Open Source Flight Sims

Rorschach_6 writes: "Not one but two Open Source initiatives to create a modern combat flight sim have come to light in recent days. Both stem from the overreaching Falcon 4 flight sim. Check out eBattleField or OpenSimulation." The problem that I always had with flight simulators is that I found the ground just uncontrolably alluring. Thank god they don't let people like me fly non-virtual planes ;)

Comments

Here's annother interesting one

[Apache]

Check out "The Valkyrie Simulation Project"http://valkyrie.sourceforge.net/

"What's interesting about it?" you might ask? The goal is to simualte piloting valkyries (the transforming fighters from Macross aka Robotech) and other anime style mechs. It's still in early development stages, but there is some working code in the CVS...

Re:I could go for that...

[Chris Johnson]

That's interesting to know. I'm a huge X-Plane fan and got it when it was $200 :) it stands to reason that it would work on x68 Linux under wine because Austin Meyer essentially re-implements every speck of interface- good thing to know.

I can't help but think of how essentially geeky X-Plane really is- I _do_ think it's the best flight sim out there, but then I do things like read 'Wide-Body: the making of the Boeing 747' for fun and then design a plane a bit larger than a Lear Jet, as plausibly as possible, with two GE high-bypass fanjets dwarfing the fuselage and hurling it through the air at up to Mach 1, and then flight-test it and fix the aerodynamic problems :)

_Most_ people want to shoot down stuff or play airline pilot, not design airplanes using blade element modelling. It's very much like games like RoboWar (not an official link, a design page)- the popular appeal of something this geeky is basically nil, but for those who are willing to be captivated by the technical challenge, the depth of the game becomes phenomenal. It's like that with X-Plane, because it's basically a full-on blade element modelling aerodynamic simulator with killer eye candy for $80, something the real aircraft designers would have killed for (as an initial rough-draft tool) twenty years ago.

To be playing with this sort of thing on a home computer is beyond anything I could have imagined as a kid drawing pictures of weird airplanes instead of doing homework :)

Engine = "OS", Art, perhaps Not

[Christopher B. Brown]

With a lot of games, there are several components that are not all of equal "creativity."

I'll suggest the thought that gaming "engines" represent something that could indeed come together via some sort of "Open Source" scheme, whilst other parts of a game, such as the setting of "physics parameters," creation of "artsy stuff" like pictures, and the construction of what relationships are used in the game represent something "less open."

For instance, someone might create a really cool Quake level, with customized graphical images, as well as parameters and maze layout being set up to be somehow "particularly fun to play." If someone messes with it, it becomes somehow less satisfactory, much as James Joyce's "The Dubliners" would likely suffer if you or I were to "tweak" it as we wish.

With Quake, the "engine" somewhat corresponds to the way books have pages, and standard sorts of formatting, and familiar fonts. That can reasonably be quite open. In contrast, a well-put-together Quake level, or other game scenario, is somewhat like a novel. It loses some of its "artistic integrity" if you mess with it.

Some "game scenarios" might be pretty robust, and even designed for you to fiddle with. Others may be very fragile, where any change will work ill.

The crucial thing about free software in this context is that in order for it to work for games, which are of arguably "frivolous" value, someone has to be willing to sponsor/commission their creation beforehand. "Open source" has been particularly successful with tools that were of demonstrable utility to their makers. If working on cfengine provides you utility, then it is clearly worthwhile, even if you subsequently give away the results.

With games, the utility is less demonstrable, and it may be necessary to have a "rich patron" willing to pay for production beforehand, with no expectation of future returns.

A few people wanting to fool around with flight simulation can find "fooling around with flight simulation" of sufficient utility to justify producing a flight sim; that's not quite the same thing as producing a line of "cool video games."

Re:heh cool

[CausticPuppy]

I've done some combat sims (Falcon 3/4, EF2000), but it seems like I'm more interested in just flying the plane than worrying about tactical air combat. Seems like you gotta learn all the systems of a real jet before you can even stay alive in simulated combat!

So now I mainly like to terrorize downtown Seattle and outlying suburbs in Flight Unlimited 3... May Looking Glass Technology rest in peace.
:-(
I've always had a fascination with GA sims anyway, I should probably take up flying as a real hobby. I've had every version of Flight Simulator since even before it was assimilated by Microsoft (FS 2.0 on the Apple IIc, baby!)
There's some satisfaction in kamikaze-bombing Bill Gates' house right on the lakeshore in the P51. Both his house and the aircraft are rendered quite nicely in Flight Unlimited III.

Open Source could taint something...

[AFCArchvile]

...the physics engine. Unless they make it clear to the programmers that this is off limits, all hell will break loose. We will have zero-g airplanes hovering around because of some L337 H4X0R fiddling around with the source for cheating purposes. Ethics is always something that seems to suffer with the advent of open source.

Don't be so hard on yourself

[ptomblin]

I'm a 250 hour private pilot, and I have over 600 real landings of real airplanes in my log book. But I've never managed to make a good, on-the-runway soft landing in either Microsoft Flight Simulator or any of the other flight sims I've tried. It's just not the same thing.

BTW: Next summer I'm planning a trip to Meigs Field (the default starting place on MS Flight Simulator) just to prove it can be done. It's also going to be saying goodbye to a very nice airfield before that scumbag Richard Daley closes it for good.

The ideas don't jive...

[Fervent]

I really don't think most entertainment should be open source. What's the benefit? Part of the allure of watching entertainment is to *not* know what's going on in the background. Games == movies I think, in this case.

Living in America, entertainment is a prized thing which pay for greatly. While I don't agree with some extravagant ticket prices, I can easily see why some people charge to make a small profit on games (Nintendo exempted, as they usually overcharge).

Besides, it's a flight sim, not some ASCII game with 2K of code. A lot of work goes into the physics and dynamic weather conditions in these things. Some sims charge up to $50 -- very high for computer games. I've seen a few around $100.

Point is, there's a hell of a lot of work involved. This is not a "hobby" that will yield an OS like Linux for others to use -- it's just a game that you're investing your time in. If you want to make a buck off your time, I say go for it.