The art of kill

[Coligny]

Long time no see (viper pilot already knows...)

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[Kanchou]

It's amazing how dated Falcon 3.0 is, but Falcon 4.0's engine was so capable that with a little work it still looks respectable even today... just wish it had working widescreen support and a few less graphical errors.

[Coligny]

It's amazing how dated Falcon 3.0 is, but Falcon 4.0's engine was so capable that with a little work it still looks respectable even today... just wish it had working widescreen support and a few less graphical errors.

For F3 computer could barely do it.
Since F4, rendering is near photorealistic. The power to do anything real time is here. The problem come from filling the database, maps, and the cost of object creation.

FSX and Xplane show these limits. They can render anything smoothly. But even dedicated custom scenery for Paris are artistically a little too far of. To much generic buildings, bad matching between poor sat ground rendering and building placement. In fact after using the piss poor sim included in google earth all other sceneries are excessively deceiptfull.

It's unfortunately no longer aboot rendering which is now easy and engine can be made available OTS for purchase. It's aboot licensing right for topological data... and they have to reinvent the wheel for every new sims. They had it easy with Desert storm themed sims... desert, few camel 1 or 2 buildings to call it a city. Now it's over...

[Kanchou]

Frankly I could give two sharts for whether or not Paris looks realistic in a combat sim. All I want is the ability to identify air and especially ground targets visually in the sim, which means the objects need to be well-rendered, and buildings/objects should look realistic, regardless of how accurate the scenery actually is...

Of course, it would be nice to have scenery that makes you actually feel like you're flying above the Earth instead of looking down at tiny little blocky objects and completely featureless terrain.

The biggest problem in F4AF is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to identify ground targets (besides buildings/bridges) visually unless you have target labels on. Partially because the models are so bad, but primarily because they blend into the terrain since you can't tell a poorly-rendered SA2 from a poorly-rendered tree, and because the terrain textures look very very generic when you're actually low enough to see said objects.

I tried the FS2009 demo and it looks really great when you're in Maximum Pretty mode, but even my brand new PC couldn't make it work smooth enough at that level...

[Coligny]

Frankly I could give two sharts for whether or not Paris looks realistic in a combat sim. All I want is the ability to identify air and especially ground targets visually in the sim, which means the objects need to be well-rendered, and buildings/objects should look realistic, regardless of how accurate the scenery actually is...

Somewhat agree for mil sims... but for FSX... you're not left with a lot of things to do when the scenery is bad (especially since they closed meigs field)...

[Kanchou]

FS was never supposed to be 'fun' so much as it was as way to learn how to fly or improve your piloting skills without burning AV Gas/JP4...

If they wanted it to be fun, you'd be able to blow things up and land on carriers (in a matter that was realistic, not on a hang glider or a Cessna), or you'd be able to fly planes that only existed on the design board on account of them being batshit insane.

OTOH, it might be fun to play 'lazer tag' with an Extra 300.

[Coligny]

FS was never supposed to be 'fun' so much as it was as way to learn how to fly or improve your piloting skills without burning AV Gas/JP4...

If they wanted it to be fun, you'd be able to blow things up and land on carriers (in a matter that was realistic, not on a hang glider or a Cessna), or you'd be able to fly planes that only existed on the design board on account of them being batshit insane.

OTOH, it might be fun to play 'lazer tag' with an Extra 300.

FS is like french cheeze, more of an acquired taste... But limiting it as a learning tool is a wee bit excessive. Sometimes you want to fly without blowing stuff up or being blown out of the sky.

[Tsuru]

FS is like french cheeze, more of an acquired taste... But limiting it as a learning tool is a wee bit excessive. Sometimes you want to fly without blowing stuff up or being blown out of the sky.

In fairness, MSFS is relatively widely used by student pilots to practice instrument navigation skills, and to prepare for type ratings using the addons offered by companies such as PMDG, to learn how to use a particular type of FMS or EFIS without needing to spend more money on groundschool than you absolutely need to. I find that these days MSFS for the "normal" flightsimmers (if there even is such a thing) is more about eyecandy than anything else... you'd be surprised how well FSX stacks up against the most modern of full flight sims when you only look at the visuals. If you want flight realism though, forget about MSFS. Dynamically its flight models are crap because everything is done with linear approximation, making MSFS useless for practising "proper" flying.

X-plane is much better in the dynamics department, as it uses the same vertex lattice method as a lot of certified (older) flight sims. Its best feature however, is the ability to whip up in a few hours a functional airplane of every possible configuration. Want to find out what an inverted V-tail UAV or flying wing are like to fly? With X-plane you can.

It really depends what I want to do... if I want to fly a plane from A to B, look at it from the outside a lot and play with the systems a bit, I take MSFS or get in one of the FFSs at work. If I want to tweak my mini-UAV concept I use X-plane, and if I want to blow shit up the Su-34 in BF2 works just fine.

[Kanchou]

X-Plane apparently has a better, deeper flight model flight model but the interface and controls are AWFUL.

[Coligny]

X-Plane apparently has a better, deeper flight model flight model but the interface and controls are AWFUL.

Dude... awful don't even start to describe that mess... even if compared to the twice weekly updates it's nothing... But at least it's not to difficult to build a glass coskpit with separate instrument screens around it. While FSX is some kind of half baked windowed clusterfuck.

[Coligny]

. If I want to tweak my mini-UAV concept I use X-plane...

humm... work or pleasure ?

[Tsuru]

humm... work or pleasure ?

Bit of a hobby project... I made hay during this crisis and bought me a sweet home with a big garage, and I sure as hell don't plan on using it to store the garbage the Mrs. likes to hang on to. Right now I'm using it to work on le voiture to make it MOT ready, and when that is all done I intend to build an autonomous UAV with all kinds of neat sensors and full tri-axis autopilot Determining the configuration of the thing, optimum wing loading and learning to fly RC aircraft were all done in X-plane

edit- This is where I got the idea: http://diydrones.ning.com/

[Coligny]

Bit of a hobby project... I made hay during this crisis and bought me a sweet home with a big garage, and I sure as hell don't plan on using it to store the garbage the Mrs. likes to hang on to. Right now I'm using it to work on le voiture to make it MOT ready, and when that is all done I intend to build an autonomous UAV with all kinds of neat sensors and full tri-axis autopilot Determining the configuration of the thing, optimum wing loading and learning to fly RC aircraft were all done in X-plane

edit- This is where I got the idea: http://diydrones.ning.com/

Yeah, I know this forum, been on it since some time, it' the posterchild for confusion. I still don't know what their RSS feed is all about or how to... approach the site structure...