Dev blog #157
05.05.2017
Dear pilots,
We have several good news for you today. The first one is that we almost finished the new aircraft - IL-2 mod. 1943. While this is the modification of the aircraft that already existed in our sim, this one will bring many interesting and not easy to implement improvements with it. One of them is the BB-1 mechanical aiming sight we told you about in the past Dev Blog.
The second innovation is the new weapon - PTAB-2.5-1.5 anti-tank bomblets. Modeling such a weapon required significant optimizations - this aircraft could carry up to 240 bomblets and drop them all at once. This was a complex task since the optimization must keep the performance hit to a minimum while keeping the drop pattern realistic. We implemented a system where the flight path is calculated for each bomblet if there is a possible target near the projected impact coordinates. If the possible targets are far away, the flight path is calculated for a cluster of bomblets at once, maintaining the realistic calculation accuracy.
The third new feature of this aircraft that wasn't available on its earlier modifications is the intermediate flaps stop that allows extending flaps to take-off position instead of full.
The fourth feature is the reserve pilot-gunner light signaling equipment that will function in the game in general combat situations.
In addition to all this, IL-2 mod. 1943 is equipped with the AM-38F engine that was boosted to 1720 HP at the price of the reduced critical altitude and the defensive turret with 12.7 mm UBT machine gun, which increased weight reduced the amount or rockets that could be fitted on the plane from 8 to 4. It's worth to note that 37 mm gun of the mod. 1943 aircraft is the more compact, lighter and faster firing NS-37 that has 1.25 times more ammo and higher projectile muzzle speed.
The second piece of good news is that we finished implementing the new graphics feature that is especially important for aircraft from 1943 - the rear view mirrors. It was a complex task even to choose how to implement them. The approaches our competitors use are very different and each of them has significant issues. In one game, the mirrors are like monitors - the image you see in them won't change according to your view when you move your head in the cockpit in 6-DOF using keyboard commands, TrackIR or VR HMD. In another title, your own aircraft isn't reflected in the mirror, visibility distance is reduced and the mirror image has a fixed resolution, which results in a pixelated image if you lean close to the mirror. Our lead programmer chose his own approach for this feature. It gives realistic and good looking results that are compatible with 6-DOF and VR technologies and are free of flaws found in the competing titles. We use optimization techniques for mirror rendering as well, but they aren't critical to the combat sim gameplay, so we can say that our mirrors are the best among the flight sims now. You'll see the rear view mirrors in the upcoming update 2.010 - they will be selectable in the modifications list of P-40E-1 and Yak-1b series 127 (they were equipped with mirrors in stock configuration).
The third piece of the good news is that we fixed the 'hit effects lagging' issue as close as it was possible. You asked us to fix it somehow for a long time and we have found the best solution. Now effects appear at the location of a projectile hit and they have the same velocity vector as the target plane at first, then they steadily slow down. The result is the visual image that looks much more like WWII era gun cameras footage. This solution also fixes the issues were hit sounds sometimes couldn't be heard on your own plane or hits on nearby aircraft were too loud. This short video recorded by our producer Jason Williams shows how hit effects will look in the update 2.010.
The fourth piece of the good news is that we reworked SLI/Crossfire support that stopped functioning properly after upgrading our engine for DirectX 11. Note that SLI/Crossfire gives a big performance boost if the game running on your PC is bottlenecked by the graphics card - for example, in situations when your FPS is limited by many light sources in the scene, many particle effects active at once or by an increased screen resolution. If the current scene being rendered is complex and contains many different objects, your CPU is likely to be the bottleneck instead and the performance boost from SLI/Crossfire won't be significant. It is also true that if you have a powerful GPU, game performance will be limited by the CPU already, so adding a second powerful GPU won't give you an FPS boost you want. Therefore, it is reasonable to use SLI/Crossfire in a case of two middle range graphics cards. In our beta version tests, we saw 50-85% performance improvement in the tank mission (where you need to cross the bridge) on SLI or Crossfire enabled PCs.
And finally, IL-2 Sturmovik team wants to congratulate you, dear friends, with the coming 72nd Victory Day anniversary. We remember the heroical deed of our ancestors and are thankful to them for the fact that we live in peace today, even if it is fragile. We wish peace and prosperity to all of you. Happy holiday!
