The future of the sim..?
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I think a brand new sim is the way to go, we could call it “Fighter Ops” ! :shock:
Fighter Ooops is dead and buried. Anyone who spent time and effort on that project has a sore opinion on what happened. Not going to go into that! Still, it is ironic to bring that up.
:dhorse:
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I think that the future will bring some awe inspiring advances. A DX update is not impossible, as they brought Falcon 4.0 from DX 6, to DX 7, to DX 9. DX 10 and DX 11 (or even 12) maybe in the works. We don’t know. But what we have now is still better than anything out there now IMO. Even the GFX are good. So will it get better over time? I believe so, as time is the only constraint here. The willingness and motivation is certainly there. Just have to wait and see what happens. There is a hole host of additions and bug fixes that need to be addressed first IMO. But a DX upgrade would open the door for things like “occlusion” and RT 4K point rendering. Just imagine, “occlusion” used in explosions of bombs hitting there target! You could see the shock waves out past the explosions! All this is just a wish for now. But who knows, in a few years, this might come true. But for now, I am more than happy with what we have.
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The look fit and feel of this sim is what makes it so good. Not so real that its not fun Not so system demanding that your system cant run it Not so hard to understand that you cant figure it out and its that give and take that you enjoy and grow from when going from SP to MP as far as what’s to come time will tell things will change and if we are lucky it will still be fun.
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The part that concerns me is what I’ve read of devs/former devs saying they can’t remember how they put the campaign engine together…and doubting that anyone would even try to do it today. I think that’s (and the AI in general) are the thing that everyone agrees is what really sets F4.0/FAF/BMS apart from other “games”. Frankly, I don’t consider BMS a “game”…it’s far more sophisticated than a mere “game”, IMO.
At any rate, I sure hope the foregoing is a myth…that the devs only lack time and resources to actually bring the sim to full operating potential when hosted on modern equipment, and using modern coding approaches. And that they are handing down what they know to similarly motivated young folk. Hope would be that it will be these young people that carry forward beyond us.
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I am not sure it matters in a lot of ways… By that I mean when I flew Falcon 4 1.00 and then patched up to 1.08US I thought THIS IS IT! When I read about real Viper Ops I was disappointed. It always annoyed me a little when Pete Bonnai in the original manual says: Falcon will take care of the SOI for you… I thought why? I want the whole thing…
Things got better with…well everyone here knows the story…and BMS blew my mind…
So: I am thankful everyday that we have F4 BMS. There is no other Sim I fly even semi seriously.
So the OP is kind of a weird question. Yes, for sure there are other things that I would like (F-18 with realistic avionics…pretty please ?). However I think Stevie pointed out the key thing: longevity. How do we ensure that F4 BMS will survive future H/W and O/S upgrades? That is actually the real thing we need to think about.
It is a shame that it won’t become open source (I don’t think Tommo will allow it). I do wonder about the other legal options that are worth pursuing.
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was a qualified as vaporware …
I never said that once……but possibly twice or thrice at GF!!!
It was your guys fault, especially Bonedust and Naldo, they continually fibbed to us about it’s existence, and in this day and age, that is not “Politically Correct” behavior I’ll have you know. :rofl:
Cheers Mate,
C9
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Eventually, the people that started all of this will pass on…which begs the question, how is the legacy of the sim passed on? That’s the real question - how much gets remembered, and how much gets forgotten?
we’ll have to start a monastery at one point so that falcon will survive the millennia.
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Oh and we all to forgot the Falcon moto:
Falcon never dies…
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such as a much needed DirectX update
Let’s see:
DX7 –> DX9 - Done in the past (Including a move from Fixed Function pipeline to shaders, which is not obvious)DX9 --> DX11 - Why you think can’t be done?
or reworking all the models and texture
Models and textures are being reworked last time I checked…
and terrain
Terrain is a huge PITA yes, will it take time to modify? sure, will it happen? Yes it will, I only don’t know to tell you when… but at some point we will have to tackle it.
and UI screens to be a true native HD and not scaled
Also a PITA, but not as terrain…
designing new code to handle newer technology and avionics that the engine can’t currently handle like JTIDS, IFF, “stealth”, AESA, etc…
I do understand these are all new techs in terms of Falcon, but why do you think that the engine can’t handle it currently? I mean what’s the difference between IFF and TGP/IAMs/MITL/TFR/Mavericks/YouNameIt ? The stuff here doesn’t require a new engine or framework, and actually only depend on someone that would like to do it and take the time for that.
They are very large and labor intensive projects that are hard for someone to take on willingly without a paycheck to keep them coming back for more every day
Agree, but… You could say the same about:
DX7 --> DX9 upgrade
The best ****ing F-16 Flight Model you can find for a none-military simulator (and all the physics that comes with that)
Stable MP (In oppose to the original product)
State of the art Dead Reckoning
Particle system instead of Falcon original crappy GIFs
All the avionics upgrades that were implemented throughout the yearsAnd last but not least - Endless cleanup (Still and always On going) of zillion of hands that touched the code over the years and at some cases left code which may make you sometimes wanna jump from the highest building you can find
Do you think anyone was ever payed for anything?
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I’m not really into BMS world , maybe it will sound stupid or simply i’m wrong but…
what about create a DCS module of the F16?
A free mod I mean , based on what has been done already in BMS and ported there where you dont have to care about upgrade an old software and can “iterate” with other detailed planes.
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I’m not really into BMS world , maybe it will sound stupid or simply i’m wrong but…
what about create a DCS module of the F16?
A free mod I mean , based on what has been done already in BMS and ported there where you dont have to care about upgrade an old software and can “iterate” with other detailed planes.
The problem with that is the DCS and the Falcon engines are 2 very different things. Such as DCS does NOT have a dynamic campaign, nor does it have the avionics that BMS has IMO. The bottom line is that they are 2 different engines. Porting them to each other would be a monumental task from both sides IMO.
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being chained to ED’s bizarre priorities is in no way an improvement anyway. DCS’ engine has marginal improvements over falcon’s, but it also is missing 2/3 of BMS’ features.
even if such a project could be completed tomorrow i’d rather just play BMS. it’s already better than DCS and will probably continue to be for at least the next decade. ED’s progress is glacial and their decision-making is questionable at best. i don’t know if you’ve ever played FC3, but try firing missiles at the enemy in it. then you will see why no one should be in any hurry to grovel at ED’s feet.
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How are the FM’s of the aircraft modelled in DCS?
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Only way to keep anything going in the very long term is FOSS development.
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Only way to keep anything going in the very long term is FOSS development.
Exactly the opposite… Open source Falcon will kill this community in a few months. We have enough debates without source code, with source code you will have zillion versions flowing around and no one will be able to connect to anyone else, and eventually it’ll fall apart.
And… if you think that open source would help to achieve the “Big things” in the list, then you are again wrong. The open source FF code could be a great base for anyone out there to demonstrate some breath taking new code in ANY of the areas of the sim, but you know how many such examples there are? Zero.
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Exactly the opposite… Open source Falcon will kill this community in a few months. We have enough debates without source code, with source code you will have zillion versions flowing around and no one will be able to connect to anyone else, and eventually it’ll fall apart.
And… if you think that open source would help to achieve the “Big things” in the list, then you are again wrong. The open source FF code could be a great base for anyone out there to demonstrate some breath taking new code in ANY of the areas of the sim, but you know how many such examples there are? Zero.
Well, your second statement and my comment are not mutually exclusive. FOSS is about letting the development continue, not anything to do with the community. You’ll note that BMS development spent years without there BEING a BMS community as far as most folks were concerned. And I cant argue that having multiple versions of Falcon around would cause issues with people choosing not to fly with people using other versions.
I know FOSS would help achieve the big things in the list, as a simple case of many hands and light work. As you allude to, the FF code is OSS, but not FOSS. Its not a legal base for anyone to use to demonstrate anything.
Ive considered using it anyway to demonstrate a few specific things Id like to see in BMS (MDDE MFD page for example), but have received advice from more than one person that doing so would be a waste of time, as the demonstration would be just that - a pretty demo about as useful as the version of Seven G floating around. Then there is the legal issue that making such a demo would leave me liable to legal action from Tommo and their subsidiaries, as well as the folks who contributed to Free Falcon.
On the whole, it has not seemed like a very smart idea to expend effort on.
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Exactly the opposite… Open source Falcon will kill this community in a few months. We have enough debates without source code, with source code you will have zillion versions flowing around and no one will be able to connect to anyone else, and eventually it’ll fall apart.
And… if you think that open source would help to achieve the “Big things” in the list, then you are again wrong. The open source FF code could be a great base for anyone out there to demonstrate some breath taking new code in ANY of the areas of the sim, but you know how many such examples there are? Zero.
The FF source code was stolen not open (and in a sorry state) no one in the OSS community would have touched that stuff with a ten foot pole anyway. As for BMS you cannot opensource the code anyway because Tommo owns the license to it and would be their call anyways. Starting a new code base from scratch is obviously a huger endeavour and not a part-time task.
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The FF source code was stolen not open (and in a sorry state) no one in the OSS community would have touched that stuff with a ten foot pole anyway. As for BMS you cannot opensource the code anyway because Tommo owns the license to it and would be their call anyways. Starting a new code base from scratch is obviously a huger endeavour and not a part-time task.
The FF source code is open. It is not free. There is a big distinction. Unless the details of the agreement between BMS and Tommo are public information (I had thought they were not), you cannot say for sure whether BMS could or could not make the code open source. Without permission from Tommo, they could not relicense it under a FOSS license.
Terminology is important, especially when discussing matters of ownership and legalities.
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And before it will get out of hand regarding legal stuff and question marks, when I referred to the FF source code, I do not mean that someone will now built something to release another version of Falcon somehow… what I mean is that it could be used as a base to get familiar with the general code structure. And FWIW The original leaked code could also probably be used to some extent for such purpose.
Bottom Line my point is - If someone REALLY would like to help, then he would have found a creative way to draw the positive attention. And FWIW it doesn’t even have to be related directly to the Falcon source code itself… the sim can benefit even from some standalone concept which can demonstrate new technologies that can be implemented later into the sim.
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And before it will get out of hand regarding legal stuff and question marks, when I referred to the FF source code, I do not mean that someone will now built something to release another version of Falcon somehow… what I mean is that it could be used as a base to get familiar with the general code structure. And FWIW The original leaked code could also probably be used to some extent for such purpose.
Bottom Line my point is - If someone REALLY would like to help, then he would have found a creative way to draw the positive attention. And FWIW it doesn’t even have to be related directly to the Falcon source code itself… the sim can benefit even from some standalone concept which can demonstrate new technologies that can be implemented later into the sim.
So are you also saying that if someone coded something into FF and it seemed useful, there could be potential interest in importing that piece of code to BMS? I am aware that on some levels FF and BMS are very similar, but BMS went further and did more with it. So, is it still similar enough today to actually be viable? I don’t know, seems like a whole lot of risk for little reward, i.e. hours of coding for it not to be used by anyone to me lol.