‘Gearing Up for a New Direction
The last few months have been, well, trying.
Paul was optimizing his commute train time in Germany by trying to wrestle
Simulab into some semblance of shape. There was some progress, but
frustratingly slow. That’s one of the downsides of the “lone programmer”
method of sim development. Well, at least he’s communicative.
My “relationship” with Simon (bomber) Morley hasn’t gotten any better. He’s
still as cantankerous as ever, and has effectively frozen me out of what has
evolved into nearly daily Skype sessions. The people involved in those chats
are Paul (outlaw) Guhl, Simon (bomber) Morley, Kevin (mekpg) Pothoff and
Gerry (Mossie) Mos, who was always a very prolific Targetware contributor who
really steps up to the plate, delivery-wise. He’s got a huge store of 3D
objects and targets, and is a fast and efficient 3D modeler and animator.
After a few attempts to try and steer and clarify discussions, I quickly
realized that Simon will always “shoot the messenger” if that messenger is
me. So be it. So, I decided to merely “lurk” on the discussions, limit my
contributions to only the most important things, and to just go to Paul
directly for feature requests. I can trust that the group will likely end up
agreeing to something I can get behind. In the end, all I really need is to
get the flight gear creation method under my thumb, and then I can get Hakko
Ichiu up and running, by my lonesome if I have to.
Simon has worked up a detailed Spitfire I flight model, with, I believe, 4
sections per side (whereas the Simulab/X-Plane/FlightGear systems all adhere
to the single wing concept, which of course isn’t granular enough for a
combat flight sim, where you need to degrade specific areas in response to
combat damage). Simon said he was pretty close to having it ready for
Simulab.
Full Reverse! Hard to Port, Ensign!
Then, on 20 August, 2011, the bomb landed. Paul had been stumped by a
nettlesome flickering problem with his graphics engine. He looked at his
progress overall with Simulab, and how far he still had to go to get a
workable alpha, and decided to change direction… radically. He elected to
align his efforts with the FlightGear engine. The benefits being that it was
already up and running, had a large aircraft selection already and was also
proven at accommodating third party efforts.
The downside? It’s a civilian sim, so there are no bullets, bombs, rockets,
missiles, or anything else of a beligerant nature (Odd that it had lots of
historical and modern military aircraft modeled…. I have to ask, “Why
bother?”). But that’s what Paul hopes to add: all the combat elements, plus
the interface overhaul that has already been hashed out for Target For Today
.
The FlightGear Era Begins…
Anyway, since the announcement, we’ve all been downloading Flight Gear,
poring through its planes and file structure trying to figure out what’s
what. It’s been somewhat enlightening. First the bad.
1) No consistency. The 3D models and textures are all over the map. Some have
very spartan, non-textured cockpits. Some have fully functioning modern
instrumentation. They use a hodgepodge of graphic file types (.jpg, .tga,
.png, .gif) and a variety of methods (alpha layering, bump and occlusion
maps, etc.).
2) Poor GUI. So bad that installing the program can be an exercise in
frustration. I hope Paul will quickly be able to take Simon’s vision and
create an interface that’s usable and flexible.
3) Goofy orientation: The only sim I’ve yet seen that doesn’t use the X axis
for the wing/roll axis. In FG, X is the thrust/nose-tail axis. Whatever:
Simon plans to introduce a root-of-the-object rotation line item to set
things to orient to the AC3D axis setup.
4) No combat modeling.
5) Very limited damage modeling (e.g., random part and system failure). Part
and parcel with #4. This is what Paul is tasked at adding.
6) Flight modeling very basic. For our purposes, that translates into
“crappy”.
And the good:
1) FlightGear is set to work from .ac AC3D file format! It can make use of
the X-Plane AC3D plug-in to create animations and cull the numeric data for
use in its .xml files. In fact, I believe that going with Flight Gear rules
out Collada as well. Yay, no more wrestling with that infernal Blender!!
2) The gauges look to be easy to create, and I’m reasonably sure I’ll be able
to quickly port the Targetware gauges over to FG gauges (improving the
accuracy of the 2D work manifold in the process). T4T wants to use 3D gauges,
which I still don’t see the benefit of at all (why use hundreds of polys to
describe the lip of a gauge and protruding mounting screws when a bump map
will do just fine?). At worst, I can take (and re-axis-orient) a FG 3D gauge,
replace its textures with TW 2D art, and see what the graphic hit is. As it
is, needing 3 rectangular objects (and just 6 tri-polys) to describe a face
and two needles has got to beat the hell out of nearly 300 for a true 3D
gauge. We’ll see, I guess.
3) Crewing (one of Simon’s big emphases) is already included and implemented.
Ditto for carrier operations.
4) Weather. Already built in. Will come in very handy for monsoon season with
Hakko Ichiu.
5) Moving assets/targets. In fact, since its designed more as a single-player
system, it’s got lots of AI features I’m sure we can bend to our devices.
Now the unknown….
FG uses a server-retrieved terrain system, and we have no idea yet how
editable it is. Suffice it to say, this being a civilian sim, it’s going to
be chock-a-block with modern-day airports, and will require a lot of work to
restore the world back to the 1940s. I’m fairly confident the 2D artwork
(basic terrain textures) will be able to be ported from Targetware… but how
do we scuplt the actual terrain? How will roads and rails and coastlines
work? (Would be nice if it’s vector driven and also editable). The bigger
question is, how can we keep our edited terrain separate and still support a
MMOG sim?
Well, having sat with this for a week, and seeing the first Skype session
transcripts, I’m a bit bouyed by this change in direction. Provided Simon is
successful in porting the Spitfire, and its detailed FM to FlightGear… and
provided he can then create a tutorial that shows the rest of us how to do
that; and then, provided Paul comes through with the interface and the combat
elements needed to make this a creditable combat sim… then the future would
be bright.
But, those are some huge IFs…. so I’m going to stay tuned, and try to
remain a bit detached, so as to limit my disappointment if this doesn’t pan
out. I may begin the process of porting Japanese, American and British gauges
over (I can use the existing FG Zero and Kate and Val as guinea pigs to test
them in situ, before axis orientating them for Hakko Ichiu), as this is a big
and necessary undertaking.
I’ve already contacted Mossie about showing me how to do animation using the
X-Plane plugin. Paul has already contributed a debug overlay for testing
aircraft during development. Simon has a Spit on some FG tarmac (albeit, not
animated yet), and thinks it’ll be flying by the end of this weekend.
