[zachanscom]

no complaints from me about the gameplay, more control and more sim level details are already being suggested so i'd like to focus on making some suggestion to increasing graphical fidelity down the road.

-sea bed is too flat and monotonous at the moment. needs more height variation and differences in textures, like rocks, weeds, coral, etc especially near shores. don't know if you use parallax mapping or normal maps, but maybe you could set a higher detailed displacement tile over the current sea bed. the scale looks off for this reason, it feels like you're in 200 feet of water, then you dive down to 800 and realize it's much deeper.

from the way it seems now, it appears you're using global scale height data, that's why it looks relatively flat, but i think a procedural "over layer" tile rendered a certain radius around the camera would help solve the issue of flat terrain.

-submarines could use more polygons. especially player submarines. many of us will spend hundreds of hours looking at these beauties, and while they are very well done and highly optimized, those of us with heavier rigs would like to enjoy even higher detail and fidelity versions of these subs.

-different material shader settings for submarines that involve wetness/spectacularity for when they submerge from the water. right now they look completely dry.

-more detail on the bottom of ice sheets. also there's a shadow issue under the ice, the shadow is rendered too dark and the edges of the shadow are flat, they should be more diffuse.

-smooth/dynamic transition from above to below sea.

i would be willing to create templates and placeholders on any of these graphical upgrades if the technical functions are already in place.

please provide any tips or suggestions on how these can be implemented.