Question about early development of FU2

[JimmiG 244]

I have noticed something odd with early screenshots of FU2 - they look much better than the way the sim actually turned out in the end. I especially remember some preview screenshots shown on the now closed site Gamecenter. I was able to find two very small pictures to show what I mean on this site:http://www.cdmag.com/simulation_vault/flig...view/page1.htmlThey are very small, but those very familiar with the San Francisco area that made it into FU2/3 will recognize that the colors are more vivid on those shots, and the colour of the sea looks better. It's not easy to see on those tiny screenshots, Gamecenter did have full-size images that showed it much more clearly.Those who have the FU2 box with the Beaver over the Golden Gate bridge, if you open the flap and look at the rightmost shot (below the Baron in a thunderstorm), the one with the P51D near an airliner, you can also see that the colours of the hills, as well as the color of the sea in the distance looks very different from FU2 or FU3. The hills in that area are brownish in FU2, but on this screenshot they appear greener and more detailed. Look at the other shots on the box and you can also see the difference in the colour of the sea. The sky also looks different, but that could be because they are using a single image for the sky.It looks almost as if the scenery was originally in Truecolor (16.8 million colours) but they then decided to convert it to 256 colours in the last minute, probably for filesize. That would also explain the odd patches of lime-green colours in the NE of the region. Can anyone confirm this or explain the differences?

[Guest jonpoint]

Jimmy,You could be right or maybe they just cheated on the screenshots. In the review, the author is PREDICTING what it will be like, therefore I believe it was pre-release and yes, the shots may be taken using the original images (which were artificially coloured anyway).Look at the shots on the FU3 box. Heck, if they'd managed to get the conifers and water looking half as good as that in the game...I believe that you are partially correct regarding the down-sizing but I think it was done to allow reasonable framerates, not just keep it small. Looking in the Beechjet resfile, many textures are 16-bit! None of these are used, BTW. I believe that the game engine may have been reassembled for high-colour or true-colour but the performance hit killed that idea. You should see it in a 3D program with the 16-bit textures and reflections - it puts MSFS to shame!I had a similar problem years ago when working on real sims. The software designers all logged into an SGI Indigo2 but when they compiled it and ran it on the simulator mainframe, it ran at 2fps! Eventually, the hardware was rationalised - to four SGI Indigo2s (@1/2 million each!). I'm glad that Defense was the customer and they had said 'whatever it takes' - sheesh :-eek:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************