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Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

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Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby Thorsten » Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:55 am

(Mod note: This topic was split off from the "Su-15 Screenshots" topic, and refers to some comments in that topic)

If there's a problem (especially if it persists in 3.7), describe it along with your hardware specs and the sequence of actions needed to trigger it so that it can be investigated properly in a separate thread. I can't make anything solid of your description here as I have never encountered the problem you describe, I do frequent object creation and management from Nasal in the Shuttle and it works fine, the weather system is doing it on a larger scale, and it also works fine (I've never had a segfault reported from anyone from adding Cirrus clouds) so we need a lot more information to see what's wrong at your end.

As for the missile work, you may not be aware of it, but there's a consensus among the core contributors that FG is supposed to be a civilian simulator, so weapons support by and large faces a hard time being committed. That's the reason you can't find any of the air combat packages in the repository - it's not that they wouldn't exist. Given that, the best course of action would be to team up with the Scripted AI Objects project as I mentioned elsewhere. But please don't assume for a moment that you're the only person who can encode parameters in the MP protocol.

Also note that Stuarts HLA efforts might render the MP protocol obsolete sooner or later - I think that's finally on the horizon.
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Re: Su-15 Screenshots

Postby Necolatis » Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:19 am

Thorsten wrote in Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:55 am:As for the missile work, you may not be aware of it, but there's a consensus among the core contributors that FG is supposed to be a civilian simulator, so weapons support by and large faces a hard time being committed. That's the reason you can't find any of the air combat packages in the repository - it's not that they wouldn't exist.


There has been hints of that core developer decision before, but this is the first time I see it so firmly stated. So it is true.

It confuses me a bit though. Because the F-14 is one of the aircraft packaged with the Flightgear releases, and it has missile support, well at least it states in MP chat that it shots at this or that. I thought, since this is the case that it would be alright to adapt those missiles for the JA37, which I then did, I also enabled MP messaging for hitting with the cannon. I would probably not have an option to enable those MP messages if I knew for sure that the developers thinks that does not belong in this sim.

But to be honest I understand the decision, simply cause I sometimes log into MP and see people using the F-14, Mirage 2000-5, F-15 or the JA-37 to shoot at civilian traffic with missile MP messaging enabled.

Maybe with HLA, we can get a server that is for military planes. Then the planes can be setup to only enable missiles/guns on that server. Or the core devs. could agree to remove all MP missile support from all FGAddon planes entirely.
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Re: Su-15 Screenshots

Postby Thorsten » Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:26 am

There's an old statement by TorstenD e.g. here:

I dislike the use of FlightGear for the simulation of weapons, bombing, dogfighting or other offensive actions and I discourage any activities going in that direction.
I can accept (though I don't like) implementing military aircraft into FlightGear as long as the main purpose is simulation of the aviation aspect.


I don't think it has ever been formalized as a hard and fast rule, and it is true that several aircraft are equipped with working weapons - maintainers can do that if they have commit access without a discussion after all. But if you make a merge request for a package that simulates weapons effects, you'll face an uphill struggle and the discussion will go into the above direction.
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Re: Su-15 Screenshots

Postby Thorsten » Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:41 pm

vitos wrote in Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:22 am:
Ok. I do not approve dogfighting games really. If someone win, someone lose, so there is something sad in it, always. Even tragical if it goes too far. Really, really sad.

At my opinion, human shall not play with human at all.
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Re: Su-15 Screenshots

Postby Bomber » Sun Dec 13, 2015 1:04 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:55 am:As for the missile work, you may not be aware of it, but there's a consensus among the core contributors that FG is supposed to be a civilian simulator, so weapons support by and large faces a hard time being committed. That's the reason you can't find any of the air combat packages in the repository - it's not that they wouldn't exist.


it's actually a self full filling prophecy....

This is the attitude of the core developers, basically a couple of people who don't have the guts to come forward and admit that they dictate the direction that FG goes.

I've been accused of being unable to play in the sand pit, yet it's quite clear there are some big bullies in the sand pit, and I don't take to bullies very well.

It's really time content developers and core developers were accepted as being very different individuals.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby PINTO » Sun Dec 13, 2015 6:33 pm

Disclaimer: I'm part of the KSU crew, so I like dogifghting, etc.

It seems to me that no civil aviation simulation would be complete without the military aspect. If realism is the aim of a simulation, then a civilian flying over R4048 or the DC FRZ who isn't intercepted by an F-15 with warnings and threats of being shot down is not a complete simulator.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby Thorsten » Sun Dec 13, 2015 6:46 pm

@PINTO: You'll find quite a few arguments of various kinds in the old thread from which I quoted.

If you're after realism, where does it stop? In the real world, there are day by day civilians killed by bombs, and there are corpses lying around afterwards. Do we include that as well, just to be yet more real?

If we do not, then aren't we pretending that war is really a harmless game?

I guess I at least don't want a really complete simulator of the real world - there's too much shit going on for real for my taste.

In any case, I'm just reporting other people's position as it is known to me, and I don't think you can really make a compelling argument that we 'must' have military aviation which does not involve essentially 'I would really like to have it' somewhere.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby Bomber » Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:32 pm

It stops just before stupidity starts...

No one's calling for corpses all over the place, but realistic flying, using realistic systems under realistic circumstances doesn't insult or show disrespect to anyone.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby Hooray » Sun Dec 13, 2015 9:39 pm

I suggest to spend some time doing a little research in the archives.

Note that Torsten's comments above don't necessarily represent a general "consensus" among all core developers - in fact, a number of contributors, including former core developers, did/do have a military background, and their involvement was also in part motivated by this background.

And all that predates Torsten's involvement.

It is true that, at some point, most /active/ core developers were not particularly interested in pursuing military aviation, and combat capabilities in particular.

However, the consensus was that this was not intended to prevent anybody from implementing the underlying hooks, as in generic interfaces and building blocks, without being specific to fighting/combat, because the corresponding functionality would also have applicable use-cases in non-combat/civilian simulation. The specific example mentioned were effects, collision detection etc - none of which would need to be implemented with any particular focus on "combat".

In fact, just look at other FG subsystems (e.g. autopilot, FDM, scripting, shaders/effects etc), which are also not specific to a single type of simulation (civilian, military, single engine).

Finally, this is not specific to the combat/military use-case: People also don't want to see FlightGear restricted to single-engine or multi-engine piston planes or IFR flying only, even though that would greatly focus, and simplify, future FlightGear development.

Just look at features like the property tree, XML, FDMs (YASim/JSBSim), but also Nasal scripting, Canvas, property rules or effects and shaders.

None of these were implemented/provided with any particular/restricted use-case in mind, which means that you can use these subsystems and consider them "building blocks".

And in the case of dog-fighting/combat functionality, this has been demonstrated in a pretty compelling fashion by flug's bombable addon, which only uses a tiny fraction of these building blocks currently, but which is remarkably full-featured, given that none of its features were explicitly designed to be supported by FlightGear.

Equally, there are other extensions, like the advanced weather system, which were developed by people, without the people providing the underlying infrastructure ever contemplating to use Nasal scripting and effects/shaders for such purposes.

Therefore, it is really totally pointless to continue this debate in its current form - I really encourage people to look at the archives for reference, and then look at how FlightGear has evolved in the meantime.

FlightGear is a platform, and you can use it as a framework to implement arbitrary functionality, and as long as you keep other use-cases, features (and people!) in mind, the functionality is likely to be added/supported sooner or later, regardless of what some core developers may have previously stated (in public or not).

In fact, the whole notion of using the property tree for scripted 2D rendering (aka Canvas) was highly unpopular a few years ago, as was using the property tree for POD types in C++ space.

These days, we can all see that FlightGear evolved despite certain resistance.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby MIG29pilot » Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:31 pm

Bomber wrote in Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:32 pm:It stops just before stupidity starts...

No one's calling for corpses all over the place, but realistic flying, using realistic systems under realistic circumstances doesn't insult or show disrespect to anyone.

Thank You!

As far as Military aviation is concerned, it is a part of aviation; whatever goes on in military aviation (in other words, disintegration, explosions, etc) are part of the real life aviation picture and therefore ought to be simulated if we want a truly accurate simulator.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby hamzaalloush » Mon Dec 14, 2015 1:57 am

Thorsten why are you pushing a certain agenda just because you're trying to prove a point against Vitos(because he has said something contradictory long ago), that's what i am think you are doing, yes people don't usually condone war, and i don't think people who want to learn combat aircraft avionics seek to be involved in one, it is more about interest into state-of-the-art militaristic machinery, and although controversial in your eyes, aerial combat can be thought of as merely a form of friendly competition(a game), but refraining from politics is key and i think this rule has already been established before.

i think what you are doing is undermining the purpose of the work that's done by combat aircraft developers on FG, and i think that this discussion shouldn't lead to anything but opinions.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby PINTO » Mon Dec 14, 2015 6:08 am

To be honest, I don't really care to debate this. It'll go down the philosophical rabbit hole rather quickly, and opinions and arguments, etc.

Flightgear is a flight sim. It should simulate flight. How "real" it is doesn't really matter to me. Flightgear does what I want and I am happy with it. If I want an accurate space sim, I'd go with Orbiter. If I want an accurate mil sim, I'd do Arma. So meh.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby Thorsten » Mon Dec 14, 2015 7:26 am

Thorsten why are you pushing a certain agenda just because you're trying to prove a point against Vitos


Sorry - I fail to see why I am pushing an agenda when I quote someone else's position? I am informing you people that to the best of my knowledge core developers feel that way, I am quoting one who explicitly said so, I can add that to the best of my knowledge it's the reason the bombable package isn't committed but needs to be obtained as an addon.

My agenda is to distribute information.

Now, the point with regard to Vitos is that if he gets upset about a core developer making statements to the effect that FG should not support combat, it is perhaps interesting to see that he himself has once said almost the same thing.

i think what you are doing is undermining the purpose of the work that's done by combat aircraft developers on FG


Really? So you'd rather have me not telling everyone what I know, so that people perhaps spend a while developing something and then find out themselves that it won't be committed?

Maybe someone doesn't care - but I've seen plenty of disappointed people who spent half a year or more on some project to learn it won't be included. So my agenda is to avoid these situations.
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby Michat » Mon Dec 14, 2015 8:55 am

I have hope in what HLI can improved the MP interations making more easy to pass a bunch of properties between aircrafts-objects With these future capabilites, is natural to think that some programmers would like to equipp their fighters models with such advantage. For missions, dual cockpit, or whatever other action, including dogfight and adventures. Fighter's programers should have easy access to those modules and it's implementation.


What a Bombable Like can provide to FG is at last a bennefit to the user, and some advantages from FG respecting other FSS.

The user's experience must be integral. Then they can decide individually or on a friends group what to fly for today. I think air fighting is not an ethical problem here in our simulation world, instead off could be really ethic issue if FG don't allow to do it.

I almost was in jail, because I refuse to make military service in Spain. Two reasons don't want to use a firegun, don't like it, but mostly because I don't want to be mind drilled.

However every flying thing should have an opportunity in FG. Why not ?
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Re: Military simulation (from Su-15 Screenshots)

Postby erik » Mon Dec 14, 2015 10:33 am

Just a note: I never opposed adding military style functionality to FlightGear, but at some point most developers thought it would be a good idea to keep it civil. Which I also get so I never even tried to change their minds.

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