Dev Blog 64: Cities

[LukeFF]

Hey everyone! Today, we're showing what the cities will look like in Korea: https://media.il2-korea.com/news/dd_64

[BlitzPig_EL]

That is some outstanding map work.  I cannot wait to fly over it.

[Aapje]

A big improvement.

[Dash,Polder]

Nice, actual streets and they don't live in blocks on the unbroken prairies.  Cities look really good from altitude in those shots, very life like.

[Juri_JS]

Will there be single houses/farms outside the cities/villages in rural areas? On the Normandy map they improved the atmosphere a lot and made the landscape look much less monotone.

[Reisen]

Looks fantastic. I'm really liking the look of the cities.

[Juri_JS]

I would reduce the number of larger trees around cities and replace most of them with bushes and some smaller trees. Thanks to deforestation during colonial times many of today's forests were shrubland in the 1950s, in particular in the more densely populated areas in the south and west of the Korean peninsula.

Two maps from the late 1950s, showing landscape types:

[Ghost0815]

Do we will see a damage model for the buildings?

[VISHNU]

Are those round structures, huts?

[Avimimus]

2 hours ago, VISHNU said:

Are those round structures, huts?

I think they are actually rectangular buildings with slightly rounded straw/thatch roofs? 

 

2 hours ago, Juri_JS said:

I would reduce the number of larger trees around cities and replace most of them with bushes and some smaller trees. Thanks to deforestation during colonial times many of today's forests were shrubland in the 1950s, in particular in the more densely populated areas in the south and west of the Korean peninsula.

I agree that shrubs would look good. It'd give a different impression of speed too.

[Kareem]

The best map update ever! Thank you!

[MADLOU]

Looks great!  Hope I dont need to update my computer!

[Elem]

Absolutely stunning! It'll be fun just to fly over the whole country just for the view! 

[LuftManu]

Looking awesome so far! There is a huge improvement over the first DDs where cities were showcased. Way to go, team!

[AndreiTomescu]

Something very beautiful, indeed. Now our RAM is gonna be happy. In GB never got more than 13 GB ram used. Now I hope to see all 32 busy!

[Leifr]

Right, that's it. This has been the dev diary that has really pushed me in to upgrading my GPU - I can't fly without the candy! 

[Harh]

I would recommend adding slight gradient shading to the lower part of the buildings using simple blend texture to emulate global illumination. That will visually separate buildings one from another and generally benefit the visuals by making buildings color not so "flat". This animated image, made from the Korea screenshot, is actually made custom, so it doesn't show the full possible potential of the effect, but one can get an idea what is it good for. 

[MajorMagee]

It looks like you're just asking for Ambient Occlusion to be turned on.

[Harh]

2 часа назад, MajorMagee сказал:

It looks like you're just asking for Ambient Occlusion to be turned on.

They are similar, but not the same. AO is most of the time is Screen Space, and this is world space one that can be added as a texture overlay for the walls. Frankly I can't tell will it be very different from SSAO or not, but it probably will.

I'm mostly interested in emulating GI, so the buildings can get that "wall shady" appearance like in MSFS like on the screen below. I have suspicion, that it will be harder to emulate via AO than with texture blending. Yeah, what I am talking about, is cheap imitation anyway, but still the image can noticably benefit from it. The rest is on the developers - are they interested or not

[MajorMagee]

Since they're upgrading everything to PBR then it would seem that AO is more likely than fixed texture shading that cannot adapt to changing conditions.

[Harh]

2 часа назад, MajorMagee сказал:

Since they're upgrading everything to PBR then it would seem that AO is more likely than fixed texture shading that cannot adapt to changing conditions.

If we are talking about PBR as a thing on a global scale like developers showed us with the cockpits and planes (both looking really impressive I must admit), then what I am talking about is an obvious crap for sure. But I really think that ground materials and shading are now close to what we'll see in the final product, so if to choose between that I see now and even some kind of "wrong" method, that can still produce a result, I'd choose the second.

How it will be achieved, by AO or any kind of "crutch" like I mentioned, I don't really care. I'm just trying to point out the shortcoming I see in the picture with my own experience and trying to advice the possible method of merely cheap workaround.

As I said, I'm unsure AO will produce this (anyway, I don't see it made with AO), and I don't believe developers will implement GI like with MSFS screen I've used up there.

[Freycinet]

For the first time in the series (going back to rise of flight) the cities and towns actually look real, and not cartoonish. Fabulous work.