Dev Blog #67: Nature

[LukeFF]

Hey everyone!

Today, we can finally share the results of our work on nature. In our sixty-seventh diary, we'll discuss the changes in technology and approaches used to create this aspect of the simulator. Enjoy watching and reading: https://media.il2-korea.com/news/dd_67

[Koziolek]

Looks very nice, I just hope this beautifull trees will stop turning as they do in GB

[AEthelraedUnraed]

There's some dramatic improvement in almost all aspects of the landscape. Great Dev blog!

[Koziolek]

3 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

There's some dramatic improvement in almost all aspects of the landscape. Great Dev blog!

Yes, it is hard to believe this terrain is made for flight simulator and not an RTS or RPG game

[sevenless]

Beautiful!

[Juri_JS]

Definitely a huge improvement at ground level. I am curious to see how it will look like from higher altitudes.

[NevA]

We need more "Tank сrewish" things for this landscape, you know...

[Jade_Monkey]

 Wow, looking great. Nice visual upgrade over GB.

[Reisen]

Wow, this is looking great!

[Fred901]

1 hour ago, Koziolek said:

Looks very nice, I just hope this beautifull trees will stop turning as they do in GB

I reckon the reason the trees were spinning in Great Battles is that they were designed in 2D! With Corea, the trees are in 3D, so no more problems!

Edited April 3 by Fred901

[Aapje]

This addresses my main problem with the visuals of GB. I bet that the view from the plane will be way more interesting!

[Rocho]

Now we need some helicopters to enjoy this beautiful terrain.

[Aapje]

Like these?

[Dash,Polder]

We can ride our bicycles out to the airfield perimeter and pick daisies now before the mission, calms the jittery nerves and helps keep lunch down before the triple A duels. 

[MajorMagee]

Curious, nothing is mentioned about making all this beautiful countryside look like a war zone with persistent battle damage.

[LuftManu]

That's some really cool images! The clouds above these green fields! and 3D trees!

As other gentlemen have said in this post, quite an improvement over GB!

[=69.GIAP=VLADI]

Impressive, beautifull!

[BlitzPig_EL]

Truly beautiful.

[Swoose]

Absolutely incredible beauty and level of detail!  I suspect, but it would be nice to know, that there will not be any repetitive, artificial long lines of trees along roads as currently in IL-2 Series: Great Battles.

[CzechTexan]

The trees are magnificent but I hope there are less trees on the battlefield hills around the 38th Parallel, such as I remember in the old movies.  I remember it looking more like a moonscape like WWI no-man's-land.  I guess maybe those trees got obliterated by bombs and shells or used in bunkers and trenches.

[Juri_JS]

2 hours ago, CzechTexan said:

The trees are magnificent but I hope there are less trees on the battlefield hills around the 38th Parallel, such as I remember in the old movies.  I remember it looking more like a moonscape like WWI no-man's-land.  I guess maybe those trees got obliterated by bombs and shells or used in bunkers and trenches.

As I already wrote in an earlier thread, this was mostly the result of deforestation during Japanese colonial times. Especially in the western part and the south of the Peninsula much of today's forests were shrubland in the 1950s. I hope the devs keep this in mind. Would be difficult to recreate some of the famous battles in Korea when there are too many trees on the battlefields.

[Leifr]

3 hours ago, Juri_JS said:

As I already wrote in an earlier thread, this was mostly the result of deforestation during Japanese colonial times. Especially in the western part and the south of the Peninsula much of today's forests were shrubland in the 1950s. I hope the devs keep this in mind. Would be difficult to recreate some of the famous battles in Korea when there are too many trees on the battlefields.

Yes, it's fairly obvious that the Korean landscape was generally devoid of dense forest across much of the war - one only has to look at photographs from the front to see barren landscapes, sparse woodlands and scrub. 

[Catch]

t would look better blowed up. I wanna see that flora given a napalm facial.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

57 minutes ago, Leifr said:

one only has to look at photographs from the front

And there you've got part of the problem. A very disproportional amount of the photographic evidence comes from either the front, or from near major towns. Both those areas are generally less forested than elsewhere. In the case of major towns, because the existing infrastructure makes it an easy target for deforestation. In case of the front line, because of the general destruction associated with a static front. Given this existing bias, it's not unlikely that the "average landscape" in Korea will have been much more forested than what you see in the pictures.

Although it isn't disputed that the Japanese occupation left the Korean peninsula forests in a severely degraded state, I've yet to see any trustworthy maps on the issue. Available statistics usually have rather specific wordings and concern widely different metrics, leading to such divergent numbers as "around 0.68 million ha, or 10% of South Korean forests, destroyed and in need of restoration" [1], "the average volume per ha in Korea dropped to 14 cubic metres from 45 cubic metres in 1910" [2] or "approximately 30% of the forested land was either denuded or had a low density of stocking" [3]. What all sources do agree on though, is that North Korea was generally less affected, and that happens to be 3/4 of our map.

Still, whether 10%, 30% or 70%, it's clear that there were plenty of deforested areas and I would like to see that reflected, where appropriate.

[1] http://nationalatlas.ngii.go.kr/pages/page_2306.php 
[2] https://www.fao.org/4/W5547E/W5547E02.htm
[3] https://pubs.cif-ifc.org/doi/pdf/10.5558/tfc70058-1

[Husar]

Everything looks better than in GB. 

I hope the grass will get trampled where units are deployed.