Ace Combat 6 Demo on Xbox Live Marketplace Now!

[Tineras]

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/11/ace-combat-6-and-ncaa-football-2008-demos-on-xbox-live/

[wildone_106]

I just played the demo from Xbox live, it looks AMAZING..the sky/atmosphere feels thick with clouds, contrails. The City (San Fran) looks incredible from medium to high alts, even down low you get an incredible sense of speed. Its amazing considering how the terrain is handled..great texture work and simple geometry makes it feel packed with buildings. Man if a 'real' sim could get this right it'd kick ass.

The effects on the plane are awesome..contrails/leading edge when you pull hard (again..nothing thats impossible to do and adds ALOT..but no one bothers to do it?) Nice shiny specular on the planes hull. Gorgeous lighting & shadows. Full screen motion blur when your panning around (looks great, realistic) Very nice afterburner effect (no one's been able to do that on the PC??)
The Japanese are great with details and its in abundance makes this look awesome...

Of course it all falls apart in the flight model and realistic weapons handling..there is none..lock & fire...but thats not surprising its an arcade game.
But they have kicked all ass's in terms of the look and feel..I WISH any PC sim maker could match some of the details they put into this..it really goes along way to drawing one into the world your engaged in..


update: been playing this some more, totally amazed how much Im liking it..I never thought I'd say that about an arcade flying game but its a heck of alot fun...hope we can learn from it at least graphically..

[Tineras]

It is just stunning to look at! :bigeyes: And yes, it does feel really fast near the ground. I wish Over G had the same polish and sense of speed.

[wildone_106]

It'd be great if the look & feel of fighter ops was similar with regards to the details..if it can be done on a lowly Xbox360 think of the potential of a PC that could be tapped.

[Buckshot]

(again..nothing thats impossible to do and adds ALOT..but no one bothers to do it?) .

The truth is that it has nothing to do with "nobody bothering to do it" if it was that easy, of course everyone would do it. Remember with a console only one platform has to be coded for, every user is going to have the exact same components. With a PC this is not the case, that is one very simple reason why console games almost always look better than their PC counterpart.

Secondly, it's very easy for a company making a "flight game" to focus on graphics and fancy effects, what else is there for them to focus on? They don't have to reserve cpu cycles for complex dynamics, weapons and avionics systems, dynamic campaigns etc etc.

The intent for Fighter Ops certainly is to combine the highest quality visuals available with the highest level of realism seen on a PC flight sim, however we do need to be realistic.

[Tineras]

I can't even imagine the amount of overhead that is required to support all the different levels/types of pc hardware.

[wildone_106]

I dont buy it, I think its a matter of attention to detail and choice.
How much extra effort does it take to have the leading edges flutter with a pressure effect to give it that touch of realism for example?

I thought a simulation was supposed to give a sense of realism, so I really dont understand what you meant there? If it fails to immerse me into the world its trying to simulate then it might as well be wireframe by that reasoning?

There's definitely truth to what you said about everyone's PC being different versus the console, but at some point if you set out to create something 'state of the art' you cant shackle oneself with the lowest common demoninator either..penalise the high end and sacrifice next gen quality because some people are still running 486's?!
Sure you might alienate those users if they just cant run the game..but what about trying to get new customers who do have the medium/high end machines and want to see something thats truly fantastic?
Otherwise just make a game for the Walmart $10 game bin right..

I think Crytech's "Crysis" is a good example of this, its going for DX10 high end machines with outstanding visuals and gameplay..are you going to tell me that game wont be a hit or sell many many copies?! C'mon..the core market of these kinda games are willing to spend the money on hardware if necessary
and its what keeps the industry going forward..you have to innovate and do things not done before..or all you get is a stale rehash that is'nt exactly gonna inspire.

When I look at Ace Combat 6 I see innovation at least graphically..yes granted they dont have any type of flight engine/dynamics to worry about..but thats all programmer/coding, its an art issue but the 2 disciplines are intertwined of course.

But todays high end machines do have the CPU cycles to handle it..I have dual Nvidia 768mb cards on my machine just waitin to burn up a good advanced flight sim. Even if someone took the engine from 'Falcon' say, which runs perfectly fine on old machines but completely re-did the graphics engine to Ace Combat standards..you'd have a killer thing on your hands..its not necessary to re-invite the wheel if the flight model is good for example..Im not saying thats the answer because you have to make a new flight model
anyway..but the machines nowdays are MUCH more advanced and Ace Combat 6 really shows off whats possible on the graphics end of things at least..if no one is gonna at least aim that high it'll never happen!;)

I dont know enough about Fighter Ops to say either way as Im still new to it and hav'nt seen much yet..but Im sure its gonna aim for those high standards that alot of simmers would drool over..!




The truth is that it has nothing to do with "nobody bothering to do it" if it was that easy, of course everyone would do it. Remember with a console only one platform has to be coded for, every user is going to have the exact same components. With a PC this is not the case, that is one very simple reason why console games almost always look better than their PC counterpart.

Secondly, it's very easy for a company making a "flight game" to focus on graphics and fancy effects, what else is there for them to focus on? They don't have to reserve cpu cycles for complex dynamics, weapons and avionics systems, dynamic campaigns etc etc.

The intent for Fighter Ops certainly is to combine the highest quality visuals available with the highest level of realism seen on a PC flight sim, however we do need to be realistic.

[Eagle Driver]

Okay, although the flight dynamics have to utterly fail in realism by our standards, I have to hear from someone how the planes handle. I will explain. In Ace Combat 04, you had angle of attack very much a factor of your flying, you could hit flat ground while pointing up, and some planes really held high angles, the only problem was that maneuverability was decided by whoever could go the slowest (Tornaod IDS dogfights better than the Raptor in that game). Anyway, in Ace Combat 5 and Zero, the planes rode on rails, AoA never exceeded 2 degrees unless you stalled, and the planes handled uniformly, only to different extents based on stats. I just have to know, do the planes feel decent or are they still rail-riders? *cringes in anticipation of response*

[Pacman]

I'll let Buckshot get more into detail but one thing here.

Julian is spot on with his remark. He didn't say that those effects don't need to be in there. He was using that merely as an example. He said that Console games have the CPU and GPU overhead to focus on the visuals not having to care about the GFX in cooperation with other code dragging the user's console to it's knees.

Let's say we put the maximum of today's GFX capabilities in, and the maximum input for systems, avionics etc...even the most powerfull desktop PC to date would not even be able to get 1 FPS.
Heck a console may burn up :)

It is all about balancing it all, and enabling the user to adjust his settings depending on his system. I agree that GFX support part of the realism feeling. On the other hand being able to run a decent systems and avionics, battlefield experience set does the same. It is all about what somebody believes is "realism".

Julian is spot on that a console game only needs to support decent GFX, hence why they do an amazing job in that area. They can use all their CPU and GPU overhead on this. Indeed AC6 is a perfect example. Now let those same people put in a decent systems and avionics package, AI for comms, wingmen, enemy, the entities on a huge modern battlefield including sensors and weapons, etc, etc...and believe me, GFX would be tuned down a HELL of a lot. As a console would crawl begging for merci.

It is up to us to find a fine balance between the GFX realism and the aircraft/ battlefield realism.
I agree with you that we cannot keep supporting the P3 crowd, perhaps even the earliest single system P4. That is totally unrealistic. What we will be able to do is make sure that somebody that owns a mediocre system at the time of release is able to run FighterOps with "all sliders down".

We will support people that have mediocre to powerfull systems, or even multiple systems. So even somebody with 2 or more mediocre systems would be able to run FighterOps with a more decent performance. Off course people with 2 or more powermachines would have a blast:evils:

Dirk

[Buckshot]

Yep, you have completely missed the point. Again it has nothing to do with effort, but everything to do with simply what is possible and what is not.

Secondly I'm not saying that graphics are not important to us, there are enough threads on this forum talking about visuals to show that, and yes we have discussed and had items such as the flexing of wings etc on our design list for some time.

The point about a PC version of a game almost always looking worse than the console version is a fact, you can look at hundreds of examples to see that, it has nothing to do with 486's, even with the latest cutting edge hardware, you have numerous variants, this requires hardware and driver layers which all add overhead, compromises and take away from the features/performance you could achieve if you are programming for a set hardware suite. Of course event that is over simplifying it, if someone released a PC game which ONLY worked on the latest cutting edge hardware, they would be digging their own grave, so add to the dozens of cutting edge cards the fact you need to support at the very least the previous two generations, then mix in CPU's, audio, RAM, etc and all the combinations of above.

If you really listen to what is being said, and think about it, take a look at the hundreds of examples you can see every day, you will start to realise that it is nowhere close to as simplistic as deciding that every game doesn't look like it was filmed with a HD recorder, real actors and real aircraft, simply because the companies could not be bothered or didn't want to. As with everything in life, there are limitations and trade offs, if it was one tenth as easy as you assume it is, then everyone would be doing it, the fact of the matter is this is nowhere near how things work.

[Bucser]

And anyways when you look in that demo on the floor there is only one very awful texture and some boxes on the ground textured.

NO geometry on the terain and the only positive thing is the gorgeus Plane models and some nice effect on missile trails and clouds.

but to be honest i have seen better quality models in Red Viper or in FS2004.

i am very disappointed with the Ace Combat 6. i would have even considered buying an X360 for this game after seeing the trailers. but when i saw it ingame... My first opinion it is ugly.

My second opinion i still could not play with an arcade game like that:)

[Tineras]

And anyways when you look in that demo on the floor there is only one very awful texture and some boxes on the ground textured.

NO geometry on the terain and the only positive thing is the gorgeus Plane models and some nice effect on missile trails and clouds.

but to be honest i have seen better quality models in Red Viper or in FS2004.

i am very disappointed with the Ace Combat 6. i would have even considered buying an X360 for this game after seeing the trailers. but when i saw it ingame... My first opinion it is ugly.

My second opinion i still could not play with an arcade game like that:)

Wow, I couldn't disagree more. The game is beautiful in motion. I don't know what you were seeing, but almost no one has complained about the visuals with the exception being the ground textures (which are still better than most flight sims/games).

As far as the models, you should watch the cut scenes in HD (If you haven't). These are all in-game models and they look fantastic. All the cut scenes are using the game engine. They are not pre-rendered. Graphically, this is worlds apart from Red Viper. You can just tell that Red Viper is old graphics technology with some polish. It still feels old. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Of course, all of this is in terms of just visuals. It's obviously not a realistic sim. That's not what they were going for.

http://globalfalcon.org/vb/forums/showthread.php?t=284

VS

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/894/894201/img_4702836.html

Not even close.

[wildone_106]

Yea seriously, if you think Ace Combat 6 is ugly show me a game thats better looking all around??!?!

[wildone_106]

http://pc.ign.com/objects/694/694190.html

Tell me this wont be a top selling PC (ps3?) game developed for the PC with kick ass cutting edge DX10 graphics. I think your point is destroyed right there..


"if someone released a PC game which ONLY worked on the latest cutting edge hardware, they would be digging their own grave, "

[wildone_106]

Now again I dont know what span of equipment FighterOps is going for..but I sure hope they dont use that excuse as a crutch for mediocre
graphics or features, because that WILL be like digging their own grave..if it fails to inspire & excite;) But I have faith:) Just bringing these things to the attention of the mass's

[Buckshot]

I think your point is destroyed right there..

Ahhh no, it only shows that you are still completely missing or deliberately ignoring the point.

The point I made was that even if you were only programming for the cutting edge hardware (ie one generation of cards, cpu's, etc etc) then you have to make sacrifices and add miles of extra complexity that you do not have to worry about when programming for a console. The remark which was added (and clearly has nothing to do with the main point we are discussing) is that any game developer who was making a PC game to only work on one generation of hardware would be crazy, Crysis is set to use the Dx10 engine, that is true, but it is also going to be programmed to be able to take in several generations of CPU as I mentioned, by the time it's released there will be at least 2 possibly 3 generations of Dx10 video card, so even there my sidenote is not destroyed at all and again the real point has clearly gone way over your head.

[wildone_106]

Yes but in Crysis case they are'nt developing for the lowest common demoninator are they? Sure you can try to run it on an older maching but 'good luck'! They are going for gold in terms of visuals and game play. Of course it will run on other DX10 generations beyond whats its written for.

Ace Combat 6 also pushed it as far they could for the 360 from what I was seeing..why cant we expect the same type of attention to detail in a PC sim? A flight sim is very complex to programme for but in terms of art its a heck of a lot easier than making characters with complex skeleton & facial rigs along with physics, AI & world rendering. I dont see WHY we cant see that level of details in visuals whilst still having a decent flight model..they are'nt mutually exclusive and I was hoping people would take note of what AC6 is doing, or are we gonna have another sterile generic flight sim.

[kydius]

You shouldn't compare FO to Crysis, it's two completely different worlds. Sure Crysis will sell well. It's a FPS and shooters like that are probably the most popular and best selling type of games on PC. It's quite the opposite for combat flight sims though. So yes, the guys at Crytek can afford to code DX10 only and it won't bother a lot of people.

So yes it has great graphics but it doesn't have to render dozens (even hundreds) of kilometers of scenery each second and it has no A-A or A-G radar to simulate and I'm not even talking about complex flight and damage models nor 3D clickable pit. All of these takes A LOT of resources.

And you don't seem to realize what happened with LOMAC. Everybody was thrilled because it had so great graphics at the time but it lacked a lot especially in terms of avionics. And guess what, if it had the avionics and realism of Falcon 4, probably no machine on earth would be able to run it. Even with today's hardware, people still have problems getting constant high FPS in this game.

So the key here, as others said, is balance. If all cpu and gpu cycles are used to render an amazing scenery you won't have enough power to run the "heart" of the sim. And as complex as this sim will be, it will need to use every single cycle it can efficiently.

[wildone_106]

No I was'nt comparing it directly, I was trying to say that they are going for hi-fidelity, high end stuff, look what can be done.

I think if you look at what AC6 is doing, its using alot of cheap tricks to get the effect right..but it WORKS. The city looks fantastic and its not rendering every detail of the buildings (even FSX cant do that) but it does a fantastic job of giving a mood & atmosphere that blows AWAY any other 'flying' game to date seriously. The 360 is decent hardware but alot of PC's can completely blow it away. I think if you did everything AC6 is doing graphically it would'nt kill any current gen PC at all. I could run AC6 on just ONE of my video cards..!

Just sit down with it if you get a chance and I garuntee it'll spark some inspiration of what can be done on a lowly Xbox;)




You shouldn't compare FO to Crysis, it's two completely different worlds. Sure Crysis will sell well. It's a FPS and shooters like that are probably the most popular and best selling type of games on PC. It's quite the opposite for combat flight sims though. So yes, the guys at Crytek can afford to code DX10 only and it won't bother a lot of people.

So yes it has great graphics but it doesn't have to render dozens (even hundreds) of kilometers of scenery each second and it has no A-A or A-G radar to simulate and I'm not even talking about complex flight and damage models nor 3D clickable pit. All of these takes A LOT of resources.

And you don't seem to realize what happened with LOMAC. Everybody was thrilled because it had so great graphics at the time but it lacked a lot especially in terms of avionics. And guess what, if it had the avionics and realism of Falcon 4, probably no machine on earth would be able to run it. Even with today's hardware, people still have problems getting constant high FPS in this game.

So the key here, as others said, is balance. If all cpu and gpu cycles are used to render an amazing scenery you won't have enough power to run the "heart" of the sim. And as complex as this sim will be, it will need to use every single cycle it can use efficiently.

[Tineras]

I will admit that some of the models I've seen for Red Viper are nice, but graphical immersion is about the total package.

[Tineras]

Yes but in Crysis case they are'nt developing for the lowest common demoninator are they? Sure you can try to run it on an older maching but 'good luck'! They are going for gold in terms of visuals and game play. Of course it will run on other DX10 generations beyond whats its written for.

Ace Combat 6 also pushed it as far they could for the 360 from what I was seeing..why cant we expect the same type of attention to detail in a PC sim? A flight sim is very complex to programme for but in terms of art its a heck of a lot easier than making characters with complex skeleton & facial rigs along with physics, AI & world rendering. I dont see WHY we cant see that level of details in visuals whilst still having a decent flight model..they are'nt mutually exclusive and I was hoping people would take note of what AC6 is doing, or are we gonna have another sterile generic flight sim.


No, they aren't developing for the lowest common denominator, but they are developing for all denominators (that sounds weird :confused:). You also have to consider the size of their team and their insane budget. They are also not working with volunteers.

No one is saying that FO is going to look bad, but you can't spend %100 of you effort in many different places. I'm sure there will be weaknesses in Crysis, just as there are in Halo, GTA, and the likes. Seriously, GTA was one of the most fun, well thought out games I've ever played and the graphics were horrible. Sacrifices have to be made. In Crysis, you're talking about small scale islands. They don't have to worry about textures/clouds/action 100 miles away. This is not even considering that the whole globe will be modeled.

[Pacman]

Well, to end this discussion I'm sure that Buckshot and myself have been very clear with our explanations. And that they hold valid ground.
Nothing to add to it. Even if the person that is in the discussion continues to see our posts in another way then intended.
It is clear that the other posters do see where we are going with our responses, so there sn't a problem in the wy we try to explain ourselves.

We rest our case.

Dirk

[Bucser]

Yea seriously, if you think Ace Combat 6 is ugly show me a game thats better looking all around??!?!

Have you seen FS-X with tileproxy and with some nice city scenery?? They will blow AC6 away anytime.

And i saw HD videos.

[Tineras]

Well, to end this discussion I'm sure that Buckshot and myself have been very clear with our explanations. And that they hold valid ground.
Nothing to add to it. Even if the person that is in the discussion continues to see our posts in another way then intended.
It is clear that the other posters do see where we are going with our responses, so there isn't a problem in the way we try to explain ourselves.

We rest our case.

Dirk

:blank: I am so ready for this post to die now.

[wildone_106]

Yea show me it, in a combat sim environment and I'd be very happy;)
Its all good, I understand. I have 12 years of game development and I've seen it all and worked on N64, Ps1,2 & 360 hardware so I know the limitations pretty well and I for one am gonna be the first in line to buy Fighter ops.


Have you seen FS-X with tileproxy and with some nice city scenery?? They will blow AC6 away anytime.

And i saw HD videos.

[Dev0]

Yea show me it, in a combat sim environment and I'd be very happy;)
Its all good, I understand. I have 12 years of game development and I've seen it all and worked on N64, Ps1,2 & 360 hardware so I know the limitations pretty well and I for one am gonna be the first in line to buy Fighter ops.

ROFL if you had 12 minutes experience acting as gofer for a game development company you'd know better than the crap you have posted here.

[Bucser]

Yea show me it, in a combat sim environment and I'd be very happy;)
Its all good, I understand. I have 12 years of game development and I've seen it all and worked on N64, Ps1,2 & 360 hardware so I know the limitations pretty well and I for one am gonna be the first in line to buy Fighter ops.

And what have you developed?:)

[Eagle Driver]

Pong XXVIIXVIXVIIIXVIXVIXVIIXIVXVIXVIIXIXXXVIVIVVVIXVIX III in 3D!
JK, don't hurt me.