2024 - Next major update content and changes - Part II feature

As said in our previous article, the next update for PR:BF2 will see more than the introduction of the WW2: Eastern Front. As in every major release, next to content updates, the game systems receive fixes and all kinds of improvements. Today we show the second part of some of this new content and improvements coming to the game soon. Do note that unexpected issues might push these things to a later update. However, before we get to the content update, first we have an important message for our community:

PRstats' Fate
Earlier this year Sgt_Baker/avram announced that he would have to retire from updating and maintaining www.prstats.tk, a PR-specific stats tracking project that he had developed and supported single-handedly for over seven years. Real life caught up, requiring more and more of his energy and time, so much so that he doesn't even get to play the game anymore!
As it would be a real shame to see all these years of data being lost to history, we decided to step in. And frankly: who doesn't love to have some trusty stats to bolster your claims at gaming prowess (or equally dispute some braggard's).
So we approached him and asked if we could take over, which he graciously agreed to! With a little bit of our (and his, as he supported the migration as well!) elbow grease to update the underlying codebase and suspending some of the extra features such as avatar and signature generation (for now), we can now announce this service will continue to be available under our own domain and running on our own server: Prstats.realitymod.com.
Your gaming glory (and shame) will be securely publicly available for the foreseeable future!
Please join us in thanking Avram for all his continued effort and especially in ensuring that his project smoothly transitions into the future! You can find out more about him and his work as well as his socials on his homepage (hint: try and see what happens when you enter the Konami cheat code there).

Shaders

The work on our shaders has continued. Next to making them readily and open-source available on our github, the next release will see the following few implementations of modern shading techniques, optimizations, and other updates. This includes a more realistic thermal camera visualization, suppression effects, optic blur effects, water rendering, and procedural sampling of textures. This last technique will cause textures with a repeating pattern less noticeable in off-map terrain textures. You can see some samples of these updated shaders below.

Auto Deploy Menu

The main menu has received long-needed attention. Primarily, we have identified the leading cause of the hardware-dependent issue with the Auto Deploy feature, which sometimes causes the game to enter an infinite loop, essentially freezing the game. This issue is now fixed. Furthermore, the menu's backend concerning game-client to game-server connection processes has been updated and optimized, lowering the chance of the Auto Deploy attempting to join a server that is already full. While an accurate queue system is still far away, working on Auto Deploy will be a valuable tool for the community.

Minimap Icons

As shown in a previous blog post already, the next update will change vehicle and kit icons to double the resolution. We took your feedback to heart and have overhauled them further with the newest team addition, [R-CON]CAS_ual_TY, the original creator of those icons, working hard on ensuring proper implementation of these icons.

Among other goals, these new icons are to allow proper vehicle distinctions of different vehicles of the same class (e.g., APC: BTR-80 vs. BTR-60PB) while still having clear distinctions for different vehicle classes (e.g., APC vs. IFV). Additionally, essential vehicle capabilities are now guaranteed if specific icons are present (e.g., all APCs that can transport a squad have a special marking on their icon with a line at the back and two corners at the front).

You can find all the icons here as well.

Support Project Reality!

The Project Reality Team develops this modification completely free of charge for its community to download and play. If you would like to show your support, please consider donating to our team. These funds go directly toward website expenses, including bandwidth, hosting, domain registration, and maintenance. We never use donation funds to directly pay team members.

For more information, please feel free to join us on our public forums to discuss this and other news. Also, be sure to connect to Project Reality through social media to stay informed and receive up-to-the-minute updates, the occasional leaked bit of information, and more! See you on the battlefield!

- The Project Reality Team