Reto.Christiano

It's not as simple as that. It would require quite a bit of testing. There are a few potential issues, a big one is that the entire world would be drawn through a transparent glass effect (which is not optimized for that purpose). Our QA department would need to do a lot of testing on various graphics cards, old and new to see how it would affect performance. does the transparency even work on all graphics cards? or maybe smoke effects would be rendered on top of the glass with other graphics cards? (an issue we are already having with clouds). - Many concerns that needs to be addressed and tested QA is already overburdened by the amount of new features in the vehicle update as it is, so for now we are focusing on just having the essentials. If they also had to test all the nice-to-have stuff the update would never be released. When the essentials are all working we'll release the update as soon as it's ready, and then we can look into enabling some of the nice-to-have features.

Sorry, no. - At least not for a while. That is one of the main reasons why the planes don't have cockpit views. The cockpit resolution is not the greatest (and is even worse on the older plane models). It's something I've been tinkering with before, and thought I'd add this to the prototype to see how it would work out. I'm gonna have to disable it again before the vehicle update is released, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up on making cockpit views. Fortunately the plane models are all constructed with the idea that at some point the cockpits could be updated - so the models are structured with the cockpits being separate meshes that can be replaced without having to redo the entire plane. My ambition is to some day make cockpits that are build from generic instruments, switches, buttons, and dial modules that are shared across the different planes. While this would make the cockpits less authentic (not that they are completely right at the moment) it would mean that we can have higher detailed instruments without using excessive texture space - with the bonus that it might be possible to make some of the instruments actually be functional. This however is not something that will be coming any time soon, and is certainly not something that will delay the vehicle update. It is something I'm looking forward to working on, but there are a lot of other more essential issues that need to be done first.

They do not. Recon, Medium, and Heavy Fighters all have the same amount of hitpoints (750). When the recon and heavy fighter classes were introduced there was a debate weather or not they should have different hitpoints, but it was decided that it would be best to leave them the same for the moment to see how the fights evened out, before tweaking it. I'd imagine that there would be even more uproar right now if the P-38 had gotten a health boost on top of being the most owned heavy fighter in the game. And bonus: it does not. The Yak-9 has a maximum speed of 139 m/s (500km/h) horizontally and 166m/s (597km/h) diving. The Me-410 has a maximum speed of 150m/s (540km/h) horizontally and 175m/s (630km/h) diving.

All vehicles are scaled 110% relative to their authentic measurements to make them appear more correct in when viewed on the screen.. - This also has an additional benefit that it allows our character (who is a rather large guy compared to your average 1940's person) to easier fit into the vehicles. The problem was that a few of the vehicles were scaled beyond this 110%. I noticed this when I was working on the upcoming SU-100 (which is on hold until the vehicle update is done), and I was comparing it to the SU-85. The SU-85 was quite a lot bigger than the SU-100, where as they should be the same size (both being based on the T-34). So I double checked it by comparing the SU-85 with the two T-34s, and it was indeed quite a bit too big. - My suspicion was that it might accidentally have been scaled 110% twice. I then went through all the vehicles in the game to check if their sizes were correct (that is that they are all consistantly 110% scaled), and found that the SU-85 was about 110% over that, and the two T-34s and Kubelwagen were about 105% over that. The M16 MGMC, which in our game has a set of rear storage bins, appears to have been set to the length of the vehicle without the storage bins, meaning it was too small. All other vehicles were ok. Since part of the vehicle update includes our animator going through all the vehicles and correcting/fine-tuning/redoing animations, this would be the best time to correct this mistake, so that the animations can be adjusted to fit the new scale. So after this fix all the vehicles are the same relative scale.

The indicator that was on the prototype server is a debug display and was never intended to resemble the final product. There will be some form of indicator, and we initially released with the debug display activated to function as that until a proper indicator was made. But the problem with debug items is that they are often not very stable since they require the server sending a lot of data to clients which can overload the server. The debug display was removed because it was one of the elements that resulted in server-crashes. Penetration fall-off is active on the prototype server, but with rough values set for each caliber-class and not for each specific ammunition type. The distances are scaled 75% at the moment (seemed like a good distance scale on paper). We want to see how that works out for a bit before we start fine adjusting every single ammunition type in the game.

That is still is missing the sound of the percussion cap. Here is a video that shows really well how loud the ignition of a hand grenade is.

To the many people commenting on the HUD display: The current UI is intended for development purposes and contains a lot of information that is not relevant to the user, this will not be used in the final product. The actual UI will take the relevant parts of it and display them in a more user friendly way. There are two main reasons why the current UI is as it is right now: 1.) Our UI designer has been fully focused on the new deploy system. 2.) The armor system needs to be more or less done before we can create the final UI for it, and while the basics are there it is still open to changes. So it was either this debug display or nothing at all. I've made this picture to help you understand what is going on in the HUD. So basically: The "Armor" shows the percentage of effective armor thickness of a part. The more damage an armor group/component takes the thinner the effective armor will get, and the more likely it is that smaller calibers will be able to penetrate (external armor won't go below 50%) The "Health" shows the percentage of health of a specific component. Each component has a set of hitpoints. Once a component has taken enough damage it will get destroyed. The different component types have a damage multiplier which is applied when the total amount of damage to the vehicle is calculated. Once the amount of damage to the components (after the multiplier) exceeds the hitpoints of the vehicle, the vehicle is destroyed. The BaseStructure component is the component that is used as a fallback if a shot makes it into the vehicle but doesn't hit anything else. The BaseStructure has a low damage multiplier and has a lot of hitpoints, enough to ensure that any vehicle can be destroyed by applying enough damage to the BaseStructure alone. This is why you should ignore the BaseStructure in the HUD - It has a lot more health than the vehicle itself, and therefore it's health percentage is irrelevant.

The "Early Development" part is this thread. But so far it's still looking as if the initial selection is the best choice.

Alternative Music:

It is something that we have been considering, but it won't be for the initial vehicle update. We want the bare basics out first before we add more stuff. - We want to avoid delaying the update with more and more additions.

There are pictures and a lot of really good descriptions in the link I posted in the first post. Also, as I mentioned ampules made of tin, like the one shown below, were more common than the ones made of glass. The FBM-125 was the primary development done by factory 145, and was the bomb that got approved. The BFM-125 was a parallel development by factory 455, and doesn't appear to have been successful.

RedFoxFour is spot on. The current spawn delay is being replaced by a token system that slowly counts up to 1000. There are two token counters, Infantry Token which is the cost of your player with all of his equipment and upgrades and Vehicle Tokens which the selected vehicle and upgrades. You need to have the right amount of deploy tokens to spawn, but the price is not subtracted until you die. The vehicle slots will no longer be locked to vehicle types, so you can select multi types of medium tanks if you so wish. (I believe the front-end is still in development to support this) In addition to this, you have option to change the vehicles while you are in the deploy menu at the cost of an instant deploy token fee. So you will no longer be locked to the vehicles you picked at the start of the match. You can also choose to change your character (also for a deploy token fee) - Changing character to one in the same class will be cheaper than exchanging the entire vehicle load out. You can also change to a different class (which cost even more deploy tokens - this is intended to replace the aux seat system) You can also choose to deploy as a support gunner on a friendly vehicle, to spend the time while waiting for your deploy tokens to replenish. Deploying as a support gunner will no longer lock you to that vehicle, but rather fully deploy your selected character allowing him to exit the vehicle and fight like normal. The suicide option has been replaced be an undeploy option that will, after a delay, undeploy your character and put the infantry/crew resources back in the resource pool. Vehicles will not be returned to the resource pool when you undeploy. So there are plenty of options to play with while you are waiting for your more expensive vehicles to become available. Note that everything above is under development and may be subject to change.

I hope to get it up on the prototype server again really soon. We are currently working on merging the new deploy system with the vehicle update. But the vehicle handling and armor damage model updates are functional, but the fine tweaking of how much damage a vehicle can take has yet been done. That is what I need the prototype tests for. I'd like some good large scale combat and user feedback to adjust the damage levels.

As the others have said, the Royal Danish Arsenal is worth a visit. The first floor is mainly filled with artillery pieces, but also includes a few vehicles. First floor also has an exhibition about the war in Afghanistan that I'd recommend walking through. They used to have a huge collection of small arms on the second floor, but a few years ago they redesigned their exhibition to be more focused on the Danish military through history. This means the amount of items on display was greatly reduced, but the information about the remaining items greatly improved. While I miss the old exhibition, I understand why they changed it, as the old one was mostly appealing to proper history and gun nerds, which is sadly a very small percentage of potential visitors. The redesign of the exhibition also freed up room that is used for various temporary exhibitions, which is nice, and not something that was possible before. As mentioned, the Danish Resistance museum is closed because of arson some years ago, but right next to it is Kastellet, The Citadel, which is the star-fortress that was connected to the original ramparts surrounding Copenhagen Founded in 1624 it is the best preserved fortifications in Northern Europe. It is still an active military facility, but it is open to the public during the day. The cannons on the ramparts have quite a bit of history as well. Originally from 1766, they were rifled in 1861, and some of them are known to have been used in battle of Dybbøl in 1864 during the second Schleswig war. The cannons are still used for salutes this day. A picture of me firing a salute with a 250 year old cannon.

You are correct in that this is the earlier mantlet and turret front, but the later one was not 200mm thick. The changes they made to the turret was that they moved the direct vision sight from being at the top-left side of the gun (aligned with the coax gun), down to being horizontally aligned with the bore of the main gun and then further toward the left. As a result they extended the mantlet to the left, shaved off some of the left of the turret front, and cut a large slot in the turret front for the sight. At the thickest point, the turret and mantlet is 80mm + 75mm, with the mantlet decreases in thickness towards the top and bottom, and being overlapping pieces of armor with a lot of holes cut into it, the effective armor of this extended mantlet is decreased, and the new mantlet is effectively not any stronger than the earlier design. (used by the IS-85 and early IS-2) So the issue is purely a cosmetic one. I'll make a note to fix this if the model is ever to be redone. But since this is a minor issue, that has no effect on the gameplay, it is not something I'd consider urgent. However there is one mistake on the IS-2 turret in the game at the moment that I am surprised no one has commented on, and that is that the mantlet is missing the co-ax machinegun all together, and the muzzle flash from the machinegun comes out of the direct vision sight hole. This will be fixed with the new vehicle update.