WIP - Personal Project F-16 all versions

[Ahroun]

Hi gents

I started this personal project a few months ago as a way to retake my learning process on 3DS Max, process that I was forced to stop for a few years. Well, at first, there was no real intention to bringing it to the community. As I progressed and realized that the results could be something useful and interesting to you, I decided bringing it to your appreciation. I’m not sure if there will be any usage for it in the sim as it works today; I also know that there are two other devs working on their own F-16 mods and, anyway, I’d need help from the other devs developing the things I don’t know yet.

I’ll continue developing it as I first intended but, if you consider it useful to the community anyhow and have any tips to me, I’ll be very glad :D!

Best regards!

Mesh for biplace:

Mesh for monoplace:

PW engine intake and face:

GE engine intake and face

Current status:

[Ahroun]

Hi folks

I added the AIFF and AN/ALR-56M nose sensors, as the pitot tube on the right side of the nose. Some pics for you:

[Radium]

Hello,

Let me kindly ask you a question, as a 3D modeler of the dev team, I feel rather surprised of your ambition to create a F-16, considering your previous statements trending to limit your work to your personal use… I was wondering, why do you post this enticing and promising project, while it could be deemed that much aircraft in the database could be re-built… Moreover, our friend Pumpyhead is also working on an F-16 with a possible further database integration, so, while I respect your quality work, I would have liked to induce you to devote yourself into something more useful for the community.

What do you think?

Keep going,

Best regards,

Radium

[Ahroun]

Hi Radium

I appreciate your reply and your question and I’ll try to answer you the best way I can.

By the way, I’m sorry 'cause I think my first post was not very clear in some points.

Well, as i said before, at first my intentions were keeping it as a personal project since it was started in order to retake my learning process modelling in 3DS Max (that’s why I chose the F-16), but as I progressed I realized it could be useful as an option to stock BMS models if I’m able to make it work inside BMS. I am very aware about Pumpyhead’s and JanHas’ WIPs and I’m sure the results will be awesome, even much better than mine as they are experienced modellers and always deliver excellent results to the community, that’s why I said “maybe it’s useful for the community, maybe not…” problably not now, but I don’t want to stop the dev on this model, even because I need to learn a lot of things before being able to make any model I develop now or in the future useful for BMS or any other purpose. Of course I’m available for making anything for the community as it needs in a parallel project, but for that, I need to learn and learn and this model will be used as a “test bench”, once a big part of it is already done, the things working fine on it being applied on any other model I come to develop in the future.

That’s why I brought it to the community, searching for knowledge and guidance. If there’s anything useful I can do for the community, I’ll be very glad to do so, I’ll just need some help from you guys learning the things I don’t know yet. You see, I can draw a little well, but I’m still learning the basics about making models, animating them, using the data in order to integrate models into systems, etc, and need guidance to do so. What can you tell me about that?

Best regards!

[Radium]

@Ahroun:

Hi Radium

I appreciate your reply and your question and I’ll try to answer you the best way I can.

By the way, I’m sorry 'cause I think my first post was not very clear in some points.

Well, as i said before, at first my intentions were keeping it as a personal project since it was started in order to retake my learning process modelling in 3DS Max (that’s why I chose the F-16), but as I progressed I realized it could be useful as an option to stock BMS models if I’m able to make it work inside BMS. I am very aware about Pumpyhead’s and JanHas’ WIPs and I’m sure the results will be awesome, even much better than mine as they are experienced modellers and always deliver excellent results to the community, that’s why I said “maybe it’s useful for the community, maybe not…” problably not now, but I don’t want to stop the dev on this model, even because I need to learn a lot of things before being able to make any model I develop now or in the future useful for BMS or any other purpose. Of course I’m available for making anything for the community as it needs in a parallel project, but for that, I need to learn and learn and this model will be used as a “test bench”, once a big part of it is already done, the things working fine on it being applied on any other model I come to develop in the future.

That’s why I brought it to the community, searching for knowledge and guidance. If there’s anything useful I can do for the community, I’ll be very glad to do so, I’ll just need some help from you guys learning the things I don’t know yet. You see, I can draw a little well, but I’m still learning the basics about making models, animating them, using the data in order to integrate models into systems, etc, and need guidance to do so. What can you tell me about that?

Best regards!

Dear Ahroun,

I think I understand your state of mind much better right now. Integrating a model into BMS is not super complex. But it is also clear that there is certain norms, certain aspects to discover before doing something really sucessfully there, because Falcon is a very old software now. I think, I could even qualify it as ancestral, deeming that its code, even enhanced blessing our coders, need some special items to understand modern concepts, this is reason why helpers such as DOF, Switch or Roots were created.

It would be my pleasure to guide you to bring your cents to the BMS mountain, as I was myself guided some years ago by people like Amraam, Waveydave and others I’d like to thanks there too.

First step is to identify one model that needs some “love” in BMS. There is plenty of. You can also decide to do something which is not in the database already, it’s up to you. Only you, can make your working policy about it. But, to give you some ideas, I suppose that fighter aircrafts like F/A-18E or F/A-18F for US, Sukhoi-25 for Russian side, airlifters such as Antonov 124, warships such as Udaloy-class destroyer could be nice options. Of course, this list could be highly criticized, it’s a simple raw point of interest listing.

Also, I would mention that, to comply BMS rules, you need to respect certain triangles budget. (We always talk about triangles, not polygons), so, depending on your project, it may vary : one fighter aircraft should be 30,000 triangles, an aircraft carrier could go up to 80,000 tris, a missile would be about 2,000 triangles maximum. Please let us know your project, if you decide one, we could advise you about the ideal budget.

Why do I say ideal? Because some people from us made calculations to find out the best triangle amount to keep the game stable. Of course, one single aircraft of 80,000 instead of 30,000 wouldn’t make a big change if integrated in the whole game. But, 2 packages of 4 aircrafts could lead to display 640,000 triangle, instead of 240,000 which would have there a deep impact on the frames per second. Of course, these calculations of mine are very theorical, but shall be taken as a proof of concept about triangles limitations.

Of course, we don’t ask anything from yours. You can do absolutely what you want. But, this is just pieces of advises. Moreover, you can request, and I hereby insist on the request verb, to integrate your model in BMS official database, but, you will have to accept to give BMS your sources, and the right of exploitation and resign your cease and desist rights on your model for BMS usage. This is, juridically speaking a lot of conditions, which is the reason why, only few people accept them, what we also and of course respect very much.

I hope, I gave you some interesting and useful advises, and am ready to help you in your passion,

Best regards,

Radium

[Dee-Jay]

to give you some ideas, I suppose that fighter aircrafts like F/A-18E or F/A-18F for US, Sukhoi-25 for Russian side, airlifters such as Antonov 124,

… there are much worse … take a look into the TacRef and look at IL76, IL78, C-17, C-5, …

[Radium]

@Dee-Jay:

… there are much worse … take a look into the TacRef and look at IL76, IL78, C-17, C-5, …

This is why I mentionned :

Of course, this list could be highly criticized, it’s a simple raw point of interest listing.

[Ahroun]

Hi my friend Radium

Your answer was very helpful and useful, indeed! I follow the Falcon universe (and all the improvements achieved by the plenty of communities that worked on it since then) since it was first launched as Falcon 4.0 by Microprose and understand the issues faced when working with it due to the limitations the old software features impose on everybody who works on it.

I’ve been looking into BMS universe for a while (even before I first brought my cents to you) and thinking about which models I could improve, but didn’t make a pick yet. I’ll think carefully about it and then bring it to you, so we can follow the implications of my decisions up.

Just let me ask you a thing: I understand when you say that “you can request, and I hereby insist on the request verb, to integrate your model in BMS official database, but, you will have to accept to give BMS your sources, and the right of exploitation and resign your cease and desist rights on your model for BMS usage. This is, juridically speaking a lot of conditions, which is the reason why, only few people accept them, what we also and of course respect very much”. Does it imply that I won’t be able to using any version of the same project for any other purposes out of the BMS world or there’s no such restriction? I would like to understand your policy a little better, could you provide me any extra info about how it works?

One last thing for now, when you say “tris” you mean the 2 tris which compose one poly, correct? It’s an issue I must be very careful about considering the techniques I’m using to achieve the good results I’m achieving for my model, I’m looking for the best results first (high polycount) and then reducing the polycount as an afterwork to matching the specs without decreasing the quality of the model so much…

Thanks a lot!

Best regards,

Ahroun.

[Radium]

@Ahroun:

Hi my friend Radium

Your answer was very helpful and useful, indeed! I’ve been looking into BMS universe for a while (even before I first brought my cents to you) and thinking about which models I could improve, but didn’t make a pick yet. I’ll think carefully about it and then bring it to you, so we can follow up the implications of my decisions.

Just let me ask you a thing: I understand when you say that “you can request, and I hereby insist on the request verb, to integrate your model in BMS official database, but, you will have to accept to give BMS your sources, and the right of exploitation and resign your cease and desist rights on your model for BMS usage. This is, juridically speaking a lot of conditions, which is the reason why, only few people accept them, what we also and of course respect very much”. Does it imply that I won’t be able to using any version of the same project for any other purposes out of the BMS world or there’s no such restriction? I would like to understand your policy a little better, could you provide me any extra info about how it works?

Thanks a lot!

Best regards,

Ahroun.

Hello,

In fact, it is rather simple :

If you give a model to BMS, you give the rights of exploitation and resign cease and desist option, but, you are still owner of your model but can’t request BMS to transfer you back what you gave.

Juridically speaking, if you make a F/A-18F model in BMS :

• You will create LODs and texture, and let BMS use them as they want to,
• You will give your sources .max and .psd, and accept that BMS can alterate your work without your permission, if you can’t be contacted,
• You are still owner of your work, if you want to export it to another software, you can do it without requesting permission of BMS. You can even legally sell your work, but, you can’t link BMS to this marketing relationship, BMS will keep independant from all your further alteration of your file and what to decide to do about it.
• You can’t then sell or give exclusive rights of your model to anybody,
• Once you accepted to give your files to BMS, this is one way decision, you can’t claim it back.

Hope it is much clearer!

Regards,

Radium

[PumpyHead]

And to expand on Radium’s explanation:

-BMS’ request for source files (3dsMax, PSD, etc…) is not to keep the original IP owner (the creator of the model,skin, etc…) from continuing development, rather BMS requires the source files so that the model/skin/etc… can be easily modified to accommodate changes in code or other changes that could impact the work. Especially if the original IP owner is unreachable at a later time.

-Also realize that BMS does not accept payment for any of its work, and by extension, that means it will not accept payment for any work that you may wish to assign to BMS. Your work is also protected from other persons trying to profit from your work by BMS’ End User License Agreement.

[sunrrrise]

@Dee-Jay:

… there are much worse … take a look into the TacRef and look at IL76, IL78, C-17, C-5, …

Or A-freakin’-10.

[Ahroun]

@sunrrrise:

Or A-freakin’-10.

I’m taking it in a serious consideration, Sunrise! One of my favorites!

[Ahroun]

Dear friends Radium and Pumpyhead,

Understood! Very objective and clear!

Thanks a lot, I’ll keep in touch and bring news soon!

Best regards

[Blu3wolf]

I have a question I think is relevant to this topic. With regards to models, does BMS make use of any (or perhaps, would BMS make use of any) models which are licensed openly to the community?

If a model was released under a permissive CC license (such as a CC-BY-NC or a CC-BY-NC-SA) would BMS make use of that, given that its very similar to the BMS requirements for use? The biggest difference I can see is that a CC license would allow anyone to use the models, whereas the BMS one appears to only allow BMS to distribute them.

With the CC licenses described above, they also allow derivative work, which is what is required to modify the model later if required, even when the original owner is not around.

[Radium]

@Blu3wolf:

I have a question I think is relevant to this topic. With regards to models, does BMS make use of any (or perhaps, would BMS make use of any) models which are licensed openly to the community?

If a model was released under a permissive CC license (such as a CC-BY-NC or a CC-BY-NC-SA) would BMS make use of that, given that its very similar to the BMS requirements for use? The biggest difference I can see is that a CC license would allow anyone to use the models, whereas the BMS one appears to only allow BMS to distribute them.

With the CC licenses described above, they also allow derivative work, which is what is required to modify the model later if required, even when the original owner is not around.

Hello Blu3wolf,

Your question is highly relevant.

In fact, the main problem is that it is very difficult to ensure a model is released under the licences you described below. There is plenty of websites claiming their models to be free, open source, while in fact the are copyrighted, ripped from games.

So, we prefer to check by ourselves how models are made, and we encourage people to share on this forum their WIPs, it gives some good general faith in the work we would be submitted.

Regards,

Radium

[Blu3wolf]

Hi Radium, I can see that would be a serious concern. I had meant the question to relate to those models which we can see develop here on the forum, though. If Ahroun (for example) decided to release his model under a CC-BY-NC-SA license, would that prevent BMS from using it?

That license requires that the model not be used in a commercial product, that the author receive attribution for making it, and that if the model is redistributed (even after modification) others are free to take that version of the model and modify/redistribute it themselves. This would for instance mean that BMS would be free to make any modifications to that model they liked, but it would also mean that if they distributed their version, anyone could use the BMS version as a base for their own project - so long as they also attributed the author, shared the model under a similar license, and did not make it into a commercial product.

Note that Im not asking for blanket approval of the license, just asking whether it would mean an automatic disapproval by BMS.

Thanks!

[PumpyHead]

@Blu3wolf:

Note that Im not asking for blanket approval of the license, just asking whether it would mean an automatic disapproval by BMS.

Thanks!

My guess is that BMS would not use the model without obtaining the source files along with permission from the author to use and distribute them.

[Blu3wolf]

Such a license would grant everyone the ability to use and distribute them…

[PumpyHead]

@Blu3wolf:

Such a license would grant everyone the ability to use and distribute them…

My guess is that BMS would not use the model without obtaining the source files along with permission from the author to use and distribute them.

[Blu3wolf]

So the model source files would need to be made available additionally. I think that answers my question, thanks!