The “Mood” of EE2 and EECH
One thing that both EE2 and EECH still bring to the table is “mood”. The rain and poor visibility, dark of night, changing light conditions as the sun sets and rises, coupled with the great sound effects can really suck you in. I’ve flown countless hours in EECH with the dull green night vision goggles barely piercing the inky void. In bad weather your view distance is cut down even more making for some tense flying and fighting. Here are two screens of the exact same image with night vision goggles on and off. It is worth noting that EECH (again, in its modded form) has a nice feature where the night vision field-of-view is slightly limited to give a more realistic feeling of wearing the optics.
The spruced up G2 explosion, fire, rocket exhaust, and tracer effects are fantastic during the day and just as impressive at night. I’m also a big fan of the way the graphics engine now renders higher detail in the FLIR imagery in the cockpit. I don’t know how “realistic” it is, but the I think the “sheen” effect that gives the new models the reflective properties during the daylight also complements how they are rendered at night on the FLIR. I like it a lot better than the old EECH method.
