[Oesten]

[CB..]

oh yes indeedy ..now were talking...!!!


i have here open the latest games magazine containing all those cutting edge games using the very zenith of graphical technology...loads of the usual in game screen shots all spouting endlesly about their stunning lighting effects and huge detail improvements and so on...(yawn) and nothing in this magazine could even be considered to be worthy of consideration....graphically ..compared to those VS shots (many thanks!)
makes yu laugh to hear them go on about high end graphics when one glance at those screen shots puts it all in perspective...yup....there is a infinite gap between "good graphics" and ART......yu dont hire a plumber to paint yur portrait...im sick of hearing the hype about graphics when it's patently obviuos to anyone with half a brain that the graphics provided in most cutting edge games is little more than childish cartoon style fudging compared to those shots from VS...brilliant...let the game developers throw their lollipops out of their prams.. and moan all they like..but don't let them con us into accepting primary school crayon scribblings as "cutting edge graphics" ..daft apeths...he he!!!
i mean a game is what it is...cartoony graphics are fine...what i object too is being expected to accept half assed multi-coloured party balloon palettes and sub secondary school level artistic representations of reality as the latest thing AND be expected to shell out half the price of a new PC in order to see them "in their full glory"(?????) ...it's that sort of blatent hype and comercialism that eventually kills most good things..
honesty.. thats whats needed ...market a game as what it is...
nice one for those shots again!! i shall be looking out for a copy of VS, let the graphical wizards benchmark that one!!!

[Oesten]

Absolutely, CB.

Virtual Skipper 3 will be a year old when SHIII comes out late this year. If the SHIII Dev team can't at least equal the graphics of a year-old product (and one with a FAR smaller niche market than their own game) then that would be disappointing, frankly.

Sorry, Neal - but that's your benchmark, as far as sea and sky graphics is concerned! Not Enigma: Rising Tide.

[AS]

Absolutely SMASHING!

Sadly, I´ve never heard about Virtual Sailor before, although I read common game magazines regularily. There´s not much about it in the Internet, too, so here´s my questions:

-which part is the current one? (Number 3 I take it???)

-very rough idea about the system requ.?

-how much is it?

I gonna get it ASAP.

Oh, and before I forget.... to all those "we can´t/shoudn´t/wouldn´t care for good graphics since we only believe in gameplay nagh agh nagh...": Why the hell is it that such a off-mainstream sim as Virtual Sailor has such outstanding graphics??? I mean, I can´t believe it has more that a handful fans, has it? And yet the graphics are better than anything I´ve seen in all those hyped mainstream mega-sellers....

Seeing this, will I ever cope with that lousy crayon-style SH3 graphics...?

Cheers, AS

[Leif...]

These pictures look very good indeed, but as you already have discovered this is graphically a one of a kind (currently). And why is that? It’s because it takes a skilled programmer and a skilled artist to come up with a result like this. It’s not something anyone can do just because someone else has done it before.

On the other hand there are many programmers that could do this, but it doesn’t come for free, it takes time. And time is always in limited supply.

What I’m trying to say is that one can’t realistically pick graphical details from different games or simulators and expect them all to show up in the next title, couse it has been done before -by someone else.

Still one can always hope.

Leif…

[Seeadler]

OT: A demo of VS3 can be found here
http://www.virtualskipper.com/indexUk.php

[AS]

Forget about my silly questions above, I confused Virtual Skipper with Virtual Sailor, sorry.

Just downloaded and played the demo - the graphics are really extraordinary and best I´ve ever seen. The demo plays somewhat boring, though... gotta have a look at the full version.

At Leif: After "Pirates of the Caribbean" Virtual Skipper 3 is the second game that has highly realistical seas, so I can´t quite follow your argument. SH3 graphics look absolutly lousy and outdated compared to those sims mentioned. Even the "Virtual Sailor demo" I accidently downloaded has quite acceptable sea-action, although it was programmed by only one guy...

So why do you defend the Dev Team? Ubi Soft isn´t just an amateur software producer, is it? So if we are expected to pay full price, we can expect full quality, especially when it´s been done before...

Cheers, AS

[Seeadler]

[CaptJodan]

Been a while since I've been here, but always nice to come back. Let's see if I still know how to post.

::steps on soap box::

Well, I'm of the "have the cake and eat it too" crowd. There's going to have to be some negotiating between graphics and gameplay due to cost and time, because that's how the game is played (no pun intended). But there's no reason why a simulation shouldn't come up to at least what has been done a year or more pior. God if I have to suffer a whole patrol with only one type of weather the whole way through (always cloudy or always sunny, or always stormy), I think I'll shoot myself....or the computer...or the game. I personally look to Lock On or FB for titles that are
A: Simulations (aka lesser bought than shooters)
B: Realistic-ish (people have their opinions on that, but I personally believe FB comes closer than anything yet done, and it's got something SH2 never really had....support which continues to improve it)
C: Graphics (These aren't your two years ago graphics. Well maybe FB but it was originally an add on and I still think the graphics are good enough for me.)

I don't expect SHIII to be top of the line in terms of graphic detail, but I do more or less expect that it can give me an immersive enviornment, and for me, that's the key. An immersive enviorment includes both gameplay and graphics. It means that the interior and exterior shots are of fairly good quality. It means the weather actually changes (I really want to see some storm screen shots...I want WAVES man! Real honest to god scary waves tippin my boat) But immersion also means accurate modeling...I really hated those unlimited depth charge destroyers, and how can I pretend this is immersive if the AI is so talented at hitting my boat in 39? (SH2)

I know it sounds like a lot but I don't really think it is too much. Dynamic campaigns have been around for ages as has been discussed on this board countless times. Decent weathering and sea-sky looks have been around in other games as well. Spray would be nice, but I doubt we'll ever see it. Crew running to dive stations would be nice, but I actually don't expect it, and won't cry in my soup if it isn't there (it may be a frame hog on some systems anyway). I just think that Ubi itself has come out with games in recent years that have both realism and eye candy, so I believe it possible. I understand that the sub genre has a far less budget than, say, flight sims, but the differences cannot be so drastic that we get something akin in playability and graphics that is the new SH2 of our time.

::steps off soap box::

[Sailor Steve]

Well said, CaptJodan. I was one of the "Campaign" group, and I still want to see that failure rectified; but if they can make it look anything like those Virtual Skipper shots, I'm all for it. One of the things I thought might be cool in the "crew activity" department would be if they fork over the money for royalties and actually use the "Das Boot" crash dive as a cut-scene.

If they can make a good career mode, accurate AI, good looking interiors and exteriors and a realistic environment, I'd be willing to pay extra. Of course I'm going to have to come up with the moolah for a better computer, first.

[R Hardman]

[Leif...]

I’m not defending the dev team; I’m just being realistic with a slightly pessimistic touch. Sub simulators have a history of not being cutting edge software. I guess simply because they are usually made by small teams with small budgets. I don’t know if this is the case this time, but if it is I wouldn’t be surprised.

Still sometimes small tweaks can create wonder so the right Atlantic look might not be so far away either. Besides, the current state isn’t that bad, there is still hope.

Leif…

[CB..]

i think for me at least the whole issue of graphics revolves around the constant trend towards forcing the customers to spend money way beyond the actual purchase price of the game itself...by utilising some minor effect that neccesitates the up-grading of our computers graphics cards....by now we all must have noticed that every year some new effect is added that is beyond our present cards capability to display..so yet again evry new game we buy carrys a penalty...do we allso spend the substantail extra sum of money for the required graphics card to compliment it....sooner or later this pattern will grow tiresome to even the most dedicated gamers...especailly when the end result is frequently disapointing anyway...i would have thought that the smaller nich markets such as subsims sail sims etc..could pioneer the use of of the tried and tested old school techniques for creating graphical enviuoments..and use those effects to the maximum extent possible...creating in the end result a far better over-all game graphically AND gameplay wise...(as the tried and tested old school gameplay elements are equally well understood);


i simply can't believe the strangness surrounding what folks consider to be cutting edge graphics..it beggers belief.....looking at the latest shots from the magazines leaves me feeling like ive entered some alternative universe...."Stepford Gamers" or the "invasion of the eye candy snatchers" are we so brainwashed by commercialism and the "next new thing" marketing that we can't use our own eyes to evaluate the results?
to be honest it actually gets quite scary....(george orwell steps up and takes a bow);

frankly any game that fully exploited to the hilt the tried and tested graphical and gameplay techniques from even two or three years ago, would make the average cutting edge game seem utterly childish in both concept and execution..and it would allso in theory be much cheaper to produce (tried and tested programming techniques) and be compatible with the average nich market gamers wallet and present computer and graphics card.....how many games have yu left on the shelf of your local gamers shop simply because yu picked up the box read the requirments..and thought...no....putting it back down again ..personally this is now a fairly regular event...one day of course my present PC will inevitably kick the bucket and then it will be a case of having to up-grade..but till then im blown if im chasing my tail after every new sales pitch......im fed up of paying more money... to get less game..
i really dont care what the reasons are...it is not unreasonable to think that
given the stunning graphics/gameplay we all know can be created using old school techniques.. that some one somewhere might be brave enough to buck the system and use those techniques in a way which simply wasnt possible at the time...(slow PC's low levels of graphical ram etc);
i'd be prepared to bet a huge amount of money that if done sensitively/artistically and with an eye for detail the results would leave most present games for dead... in every department....and at the end of the day no one really cares what techniques are used to create the graphics/gameplay (outside of research and development and marketing board rooms anyway..and the boasting down the pub brigade aswell which is perhaps the saddest thing of all) as long as the results are effective and satisfying...and the human race has been creating things that are effective and satisfying as long as it has been in existance..so we ought to know how to pull that stunt off by now..


he he!! well there yu go ...old school graphics are capable of completely outstriping current graphical standards if utilised to their full extent and executed with flair and imagination..in reality what we are viewing in game is simply put , 2d interactive animated art (yur screen is 2d regardless of whats displayed on it), and given that artistic approach /as seen in those VS shots/ as against a purely tech driven approach to graphics even a "two" colour game using a simple black/grey pencil palette against a white paper background could, if done by an talented artist make cutting edge seem,, well ...a tadge bland and amateurish .the rest is just orwellian marketing techniques :huh:



i mean heres a couple of shots from an extremely out of date version of virtual sailor...virtual sailor 4 (nothing like as good as the current version would be) BUT it manages to not only do the job perfectly well with a degree of flair and atmosphere..not to mention animated seagulls dolphins
lighthouses and a fully customisable camera position ..so yu can stand on the aft deck of the boot and with the right model even go inside the uboat and stand in the control room if the model file allows it, it does it with what would be considered very old school techniques and does it better than current games in our genre..i mean what can yu say...it's about time the games industry started giving it to us straight...virtual sailor was as AS said developed more or less by one solitary guy!...
what on earth are they telling us here?

[Seeadler]

[AS]

Again I don´t agree with you, Leif. True, subsims are not a big market, but a sailing simulation like "Virtual Skipper" isn´t neither.

So if one dev team is capable of developing photorealistic graphics for an absolute niche product, while the other dev team isn´t even able to keep up with that amateur-style "Virtual Sailor" thing you can see above... (it does look way better than SH2 and equals SH3 so far, doesn´t it?), what can we say? Why don´t they just license the "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Virtual Skipper3" graphics instead of developing anew what they obviously are not able to develop...

It really annoys me that subsims always seem to be years and years behind and there are always many guys who actually EXCUSE this, too. And please don´t tell me SH2 lacks good graphics because they put the moneey into GAMEPLAY and AI (LOL!).

So, I´m pessimistic as you are, Leif, but I´m getting somewhat bitter, too, no offense intended.

Cheers AS