin by albreit. I hope I have his name right. That skin great for hidding.
Thanks Gents!
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Oh and one other thing. From a guy who plays with real airplanes? You'd be hard pressed in real life to see anything the size of WWII fighters
any more than 3 miles away. So if we have 17 miles visability here in our arenas it is mucho overkill.
I'd even argue the dots we can see here in the game are a bit UNREALISTIC if it matters. You really dont see things comming like that.
Even at (slow) closure rates of WWII aircraft, You wouldnt see them for as long as we do here in AHII, in the RW. I have better than 20/20 vision and have a few flight hours. Without huge monstro icon, you can't see other aircraft in the air, when you are in the air, nearly as easy as you can here in the game.
Grab a buddy sometime and hit the DA. Turn off your icons and do some ACM. I guarentee you will be amazed at the difference. Only now are you approaching RW for those who want this so desperately to mimic RW.
6000 yds (main arena icon range) = 3.40sm = 2.96nm
17sm visibility is terrain visibility.
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I think the game is decent but as with anything, I'd love to see better graphics, it adds to the immersion.
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Currently, inside that 17 mile radius, there are 3631 ground vertices at 1/2 mile apart, yeah, I knew I'd messed up the math last time I asked, but that thread went south.
At 1/4 mile between vertices, there would be 14,527, which I think is less then I see in a group of bomber formations, and the terrains could be much more detailed with cells at 1/2 mile instead of 1/4 mile.
It would even be worth it to reduce the visibility to 12 miles if needed to make it work.
I've heard it said that no one cares about the terrain at 30,000 feet, but since most of our time is spent flying far closer to the terrain, and not engaged with bandits, it's more important than it's given credit.
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I'm gonna have to buy a PC with a liquid cooling system and 5 hardrives and unremarkable memory, $$$$
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Don't be ridiculous.
I am running a Northwood P4 that is at least 3 years old, I have RAM that is easily as old.
My Motherboard is a now outdated socket 478 ASRock with a PCIe.
My GPU though still current is not exactly top of the line.
All up this system cost me a few hundred to build.
I have no issues running AHII with the graphics maxed out with FPS's constantly at my monitors refresh rate (60Hz) in any environment.
I am comfortable that this system will be easily capable of running an AH with a higher graphics load.
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Look, I just got a new computer. I am running both AHII and IL2 at as high a graphic settings as they will go. IMO, the hires airplanes, vehicles, and objects in AHII look every bit as good as the ones in IL2. Check the hires screenshots an see for yourself. The landscaping is simpler in AHII, I suppose you can't vary the complexity of the mountain polygons for everyone on a slider. However, considering everything AHII offers, I am content.
Lets put it this way: I still spend 90% of my recreational comp time playing AHII, not IL2.
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Look, I just got a new computer. I am running both AHII and IL2 at as high a graphic settings as they will go. IMO, the hires airplanes, vehicles, and objects in AHII look every bit as good as the ones in IL2. Check the hires screenshots an see for yourself. The landscaping is simpler in AHII, I suppose you can't vary the complexity of the mountain polygons for everyone on a slider. However, considering everything AHII offers, I am content.
Lets put it this way: I still spend 90% of my recreational comp time playing AHII, not IL2.
Couldn't agree more when it comes to plane/vehicle looking great, and when you light them up they fall apart in pieces, very realistic. But the terrain needs to be spruced up a bit, or a bit more added. I have seen some of the SEA maps and they are sweet, maybe running these in the MA would help change it up a bit. Just a thought. <S>
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Couldn't agree more when it comes to plane/vehicle looking great, and when you light them up they fall apart in pieces, very realistic. But the terrain needs to be spruced up a bit, or a bit more added. I have seen some of the SEA maps and they are sweet, maybe running these in the MA would help change it up a bit. Just a thought. <S>
Something that could "spruce" up the MA scenery, would be to vary the color palette. The landscape is too monochromatic, too much green-on-green-on-more green. I think one of the biggest advantages the Sherman currently enjoys is not its armor or gun but the fact that its paintjob blends in with 99.9% of the terrain better than that of any other tank.
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Anyone? Has anyone heard if we are going to get any new default skins for the panzer and the tigers? So we no longer tend to have brownish orange tanks in grasslands?
I've only just now seen this. I'm not speaking from authority, just from common sense: Why would they tailor the default skin of a vehicle to a terrain that can and does change every week?
The default skin doesn't have to blend in. It is simply a skin representative of the vehicle/plane itself, removed from any context/location/blending considerations.
So I would have to say "no" to getting new defaults until such time as the models are upgraded to AH2 standards. Even then we may get similar color schemes on our defaults.
P.S. I'd be more than willing to spare a few FPS to bring back the horizon. 17 miles or no, we lose geometry in a very ugly manner when we used to get nice smooth horizon transitions. It's quite off-putting and ugly, and we didn't used to have this problem.