Dev Blog #67

As promised, this issue is dedicated to nature, virtual nature in "Korea: IL-2 Series."

Nature is a very important aspect of any simulator, because it’s what we see most of the time as we scan the surroundings in search of targets. Nature helps immerse us in the game world when we see it around the airfield at the start, before takeoff. Nature also dictates the rules of combat. That’s why the environment needs to be as realistic, high-quality, and natural as possible.

Earlier, in various videos and screenshots, you saw grass and trees in Korea, but those were technical prototypes and temporary solutions. And only now are we finalizing the appearance of the flora in our new simulator.

To achieve this result, we refined numerous aspects of the graphics engine’s various technologies. Additionally, our artists thoroughly re-examined the methods and approaches used in Great Battles. They created new ones for Korea to achieve a more detailed, diverse, and realistic depiction of nature. As a result, the flora in Korea has reached a whole new level of visual quality, detail, and realism.

A lot of work went into finding the right color schemes, proportions, textures, and natural patterns. We had to start from scratch with all of this because of new technologies and lighting. If you look at past Dev Blog issues and Dev Brief videos, you’ll notice that in early screenshots, the ground looks dark and uniform, and objects appear unnatural against that background. This is precisely due to the use of temporary textures and approaches to their color ratios, but new technologies require new parameters. Now, however, the environment features more detail and variety. Nature appears and is lit much more naturally.

It’s also important to note that all of this is the result of manual work, not photogrammetry of the terrain. No matter how good photogrammetry may be as a tool, it does not allow us to obtain data from the past. Therefore, we had to manually create new texture atlases, determining their location and distribution, while relying on both real photogrammetric data and historical aerial photographs. And we had to do all of this across the largest area in the series, with a higher density of detail.

Thus, the quality improvement is evident not only in scale but also in the level of detail applied to every square meter of the surface. Of course, it was crucial not only to add naturalism, variety, and historical authenticity but also to accomplish all of this within a reasonable development timeline. As a result, working on the environment became yet another challenge, requiring us to combine creativity with truly interesting engineering tasks. You can now see for yourselves what we’ve achieved.

The grass is no longer a monotonous carpet; it is now highly varied and depends on where it grows: at the airfield, you’ll see short grass with patches of bare ground, while in wild meadows, you’ll find tall thickets. In rice paddies — rice crops. And everywhere — diversity and an absence of monotony. The grass has become denser; its height depends on the natural context in which it grows, and a variety of species has emerged.

Trees have been given a fundamentally new lighting technology, allowing for a qualitatively new level of realism in the texture of their trunks and foliage. Tree canopies, letting light through, are illuminated not only from the sunny side but also from the opposite side with diffused light. New approaches to creating