[2021] Unsatisfying explosions

First of all, I love this game, its mechanics, its look and the developers and the awesome work they put into the last vfx update. Though almost everytime I see a vehicle explode or a bombing run I have something that itches somewhere in my mind...

About the vehicle thingy: the explosion seems to be not really volumetric. (e.g. compared to a vehicle explosion in PS or the Napalm strike in RS2) if you are close to it and look into the air it almost looks like a cardboard effect. (Does this make sense; anybody understands what I mean?)

About the bombing run: dust should be hanging in the air a lot(!) longer. It seems to vanish much too fast. I know they increased the vfx due to community feedback already a bit. But at the moment it is still so that the moment the bombing run is over it is almost instantly disappearing and the battle continues as it was 10 seconds before. But I think it would be very epic to storm or defend a freshly striked hardcap while the dust of the bombing run still hangs in the air for at least a minute or so.

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Originally posted by cellander

The explosions you're referring to are in fact mostly(?) 2D effects, extracted from a particle sim or real footage would be my guess. That's why they have that realistic look to it. The downside can be that they might not look as convincing once up close.

There aren't many games that seem to use this method but PS and Squad definitely use the same method with their explosions and overall VFX. I'm a huge fan of this as I think it adds a whole other dimension to the authenticity. I would love to hear more about this in-depth, maybe u/DannyArt_HLL could shed some light into this sometime?

In HLL's case they recently added (U10) a sudden flash to the larger explosions, which I think adds depth and improves the effect. However, I think there could be elements added to explosions to improve and sell the effect even further. For the bombing runs I guess it's a matter of performance but I think more variety to different explosion types in general would improve the impression and believability a lot. It kind of gets a bit non-organic and static as it is right now, if that makes sense.

Much as many others talk about true to life uniforms and equipment I could talk about this topic forever. Visuals and sound usually gets me excited and I think HLL really is heading in the right direction here.

Ah, before we do anything else with the VFX, we need to iron out the majority of the performance issues. When those are done, we can certainly return and see how we can make even better explosions.

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