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Page 1 of 3 The following article was translated and posted to the simhq forum by VSlash...
So, at last I made it to the very
heart of the virtual aviation world. In the developers’ office of
world’s most famous aviasimulator IL-2 Sturmovik, and, the “Storm of
War: Battle over Britain”, which, as I hope, will become much more
famous in the future.
I think I can skip description of all the
events preceding the visit as: making preliminary agreements, the trip
to town-hero Moscow and searching of the office itself, as they don’t
have much to do with the main topic itself. Though, one remark on that
point is that the office is located 5 minutes of walking away from the
Central museum of Russian Army, which has a huge ballistic rocket
standing at the entrance. Sad thing I didn’t have a chance to go to the
museum. ![[Frown]](http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/frown.gif)
At
the MG office Maksim Prut, more known as Klocska in the forum, was my
guide. I want to thank him for his attention, given to my humble
person. In the beginning he took me from the entrance with a watchful
guard to the MG office. The way is pretty mazed so I had to find my way
out with his help too.
The office itself is not very large, densely
filled with workplaces. Looks very much like many other offices. But
the thing that gets your attention first is the number of posters,
devoted to the aviation in general and IL-2 simulator in particular.
One of them has all the planes from FB series fitted in one scale. Very
nice one indeed. Wanted it to ask it as a present, but didn’t get
enough cheek to do so. ![[Smile]](http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/smile.gif)
I
should say a few about the atmosphere in the office – it’s definitely a
working atmosphere. And it’s a good thing. Everybody is working. I say
with full responsibility, that MG employees working hard, making the
exciting moment of getting the long awaited BoB in your hands closer
with every minute. By the way they call it English-style – BoB (it’s
BzB – ‘Bitva za Britaniyu’ in Russian. trans.rem.)
My arrival didn’t
make any difference in the working process – everyone kept working. So
I started to go from one workplace to another, disturbing these worthy
people from their, no doubt, important work, to get you a little bit of
information. Because, if I’d say that I had been to MG office and
didn’t get anything new, I doubt I’d have been understood by the
community.
The first man I approached was Yuriy Shubin. His task is
modeling of planes and cockpits, so we talked about it. He showed me a
nearly finished Bf 110 cockpit. It’s made with the same level of
attention to details as the Bf 109 and Ju 88 cockpits, which were
already presented to the public. You can see it clearly that it’s a
German plane. By the way, as Yuriy have said, view control from the
gunner’s position will be reworked. You will be able to look only at
the direction the turret is pointed towards and a little bit sideward.
So to look further you will have to turn the gun-turret. The main point
of it is to reduce the worktime for one cockpit, which is now taking
2-3 times more since the first release of IL-2 Sturmovik.
Surely,
from my point of view free control of a view direction for a gunner
would be better, but if to choose between this limitation and further
delay of BoB release … the answer is clear. Besides, it’s pilot’s job
to look forward, isn’t it?
Concerning 3D modeling Yuriy said a few
good words about 3rd party developers, who are now making plane models
for new FB add-ons with free will. I think we should be grateful to
those people, who are frequently addressed with sayings like: “Why on
Earth do you make plane A, instead of my favorite plane B!? Make plane
B quickly!!!!!!” in the forums.
Then Yuriy showed me the cockpit of
Su-26. In the process a very interesting thing came to my knowledge. It
seems that they don’t get the information about the plane from first
hands. In fact they are first hands themselves! Because several MG
employees, including Yuriy, worked in the Sukhoi Design Bureau in near
past and even were involved in the developing process of Su-26.
The
cockpit of this aerobatic plane has great field of view, because of
large canopy, even below the seat. A Yakovlev’s quote about eye in the
ass came to mind (he said it to pilots who were asking to do such thing
on a fighter planes).
Then there was Ju 88 cockpit.
It was very well demonstrated in a movie given out by MG. For those who didn’t see it I’m putting some screenshots.
However,
if you can get the 200 mb movie, you better do so. It reproduces the
very good atmosphere of it. There will be definitely no such bugs as we
can see now. You can download it here (201,99 Mb).
Concerning
the upper gunners position – at present moment the problem is solved
with removing 1 gunner. But, as I understood, it’s not a big problem to
add another gunner position – new game engine is able to handle it.
Yuriy also showed me some new things. Firstly it’s a Ju 87 cockpit (shown on a screenshot).
3D
model of a cockpit is made from pilot’s and gunner’s positions as a
whole. The same way as in Bf 110 and Ju 88. You can clearly see the
quality of modeling set by MG and the 3rd party models certification,
which is planned by MG, is surely a serious thing.
Next stop was by
another game artist – Sergey Golovachev. Thanks to his mastery we have
a living heroes of the drama: the Messerschmidt and the Spitfire. I
won’t say much about their cockpits, you could have seen it yourself in
provided movies and screenshots. The only thing to add is that
back-down view is still ‘absent’ as it is supposed to be. Even
considering the ability to move the point of view.
Then Sergey
showed me a cockpit of another plane. To be honest, I didn’t manage to
guess it from first sight. But because of the instrumental panels I
supposed that it could be no other than ‘Hurricane’, so I guess I was
right.
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