Another F16 entry coming "someday"?
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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.
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@i-hawk Thanks for the clarity. I hate seeing these threads devolve into comparison threads. I own all the other sims with pretty graphics and rarely touch them. BMS will not die if it doesnt have latest in graphics. That is quite ridiculous. I look forward to enjoying BMS improvements when they are ready. Thanks again for the superb sim.
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Of course some good points and explanations have been made. I do see your points and appreciate them being shared with me and others who are reading this topic.
However, I continue to believe that BMS has more of a future if it gets, at the very least, VR support. VR adds immersion and makes the experience more REALISTIC, which is exactly what a hardcore simmer would want.
To get VR support, as I understand it, it’s native in UE5, so switching to the UE5 environment makes sense from the VR standpoint alone, and the visual improvements it can bring to the table would be welcome, and I don’t think anyone is going to argue against that.
We are still an unknown number of years, decades, maybe centuries away from being able to fly combat missions in a Holodeck, at “you are there” levels of realism, indistinguishable to your five natural senses from actually getting in the cockpit of a real F-16 with a mission brief to follow. And that will not be “eye candy”, it will be REALISM.
Call it eye candy if you wish. I say that visual enhancements contribute to realism, and in no small way. If “hardcore” simulation is the goal of BMS, then visuals must not be neglected. They should be as realistic as is practical without incurring a computer performance penalty because there’s nothing “realistic” about flying with lag or dropped packets.
Whatever future enhancements may come, no matter how modest or ambitious they may be, nonetheless I will welcome them. Even if we never get the enhancements I’ve mentioned so far, I still won’t stop enjoying BMS even if it’s just practicing various TEs and trying to pull off the sickest “simulate engine failure on takeoff, land safely on the parallel runway or other stupid pilot tricks” stunt flying anyone has ever seen in BMS.
I’ll be glad for what we are given. But I have high hopes for a global world, VR, and industry leading visuals.
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@AWmk1 Yes competition is always there and by nature I think some of us have very competitive personality (I know that’s true, at least for myself). But what I meant here in my words is more in the sense of: We don’t need to compete, cause we already won
And let me explain before I’m being jumped upon: We won because Falcon was supposed to be dead probably 10-15 years ago. I (personally, and speaking as a “Falconeer” here) find myself lucky that Falcon is still alive and kicking, many folks are using and enjoying it, flights are running daily, PVP sessions are executed on different theaters every now and then, and: It’s being flown the way we aimed for! So even though everything I said above about “I’ll keep developing even if I’m the last one using Falcon”, of course it’s warming our hearts to see a big and strong community!
Also yes sure, I agree that cinematics do sell (As I stated above, GFX sell). But we are out of this game, for various reasons. I can talk here for hours but instead I could post a single vid or screenshot which would explain much better where we are currently and where we are headed, but we don’t do that. Things will come when they will.
@Buzzbomb Yes, trust me I totally agree with you that GFX (and sounds) are part of realism and immersion, that isn’t a question. So basically all the things you have in mind, be sure we don’t miss anything and we know where current technology is. So while it doesn’t mean we will release or implement everything in a single version, it’ll probably take more than that, we don’t intend to miss anything that the DX11 API can be used for and which all the great sim engines out there already have.
Regarding VR it was stated more than once by myself and possibly by others as well - We know that VR is the future, and it’s already not a question of “if” but a question of “when”, only.
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We have a few people that know BMS well enough to get you started. Frederf#3438 on discord, Frederf with the upside down sailing ship on Steam, whatever. That goes for the lot of you I don’t bite too hard.