Another thought about the new version......

[JBaymore]

Not that I am a combat sim fan in any way........ but.........

In FSX there are now missions.  One of those missions is the "flour bombing" one.  In this mission, you release a droppable object from the aircraft, that object (supposedly) follows the laws of physics and falls correctly to the ground, the object then impacts the ground or the target, the object then displays an effects file (the puff of the flour bag bursting and the resulting white mark), and the sim also has a way of telling if the target has been hit for "scoring" your success with the mission.

It seems to me that this feature has now completely opened up the possibility for add-on developers to add in serious combat features to this sim.

Flour bombs can easily turn into munitions of various sorts.  Targets can easily turn into tanks and bunkers and such.  The triggered effects probabl ycan turn into flame and explosions and flying building parts and such.  The tracking of a "hit" might easily translate into an event trigger key that leads to an animation.....an explosion.  And the success of the mission (all targets hit) can already be tracked.

Seems a short way to go to creating a "firebase" scenery that is composed of targets like bunkers, trucks, parked helis, and so on with triggers and effects files keyed to each of them..... and "flour bombs" strapped on an A-10  that are, at the least, looking an behaving like dumb bombs, if not missles and gun rounds.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

best,

......................john

[gijake]

I have been thinking about his for awhile now.  And with the landable, moving ships, Blider towplanes, and moving ground traffic, I was thinking that someone could re-creat like D-Day, with the gliders, and ships moving accross the channel.  That would be reall cool.

[Mobius]

The people at aerosoft are making an FSX F-16, and they say you will be able to dogfight with guns and sidewinders only, but still, that's a first for Flight Simulator.

F-16  Add-on

how does a dog fighting mode sounds to you? Guns and Sidewinders only, but at least you can now show you are able to shoot down all your buddies who fly the same aircraft.....

Sounds good to me.

[Daube]

Tsss tsss, you see only military aspects, you foolish gamers

[Felix/FFDS]

[quote]Tsss tsss, you see only military aspects, you foolish gamers

[Katahu]

I agree that just because a flour bomb feature has been addon to the sim doesn't mean that everyone will be using it for military purposes only. If you look at the real-world planes that drop boyies [is that spelled right?] into the water to record the current of the oceans and stuff like that, then you can see that FSX can also be modded to simulate flights for NOAA.

[Hagar]

Not before time. Most of these features are included in CFS2 which was released 6 years ago. I've been saying all along that we could have had all this with FS2002. I think we would if it hadn't been for the inverted snobbery of some of the FS community, especially the old die-hards who stubbornly refused to see the potential. Even now, some people object strongly to having any form of military aircraft in FS.

Many of the features you now take for granted were developed & perfected in CFS long before FS. The FS2002 AI Traffic works on exactly the same principle as the AI aircraft used in CFS right from the start.

[JBaymore]

If the drop physics is modeled correctly... it should also allow dropping radiosondes into hurricanes and maybe even tracing their "performance" (did the unit do it's mission).

Also deploying a group of skydivers.  Hum....wonder if you could deploy an animated group of skydivers that after jumping made formations and such?

And dropping bales of hay to stranded cattle in Minnesota in a January deep freeze?

best,

.......john

[pete]

The cutting edge of aviation is often centred in the military arena. A lot of civil & commercial aviation follows in the wake of military aviation.

Basically what I am saying - similar to Doug (Hagar) above - is that MSFS has often & wrongly, in my opionion, steered clear of military aircraft (note no default model to use the FD for dynamics of addons)

I think there are many who wish to steer clear of military in MSFS & fear the 'gaming' aspect - in other words getting away from the emphasis on 'flight simulation' ..

Well, in my opinion, it's high time that MSFS got to grips with military aviation & it's great possibilities - & be especially clear that we need to focus on FD, real life flying simulation  ....  & not gaming point scoring.

[Woodlouse2002]

If you look at the real-world planes that drop boyies [is that spelled right?].

No you didn't. It's Buoys.

[Katahu]

No you didn't. It's Buoys.

Thank you for the correction.

I agree with Pete's comment in regards to how military aviation has improved civil aviation. I like to add an example to his comments. World War 2 accelerated the progress of aviation from primitive bi-planes that can barely go any faster than a cessna to high-altittude bombers and transports that delivered the heaviest payloads of the time. Heck, if it wasn't for the progress of military aviation, we would most likely still be flying DC-3s for airlines today since aviation is only 103 years old.

Now compare this piece of history to the FS and CFS series. The CFS series was more advanced than the FS series since it featured a more intelligent AI as well as support for high-speed dynamics from vintage jet fighters that were included in CFS3. If these aspects of the CFS series were to be spliced into the FS series, then we would be looking at the most advanced piece of commerical software in the market to date.

However, the doomsayers who oppose this approach seem to make up most of the consumer population. So as a result, we're stuck with the limitation of the FS engine because Microsoft wants to attract the widest range of audience possible.

Even if the doomsayers don't make up the majority of the consumer population, they seem to have a strong influence.