The actual Yom Kippur War as a campaign

[toonces]

Have you guys considered creating a Yom Kippur campaign, with a 1973 OOB? I started looking into doing it myself, but it’s going to require a lot more work than I’m prepared to take on, not to mention database work that I know I can’t do.

Understanding that Falcon is an F-16 sim and all that, when Qawa releases his new cockpits I think the time will be ripe to try some older OOBs.

[Cloud 9]

No time for that, Kurile is up for improvement!!!

C9

[uri_ba]

ITO is focusing on contemporary hardware in a “real world” (or to be more precise “alternate time real world”, as the current conflict in the region do not suite falcon campaign engine).

We are not planning on doing any “historical” work.

[toonces]

That’s cool.

I finally got Freefalcon to work on this computer, so I’m content.

Seems a waste of all that beautiful terrain, though, to not get outside of the box. I mean, isn’t it just as interesting to fight a war that actually happened in the game as it is to fight a fictional war in an alternate time real world?

[crazyTom]

Was about to post “You can always download FF6 and fly it there!”…but since you are a team member anyway I figure you figured this.

[crazyTom]

BTW sorry to say but ITO in FF simply looks more appealing to me colour wise than IT in BMS.
If it only had some more stability and FMs a la BMS.:(
And if BMS had the Ff F-16A cockpit.:D My alltime favourite Falcon cockpit, thanks to RP.

[toonces]

Didn’t Polak do the terrain for both versions (FF and BMS)?

[crazyTom]

Sure, and I did not mean to put off the BMS IT team.
I only meant the terrain colour lighting in FF, lol, DX 7 lighting at that. But maybe in future BMS versions, we get some more variety there. I annoyed poor Dee-Jay so often with this finally he gave up lol.

[uri_ba]

FF vs BMS terrain all comes down to two things.
BMS only uses L2 terrain, while OF and FF both used L0 and L2 (which means better terrain resolution in low alt).
and there is some “foggy horizon” effect in FF/OF that is there to hide the transition between L0 and L2, which in turn makes the horizon seem much less distinct.

maybe someday BMS will return to an all out L0… but that will be a CPU killer.

[Khronik]

TOD (Time of Day) file in FF allowed you to use color values to shade certain features (sky/terrain/haze/etc…)

You were able to define very specific color shading values depending on the hours also defined by the user.

This allowed theaters to have unique values which gave a different feel even if based off the same terrain.

Best yet, there was a great GUI editor made by Lee as described here:
http://www.demovfw.com/Public/Training%20Files/Falcon%20Manuals%20&%20Info/FreeFalcon%205.0%20COMPANION%20%28v.OCI%29_v2.pdf#page=96

Sky
These sliders determine the colour of the sky and affects none of the others.

Turbidity
These sliders control the amount of particles in the air creating a graduation of the sky towards the horizon. This is often seen near large cities where pollution creates yellow like haze in the horizon creating spectacular sunsets. This setting also affects none of the others.

Horizon
These sliders determine the colour of the horizon and the haze on the ground. The turbidity and horizon colour meetin the distance so if you want a distinct separation between the sky and earth you make them individual colours. If you want them to merge,make them the same colour and you’ll get a diffuse and hazy effect.

Texture lighting
As explained above, these sliders control the tint/colour of the textures in the environment.
Then - as textures move farther away from the camera - it tints into the horizon colour.
The “Preview” does not display the texture lighting effect very well, so some testing is needed to get the colour right…!
On the following page, there are three (3) screenshots showing examples to help illustrate how the texture lighting works.

Specular
This setting is fairly simple. It controls how “glossy” the aircraft appears to be.

Bad weather lighting
This slider controls the colour of the sky at the current time of day if the weather is bad. The colour can only be in the gray scale.

Believe TOD file usage was unified and removed from the options in OF somewhere towards the last release? (Can’t remember)

Might have to do with a feature of DXM engine used by FF no longer supported by DX code in BMS? Maybe it was deprecated as a function…