what am I doing now?

[EAGLE 18 FLT]

Its good to see how things are going visually, keep up the good work!

[scary_pigeon]

 

this i think is a first for us in some ways - for some months we've had bots firing missiles, then it was the player able to fire dumb fire missiles. Now I did a test firing. it actually missed the plane in that attempt.

[scary_pigeon]

another movie

 

xvid codec needed

 

http://fluffysteve.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/air2airb.avi

 

what we see here is a test of the missile exploding after tracking some target. The way the project has ended up is that everything is played over an net connection weather across the world or to a local server. The skyhawk the missile that was fired at was a bot aircraft. the missile too was a bot flying under the servers direction in its single minded pursuit.

 

missions are defined on the server as will campaigns.

 

 

much remains, in the movie you can see how the missile carries on through the target - this is because i've not programmed it to be removed properly from the client: it just takes its last velocity and accel information and then flies. Also, its just fireworks at the moment as the missile does no damage yet. These are not hard things to do and will be done shortly. probably when i get back from work :)

[pittnuma]

Hi,

 

Looks fantastic, really looking forward to this when she comes out, especially the GR3, 1 of my all time favourite aircraft and the modelling of VSTOL is sorely lacking in the Sim community.

 

I hope the VTOL is fully modelled and the nozzles thus allowing some forms of rotations around the axis.

 

 

Regards

 

Darren

Pittnuma

[scary_pigeon]

most recently i have crushed an error.. the missile . thaat didnt excplode completelu- it what do that. boom. bugt carry on flying no longer though in latest code.

[scary_pigeon]

another missile test - this time we are working on a new terrain:

 

http://thunder-works.com/media/terrainwip.avi

 

it will improve yet.

 

 

this is what we did last night. later on some more work on damage actually killing an aircraft. the other day i did manage to with a missile knock off bits of a sea harrier (by mistake - sort of firing the missile blindly into a an ai dogfight) - but it carried on flying with the back half of hte plane missing. so that wont do.

[+Dante-JT]

it will improve yet.

 

 

 

Nice video, Steve ! :) I'm glad to see that finally the terrain thing is being solved.

 

For those who wanna know, this new terrain system is based on accurate elevation data about the islands, and coastline contour is map-accurate too.

 

For example, in Steve's video, he was flying near Stanley from Cape Pembrook to Seal Point, approximately here:

 

Soon Steve will hopefully improve the system with a loading-on-demand of terrain chunks and other clever parts transplantated from his older terrain system. To form the complete and accurate Falklands/Malvinas mesh, I believe 100 to 150 chunks of terrain like that will be used. It's huge.

 

P.S.: for the argentine people, we will provide the spanish/argentinean map names as well (as an option)

Edited August 23, 2005 by Dante-JT

[scary_pigeon]

definately, it adds to the sort of authenticity in a small way perhaps - like how in IL2 the voices are all spoken in german and russian rather than accented english.

[+Crusader]

[Sumatoria20]

Its very good to include both names sides for the different locations of the islands.

 

keep up the "tremendeus" work.

[HawkHums]

Still looking good, keep it up.

 

Just thought it was time to pop in and have an update.

 

 

I see the instuments are moving (some) and the radar looks good too.

 

Hows the weather effects going ? its the one thing Ive been wondering about and havent seen any info on. (maybe I just missed it)

[scary_pigeon]

weather effects are not any more developed than what we saw in previous screen shots - sort of fluffy clouds which can be darkened and interesting skydome effects along with rain. fog and haze type things are easy enough to do.

[scary_pigeon]

realised that lightsourcing was missing from terrain. makes a difference sure enough.

 

i think this looks much better.

[Berkut RnR]

Looks Great!!!

[+Dante-JT]

I'm working in the seaside objects like cliffs, there should exist an enormous amount of these around the isles:

 

Some z-buffer fight happens here and there, which I'm trying to solve now.

[scary_pigeon]

I'm working in the seaside objects like cliffs, there should exist an enormous amount of these around the isles:

 

Some z-buffer fight happens here and there, which I'm trying to solve now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

i wonder if there is any reason for us even to write to the z buffer for rendering sea?

[+Dante-JT]

I've did 35 more terrain blocks. The whole contour of the islands is starting to be recognizable. Below, there's Fitzroy, Bluff Cove, Stanley area (city and roads not yet in place) and other nearby areas (I think mount Kent):

 

 

Terrain high-alt textures are placeholders, they will be manually worked for better fidelity.

[Incendiary Lemon]

Thats the most accurate ground mapping I've seen in a sim. :)

[+Crusader]

looks great :)

[scary_pigeon]

continueing from a discussion with dante the other day - he requested some extra terrain effects. Dante should be able to enhance the implementation later with different textures and settings and such. but the effect looks quite good. Unplanned is the apparant shallow water effect.

 

Edited September 13, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[+Dante-JT]

continueing from a discussion with dante the other day - he requested some extra terrain effects. Dante should be able to enhance the implementation later with different textures and settings and such. but the effect looks quite good. Unplanned is the apparant shallow water effect.

 

 

Looks awesome! Good job!

[scary_pigeon]

for the online demo, I perceive only a few hurdles:

 

1) terrain/object physics interaction. for some reason my plane when it hits the ground isnt behaving entirely convincingly.

 

2) the ability to shoot down other objects with missiles. technically thats already there, i once fired a missile and saw that the tail of another plane was shot off - but it still carried on flying - behaviour scripts need writing and tweaking on that score.

 

3) make memory footprint smaller: means use of texture compression/deallocation of textures. at the moment the page file continues to expand as more terrains are loaded. in the past this was fine because ever large landscape wide texture was a general one, now they are terrain specific/

 

4) addition of roads (to later be followed by junction waypoint program to enable ground vehicles to navigate terrain)

 

5) creation of decent user interface that comprehends aircraft despawning and point scoring.

 

i have a week off work to work on this.

Edited September 16, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[AWL_Spinner]

Wow, it's really impressive how quickly you guys are progressing with this given how few of you there are!

 

Nearly to the point of an online demo already? One flyable aircraft only, do you think?

 

Best regards. Spinner

[scary_pigeon]

Wow, it's really impressive how quickly you guys are progressing with this given how few of you there are!

 

Nearly to the point of an online demo already? One flyable aircraft only, do you think?

 

Best regards. Spinner

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

i was just thinking about that. im in uk, dante is in brazil - we send each other files but sometimes not entirely sure at what stage each is at. I'm not sure what his level of development is for the other cockpits. Easiest will be the electronically lacking pucara or skyhawk pit.

 

a mirage vs sea harrier match up might have been interesting.

 

the online demo is the easy one i think. What scares me still is our promise on the dynamic campaign. single player means gameworld complexity. online demo just means take off and pwn.

Edited September 16, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[Shadowcat]

2) the ability to shoot down other objects with missiles. technically thats already there, i once fired a missile and saw that the tail of another plane was shot off - but it still carried on flying - behaviour scripts need writing and tweaking on that score.

What's the current situation with the flight modelling?

 

It would be really nice if the flight model was dynamically affected by damage, rather than entering into some pre-scripted behaviour, but of course highly detailed damage modelling is a fairly large can of worms for a small team.

 

Do you have concrete plans for handling the effect of damage on flight modelling? Or is this side of things still undecided?