Another F16 entry coming "someday"?
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@buzzbomb said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
In my opinion, the sims that survive and the sims that will be left in the dust will be divided by a single factor: The terrain database. Specifically, a global terrain database that is derived from real world data, satellite imagery, and the like, and procedurally generated, as per the world in MSFS, and now in Meta’s NOR platform, will be an absolute requirement.
I’m TIRED of only flying around the Korean theater. I want to be able to pick a spot, any spot, and fly from it or to it or around it.
I get it and I get the impression that 4.37 will be big with terrain and theaters. 2 counterpoints though.
- There are several well done theaters that are pretty close to Korea level and there are a many more that are still serviceable if you can deal some of the repetitive tiles, etc. 2. You can have very detailed areas but that doesn’t make it a good simulator. In the DCS sense, that means it has a very pretty but overall sterile “combat zone” and still a lack of fidelity. In the MSFS sense, it is amazing I can now use true local area pilotage, but there is still a lot in systems/flight model detail that is left to be desired.
Porting over to Unreal Engine is probably also a really good idea since Meta’s NOR demo video has already shown that it’s easily capable of delivering near photorealistic imagery, easily equal to and superior to the best that BMS’s chief competitor, DCS, has to offer. Plus the support for UE is unmatched. VR is natively supported in UE, as well.
The VR work is already being done (see the 4.35 EULA), I don’t know if it is worth it to switch to UE5 to check that box too. The other question which I haven’t done any research on, it looks great but how does it perform? That has been the issues with DCS for a long time too, it looks pretty but brings your system to it’s knees in VR (see my system’s specs, it’s what I had to run to get the Pimax usable and even then there were trade offs and MP/Supercarrier would still bring the 3090 to it’s knees.)
I’m certainly a BMS supporter, above all challengers, because of the simulation fidelity BMS promises and which is the cumulative work of 24 years of development. But it must be upgraded to technological currency in order to remain viable. A full world database coupled with a transition to the UE environment are the cornerstones of that necessary evolution.
Overall, for the big picture that may make sense but being a community team, it may not be viable to jump onto a new engine this early and not just due to Falcon 4.0 base code being so old. Yes, UE maybe a good engine to transition to be cutting edge, but another part of the reason BMS took so long to get to “even” DX11, it still takes coder experience/time. I believe @I-Hawk was the lead guy on that with years of work on it (EDIT: not @I-Hawk actually )
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@buzzbomb said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
But it must be upgraded to technological currency in order to remain viable. A full world database coupled with a transition to the UE environment are the cornerstones of that necessary evolution.
IMHO Your opinion of what’s “viable” might be somewhat different from a lot of others.
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That could very well be true. My opinion of what’s viable is MY opinion and I can not present it as being the majority opinion of the BMS community without putting that question to a general vote and getting a supportive result.
I’m certainly no programmer, either, so I’m not qualified to speak to the technical difficulties that would involve a platform change. However, I have to say that UE5 is built to be a very easy environment to develop games in, and in fact there are tutorials that can have a total novice making fully functional games with substantial world detail in a matter of hours. And, I cite Meta’s NOR demo video as evidence, that clearly the UE engine is fully capable. It may well be that the simplest way to make a large leap forward for BMS would be to redevelop it under UE. I’d be surprised if the in-game assets of most importance can’t be ported into UE with little difficulty.
In truth I’d be willing to PAY for an upgrade of BMS that checks just these two boxes: UE5 engine and the global terrain database.
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FWIW, BMS isn’t aiming towards global terrain. That is let’s say “an additional level of complexity” compared to using “flat” theaters. However, as we aren’t an airliner sim, I don’t really find much sense in breaking our heads on having a global theater, the 1024x1024 theaters are already large enough for any combat simulation, and if needed 2048x2048 theaters will be supported as well.
Regarding photorealistic terrain - Yes I agree, but don’t forget resources. We aren’t M$ who can store and stream zillions of textures in high res to anyone, so our DB will need to be stored locally on HDs of the users. So, I wouldn’t expect FS2020 detail/resolution levels, not at all, but considering the user has enough HD space, it should be good enough.
UE5? Honestly I have no idea, never even tried to really dive into stuff like that. I’m not sure how hard or easy it’ll be to use a UE engine for BMS and what would be the consequences? And I’m talking about stuff that is special for flight sims like visible range, long range effects (Atmosphere, fog, terrain etc). That META vid looks a lot like DCS and I really doubt it can handle stuff like streaming photoreal textures, for example. The terrain looks nice and detailed, but same colors, boring… Like DCS.
And BTW, just to correct something that was mentioned here: I confirm that I work on terrain, but not DX11 in general, that was the work of someone else within BMS team.
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did you get a response from them?
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Hello,
What I feel positive, after feeling some antipathy towards NOR is that it looks that we will have a Typhoon as a base model, alongside with classic F-16 and Mig-29.
It’s a great new for European who are proud of their local wings !
Cheers,
Radium
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@vfp I have not yet received an answer, which I must admit bothers me ever so slightly. I expect courtesy and professionalism out of all people and all organizations, and that means that, among other things, if a person makes a polite inquiry about a product, it deserves an answer even if that answer is simply “No.”.
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i understand and i expected that
its predictable behavior -
If you expect BMS to become a Simulator based on GFX up to modern standard then you will be disappointed
Things will improve , yes
But when I read that « the sims that will die will be the sims that don’t have a photorealistic global terrain » my only answer would be: yes sir , but only if those other sims have a high level of fidelity for a COMBAT sim in a global war .
And the only simulator for now that matches this definition is BMS.
Îm not saying it is bad or not I’m just stating facts
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I don’t disagree with that assessment. However, if BMS is to maintain its user base, or have any chance of expanding it, my belief is that it will have to address its shortcomings and become best in class in all categories or at least be fully competitive in all categories.
We have the high ground when it comes to simulation fidelity. But not for graphics realism and not for terrain modelling. We don’t have VR support, either. Those are factors that work against growing our user base or even retaining it.
With a global terrain database, the opportunity for more wargames scenarios obviously becomes wide open. And let’s be honest about it, who here wouldn’t want to participate in wargaming against Russia or China?
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@Buzzbomb I thought that I made an answer about global terrain and it is a “No”. Why not? Because IMHO it doesn’t worth the efforts that it would take to make it happen. The graphical/GIS efforts will not be small - Mainly about when you are getting close to the edges then the “next area” should start to pop, slowly coming to life (If exist, of course), maintaining X/Y translations from LAT/LONG according to which area we are globally etc all that is already a real headache, and for what? this is mainly a F-16 sim, if it was B-52 or airliner sim then maybe would worth it.
Regarding GFX in general, BMS will make its quantum leap, but it won’t be probably at same level as you may see in other or future sims. I guess time will tell and people will see, and we don’t intend to stop so things will improve even more as time goes by.
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Yeah, I have no idea how anyone could make a world terrain system and a dynamic campaign work wherever you wanted, including the still gold standard BMS engine.
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@snake122 said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
Yeah, I have no idea how anyone could make a world terrain system and a dynamic campaign work wherever you wanted, including the still gold standard BMS engine.
Still not perfect, but you will see
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@buzzbomb said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
in class in all categories or at least be fully competitive in all categories.
But it’s not a competition, or is it?
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Yes, it IS a competition. Every time I decide I want to fire up a flight sim, I have to choose: BMS or DCS, or X-plane or MSFS, or Prepar3d, or various legacy sims. Which will give me the experience I want at the moment?
Every person who has more than one sim installed makes this choice, too.
The moment you think you aren’t competing, you’re not. And that makes your product obsolete.
I realize that adding these things to BMS will be no trivial effort. But it’s going to decide how relevant and competitive BMS remains in the foreseeable future.
The flyable world will surely be the biggest effort, particularly when you start adding in 3D constructs. (Buildings, vehicles, etc) Hand crafted areas of interest which will be focus points for future battle campaigns will certainly require extra effort. But even that is getting easier to implement all the time. It was beyond consideration a few years ago. It’s working now in MSFS, X-Plane, and Prepar3d .
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@i-hawk said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
@snake122 said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
Yeah, I have no idea how anyone could make a world terrain system and a dynamic campaign work wherever you wanted, including the still gold standard BMS engine.
Still not perfect, but you will see
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m sure you have something great cooked up for 4.37 with the terrain and theater systems. I’m just saying I don’t know how anyone could do a global terrain system and somehow represent the detailed info required to do a dynamic campaign anywhere on demand. Static targeting objectives (bridges, factories, bases, etc.) and their campaign effects alone while not infinite, becomes practically so on a global scale for coders.
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@buzzbomb said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
Yes, it IS a competition. Every time I decide I want to fire up a flight sim, I have to choose: BMS or DCS, or X-plane or MSFS, or Prepar3d, or various legacy sims. Which will give me the experience I want at the moment?
Every person who has more than one sim installed makes this choice, too.
The moment you think you aren’t competing, you’re not. And that makes your product obsolete.
I realize that adding these things to BMS will be no trivial effort. But it’s going to decide how relevant and competitive BMS remains in the foreseeable future.
The flyable world will surely be the biggest effort, particularly when you start adding in 3D constructs. (Buildings, vehicles, etc) Hand crafted areas of interest which will be focus points for future battle campaigns will certainly require extra effort. But even that is getting easier to implement all the time. It was beyond consideration a few years ago. It’s working now in MSFS, X-Plane, and Prepar3d .
BMS isn’t competing because we don’t need to. We aren’t driven by anyone’s money nor will so we don’t need anyone’s support in order to keep do what we do
And speaking for myself (i.e off-record as BMS dev) - You need to understand - Before I’m coding for you or for him, I’m coding for myself. I LIKE flying Falcon/BMS, even alone, even SP, even forever (And consider I didn’t actually flew for the last 4-5 years because of my current development journey and it’s incompetence with existing state). At this point in time, I can tell you that I will keep coding and developing Falcon/BMS even if I’m the only one in the world using it. So, let’s get over that specific point.
Now that we are clear about that let me add a few things about BMS compared to the rest of the world:
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We don’t “speak loud” in general. Well, I do, sometimes, but still not really… if we wanted the world to know where we are, then with a few clicks you will have much clearer answers, but that’s not the point and not how we work. Again we don’t need money, so while hype is nice for keeping interest, it’s a momentary thing eventually. We look for the long run.
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BMS isn’t for everyone. BMS is being developed with the faith that it was meant to be used for “as real as it gets” (i.e dead serious) simulation of a F-16 pilot in a war environment. We don’t mean it to become some “Digital Cinematic Simulator”. For people with that kind of purposes, there are other products, probably much more suitable…
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Considering all the above said, and while we lack in the GFX department (for now, but being practical, probably always will, at some amounts), we compensate on that with other stuff. Graphics sell, and that’s why you see all commercial products taking care of that first, but when you look under the hood, that’s where the things that matter will be, and I believe there we still have a strong word.
If you or anyone else will decide to not use BMS anymore because he think we are too slow, not advanced enough with chasing technology (We are doing this at our free time yes?), then we will be very sorry to hear that but not much we can do more than we are already doing.
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@i-hawk said in Another F16 entry coming "someday"?:
to not use BMS anymore because he think we are too slow, not advanced enou
I’m sure there’s some competition regardless of pay
- simply being able to compare the sims even though one’s a commercial product and one’s a labor of love is going to inspire actions by each team that would not happen in the absence of the other.
Cinematics attract viewers, and viewers become players/ payers. Customer feedback informs them on what to improve, if it’s profitable, they’ll implement - the relationship is understood.
The relationship between devs and players here is an uncommon arrangement. We take someone else’s hobby we have minimal input and tool around until we want more, at which point we study manuals, join competitions, and maybe join a squadron - this is extra work WE put in to our own satisfaction - so much more than becoming adept at a game. Most people will never understand the difference from a commercial arrangement, and I can’t imagine being a dev and having to constantly remind myself that’s ok, just keep calm and dev on.
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Bravo to the whole team!
Just do what you like. This is what I like the most. I raise a glass to you and wish you health. -
Regarding the global scenery, I really don’t think you understand the enormity of the task you are suggesting. There is a huge difference between a global scenery for just pleasure flying or simple scripted missions and a global scenery for meaningful combat scenarios in a working dynamic campaign.
Notice how Meta mention nothing of a dynamic campaign because in a military training scenario the world only needs to exist for that one training session. It will either be pre-scripted or there will be somebody external running the sim, spawning in enemy units wherever they are needed, essentially playing as the enemy.
In this scenario the scenery is literally just there to look pretty (much like it does in MSFS), it doesn’t have to function as a working dynamic world as that’s being taken care of by a human. This makes the concept of using a global scenery much more feasible as each training session will be “authored” by a human, and the scope of each session will be relatively small, they won’t be modelling a whole war.
A working persistent campaign with thousands of units is a whole different proposition, and cannot simply be generated on the fly on any random bit of the earth you choose.
BMS already offers combat areas many times larger than any other current combat sim, and with a new terrain engine coming which will (hopefully) allow satellite elevation data and possibly even photoscenery then I’m sure more varied places to fly and fight will happen, all with the wonderful BMS campaign working alongside it.