This already awesome program needed a world vector shoreline map underlay…

So I made one…

I tried setting up a GCI/AWACS community but it didn’t get a lot of momentum.
I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from doing human awacs/gci at FO,
but honestly, who wouldn’t rather be flying.

,that’s not the same thing as VATC though, yeah.

Print the laser code that is set for LGB’s on the mission briefing screen, for each member of the flight.
If this is updated in the loadout screen, reclicking the flight and seat, and then reopening the brief should show the updated codes.

Wow I seem to have contributed to kicking the hornets nest a little (haha)

For the record, I was in no way suggesting that what BMS is doing is wrong or should be changed.
You guys rock, and I wouldn’t want to try to mess with perfection. Seriously.

My suggestions were in no way meant to be applied to any modification of any existing Falcon code (1.08, sp4, whatever).
I was talking blank sheet design. And I think my post was fairly realistic about the downsides involved.

Just throwing that out there.

Good fun, everybody :lol:

I too tend to be extremely grateful for the devs endless and selfless radiation of pure awesome into this community.
:werenotworthy:
From 1.08 to where we are now, is really just astounding.

I’ve been in this discussion several times, in other formats.

In my opinion, an open source community collaboration is the ONLY way that a shiny new sim could possibly work.

As many have pointed out, there aren’t enough dollars in the community to pay people full time to re-make the awesomeness that we already have, let alone even more. It is not, apparently never has been, and never will be a sustainable business model. Nevermind that there is great disparity in the community about what people want… Some will shell out bucks for pretty pictures, for others that is not their top priority. That one map of the many branching trees of falcon development over the years bears that out plainly. Others don’t have time for anything that’s not VR… not that that isn’t without issues itself, and probably a half dozen other preference orders… but the point stands.

Could an open source community project make a great product?
I think there are enough examples out there to demonstrate that it’s possible. Look at linux for crying out loud. It’s not alone.
There are also enough abandoned projects out there to provide a reasonable reality check, fwiw.

Opening up source and allowing contrib to a wider group has advantages and disadvantages. There are valid reasons why the BMS dev community doesn’t just let any/all of us trape in and do ‘whatever’ around here. It’s a fine balance to maintain some form of control and sanity, while getting maximum leverage out of available talent. Getting that balance wrong has also killed several dev teams along the way. Too many chefs in the kitchen and you’ve got 10,000 spinoffs and nobody can produce a coherent “thing”, just a matter of time before you break off and branch the tree. Not enough chefs in the kitchen, and you don’t have the expertise on staff to fix a critical multiplayer flaw. How exactly do you handle that? That would be a key question to answer before even thinking about starting.

For my two cents, I think that a “DCS World” style foundation is the “right” approach.
The “pay per module” thing leaves me with a bad aftertaste.
Maybe it wouldn’t if there were just more modules and better integrated… I don’t know.

A basic construct (world, order, physics, etc) that works as a foundation for everything else and is extensible by contributors.
Inherited by everything that is objectively iterated in that world (mesh, texture, performance logic, sensors, event based triggers, and so on) a package of modules that tie together to make an “F-16” or whatever.
I think there are ways to do a lot of things better, like almost all of the AI functions, the atrocity that is the logbook, and other settings, multi-threading, using something resembling a modern database, to name a few. Many of which probably aren’t doable on the existing codebase (at some point of frankensteinery, you have written a new sim instead of modifying an old one, and when do you cross the line where you would have been better off to start clean?)
I think there are things to be learned and implemented about multi-zone multiplayer, bandwidth management, and data broadcast from the MMO’s and FPS’s out there.
and so on.

But those are my opinions. And there are as many variations of opinion as there are people in the community.
Even if you limit it to people in the community that have a reasonable level of input to production, who gets to decide which one(s) are right? And how is that decision made? Many butts would be hurt hashing out such things.

Rabbit…
I wrote my first line of code over telnet when I was 14 years old, after getting promoted to level 20 on a MUD and being made a ‘Wizard’ (ha, dating myself, I suppose). I edited the stock sword.c file to change the text description of the item, made and corrected a dozen syntax errors, instantiated in the game and ‘wielded’ it. Huh huh. Cool. Now to try something a little more complex… Entire ‘areas’, ‘quests’, ‘smart’ monsters (really lame basic AI logic). I was hooked, i’ve worked in the industry professionally and casually ever since that day. Can we grab a kid who thinks jets 'R kewl (or tanks, or ships, or SAM systems… whatever), and who learns the basics and moves on up from there? Or who downloaded Blender/etc, extruded a cube and rendered it, working up to making more complex stuff? I know people who have built paying careers out of these hobbies. I know people who went to school for these things and used content they developed for their hobbies as portfolio to get admitted to their programs, and afterwards, a real job. I personally think it would be pretty neat if the mil sim segment had a vector for this as well.

Anyway i’ve probably digressed enough for now.

An interface to change the IVC frequency from the 2d screen (and/or key callbacks) while connected to multiplayer (so you can select different freqs without going to local control)

Hey how about that! It had stopped working for me for a while, but it seems good now.

Allied Force was actually released for Mac for a while,
but it died.

But yeah as noted, BMS and AF are not the same thing.

It seems like a mac should have enough horsies to run BMS, but i’ve never tried it.

In BMS it seems to me that it is not you flying the probe onto the end of the boom, but getting the jet placed in the correct contact position and then the boom operator puts the end of the boom onto your probe. The sight picture is definitely different than for the F16, but i’ve gotten decently good at getting into the right place sort of quickly. That’s for the F-18C, the E and F models are still just too much of a handfull, I can connect with those but it’s more luck than skill. I agree though , it’s definitely a much higher workload than the viper which is pretty much just easy, by now. Go do hornet AAR for 20 minutes and then try it in the viper, it feels like a vacation (haha)

Also i’ve noticed the differential in thrust, especially in the E/F, when I spool up on the cat, if I have both throttles maxed forward I yaw off to the right in a very visually stunning and dangerous way. I’ve learned to max the right throttle and advance the left throttle only far enough to make the catapult ready. I have done differential throttle in cruise too, which seems to alleviate some of the control issues, but not entirely…

I’d love to hear any inputs to make it better/easier or explain to me how i’m doing it wrong, and how to fix

/offtopic, sort of,

i’ve had to add it to my personal crosscheck to shut OFF the hmcs right before going precontact or landing