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A visit to Oleg's Office - BOB |
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Written by Administrator
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Saturday, 23 September 2006 |
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Page 2 of 3
In
fact, the first look at the cockpit without initial preparation with
screenshots etc makes leaves ‘strong’ impression. You start to feel
somewhat different from what you have experienced in FB and PF. For
further effect Sergey moved point of view several times along the side
of the cockpit and ‘looked’ back. The field of view is really improved,
but you still feel that solid glass canopy and glass-armored head rest
were developed for a reason.
Next MG employee, disturbed from his
work by me, was Sergey Karavaev. We passed the 3D models, because it
would take a lot of time to look each model in the game engine’s
environment – he showed my only the screenshots. However, our talk was
as much interesting as the previous ones. Firstly Sergey told me about
several features of a new plane Fiat BR.20M. This is a
navigator-bombardier position. This ammo line from ammo box will move
with turning of a turret. And steering wheel will move to the right
when switching to gunners position. This will probably be animated.
Besides, navigator will have the ability to make course corrections on
target approach with the steering wheel himself, and be able to choose
the order of ammunition drop, but with limits concerning real plane
features.
Then
we discussed another interesting screenshot. This is how a lower
gunner/radio operator position. It’s interesting that the turret is mad
extracting below the plane, as in the real plane. Extracting/retracting
the turret will affect plane’s behavior. While the turret is retracted,
the gunner/radio operator will remain in specially modeled radio room.
After extraction he will be able to switch between places. As I
understood, switching will be instant, without exploring other inner
parts of the plane.
When
I asked: “What will happen if gunner/radio operator is killed while
being in his radio room?”, Sergey answered that there is no conclusion
yet. Most likely the turret will not extract.
Ammo line will move in a special casing. Through the windows available in it you can see that ammunition runs out.
After
discussing the matters of modeling Italian machineguns, in the middle
if which, he showed me a rarity book about aviation weaponry of WWII
published in 1941 (!), we moved to Blenheim. I studied pilot/navigator
and gunner positions.
Interesting that the navigator’s bomb-sight just by the look is very different to what you can see on German and Italian planes.
In
fact, all bombers I’ve seen (Ju 88, He 111, BR.20, Blenheim) have
bomb-sights of original construction. Answering my question about
structural differences, Sergey said that all bomb-sight process same
data. Though, where there was no optical equipment there will be no
any. And operating procedures will differ a lot.
I liked the
Blenheim’s gunner turret a lot. It has a very wide angle of firing,
including significant part of lower hemisphere. It is no match for that
wretchedness, which Americans did on A-20. I believe a lot of
unexpected unpleasant surprises await blue pilots. You will also be
able to control remaining ammo in the clip. Besides, the process of
reloading machinegun clips will be taken much closer to realism.
German
gunners were not forgotten as well. Remaining ammo in MG-15 clips will
also be under control. And gunner positions in He 111 had some heave
rework with aim to make operating them better and of course closer to
realism.
So, glass from the upper turret will slide forward allowing
gunner to greatly increase the angle of firing, though it will still
make some limitations.
Nose part had been reworked even greater. This is how it looks now:
Here
we see two machineguns and they will be modeled as different gunner
positions. Upper is mounted in a ball and socket joint. But the other
one ...
In FB lower machinegun was modeled as ball and socket
joint mounted much like IL-4. In BoB the ball and socket joint itself
is mounted in the “Ikaria” turret. Because of this firing angle
increases dramatically, making nose gunner really dangerous. Turning
the turret will be operated with additional buttons.
By the way,
Sergey complained about not enough buttons on the keyboard and because
of this they could probably reduce amount of plane control functions
such as: turning off fire extinguishers lock etc. On behalf of
community I assured him that we will find where to bind those functions
– main thing is that there was something to bind to.
If you take a
place of a pilot in He 111 you will be surprised. I’ve spotted a
complain about field of view being not realistic in He 111 many times.
Now, in addition to visually more thin borders and the ability to move
point of view around the cockpit, you can open the hatch above and lean
out controlling the plane at the same time, as it was done in real
Heinkel. Sergey showed me many photos of a special protective shield,
which extended when a pilot leaned out of the hatch to improve
visibility on a landing approach. We’ll get the same thing.
I
thanked Sergey and moved on. To Alexey Pervov, who is working on ground
objects. I didn’t manage to take a minute of his time, but I was
allowed to spectate the show on screen. There was a battle between
several English tanks and German APCs Sd.Kfz.231. It finished quite
quickly, English side won, but I managed to observe some details.
APCs
had all their wheels rotating and suspension individually reacted on
the terrain roughness. Tanks were affected with this too. Besides,
after a shoot a field-gun had a recoil that moved it backwards. And as
I was told with high caliber shot tank shifts a bit with the recoil.
Also
I observed a motocycle (wheels are rotating as does the rotating bar,
when hit – falls on one side) and an explosion of small fuel warehouse
(actually, there was just a warehouse filled with barrels, but what
could possibly be there instead of fuel? After explosion barrels flew
aside breaking the fence. Very nice. The only thing that confused me –
all the barrels had no visible damage. But I didn’t start to discuss
the barrels DM, hoping that the work is in process and it will be done
in future. Moreover it was clear that environment was from the old
engine, so there’s a great amount of work still to be done.
I left
Alexey fixing AI for German tankmen and moved on to Yuriy Kryachko. By
taking single look at the screen I unintentionally caught a thought
that I got to the seashore for the first time this year, and felt sorry
that the monitor width will allow me only to push my hands through and
rinse them in sea water. Reality shift was so complete, that when the
picture stuttered for a moment I felt like Neo pulled out of Matrix.
Waves
were in complete 3D, with white caps over some of them, and the surf
washed the shore so convincing that it’s sound could be heard even with
sound turned off.
Yuriy told me, that it’s not final, and there are
still thing to be done such as: decide how to take the surf accordingly
to seashore line at every point of it and how to make underwater
exterior. I should say, that the last note doesn’t mean MG is going to
make a Submarine simulator anytime soon. It’s just because planes fall
in water very often and the picture a pilot sees is also a subject to
take care of for MG.
Overwhelmed by it I said that the only thing
left is to model a 3D shark, which is going to swim towards the pilot
out of gloomy depths. Yuriy answered, that they already got sharks,
with a strange tone in his voice. I didn’t get whether he was joking or
not.
The thing he stated seriously is that new water will have at
least the same performance impact as the one we have now, or even less.
Such thing became possibly because of new engine and water surface
optimization. Yuriy’s report on the matter can be found here (7,92 Мб).
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