game engine Game Engine improvements discussion

[Shinobimono]

1 час назад, Trooper117 сказал:

can you at least put a translation in with it as well...

You can do right click in your browser and translate it. Easy as abc.

Moreover it was stated on the old forum that the foreign language is allowed in the main threads. So no we can't do that. 😌

[[I.B.]-=ViRUS=-]

3 часа назад, Shinobimono сказал:

Зато как они там маневрировали в бою, не чета местным. 

Вы не понимаете ЧЕГО вы просите. То, что боты кружат хуже не проблема физики, а проблема ИИ. В БзХ боты не на столько предсказуемые, как в старичке, получше. Несправедливость отсутствия физики у ботов выявилась, когда БзБ вышло. Там можно было занять самолёт, до этого управляемый ботом; очень часто, когда занимался этот самолёт, движок у игрока мгновенно вскипал. В топку "рельсы", нужно ИИ править.

54 минуты назад, Trooper117 сказал:

f you are going to converse in this forum in a foreign language, can you at least put a translation in with it as well

Calling BS on that strait away. This part of forum is NOT english only, russian community sees russian descriptions on sections of a forum everywhere except language-speciefic divisions.

Скрытый текст

English and russian communities are comparable sizes so there is NO reason to set one language over other. If fractions of other languages were diminishing on old .com forum - this is not the case now. We had our forum turned off too and new link come to this forum.

The guy who made this topic is russian and i spoke to him on a subject. You having hard time to understanding what are we talking between each other - trust me, huge part of russian community has same problem despite almost all learned english back in school (with varying quality and very long ago) and i can easyly bet almost nobody here in your country did learn russian. Having that problem it resolves by using extensions in interntet brouser of your choice.

And finaly, speaking myself - I know english quite well. And if the tone of my speach here seems rude - I'm informing you that I can understand what some of you wrote in neiboring topics very well and it's more tit for tat because I find some of you are very arrogant.

Thank you very much.

[FuriousMeow]

14 hours ago, Stoikiy said:

one hundred percent my opinion. I'm with you here.  I remeber that fights in BoS and BoM was very boring.  This is why i'm always played PvP

That's the way its been for every single air combat sim since multiplayer became accessible.

AI in every air combat sim has just been target practice, and to get some familiarity and ball park ideas of aircraft strengths, weaknesses and disparities. 

Supposedly Rowan's BoB had the best AI, I played the remake a little but couldn't get into it but even then it wasn't as good as the average human. 

SP is just practice for me, and if I want to get some turny shooty in but don't have the time to put into a whole MP flight.

[III/JG52_Otto_-I-]

On 11/28/2025 at 5:39 PM, Dash,Polder said:

I truly hope they remove the AI flaps wanking in every fight, this is not the norm or the technique would be published in every pilots handbook and operators manual.  

That's just plain nuts and gaming the game.

It would be beautiful a REAL Flight Modeling, who cause the damage and adverse effects in flaps, (i.e. stall and Spin,etc.) when wankers deploy FULL landing flaps at any speed, or combat situation.

[Shinobimono]

2 часа назад, [I.B.]-=ViRUS=- сказал:

Вы не понимаете ЧЕГО вы просите. То, что боты кружат хуже не проблема физики, а проблема ИИ.

Это именно, что проблема физики, так как с ней совсем другая модель поведения ИИ.

2 часа назад, [I.B.]-=ViRUS=- сказал:

В БзХ боты не на столько предсказуемые, как в старичке, получше.

О какой версии ЗС мы говорим? Самой первой? У меня абсолютно другой опыт был. В БзХ же боты только и могут, что в вираже стоять, поэтому я не знаю, о каком "получше" может идти речь.

[LukeFF]

Guys, let's get back on-topic please. 🙂

[Stoikiy]

On 11/30/2025 at 8:34 PM, LukeFF said:

Guys, let's get back on-topic please. 🙂

I saw in some video that you improved editor for people who want to create their own experience.  What about mods?
Have you done anything in regards of mods support?

Edited December 1, 2025 by Stoikiy

[Stoikiy]

On 11/30/2025 at 5:29 PM, [I.B.]-=ViRUS=- said:

В топку "рельсы", нужно ИИ править.

I raised different topic, not about AI accuracy but about amount planes in the air and ground units at the same time.
If you played Campaign in any Great Battles you saw that units render on front line only where you have flight plan and all other map is empty. That broke immersion.

Devs can solve this in 2 ways in order to have 500-1000 uinits in the battle at the same time .
1) Optimize Ground and Fly AI, add multitrading.
2) Add same system as many others game uses, where game splits on 2 layers, logic layer and physical layer, where units render only on certain distance from the player and disappear when player fly very far away, but keep existing in logic layer or hash map.  That would allow to render 1000+ units in whole front line.

That hash map could look +- like that 

const units = [
  [
    "id_1a2b3c",
    {
      name: "Pz4F2",
      class: "Tank",
      stats: { hp: 100%, distance: 400000, coordinate: '49.3679, −0.8904' },
    }
  ],
  [
    "id_1a2r5c",
    {
      name: "Pz4F2",
      class: "Tank",
      stats: { hp: 50%, distance: 395000, coordinate: '49.3502, −0.8627' },
    }
  ],
];

 

Edited December 2, 2025 by Stoikiy

[AndyJWest]

I'm getting all nostalgic. Back on the old forum, we used to see suggestions to 'optimise' code quite regularly, though it seemed to die off somewhat recently. I'm curious as to whether the people who advise such 'optimisation' actually think that developers deliberately write sub-optimal code, or whether they do it by accident, and have to be reminded to fix it? 

As for multithreading, I'm fairly sure the developers will have though of that too (sarcasm alert!), though given the task at hand, the benefits of this may not be as great as those unfamiliar with such coding might expect. Parallelisation works best when modelling simple systems, and an air combat simulator is anything but simple. And as anyone who has ever even tinkered with multithreaded applications (which is the most I've ever done) will be well aware, they can be a nightmare to debug. An over-ambitious approach to multithreading the complexities involved in IL-2 (new series or existing) looks a good route to frustration.

I'm happy to assume that the developers know what they are doing without our advice. 

 

 

[Stoikiy]

56 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

I'm curious as to whether the people who advise such 'optimisation' actually think that developers deliberately write sub-optimal code, or whether they do it by accident, and have to be reminded to fix it? 

Well... i know that developers are very good in math in physics but if you get shot during the Campaign in Great Battles missions and RTB while your AI mates continue the mission, if you press mission end before AI cross the front line - all of them will have "missed in action" status, which means all of them dies, which means after you press close mission button nothing calculates after.  That broke immersion in very high way (like you only one pilot and every one else is fake). 

And that could be fixed in 2 weeks sprint by adding randomization function in the mission ends, where based on AI plane statuses you will calculate does you squadmates survive or not.  I've pointent on that at the first week after they released new Generated campaign but it hasn't been fixed in years... idk what the situation right now since last Campaign i've played was Kuban

So - Don't underestimate the community's advice.

Edited December 2, 2025 by Stoikiy

[AndyJWest]

Clearly, you don't know what 'optimisation' means. 

[Stoikiy]

Ah and BTW, let's not forget about "beautiful" gothic UI of Great Battles,  Black and White with some huge Green Buttons 
Thaty also related to programming 

Just now, AndyJWest said:

Clearly, you don't know what 'optimisation' means. 

You need to read my original message again. And google what hashmap used for.  After that, return to conversation.

ill left you small hint:
 

[AndyJWest]

I'll leave you a big clue. I'm not the slightest bit interested in your 'optimisation' proposals, given that you clearly don't have access to the code, and accordingly can't know what the developers are already doing. 

As for hashmaps, congratulations on discovering something that's been around almost since the earliest days of programming: A new method of recording and searching information H.P. Luhn, 1953. 

[LukeFF]

1 hour ago, Stoikiy said:

What about mods?
Have you done anything in regards of mods support?

Mod support is unchanged from GB at this point. I encourage you (and everyone else out there who is curious) to look through our old blog posts - we've been pretty thorough in what we've discussed so far, and if something hasn't been answered or discussed yet, it's because it's still being finalized. Not trying to be snarky or short with you or anyone else, but I can't be the librarian for everyone on this forum - we have published a wealth of information that is available at the click of a button if you just put in a bit of time to look for it. 🙂 

[Mysticpuma]

In terms of game engine, seeing all the new aircraft, details, ground objects and development diaries, the one feature yet to be showcased is the visual effects overhaul.

The most disappointing feature in current BoX (for me) is the very simplified, cartoonish, smoke, fire and explosion effects. I did ask the question about whether they would be updated and the reply from Han was as follows:

Firstly, that's a promising reply.

Secondly, I am hoping a developer diary will soon showcase changes to the effects and what we can expect.

Lastly, having carried a bomb load a significant distance, I'd like to see some proper plumes of debris, tendrils flying off, shockwave effects...you know some real eye candy, as they have created a new engine to push the boundaries.

[MajorMagee]

It's not something provided to the modding community very often, but I would love to have an effects editor. We had one for Panzer Elite, and it was a great asset to work with, and let us really extend the game's potential.

I've done similar development for CFS3 without one and it has been a tedious trial and error process of editing a scripting language without an sdk or a pre-view tool. Several blind efforts to add or modify special effects in BoX have been similarly difficult without one, but have produced some important enhancements.

I understand the desire of the studio to control the design intent of the graphic effects, and prevent overblown Hollywood style visuals creeping in, but there are some very talented effects artists out here that could make valuable additions to the development if provided with the proper tools.

For example, we've seen some development video snippets of crash landings with smoke and flame and sparks. Looks great, but the sparks are the color of iron, not aluminum and magnesium. With an editor we could extend the options to include all three.

Edited December 3, 2025 by MajorMagee

[Stoikiy]

6 hours ago, Mysticpuma said:

The most disappointing feature in current BoX (for me) is the very simplified, cartoonish, smoke, fire and explosion effects. I did ask the question about whether they would be updated and the reply from Han was as follows:

As far as i remember they wasn't so bad, i was mostly not happy with ground textures but it's great to hear that they would be updated too.
From effects , i remember that i wanted to saw smoke trail from the place where plane crash, at least 3-5 minutes

[Mysticpuma]

CloD used to have some of the best in-game explosions. Explosions with huge plumes of dust (before they were over edited).

Check the 1m 34s mark from this video 11-years ago.

PC's should easily be able to run detailed effects like this now.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2025 by Mysticpuma

[Juri_JS]

1 hour ago, Stoikiy said:

As far as i remember they wasn't so bad, i was mostly not happy with ground textures but it's great to hear that they would be updated too.

Where were the updates to the textures mentioned? In the few screenshots of the terrain we've seen so far, textures looked very similar to Il-2 GB. Some of the issues from GB are visibile on the Korea screenshots too, for example rails and roads that clearly show that their textures were overlayed over the landscape textures.

Edited December 3, 2025 by Juri_JS

[Leifr]

2 minutes ago, Juri_JS said:

Where were the updates to the textures mentioned? In the few screenshots of the terrain we've seen so far, textures looked very similar to the Il-2 GB.

The last time it was asked (of the terrain), LukeFF said that everything was a placeholder and it wasn't final in any way, shape or form. There isn't much to look at that is different to GB, hopefully we'll see some of this fabled terrain before the end of the year. 🙄

[Husar]

I hope all rivers and roads would be visible from up high to the horizon in good weather because it's not the case in GB. 

I hope smoke and dust plus explosion effects would be improved a lot compared to GB short lives z- fighting sprites. Smoke interaction with wind is not hard but with global lighting I doubt.

[Dash,Polder]

Artillery flashes on the night sky horizon line would be an awesome effect also adding to the immersion.  Give you a little pucker factor on the way to the front.  

[Avimimus]

On 12/3/2025 at 6:06 PM, Juri_JS said:

Where were the updates to the textures mentioned? In the few screenshots of the terrain we've seen so far, textures looked very similar to Il-2 GB. Some of the issues from GB are visibile on the Korea screenshots too, for example rails and roads that clearly show that their textures were overlayed over the landscape textures.

There is a demonstration of how they've added new technologies - PBR for the aircraft (and some illumination updates), and an additional layer of textures is now possible on the terrain to avoid tiling issues. We haven't seen the final results yet.

Anyway, I've timestamped the information on map texture technology:

 

[Avimimus]

Also be of interest to you:

This Q&A discusses a lot of ambitious directions for possible future development, and shows they are very aware of our wishes and input:

 

[CaptHook]

On 11/29/2025 at 4:56 AM, Avimimus said:

 

There was a lot of pressure (form the Il-2 1946 era) from people who wanted the AI to use exactly the same flight model and physics model as the player aircraft. This is obviously very computationally intensive. There is work being done to allow bombers (and perhaps even some fighters) to use simplified systems models to allow larger formations, and this is an announced feature in Korea.

However, for something like multiplayer, my understanding is that calculations need to be done centrally (i.e. on the host/server) to make sure there isn't desynchronisation, so it will be very computationally intensive, as the host has to run the full flight models for all of the players - at least that is my understanding. I think this may mean there is a bottleneck that exists separately from the netcode... and it might be a fundamental tradeoff between the number of players and the quality of flight/phyics/damage models. However, I could be wrong about this... there could be a clever work around that I don't know about.

I'm curious how 'contained' the AI code loop can be made - can AI aircraft be made to log into a server and get the same feed and same inputs as human players?  In that scenario your AI aircraft count is only constrained by the number of clients the server can handle, and how much hardware or threads you have to throw at AI entities.  If an AI client with no graphics workload consumes the equivalent of 4 modern cores then a 64 core Threadripper machine with 512GB RAM could host up to 16 AI clients.  I could even see a distributed computing model where the community could run an AI client locally on their home PC when not playing themselves to provide a high fidelity presence on the server.  Would be expensive and altruistic, but I've seen a lot of people contribute a LOT of time and resources to this sim/community over the last 24 years.  

Not a coder, though, so I have no idea if a self-contained AI client is practical or workable to write.  I come from the old days of hyper-competitive Quake 2 and Quake 3 back in the late 90s when we called AI clients 'cheat bots'.  🙃

Edited December 7, 2025 by CaptHook