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[santobr]

http://www.outerra.com/


santobr.

[SAS~Bombsaway]

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you dont walk out your front door, you'll never go anywhere. I say go for it. All that can happen is it doesnt see the light of a day but if you dont try, it wont happen anyway. I would be willing to help when I can. Maps, small mod projects like I've been doing lately.

[marcost]

Great idea!!! I wish I had the time and skill to help

My thought would be this, and in this time order:

1) Define what we have now in IL2 in terms of a list of features. Agree which ones *must* be in a first release of a new version and which can follow later. I mean really define it - why are we all still fascinated by this sim 13 years on...

2) Define the 'blue sky' vision (sorry  ) of the flight sim that we all want and choose an engine that could ultimately deliver this

3) Create the must-have's from (1) in the new engine (referring to 'the vision' to allow expansion later) and maybe even release to the general community. That way, interaction and involvement is encouraged at the earliest possible time

4) Develop the remaining features, so that we have something equal to IL2 as it is now

5) Finally, harness the power of the new engine to give us the new features - graphics etc that we want


I suggest it this way because to me, there are too many 'half-finished' sims that look fantastic but just don't have the depth of IL2 in terms of features and feel. We should be careful not to subordinate these critical parts in chasing some nice-to-have feature like cockpit shadows.

Substance over style - I know it's the boring way but if you are going to do it, you want to create something that is still as alive in 2030 as IL2 is now!

Best regards to all,

Martin

[SAS~HolyGrail]

CryEngine
*Technologically perfectly up to the task of making a flight sim as far as world size is concerned
*free SDK
*If game is released for free, no additional licensing required; If you intend to charge money for the finished product, some sort of "attractive licensing options" are available but I can't seem to find them...
*CryTek is in some financial problems and future support may be uncertain
As far as I'm concerned, the CryEngine seems pretty well suited for a project like this considering the SDK is free to start working on.

Yep .
2007 year , just the effects alone would have been mind-boggling in combat flight simulator even up to this very day.

Crysis 1 engine was already able to calculate an advanced flight characteristics including real life weight of the aircraft on the ground 
If I remember there was one aeronautical engineer guy who was testing the possibilities of Crysis 1 engine for real life flight characteristics
simulation and there was nothing even remotely close on flight sim market to what could be calculated to simulate a real life flight characteristics in Crysis 1.
Some of you sure do remember those early Spitfires , B-25's experiments which did not show the true potential at all but due to lack of interest there was
no progress in Crysis 1 first person shooter community , no wonder 



 



~S!~

[Stainless]

Seems like getting "something" up and running could be fairly simple...... hmmm food for thought.

[DarkBlueBoy]

The Crysis engine looks incredible.

[santobr]

santobr.

[VF111Sundowner]

Oh and one other little item I would like in the "perfect sim"

Multi monitor support!

So should I want a 360° view around my sim pit I can. Oh and Simkit or the like support for third party instruments for a real physical SIM pit.

I would like to tie 5 projectors together, four for the front, back and two side and one for directly above in a domed room.

[SAS~HolyGrail]

Yes , Outerra is very nice but I would rather see Outerra replacing FSX and Prepar3D: Lockheed Martin as being a commercial airlines and civilian aircraft simulator .
Outerra was brought up many times in the past but I don't see those two developer guys turning years of hard work in to a giveaway .
There is still so much missing , complex effects creation , advanced damage model , advanced trees damage model , walking personnel , advanced building damage etc...
That's why the Crysis was mentioned , it's all there already and in my opinion still a way ahead of a majority of latest games .
Just Crysis trees , bushes , plants alone damage model is beyond awesome , broken individual branches , just imagine going down for crash landing in Japanese Zero
plunging into the jungle watching trees , branch breaking , wings shattering around you  , in Crysis it is doable and without a FPS slideshow  .
Of course turning CryEngine2/3 into combat flight simulator is another thing and it's likely never gonna happen , it was just one of those " dream on " suggestions 
We probably need to stick with the trusty IL-2 and build on top of that if that's ever possible , every little helps and can make a tremendous difference to us .
That's what we're all doing for years except for the game engine graphics OpenGL/DX modifications .
If Stainless know what's possible or what he's able to do with the current IL-2 game engine it would be great to know so some don't have some kind of high expectations
which will never materialize 
As I've said already , every little helps !

~S!~ 

[SAS~Tom2]

I'm all for it. Cannot mod nor do anything big except some map modding stuff, but I like the idea very much as I always thaought I'd rather have an updated IL-2 with a few more advanced lighting features and an advanced flight model capability than any of the other current new sim modules.

My 2 cents.

[Stainless]

The problem with all the engines I have looked at is they all do most of the things we will need, but not all of them.

The issue comes when I look at how to add the extra bits we need.

For example, mesh importing.

Most engines either support a set of 3d formats, or they use there own 3d format and supply a conversion tool. So imagine you have the task of getting all the aircraft from this site into the new engine. There are three options.

• Write a converter
• Write a custom importer
• Do it by hand

option 1 requires that the engines 3D format is public, often it isn't
option 2 isn't always supported, the game will only import data in the engines format
option 3 is a nightmare. Import each MSH (NOT HIM!) into a converter, save as some other format, import into game, save, write code to put all the MSH's back into a single structure.

So just looking at a set of videos and saying "that looks awesome" is only the first step in the process of picking an engine. There are lot's of issues like that one you have to handle, and not all engines will make it possible to do it at all.

I'm thinking about how to break down the new game into a set of sub modules that can be created as separate entities and created independently. If I can't do that, people will get bored and go away and I'll be left with a half finished product and no helpers.

[Stainless]

Ok I've had some more time to think about it. This is what I am going to suggest.

Task	Workers	Timescale
Select Engine	Me	3 weeks
Writer mesh importer	Me	2 weeks
Convert HIM files	Modders	Open ended
Write map converter	Me	1 month
Convert maps	Mappers	Open ended
Write flight model	Me	3 weeks
Convert FM files	Java coders	Open ended

This will give us three key points in development.

• Model viewer
• Map explorer
• Simple flight sim

The model viewer will let you see what your mods look like in a modern engine with sophisticated lighting etc. This will also show you which bits of the models will have to be reworked. (probably the first will be creating a much more detailed pilot mesh.

The map explorer will let you see what the terrain and buildings would look like. Again this will produce a lot of "that looks crap, let's rework it"

The last will be the first time something actually looks like a flight sim. No combat, no weapons, no missions, but a good flight model, good aircraft, good cockpits, good terrain, etc.

Before I commit to doing this though, can someone who knows this site well put up a survey so we can find out how many people would be willing to pledge support to each section.