About New Technology used for Normandie 2.0 - Underwhelming?

[zaelu]

So I bought the map and I didn't had a lot of expectations (owner of 1944 version) but I really don't understand what this "new technology is about.
I must mention it I play it On Max settings 4k and VR. And I am not talking about performance. I don't care about that at this moment.

 The map visually still looks like a glorified "Il-2 Sturmovik 1945" map (the old defunct game of Maddox for people old enough, I am not talking here about any competition). Yes more polys, new clouds a little bit of new shadow system.
The cities are still patches of land populated rather automatically with SPARSELY placed generic buildings. If you fly over Paris and you don't have The Eiffel Tower and L’arc de Triomphe and some other few known buildings you don't really feel is the Paris.  Flying above it is just UNDERWELMING. I flew over Paris in real life... not in 1944 but come on... New technology? What it is please? Some small incremental improvements?

So you managed to make maps extendable... probably still not placeable on a round (whole) Earth but that is not New tech is a small improvement.

Trees.
Another BIG BIG Issue.

I understand you are using SpeedTree tech. I think I saw that tech 15 years ago and it was rather impressive. Now in 2023 we have basically ONE tree multiplied all over the place a million times. Not even a variation in color. No shadows on them from clouds at least to change the color a little. 
I would have expected to have some variation by now... 2023 but no. And going low and slow is just the same. Generic sparsely placed buildings surrounded by mostly gigantic Tree (at singular) multiplied by a simple nvidia driver trick I guess.
It really gives the impression that ED bought the lowest of lowest license from SpeedTree or has a free one.

The ground. While better than 1944 variant the topography is also underwhelming.  You simply have the impression you fly over a imperfect miniature of the real ground. To this also the lack of details of the terrain have their part because a cliff has a million details in real life that tell the eye about it's size but a simple pixel to meters difference in game covered by a rather low rez texture will not do the trick on tricking the mind.


Is it playable? Yes.
Underwhelming? For sure. At least for me.

 

Edited April 23, 2023 by zaelu

[Mr_sukebe]

???

I’m a little confused.  I flew over Paris yesterday in a Hind and saw lots of Landmarks that I recognise, eg Arc De T, Notre Dame.  I landed underneath the E Tower.

The use of “generic buildings” for more average areas of cities is just normal practice in flight sims, whether that’s DCS or Civ sims, as it’s simply not currently realistic to model every single building. Maybe AI can help on that in the future

Edited April 23, 2023 by Mr_sukebe

[zaelu]

3 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

???

I’m a little confused.  I flew over Paris yesterday in a Hind and saw lots of Landmarks that I recognise, eg Arc De T, Notre Dame.  I landed underneath the E Tower.

The use of “generic buildings” for more average areas of cities is just normal practice in flight sims, whether that’s DCS or Civ sims, as it’s simply not currently realistic to model every single building. Maybe AI can help on that in the future

 

Sorry. Maybe I have used an unclear expression. I should have used "If you wouldn't have had Eiffel Tower etc etc you wouldn't know it's actually Paris". I thought is obvious from the trailers that Eiffel tower is present in the map. 

As for second point is an yes and no. Using generic buildings is acceptable if they are believable. And No, there are sims I should not name here that are able to reproduce either real buildings en masse or autogen buildings but after detail maps of open street view in a way that each and every building that is recorded to exist is represented in it with a somewhat correct ground floor shape, somehow correct height at least in number of floors and somewhat correct style. Now I don't say DCS World should match that for a map representing 1944... but at least the correct size and density of buildings should be one of the goals.

Besides all I mentioned above there is also the problem with the color palette that as for Normandie 1944 (1.0) is limited and incomplete. What I mean is entire sets of the colors are missing and we have just few shades of certain colors and this mixed with the repetitiveness of the trees and buildings and wrong perceptive scale it just switches off any immersion (for me and maybe for some others too).

And bottom line is I think ED proclaiming such small iterative progress in map development all mixed with a doubtfully functional pay ware scheme is self delusional in the long term.

Time will tell but...

Edited April 23, 2023 by zaelu

[peachmonkey]

I think lowering the expectations will help you deal with this issue. 

- MS decided to invest into a terrain engine. Photo realistic landscapes are all there.

- ED invests into the modeling/damage engine. Blowing stuff up is available here with some trade-offs (no photo realism).

Unless you post in MS forums asking how their engine is lacking the destruction modeling in 2023, I think you're being a bit unfair to ED here.

 

[Mr_sukebe]

Zaelu,

I’m only aware of one flight sim that is trying to use real world data, and that does NOT generate accurate buildings.  If it did, it wouldn’t need “crafted” landmarks and aftermarket terrains would be pointless.

It may well use recent map data, but like all other flight sims, when it comes to populating cities and buildings, it stuffs some “approx” pre-built building a just like every other flight sim.  For example, the detail of where I live an areas that  l know well look great from altitude, but close up, are frankly no great shakes.  It really disappointed me for that

[zaelu]

23 hours ago, peachmonkey said:

I think lowering the expectations will help you deal with this issue. 

Literally was my first phrase. So...

On 4/23/2023 at 12:16 PM, zaelu said:

So I bought the map and I didn't had a lot of expectations (owner of 1944 version)

Feel free to go to that forum yourself. I am not speaking about that game so I would prefer people here to focus on DCS even if comparisons are made in each ones mind.

[zaelu]

21 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

I’m only aware of one flight sim that is trying to use real world data, and that does NOT generate accurate buildings.  If it did, it wouldn’t need “crafted” landmarks and aftermarket terrains would be pointless.

I am not talking about accurate. I didn't even expected to be realistic representation at ground level... although since we have tanks and what not...  I am talking about flying above cities in general or well known cities in particular and have the sensation is somewhat that cities as we would expect in 2023 regardless of the fact one might or might not have played other sims.
To give you an example. Lock On had better cities feel than Normadie 2.0. Sure Caucasus of today is even better  but it's a quantifiable miss. Not only buildings are not at the relative correct size but they are placed usually at too much distance one from the other and in-between you have this... forest or patches of forests that look more like patches of parsley than trees. All trees have the same color ad they are simple variations of same tree if you get close enough. The land texture looks like a cartoon with some crayon noise applied to it. And generally the colors aggravate the sensation of old revamped game. 
I have no problem with revamping an old game and give it more life along the years but when you call it "new technology" (and is not the first time, first Normandie was new tech, Hurmuz map was another "new tech" and even the Sinai I think is called again another new tech... but everything looks the same only new million little boxes made to look like Cairo (rofl) and some new shading... when this happens it means nobody is actually aware of the problem and people at the helm are drinking Kool-Aid.

DCS World looks dated badly. And calling it new tech is simply sad.

Edited April 24, 2023 by zaelu

[Ala13_ManOWar]

The thing, apparently is you're assuming "new tech" means something different than what ED means when they say so. Internal new tech, not something you see anywhere in the game itself aside from the actual result of that new tech, is because it allows them for things which were technically impossible in this game previously. Nothing more. It's definitely new tech since they're able to make new things which we haven't seen in this game before. It's new tech since comparing these new maps, not only to LOMAC old map, but even to third parties and ED previous maps, these new maps allow them to make things which were just impossible previously, so since they were impossible we haven't seen those ever before in DCS. And here it's easy, compare old Normandy map to the new one. They aren't just different because they "enhanced" the old one, it's a whole new map using tech unavailable for them back when N1 was first made and released. All of that, bearing in mind it's a proprietary graphic engine which is made by ED either, so they expand that graphical engine and it's possibilities all they can, and continue doing so, otherwise we would still be playing Flanker 2.5 graphics, FM, DM, and all. That's why it's new tech, have you seen those details on the Normandy 2 map ever in DCS? No? Me neither nor anyone, hence there's your new tech, internal new tech for them and developed by them. Stop thinking of other games or whatever, this is all made by ED from the beginning and graphical engine is also made by them. Any changes they make allowing third party and themselves new things not seen previously happen because they developed some new tech allowing them to do so. Just that, and it doesn't mean anything more than that. It's not like they're trying to compare or compete with any other software, that's only in you mind, not in their intentions when they talk about developing this or that new tech (DCS internal new tech, just that).