Question about player hair and stadiums in FM21

[WojciechZed]

Hi folks.

 

For those already playing FM21 beta, I have two questions.

1) Have they finally given players with afros and long hair, afros and long hair, or is there at least going to be an option to edit real players to have it if they don't from default?

2) How are stadiums looking. In previous games some stadiums (like Barcelona's or Monaco's) did not look anything close to the actual ground. I wonder if there has been any improvement on how the stadiums looks?

Of course I plan to play the demo and explore for myself (still not sure if I am going to buy FM21. I didn't buy FM20), but I wonder if anyone can give me the answer to these two questions right away?

[Grifty]

Regens look a lot better this year IMO. I havn't seen any balding 16 year olds with goatees yet anyway...

I'm in the Swedish 2nd division. so can't say about the big stadiums, but there seems. to be a bit more detail in LLM stadiums.

[FrazT]

4 hours ago, WojciechZed said:

Hi folks.

 

For those already playing FM21 beta, I have two questions.

1) Have they finally given players with afros and long hair, afros and long hair, or is there at least going to be an option to edit real players to have it if they don't from default?

2) How are stadiums looking. In previous games some stadiums (like Barcelona's or Monaco's) did not look anything close to the actual ground. I wonder if there has been any improvement on how the stadiums looks?

Of course I plan to play the demo and explore for myself (still not sure if I am going to buy FM21. I didn't buy FM20), but I wonder if anyone can give me the answer to these two questions right away?

Many of the issues regarding how stadiums are represented are down to licensing , particularly with larger clubs, so accurate pictures are unlikely

[WojciechZed]

Thanks @Grifty but that I was referring to real in game players, rather than players FM creates, where I know some do indeed have afros yes.

Some people who playing the beta version now must have picked a team to manage with at least one or two players with afros or long hair. Did they have them, or are bald and short hair still the only two hairstyles?

@FrazT I am not expecting 'accurate' pictures. But the Nou Camp In FM couldn't look less like the Nou Camp in real life. It makes it practically impossible for me to play games there with the 3D match engine, and I generally prefer to use that. It would also be nice to see absurdities like taking away tracks from around the stadiums that have them (Monaco or Hertha Berlin as an example), stopped.

[BamBamBam]

I so wish the stadiums looked more realistic.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

Licensing restrictions limit what hairstyles can be used on real players and what the Stadiums can look like, they don't just restrict 'accurate' pictures but anything similar, hence something as simple as a running track cannot be used.

[Dagenham_Dave]

I always find it bizarre  that SI can't use even a basic representation of a stadium, when they can use real player names and real team names for data they have no licences for. How does that work?

[michaeltmurrayuk]

Different things are covered by different licenses. player names are generally licensed from FIFPro but that is different from a license that allows you to use their image, similarly the Football League and German teams are licensed but those licenses don't include rights to the stadiums.

Also more generally stadiums can be subject to Copyright, whilst names generally aren't, and whilst both can be trademarked, trademarking isn't automatic and is hard to get for generic stuff like names, whilst copyright is automatic.

Basically licensing is complicated, even more so when the likes of the Football League still claim ownership over the fixtures list even thought they lost a court case over it (there is an interesting line in the license splash screen for FM21).

[Alexandre Supertramp]

It would be nice if we could change the color of players boots at least.

[WojciechZed]

I just feel that FM is being overly cautious. I don't believe any club would complain because you have a running track in your stadium and they have a running track in theirs. They don't own the rights to running tracks. There are plenty of stadiums in game that don't look too different to the real ones, if you use your imagination a bit. I don't see those clubs complaining. 

As for hairstyles, I have already suggested a simple way this could be solved. Give us more options to edit a player's hair in the editor. You can already do a lot to a player's image in editor, so how about a few more hairstyles?

[rp1966]

My biggest issue with stadiums isn't accuracy (beyond appropriate stands for the capacity of the ground), though it would be good to see better representations even from a generic stadium construction kit.  The  bigger issue for me is the low quality of the models, texturing and lighting. Even if they are not realistic to the real stadiums, they are static graphical objects and should be rendered to a much higher standard.  

The player animations have greatly improved and the models are pretty good, but the improvement here is let down by the low quality of the pitch and stadiums they play in.  We know what's possible nowadays for realistic looking buildings, lighting and weather - it's long past time SI invested in this area.

Everyone knows the focus of the game is elsewhere, but we are on the matchday screen a lot of the time (especially if you play on comprehensive) - graphically it needs to improve.  

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by rp1966