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RAZBAM Falklands map looks stunning on Tactical Pascale video!


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I've just seen Pascale's Flaklands map WIP presentation and interview with RAZBAM and i have to admit i'm stunned.

 

  • I love how RAZBAM is making coherent Cold War Falklands war map, assets, planes (lack of this coherence was is the biggest drawback of DCS)
  • I love they are making historic 1982 variant of the map also, besides the modern one
  • It looks a lot better than what we've seen on raw screens - with weather, with proper lighting it looks so real and alive
  • The map is different than anything we've seen in DCS so far - RAZBAM's Falklands looks cold, windy, rainy, unhospitable, Atlantic subpolar island - simply perfect

 

I'm excited for the classic Cold War British fighter Sea Harrier FRS.1 even more than i was for AV-8B

Overall it all looks like fantastic choices!

 

cheers

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Edited by bies
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  • bies changed the title to RAZBAM Falklands map looks stunning on Tactical Pascale video!

WOW! agree on coherency. it the direction DCS should be going in ie Cold war Enterprise carrier + airwing  ( and def forrestal with add on for supercarrier functionality available as an upgrade). If DCS's weather materializes,  Falkalnds map could be truly insane. imagine taking off in a storm from a pitching Invincible in a Sea Harrier!


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I thought it looked a little on the flat side, appreciate they wanted to show the map off at high altitude as thats the best way to get sense of scale but the low down stuff looked overly flat to me - perhaps it was the locations they chose to tease us with?

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I agree that the map looks excellent, for some reason the flying footage does it much more justice than the screenshots they have been sharing. The one worry I have is when will they actually manage to release a good set of coherent assets and modules, especially some sort of Mirage 3/5 and FRS 1. They have an insane back log of projects, and I really think the quality of the map will be judged by the presence and/or quality of those two aircraft.

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16 hours ago, Dr Zaius said:

I thought it looked a little on the flat side, appreciate they wanted to show the map off at high altitude as thats the best way to get sense of scale but the low down stuff looked overly flat to me - perhaps it was the locations they chose to tease us with?

754A9435-39AE-4115-93B9-05D73348D053.jpeg

 

All the maps in DCS look flat at the lower altitudes as the DCS Terrain Engine might not be able to render larger areas with small sub-meter resolutions. There are the riverbanks, road edges, bridgeheads etc that seem to be able to be done so, so evidence is pointing that it should be possible. But, when the DCS maps do not have ground clutter and small terrain height features, it makes them all just wide open feeling ones.

 

And human eye is very good spotting these small details (lack of) and person just might not notice such thing until pointed out.

 

For long time the savior for this all has been the terrain texture, that has allowed to use a satellite imagery or just generated terrain texture to give a illusion of the ground clutter details like trees, bushes, buildings, flats, roads etc. But it all works fine only at the higher altitudes.

 

To fix these things:

  • The DCS Terrain Engine should get capability to dynamically adjust the terrain LOD for higher one when looking it close, so when viewing from low altitude or when viewing with high magnification from high altitude.
  • The Terrain Engine should as well get capability to render ground clutter at long distances similar manner, bushes, rocks, small trees, tall grass, more different foliage etc. I think a 5-7 km maximum rendering capability would be enough so user can select shorter range for their performance. And then at further distances from max 5-7 to 10 km have more of a small LOD setting so there are still some terrain color changes and so on to create the "clutter".
  • The DCS graphics engine requires rework for the 3D model drawing distances. Against a camouflaged units on ground, spotting distance is by average 1500 meters from the air, that is just the camouflage paint and when vehicle is parked like example just at the forest edge, so the 3D models shouldn't be drawn but use a shaders to render the possible shadow and proper color for further distances, and only render the 3D model at closer ranges. This because 3D model rendering causes problem with aliasing and other LOD systems that simple texture helps to avoid with shaders. When the vehicles are camouflaged properly with the nets, tree branches etc, their spotting range can become practically zero if they are parked to proper background. So of course a dark green square vehicle is easy to spot against a bright yellow crop field, but place that vehicle to stay stationary in similar color terrain and it becomes almost invisible unless something reveals it by creating strong shape (shadow) that human brain can spot braking the pattern/randomness.
  • Improve the terrain textures. There are many good scenery texture mods for Caucasus, that helps a lot to improve the spotting challenges and make ranges visually more pleasing. ED has gone fairly low in these in many cases, very likely because performance reasons etc, but I personally think that ground texturing needs to be taken few notches higher level as diskspace is basically free as at this moment a one gigabyte costs about 2-4 cents. But texturing will make you only so far at high altitude.
  • Players should stop expecting a 100% accurate locations and modeling, the world changes in time. Trees grows and new roads are made, fields are changed, buildings painted and moved. So it is time that it would be more widely accepted that terrains are populated with roads, buildings, trees, fields etc that are not realistically there. The major landmarks should be there like big cities, possible towns names etc and main roads, but lots of stuff needs to be randomly generated by the map designer. There are OpenStreetMaps project that offers free the mapping data, that is easily usable to be converted such way that proper heights, roads and building locations can be extracted and then used to insert random buildings in DCS Map in those locations and draw the roads via proper routes. No more buildings in ground texture but actual 3D models. Who cares if a town edge is not 100% accurate as in real world, when it looks good and fits to the map?
  • The map editor should be heavily invested to be at the level that many RTS games has been in the past 20 years. That you can just bring the height map to it, have collection of dozens of terrain textures, texture layering, possibility use large brushes for random ground clutter, manual and automatic map height adjustments etc. To build a map in todays technologies for a rough scale details like in DCS, it is shouldn't be years process anymore. We already have software that can be inputted with the real world topographic maps from any decade and they will build a complete 3D models for the terrain based the symbols on the map.  If the current SDK requires map artists to place all trees, roads etc by hand, it can't be anything else than a nightmare.

 

At least we are getting major upgrade to graphics with the new clouds and weather engine, as that should start to add far more visual content even with the current existing flat maps.

As can anyone find out, flying DCS with the default weather is nothing else than boring. Making the date proper for sun angle and adding some mist, clouds low and maximum 8/10 value and it can become very beautiful even with its current old weather/cloud system. It still doesn't remove the flat and emptiness in many terrain areas, but it will be huge improvement.

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Really, really looking forward to this... was at school in 1982 and we watched the frigates and commandeered merchant vessels sail south, and welcomed some home... 

Especially remember HMS Arrow returning home with the Red Arrows fly over

 

A family friend was on HMS Brilliant and my own father worked on ships that went down south and on repairing some of the badly damaged ships that came home

 

So, I’m really keen that Razbam stick to their plans re 1982 assets 👍

(hopefully the AV8B is just a GR3 / FRS1 stand in for the video...)

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About a 50ish minute video? . . . Spent nearly 3 hours watching it as had to keep re-watching sections again and again 😄 .
It is stunning as it is!

The feel of the terrain - a strange thing to say - but the feeling it gives is incredible. RAZBAM - for a first foray into DCS terrains - are in my opinion really setting the bar high. Makes you wonder about the other possible locations that were intimated to.

The standard of the terrain, the texturing, all astounding.

 

Stunning. 
 

The Harrier made me a follower of RAZBAM - yes some people knock it, but really I think they just don’t “get it” - and I think it is a ‘jack of all trades’ delight. 
I love it, I never flew the Harrier in the RAF - i was mainly Tornado - but a friend of mine who has flown Harrier GR.5/7 (I still put up with his assumed superiority) and has flown the Harrier I own in DCS, says that the FEEL of it is absolutely spot on.

 

RAZBAM - keep doing what you are doing, my wallet is always ready if the product says “RAZBAM” on the tin.

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  • 3 months later...
On 2/20/2021 at 5:54 AM, G.J.S said:

The Harrier made me a follower of RAZBAM - yes some people knock it, but really I think they just don’t “get it” - and I think it is a ‘jack of all trades’ delight. 

I love it, I never flew the Harrier in the RAF - i was mainly Tornado - but a friend of mine who has flown Harrier GR.5/7 (I still put up with his assumed superiority) and has flown the Harrier I own in DCS, says that the FEEL of it is absolutely spot on.

 

So is your friend against the major Harrier engine performance reduction, that was done after your comment? That dramatically changed the Harrier flight characteristics as it had 1.5-2x too much thrust in it engine....

 

The interesting part is that Harrier systems are mostly incorrectly simulated, something that one can find from the real HUD videos and NATOPS where these errors are very carefully shown. So I wouldn't put much to "spot on" arguments if so.

 

I have lately watched couple times the upcoming map interview video and it looks like that map is almost just 50 meters above the sea. It is very difficult to not see the lack of details and the flatness, texture trickery that works great at 30'000 ft but not at 30-1000 meters.

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58 minutes ago, Fri13 said:

 

So is your friend against the major Harrier engine performance reduction, that was done after your comment? That dramatically changed the Harrier flight characteristics as it had 1.5-2x too much thrust in it engine....

 

The interesting part is that Harrier systems are mostly incorrectly simulated, something that one can find from the real HUD videos and NATOPS where these errors are very carefully shown. So I wouldn't put much to "spot on" arguments if so.

 

I have lately watched couple times the upcoming map interview video and it looks like that map is almost just 50 meters above the sea. It is very difficult to not see the lack of details and the flatness, texture trickery that works great at 30'000 ft but not at 30-1000 meters.

He flew the Harrier in DCS twice (first ended rather dramatically!) quite a while ago out of interest only, I don’t think he is on DCS, it was just a passing curiosity about what it was that has me slightly hooked.

And I wouldn’t put too much stock in videos, you are only seeing a very brief snapshot. As for NATOPS, configurations change - the publicly available ones aren’t current.

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10 hours ago, G.J.S said:

And I wouldn’t put too much stock in videos, you are only seeing a very brief snapshot.

 

Those "snapshots" are more than enough to show how real thing works, and when they are paired with the NATOPS that both confirms with latest versions, you get the correct results.

 

10 hours ago, G.J.S said:

As for NATOPS, configurations change - the publicly available ones aren’t current.

 

No, not the main systems. You can have some minor changes like a instead 4 Mark Points you have 10 Mark Points, but not the major changes where Mark Points are eliminated so their functionality doesn't anymore exist. You don't add fantasy technologies where suddenly the aircraft knows magically every target altitude, as even the newly added technologies (like radar replacing DMT) is required to have the features to feed such information, and TAMMAC's DTED doesn't provide anything to the bombing triangle (that Radar is there for with own modes to generate that information.

 

If Razbam wants to back their claims, they should reveal their open declassified documentation that is newer than current ones for H4.0 update that we have. As just going against the technology and the manuals is not wise move from Razbam. 

 

This is about upcoming Flakland map, but just required to question that if a someone say that Harrier flight modeling is "spot on" and it had 1.5-2x more thrust than any official engine performance chart says, it is just a point as usual that even real pilots can't say much about flight modeling as it depends a lot about gaming setup too (a proper chair with center mounted extended stick, throttle, pedals and VR vs Joystick and Throttle on table and playing using monitor). And every pilot needs to understand what is the target of the DCS, as it is not just "looks good, sounds good" but it as well needs to "feel correct with proper numbers", so what is the context of the simulator.

 

These DCS maps are such that they should have proper height maps and weathers and other looks. Main roads should be properly done so they join correctly towns and cities etc. Main rivers exist in correct places as much as possible and major forests and agriculture areas are properly done. Then rest of the small details can be randomly done to just fill the caps and voids as it would be unrealistic that there is nothing between two big cities/towns (well, Falklands is mostly empty unbuilt areas anyways... but you get the point that there is here and there some minor detailed areas).

More flat areas and emptiness there are, more the map requires a proper sub-meter elevations for terrain, so there are the proper height differences and dips and hills, and more it requires a random painted low level terrain features like bushes, different grass etc.  

 

 

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19 hours ago, rkk01 said:

I’ve made terrains / maps in other sims…

 

… there is no way anyone would take on a map project without getting a good DTM dataset to start with

 

It is not so much about height map but how it is used and what the terrain engine supports. 

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3 hours ago, rkk01 said:

I suppose the point being… the Falklands terrain is pretty flat / low and featureless - and this will be reflected in the DEM data (and the texturing)

 

If you look the real world videos and photos about Falkland, there are a lot of small terrain height differences/features. It doesn't have tall mountains and all such, but there is plenty of terrain features what comes to ground units operations.

 

The real Falkland is reason why I don't likely buy the map, because it is so flat. I don't see so interesting missions for it than just create the historic events. That means it is not about Razbam but more about DCS terrain engine that can't produce ground clutter (various different grasses, bushes, rocks, dozens of different trees by height and type etc...). 

This is similar thing as in the Caucasus where the mountain ridges and hills are without details, the NTTR looks like one golf course at low altitude. This all because the terrain texture is the only main element that is showing the height differences and when you get low enough, it all becomes just smooth hills.

 

But maybe my opinion changes when map is shown in new weather etc.

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/13/2021 at 3:14 PM, Dr Zaius said:

I thought it looked a little on the flat side, appreciate they wanted to show the map off at high altitude as thats the best way to get sense of scale but the low down stuff looked overly flat to me - perhaps it was the locations they chose to tease us with?

754A9435-39AE-4115-93B9-05D73348D053.jpeg

That isn't the FI.

 

HMS Bristol taking on stores at Ascension Island (Wide Awake). We were part of the 2nd group, and destined to take the Flag off HMS Hermes after the conflict.

 

The only Type 82 Destroyer (which should have been a Cruiser really).  So here she is. CTG 317.1.

 

How do I know this? I was there. The ship was decomissioned in December 2020, and is currently awaiting disposal.

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Me taking in the air on the Flight Deck of HMS Bristol - TEZ (Total Exclusion Zone). I was off-watch. However, every afternoon without fail the ship went to air raid warning red.

 

I'm standing up straight, but the South Atlantic has other ideas!

 

bKbObkV.png


Edited by =Buccaneer=
Got rid of a spurious URL
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