Post by Dutch Owen on Aug 1, 2019 17:38:53 GMT -5
Although I've seldom heard it spoken or seen it written, I know a question prople who know what this project is about have to be asking: why bother?
Why work to create a combat simulation environment inside a flight sim that wasn't designed to support it? There are several highly detailed and realistic combat flight simulators out there already and have been for many years under constant development and improvement. They have great graphics and detailed aircraft with realistic flight models. They were designed from the ground up to be combat flight sims, and therefore can do things we can never do in the FSX/Prepar3d world (for just one example damage modelling for aircraft and buildings.)
What is the "market"? Anyone interested in shooting and being shot at already has at least one of these installed and play them. Why does one want to have such a thing in the civilian world?
I can only answer from my personal perspective.
All the alternatives available (and I've tried most of them) are missing two elements I think are essential to realistic military flight operations: Global scope and realistic weather. They also are quite narrowly focused on an era and a location. They offer content only as it applies to that narrow focus. They have a revenue model that requires constant selling of new content, so they have no incentive to expand to a global scale, only to continue to sell (often for a premium price) more aircraft and maps and scenarios.
With the ESP/FSX/P3D world of flight simulation (hereafter just "FS") there's only one map and you get it with the base package: the entire world. And there is the unlimited capacity to alter scenery to suit any particular local requirements - and with a huge base of products and utilities to help you do just that.
As for weather, it's usually at best an afterthought in commercial combat simulators. I think the reason is that so many are dedicated to multiplayer aerial dueling, and people who are into that just don't want the weather to get in the way. It's true you can design missions that include adverse weather, but it's not dynamic or realistic. Real weather has always been a huge factor in military planning. The ability of FS (with a good weather add-on) to replicate real weather is a game changer. If you fly in "real weather" like I do it adds another enemy to the game.
With FS, we get a huge selection of pre-built aircraft, with the potential for more to be added all the time; both payware and freeware. You get a wide choice.
And the final area I will mention is free flight. Outside of multiplayer servers, none of the commercial combat simulators I know offer a true free flight mode. All rely on canned pre-built mission scripts. The missions are fine, but somehow limited. You have an objective and if you do the right things at the right time, you win. And move on. But seldom is there is feeling of flying towards a general objective but not knowing what will happen along the way or when you get there. Each time should be different, not because the mission designer went to a lot of trouble to "randomize" his mission, but because of the inherent nature of the way things are simulated.
Of course there are drawbacks to FS to balance these benefits. The flight models are optimized for civilian flight and this can only partially be overcome with great effort. Most combat aircraft sold or provided for free have no weapons and usually even the weapon switches are not animated (the exception being the small number that have been designed for Tacpack). While it's possible to design a combat airplane with a damage model in FS no one has because there's been no standard to adhere to and no program to supply the information to implement it.
Combat in FS has never really "gotten there", despite efforts, because of the limited interest - and the limited interest is mainly because combat in FS has never really "gotten there".
FSCAI is an experiment to see if we, together, can break out of that loop of futility and see what can be done.
Thanks for supporting this project.
Dutch
Why work to create a combat simulation environment inside a flight sim that wasn't designed to support it? There are several highly detailed and realistic combat flight simulators out there already and have been for many years under constant development and improvement. They have great graphics and detailed aircraft with realistic flight models. They were designed from the ground up to be combat flight sims, and therefore can do things we can never do in the FSX/Prepar3d world (for just one example damage modelling for aircraft and buildings.)
What is the "market"? Anyone interested in shooting and being shot at already has at least one of these installed and play them. Why does one want to have such a thing in the civilian world?
I can only answer from my personal perspective.
All the alternatives available (and I've tried most of them) are missing two elements I think are essential to realistic military flight operations: Global scope and realistic weather. They also are quite narrowly focused on an era and a location. They offer content only as it applies to that narrow focus. They have a revenue model that requires constant selling of new content, so they have no incentive to expand to a global scale, only to continue to sell (often for a premium price) more aircraft and maps and scenarios.
With the ESP/FSX/P3D world of flight simulation (hereafter just "FS") there's only one map and you get it with the base package: the entire world. And there is the unlimited capacity to alter scenery to suit any particular local requirements - and with a huge base of products and utilities to help you do just that.
As for weather, it's usually at best an afterthought in commercial combat simulators. I think the reason is that so many are dedicated to multiplayer aerial dueling, and people who are into that just don't want the weather to get in the way. It's true you can design missions that include adverse weather, but it's not dynamic or realistic. Real weather has always been a huge factor in military planning. The ability of FS (with a good weather add-on) to replicate real weather is a game changer. If you fly in "real weather" like I do it adds another enemy to the game.
With FS, we get a huge selection of pre-built aircraft, with the potential for more to be added all the time; both payware and freeware. You get a wide choice.
And the final area I will mention is free flight. Outside of multiplayer servers, none of the commercial combat simulators I know offer a true free flight mode. All rely on canned pre-built mission scripts. The missions are fine, but somehow limited. You have an objective and if you do the right things at the right time, you win. And move on. But seldom is there is feeling of flying towards a general objective but not knowing what will happen along the way or when you get there. Each time should be different, not because the mission designer went to a lot of trouble to "randomize" his mission, but because of the inherent nature of the way things are simulated.
Of course there are drawbacks to FS to balance these benefits. The flight models are optimized for civilian flight and this can only partially be overcome with great effort. Most combat aircraft sold or provided for free have no weapons and usually even the weapon switches are not animated (the exception being the small number that have been designed for Tacpack). While it's possible to design a combat airplane with a damage model in FS no one has because there's been no standard to adhere to and no program to supply the information to implement it.
Combat in FS has never really "gotten there", despite efforts, because of the limited interest - and the limited interest is mainly because combat in FS has never really "gotten there".
FSCAI is an experiment to see if we, together, can break out of that loop of futility and see what can be done.
Thanks for supporting this project.
Dutch