Compare the P-51B's from WBIII and AH, since they sport the same markings.
While the WB P-51B looks nice and all, the wing proportions are way off, something that is rather prevalent in most of the planes. The much higher use of polygons and the lighting effects are very good though, as is the dissolution of a texture into a bump map at low altitudes. There were alot of interesting little things that have pretty much been passover by Aces High, I'd assume mainly to keep system specs down. Things like rolling gear, cowl flaps, and certain aspects that help immersion some. Granted one tends to forget about that when trying to avoid a vulch.
AH still has some clipping issues that have been around forever, but it's not even worth comparing the cockpit art to WB. Aces High definately wins there, even when comparing to the early beta shots of AH.
I like the clouds in WBIII, they remind me of the cirrus clouds down here in Texas. When flying around in the WB clouds there transparency does tend to reflect what flying through a real cirrus cloud is like, much like what AH does with cumulus clouds. The transistion in AH is a little to cut and dryed, but it saves frame rates. The sun rises are pretty well done in WBIII, as the one in AH is. I still think the sunrise in AH has to much orange -- it should intially but the orange bleed over into the remainer of the sky seems a bit overdone.
Over all I like the lighting effects and overall feel eyecandy in WBIII, although other then that the game hasn't changed much from what I could tell. Kind of like AW2 3D on steroids, if anyone remembers that
The aluminum reflection was interesting, but it reflects more of a well polished airshow plane then an airforce work horse. But it's still some great lighting work.
WBIII is going to need to make some headway in interface, incockpit features, cockpit art, gunnery, other effects, flight model attributes, if nothing else, the graphics engine looks promising.
Far as gameplay goes I just haven't found anything that beats AH.
I ran in in 1600X1280X32 everything was very smooth overall, but lots of weird bugs in this beta version.
I run AH in the same resolution. I'd consider it's detail a mix between, say AH and CFSII cranked all the way up.
- Bess
