Interest in adding dogfighting capability

[JamesP]

I am seriously interested in adding dogfighting capability to FG.

I've been reading through the source for the past couple of days. (I've only just stumbled upon FG.)

As I see it, the following changes would need to be implemented to have a rudamentary dogfight.
1- add missles to submodels
2- have submodels added to the multiplayer protocol so that players can see other AI entities.
3- add collision detection (airplane to airplane and airplane to AI)

Missles -
The approach I planned involves creating a new submodel called "missle." I have two options on how to proceed.
a- create a missle object based on the AIballistic submodel but with an added "thrust" parameter.
b- create a missle object based on the AIAircraft model.
I think the AIAircraft model will be more useful as a base, so that future expansion can be added more easily (i.e. seeking methods etc)

Multiplayer -
I still have alot of reading to do in this area. Any suggestions for allowing submodel information to be sent to the server and other players are greatly appreciated.

Collision Detection -
For a first run, I planned on using the same "_crashed" variable in the YASim model. Just calling a setCrashed when a player comes within contact distance of another player or AI model.

I haven't read through all of the source code yet, so any critiques or suggestions are welcome.

[HeliFlyer]

Hi JamesP,
this is the wrong place if you search the discussion with the FG core coders.
Write to the FlightGear developers mailing list, there you'll find the FG core developers/programmers.
Regards
Georg EDDW

[pauljs75]

Looks like someone may have started some work on this with the Bo-105 Eurocopter. If you cycle through its variations there's one with "working" guns and another that fires rockets. (Sometimes I fly that and "attack" others on MP when I'm bored.) It also has some form of collision detection with the ground, as it's one of the few FG aircraft that can actually crash.

Only thing is that it doesn't seem to register hits/collisions from other Bo-105 weapons. (Or other aircraft for that matter.) But it does appear that you might have a little something to start from based on that aircraft.