Something that sticks in my head from back before IL-2 Korea was announced was that the team was looking to avoid putting a big city on the next gen sim map. I’m not sure exactly how that panned out because IL-2 Korea features quite a few cities and it looks like 1CGS have been working on newer technologies to detail them. The latest dev diary fills us in on some details.

Villages, towns, and cities of Korea

The newest developer diary talks about using polygonal outlines of neighborhoods that allow buildings to “grow automatically.” I think what they are talking about are new artist tools that let them more or less autogen a city into existence by defining different areas of the city and then having a system built that into something that resembles the real deal. The trick for doing historic sims like this one is that you’re not going to be able to use modern Open Street data or photogrammetry or some of the other new tricks, this is still artist driven using historical photos and documents.

You can see for yourself if you think its a step forward but from the screenshots I do see a more natural look to what’s been shown so far. Though I think 1CGS has been getting better at that already with Odessa and Finnish Gulf maps both showing off those efforts. This does look to take another step forward.

We’ve got some numbers too: 800 settlements including 26 large cities, 12 sea ports, and a road network that is 11,000 kilometers long.

They end off by saying that they expect to continue to add details to the map prior to and even after release and that there are a few more topics to reveal related to landscapes and the map before release day. I’m intrigued.

Read the whole dev diary here.


8 responses to “IL-2 Korea dev update talks about cities in the new sim”

  1. Imagine what they could do with this technology if they decided to remake Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Moscow? That wold be awesome! I hope they do remake all the Great Battles content with this new tech.

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    1. In the new game, of course.

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  2. Unfortunately, whilst a definite step forward from Great Battles, urban areas still look sterile and more akin to an architect’s planning vision than reality. Even if there are a few people wandering about. There’s no easy solution to this; MSFS with its real-world photogrammetry often looks appalling close-up and although more cluttered with street objects still doesn’t convince. It’s something that is never going to be addressed; it just isn’t possible to simulate everything down to the last little detail across an enormous map area, especially trying to recreate something from seventy years ago. The dev team are to be applauded for their efforts, as I don’t suppose it can get much better. Cheers.

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    1. We have come a long way over these past 20 years, if you revisit early flight sims and compare to what we achieve today. performance is generally the throttle for this kind of work. Flight sims, unlike Cyberpunk2077, have to balance the level of detail of a given terrain/city with the requirement that we be able to see it from up to 30000 ft altitude, out to a horizon at 50 miles, and be instantly zoom-viewable in any direction, and allow me to move across it at 500knots….rendered at playable framerates.This is where AI is supposed to be used (its not. its used instead as a replacement for human artists/resources to save costs or speed up delivery), is where details are generated, on the fly, within a game engine’s instance. e.g: So, i zoom my view down from the sky above and with each notch of magnification, details are revealed that are dynamic and not in need of being stored. some windows are open and i can see generated furniture inside, vehicles and people are moving about without need for pre-scripting. The simulator engine would apply AI as needed , per user.Thats going to take about another decade of evolution on PC hardware, but the last decade went by pretty fast if you ask me, so im optimistic

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      1. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
        ShamrockOneFive

        We definitely have! Maybe some AI/autogen technology will help fill those details in at some point, yeah I can see that happening.

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      2. They already manage the issue that you see across a larger area at higher elevation, by reducing the quality when you zoom out. You can actually see the textures go to lower quality versions if you climb. Combat Pilot apparently will support Lumen to get rid of that sudden change in quality.

        The issue with a flight sims is that you have huge sight lines, also at relatively low elevation, so if they would add a ton of detail, your PC would slow to a crawl.

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    2. ShamrockOneFive Avatar
      ShamrockOneFive

      Yeah it’ll never look fully alive but they have clearly made some efforts to make it look better and give it a bit more life than before. While the ground flashes past as you’re flying over it, I think it’s not a bad compromise overall.

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  3. Well its never going to be perfect so any improvement is good in my books – I mean when I started out it was like this

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Simulator_%281980_video_game%29#/media/File%3AFlight_Simulator_1.0_short_animation.thumb.gif

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