DCS WWII: Europe 1944: Kickstarter Video 3: EDGE Terrain Engine

I know someone who had the opportunity to test out a full blown F-16 sim being contracted for the USAF. He said the graphics in Falcon BMS are better, which means DCS is even further ahead!:P

ok i was freaking out thinking the F16 pic was a in-sim screenshot :doh:

I saw a fun video where the Danish army was using Steel Beasts for tank crew training. They were running winXP.

 

The graphics in commercial sims are often poor, so you don't need crazy hardware to run them. It's the entertainment crowd that is usually more interested in seeing beautiful reflections than in having the systems work as they should.

the main difference is that for army simulators like that the scenery is MUCH less important and is not a priority.

They instead mainly focus on getting all the controls right, have the movement/flight behavior of the tank/plane correctly simulated , have the ballistics of the munitions correct, AND have a fully simulated battlefield environment with a large number of other objects (vehicles, tanks, planes etc) all moving around at the same time and interacting.

as such these military simulators are much more demanding on pc resources, and making the scenery look pretty is the last priority on the list.

Very cool Luthier! and a great presentation... If the first stretch goal is not met, can you still envision the possibility of the map expansion to the north, and a flyable B-17 some time in the future?

Why, oh why must the night fighters be so out of reach? :(

I really wanted to experience shooting down Lancasters and Wimpys with the Schrage Musik in a Ju-88.

Ta Luthier for the vid - very informative indeed :thumbup:

Why, oh why must the night fighters be so out of reach? :(

We are definitely considering night operations, but not initially. There's too much that needs to be done, and we're trying to go lean initially. You need to have historical radar, searchlights, airborne radar and night interceptors with their own AI etc. It's a huge project. I don't think we could pull this at the moment, and if we add it as a kickstarter stretch goal, I am really not sure we'd be able to get the hundreds of thousands of dollars something like this would cost.

Illya mentioned the different requirements for a commercial simulator v. an entertainment product.

To give you an idea... Our commercial -airline- simulator uses the latest and greatest Thales has to offer. However, you won't find fire-extinguishers, tractors, houses (except for the odd high-rise here and there) or even trees in their scenery. Things that make scenery 'alive' and are vital(?) for an entertainment product. Even the mesh of the terrain is roughly on par with ED's _current_ terrain (non-EDGE).

Commercial simulators have the advantage as far as visual -cues- are concerned. "Things that pilots look for-" I believe someone said in the kickstarter video which is spot on. I have never, ever, experienced a stutter or a tear in a 'real sim'. It is completely fluid and it never misses a beat... because the rest of the scenery is sparse, almost non-existent. Fog really does look like fog and blowing snow is mesmerizing to look at. That's just the image side of things. Flight modeling is obviously more sophisticated in commercial products as well although I'm amazed at what Yo-Yo and Friends are capable of considering what they have to work with. More than adequate for an entertainment product such as DCS. Simulator developers such as Thales and Lockheed Martin get their data directly from the aircraft manufacturer. This data is vast and extremely expensive to purchase. They're not trying to fit curves found in an aircraft performance manual.

Anyway, off on a tangent. Very impressed with the images of EDGE so far. If framerate can keep up I'll be one happy camper for sure!

Yes, it is a good idea to keep talk of things commercial and gaming separate.

One thing which worries me, with regard to the screenies... understood it is that everything is in very very early stages - very early stages, but the terrain (noted is the qualifier of NO COLOUR CORRECTION) shown is eerily familiar. If Speedtree is being used... let's hope the LOD side of things scales well

Im a bit confused ... is this part of ED's team or a 3rd party / partner.Their offices have windows :sorcerer:... though they lived in a concrete cave.

:D

BTW look at the guy's monitor at 2:10, I sniped a pilot render not really matching the WWII era, so they could be the ED guys helping for RRG...

Not necessarily. I have never seen a full blown simulator, but given what can be done with proper multi-threading and well optimized code, not to mention that there is no reason for only one computer to be running the thing in the first place; it may well be possible, even probable.

 

Customer's, especially, the 'government' types are very interested in off-the-shelf solutions whenever possible.

(@Luthier1)

Exactly, and this makes me hope that EDGE is not CPU core limited. Like 1 core audio, 1 core everything else as we have now.

Basically the question is, is EDGE good coding for multi-threading and the use of all available cpu cores.

Until now I haven't read it anywhere and I think it is such a strong promotional point. Wich makes me wonder why very much.

Anyway it is a really nice update, thanks!

This is a bit OT, but I'm really curious. Is there any "marketing" reason for everybody speaking Russian in these videos, or does nobody at ED speak English?

A lot of the development is done in Russia and most people tend to, you know, speak Russian there. They may have some English but are probably more comfortable talking about technical things in their native tongue. Subtitles are just fine anyway.

I find it a bit odd that there should be not even a short generic flyover demo available in a graphics engine in 4th generation. How would they ever market their capabilities to commercial/military customers (- sorry, trust us it will look great, but we can't show you)?

Still, thanks for the update, nice to see Luthier roaming the planet in the pursuit of making this project happen.

MAC

A lot of the development is done in Russia and most people tend to, you know, speak Russian there. They may have some English but are probably more comfortable talking about technical things in their native tongue. Subtitles are just fine anyway.

Fair enough, but my experience with software development is the opposite. I feel more comfortable coding and speaking of code in English than my native Spanish. The technical terms and APIs are all in English anyway, and mixing languages sounds stupid.

But whatever floats their boat :thumbup:

Good insight, I feel that tech-wise they are telling us only a 10% of the story.

No one talked about APIs, 3D tech, GPUs or CPUs in this video. They are keeping this very non-technical, I suspect this will be a huge (positive) surprise in terms of scalability and performance.

I love the sense of humor going on in this video :D

Thank you, keep it coming!

Thanks for the update luthier.

(@Luthier1)

 

Exactly, and this makes me hope that EDGE is not CPU core limited. Like 1 core audio, 1 core everything else as we have now.

Basically the question is, is EDGE good coding for multi-threading and the use of all available cpu cores.

 

Until now I haven't read it anywhere and I think it is such a strong promotional point. Wich makes me wonder why very much.

 

Anyway it is a really nice update, thanks!

+1

We need the info whether this will utilize more than just 2 cores (1 for sound only as already posted), and will it perform better. That part is more important to me than the visuals.

Best video so far!

+1 for pics or even video of the 190 pit if possible!

This is a bit OT, but I'm really curious. Is there any "marketing" reason for everybody speaking Russian in these videos, or does nobody at ED speak English?

I would not be surprised if it is just that they feel their english is not well enough and thus feel uncomfortable if forced to speak in front of people - let alone in front of a camera. At least that is how I would feel. I think, my written english is understandable and I would certainly get my points across when talking to people, but I am not used to it and would feel really arkward. :o)

(this is btw & ot something that gives me headaches whenever somewhere teamspeak is involved ... lol)

I think subtitles are preferable to poor spoken English leading to misunderstandings.

I think subtitles are preferable to poor spoken English leading to misunderstandings.

Agreed. Subtitles are totally fine.

One thing which worries me, with regard to the screenies... understood it is that everything is in very very early stages - very early stages, but the terrain (noted is the qualifier of NO COLOUR CORRECTION) shown is eerily familiar.

Heh! I had the exact same thought. Hopefully it's just unlit, uncorrected assets in the editor.

Fingers crossed they'll take a peek at what Team Fusion have been up to recently. :)