![]() It features distinctive engine sounds, hearty gunfire, thudding flak, and the Doppler zoom of a plane roaring past your canopy. With graphics as sharp as IL-2's, this latter feature is a deceptively addictive time sink. You can record your missions to watch them after the fact or to assemble them as cinematic replays from different perspectives. With variable zoom levels available, you can effectively stick your head up to the sights and fire at your target as if you were shooting footage with a gun camera. Good-looking explosions and fire are a dime a dozen in games these days, and IL-2 is no exception. Larger-caliber cannons and rockets leave sharp smoke trails, while dogfights at higher altitudes leave lazy twisting coils of contrails. IL-2 has a realistic tracer effect with occasional illuminated rounds for machine guns. When the shooting starts, the graphics really take off. This is the sort of sim in which you can enjoy just watching the landing gear extend and retract. Your pilot's head even turns to look at his target. The aircraft models are superbly detailed, from chipped paint to moving control surfaces, down to every flap and leading edge slat. Water has a rippled translucent look, and surf even laps at the shore. To create forests, IL-2 uses a clever trick with layered bitmaps that give the illusion of depth and multiple trees-it's a bold new effect that pays off much better than mere forest textures with fake shadows along one edge. Instead of using generic urban texture tiles, towns are modeled using hand-placed 3D objects (although they'll only appear at short range to keep the frame rate manageable). What a delight to see them in a fully realized game. The volumetric clouds, the atmospheric lighting, and the weather effects are the stuff of tech demos. IL-2 is arguably the most beautiful flight sim to date. Volumetric clouds are one of the impressive visual effects in IL-2. It has all the fidelity, immersion, playability, polish, and graphical splendor that enriched classics like Red Baron, Aces over the Pacific, Falcon 3.0, and European Air War. This is one of those simulations that reminds you why you love the genre. ![]() IL-2 Sturmovik is destined to be a classic. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |