Does FlightGear has Multiplayer Combat mode?

[shashi]

Hi,

Does FlightGear has multiplayer combat option?
If no, it would be great to implement this feature in future releases.
People will have more fun.

[Johan G]

Yes, there is a multiplayer combat option. It is called Bombable (see FlightGear wiki article and forum topic. It can be used single player against AI:s as well. I have not used it myself, but some people really like it.

[DFaber]

The bf109g and F-86/Sabres have experimental Combat Support without requiring bombable. Checking the Combat Mode Button in the Configurations Menu enables hit-detection/damageability. Works only against these Aircraft and only if the opponent also has combat Mode enabled.

Greetings

[shashi]

In the official page of Bombable they listed very few aircrafts that support this feature.
1. Sopwith Camel
2. SPAD VII
3. Fokker Dr.I Triplane
4. A6M2 Zero
5. F6F Hellcat
6. A-10 Warthog
7. UFO
8. Polikarpov I16

It would be better if modern jet fighters like Eurofighter Typhoon, Rafale, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, F-35, J-11, J-20, Mig-25, Mig-29, Mig-35, Su-27, Su-30, Su-47, T-50, etc., are also included.

[Thorsten]

It would be better if modern jet fighters like Eurofighter Typhoon, Rafale, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, F-35, J-11, J-20, Mig-25, Mig-29, Mig-35, Su-27, Su-30, Su-47, T-50, etc., are also included.

Please have a look at this

[Hooray]

right, that is like saying, it would be "better if someone would spend 5000 hrs contributing to an area that YOU determine".
Besides, if you truly care about your feature request, the bombable addon is fairly well documented, and it only takes a few minutes to make an existing aircraft "bombable", once you have done it a few times, you can probably optimize the process even more.

Apart from that, "moderm jet fighters" are generally not as well developed in FG, we used to lack the means to model complex glass cockpit avionics, so that the cockpit side of things was often still rather basic.

[hvengel]

In the official page of Bombable they listed very few aircrafts that support this feature.
1. Sopwith Camel
2. SPAD VII
3. Fokker Dr.I Triplane
4. A6M2 Zero
5. F6F Hellcat
6. A-10 Warthog
7. UFO
8. Polikarpov I16

It would be better if modern jet fighters like Eurofighter Typhoon, Rafale, F-15, F-16, F-18, F-22, F-35, J-11, J-20, Mig-25, Mig-29, Mig-35, Su-27, Su-30, Su-47, T-50, etc., are also included.

The current JSBSim P-51D is setup for bomable as well so you don't even have to install a special version like you do with most of the planes in the above list.

[Jabberwocky]

@Hooray:
But canvas solved that problem, so things will probably go ahead over time now.

[Hooray]

Canvas & Nasal are still fairly low-level for most aircraft developers, to come up with good -and fast displays (code)- people still need to be experienced coders, and familiar with FlightGear scripting and Canvas technologies/elements and the way performance is affected through certain constructs. So far, we now have the means to create the corresponding visuals, but there's still quite some work ahead to re-implement existing hard-coded displays - but to implement a compelling jet fighter, including a credible cockpit, you would need more than "just" the visuals, i.e. lots of handbooks/manuals, building blocks for creating systems and components, and scripting-space frameworks to help with the latter.

The best option to pave the way for this is to keep on generalizing existing code, so that instruments support multiple instances, multiple aircraft, and multiple "sensors". Here, galvedro's work is really promising. But for the "visual" side of this, we really need to generalize our NavDisplay code much more - so that we can factor out MFD related functionality, and reuse it on fighters like the m2000-5.

[Bomber]

If the coders here at FG spent their time (1000 hrs) making the aps / tools that take all the coding out of making stuff, then the modders those with little coding knowledge would spend the 3000 hrs doing the rest.

[Hooray]

If the coders here at FG spent their time (1000 hrs) making the aps / tools that take all the coding out of making stuff, then the modders those with little coding knowledge would spend the 3000 hrs doing the rest.

Basically, that's what's been happening over the last few years in various areas, especially canvas - however, rather than focusing on "tools" or "apps", developers tend to focus on infrastructure and building blocks - often using existing standards and established technologies, so that existing tools can be used, without those having to be coded from scratch (XML=>XML editors, Blender/AC3D, textures: GIMP, sound editing, GRASS/QGIS etc)

[Bomber]

Canvas & Nasal are still fairly low-level for most aircraft developers, to come up with good -and fast displays (code)- people still need to be experienced coders,

that means as a tool it's a failure....

The point of a tool is to de-skill the operation to a point where a semi-skilled person can produce..

Flightgear is Coder centric... it's developed and run by coders who have little to no respect (from what I've seen over the years) for modders...

Coders vs Modders

There are examples out there where games/sims have huge modding communities, harnessing the knowledge and dedication of these people to great effect... But the problem here is that it means 'letting go' and it seems to me that it's more fun to have yet another coding language to learn, another empire of kudos to build than it is for Flightgear to succeed.

I know that's harsh.... I know people wont listen why should they it's their hobby, and yet again it seems I'm criticising.... or am I just voicing my observations ?

There are 2 flightgears.....

The flightgear where the development is the 'fun' and the flightgear where the flying is the 'fun'....

My suggestion, get all the developers together and find who's a coder and who's a modder. Then find out what needs doing to make the modders development work easier, these are the 'grunts', the workhorses of your development.
The coders could then (if they have the desire) plan a way forward that and itf that results in pain for some people because of backward compatibility or divergence or because their code just makes hard work for some other discipline and needs to be rectified, well so be it.

No one with real coding skills should be making a gauge or a jet console...... make a tool that allows a modder to make dozen of the variations without having to learn code..

That's where FG is going wrong... it doesn't cater for the grunts, and it's why you don't have enough of them,.

Simon

[Hooray]

sorry, let's not go there - you are talking about something that you don't understand at all - I explicitly highlighted the fact that this is not about "tools" or "apps".
Canvas is far from being a failure, Canvas & Nasal are very much like Canvas and JavaScript in HTML5, W3C standards that power the web these days.
Regarding "de-skilling", that's exactly the point of introducing more specific frameworks on top of Nasal and Canvas, developed by more experienced programmers, usable by less-experienced contributors, who often don't need any programming experience at all (see for example Gijs' ND work, which can now be integrated and used with different aircraft, without requiring ANY coding, it's just configuration markup, analogous to XML, but more succinct)

To understand how and why FlightGear works the way it does, see the wiki - no need to discuss this here.

So please let's just stop it here.

[Bomber]

Sure.... I'll waste my time reading how FG doesn't work by reading the wiki...... Not.

Or better still why not lock the thread before someone writes something you don't like to read.

[Hooray]

That is not the point, FG works the way it does for a reason - exactly because people like you (or I) don't roll up their sleeves to change it for the better, but instead prefer to just voice their criticism.

So what you can learn by reading such articles is how the project works despite all of us being "lazy volunteers", who do not like to be told what to work on, and instead work on their own little pet projects, and just resort to making comments whenever we do not agree with something that we're not interested in getting involved with.

You should be able to perfectly relate to this, because you are amongst the most reluctant and resistant contributors around here, who's constantly demonstrating just how much he's not interested in teaming up with others, and compromising in the process - and that's exactly what all of us have to go through.
Honestly, the perfect still is the enemy of the good. So this is not about me/us not liking what you said above, it's about saying something that is not correct: Your 2nd paragraph, i.e. the coders vs. modders segment is perfectly valid, and that's exactly how Nasal/Canvas work behind the scenes, much more so than any other FlightGear related effort, recent or not. SImply because there's exactly 1-2 core developers who are providing the infrastructure for others to build stuff on top, such as Gijs' NavDisplay or Philosopher's MapStructure frameworks.

Besides, you won't change a single thing by debating the way you do - even if you should be completely right. And being ignorant about how the project works behind the scenes, will not help you much either. This is not to say that we all "like" the way the project works, but the way things are working is not by conscious decision, but due to the exact same behavior that you've been exhibiting here for the last few years: due to people caring about their own stuff, with little to zero interest for getting involved in other projects. Simple as that. It is the few cases where people manage to work around such issues and actually collaborate that FlightGear is shaped in major ways. Nasal, Canvas, NavDisplay and MapStructure are testimony to this working extremely well - but it's tedious and not exactly "fun" to work like this - just ask TheTom, Gijs, Philosopher or myself: It is much more fun to focus on our own little projects than keeping the big picture in mind and coordinating things behind the scenes. I actually explained this to you a while ago in several different threads, and was really hoping that you had understood it...