[Starting a new thread, since the original is getting a little strung out. :)]
In an attempt to depoliticize the combat flame war as much as possible, it's worth pointing out that, irrespective of people's opinions on the matter, there are not a lot of "combat" features we can really avoid implementing: + A missile is just another aircraft with (perhaps) a variant FDM configuration. Ditto for a bomb. + A collision is a collision, be it with a guided missile, a partner in your close formation flight, or the tanker from which you are refueling. + Hydraulic/control system failures (or whatever) don't behave differently depending on whether the leak was caused by wear or a shell fragment. Overstressed civilian aircraft have been known to shed ailerons, wings, or tails on occasion. I'm sure others can come up with many more examples. Here are the only three "combat only" features I can actually think of which will require code or features we don't already have: + Weapon damage code. The system failures themselves can already be modeles (or will need to be at some point for civilian simulation). But computing "how much failure" results from a given event is something that will need to know about what a "warhead" is and how it differs from a bullet. + Gun trajectory modelling. Even this could *almost* be done with generic collision code by treating each shell as a separte object with its own FDM (do the math -- there aren't that many shells on an airplane, and computers are mind bogglingly fast these days). But still, the simplest gun implementation is going to be doing gun-specific stuff. + Missile homing code. This could easily be plugged into a generic autopilot framework, of course. But other than the framework boilerplate, this isn't likely to share code with any civilian autopilot implementations. :) Beyond that, all the "combat" stuff I can think of is going to be server-side functionality. Stuff like radar coverage handling, battlefield AI, etc... is all handled more cleanly by a separate, shared server application. Hopefully this will help to push the flames down until someone actually submits code to flame over. FWIW, I'm a mild, civically minded democrat and peacenik. I still enjoy the occasional dogfight; I've even been known to play Quake. :) Andy _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
