The future I'd like to see....

[Feuerfalke]

Well, it's not wrong to have dreams. But it get's ugly when you feel RL or company XY sux because it doesn't live up to those dreams. That's the danger with these expectations.

 

To keep it in the flightsim-language: No matter how high you fly, remember you will get back to earth. How is up to you.

[robmypro]

Only time will tell I guess but one day I think people will realize this is the obvious direction the industry needs to take.

[robmypro]

Well, it's not wrong to have dreams. But it get's ugly when you feel RL or company XY sux because it doesn't live up to those dreams. That's the danger with these expectations.

 

To keep it in the flightsim-language: No matter how high you fly, remember you will get back to earth. How is up to you.

 

I agree, and I don't blame any company for not going this direction. I just think it would be a win-win for everyone once they take that direction.

 

It's all good.

[Panzertard]

Well, we would have to assume what kind of budgets & manpower such environmental battlefields simulators would require - massive.

Now consider which kind of developer-houses + owners that would require. Huge.

 

I would be afraid we would be looking at ownsers like UBI or EA - and even larger.

Now consider how well they tend to respond to their customer base ....

 

Personally there's a few products I've been avoiding just because of the decitions those Project managers have been doing just to "please the masses" (aka the console markets).

 

As you see, the whole debate would now take a new turn because it may involve some different factors.

But I'll stop there - because I dont want to talk about the other one's ;)

 

This is why I love getting the products from the niche ED is aiming for - develop simulators for the desktop - all within the scope of their budgets and their customer base. :)

[Feuerfalke]

It CAN be a win-win-situation in terms of a success, but it doesn't need to.

 

Remember, there are a lot more players playing Battlefield and Modern Warfare. Neither is a military simulation that deserves the name. The market for flightsimulations is not large either, not daring to mention naval simulations.

 

But an enterprise like the ultimate battlefield simulator is a VERY daunting task and you have to calculate that it will be a success. But that's not that easy considering this market is rather a niche in the gaming business.

 

 

On the other hand, if you look at Storm of War, they are at least offering the possibility to add human controlled ground vehicles, possibly even infantry combat. But of course it's still a flightsim, so don't expect too much of that either.

[evilnate]

Evilnate, I think you are massively overestimating what outerra is...

 

I know what outerra is, and I like the concept. I know they aren't making a flight sim or anything at this point. The reason I mentioned it is because the engine has the kind of LOD scaling that would work for what was suggested. There's a market for the Eierlegende Wollmilchsau and the dev group that gets there first could make a bunch of money. :)

[Panzertard]

I know what outerra is, and I like the concept. I know they aren't making a flight sim or anything at this point. The reason I mentioned it is because the engine has the kind of LOD scaling that would work for what was suggested. There's a market for the Eierlegende Wollmilchsau and the dev group that gets there first could make a bunch of money. :)

 

Yes, if they have the stamina, investors, budget, a well planned project and control, the right amount of developers and resources, and a lot of patient customers.

It needs to come together - over time ... and while this is happening, you need to have a income and pay your expenses.

[GGTharos]

You are a programmer, so now look at what you wrote and explain how this is going to work within the context of project management, inter-company cooperation, and so on and so forth, before we even start getting into the nitty gritty technicalities.

 

And as a programmer, you should also know that the scenario you presented is nowhere near as simple as you've made it sound. ARMA2 has a very finite map, with different handling of weapons, different visuals, different everything.

The way netcode is handled is different, too.

You won't be able to see an A-10 attacking you from 7-8km whereas you can in FC2, as an example.

Flares aren't worth much in ARMA2 - so now an 'I never miss' missile is launched from ARMAII against a pilot who's 'doing everything right' to evade, but nothing takes. Aspect angles etc are not respected. Now what? Who handles what?

 

It is a logistical nightmare.

 

Many people dream of such integration, and as great as it would be, right now, and for a long time from now: dream on. It's just not going to happen.

 

Let me be more clear, and yes, I am a programmer. Take ARMA II. Right now you have bombs that drop, and when they hit you get a blast radius and kills. This data comes from the internal game engine. The engine handles displaying the bomb, the blast, and determining the kill radius. What if this "data" wasn't originated from the ARMA II engine, but instead came from an external source. The external source could pass along info that told it a bomb was dropped, in which direction, and then that bomb becomes part of the ARMA II engine. So the plane that drops it sends data telling it I've dropped a bomb, it's this type of bomb, and here are the coordinates. The pilot sees the blast from the air and the graphic engine of that sim shows the effects of it. Is that much different from the multiplayer games we have now where all players see the same explosions?

 

 

Once you start sharing the data between sims, the each sim can render it using their native engine. Again, I think this is totally logical, and possible.

[EtherealN]

Evilnate, the reason for my comment is this:

 

IMO the examples of the outerra project might prove that a single dev (only 2 programmers) is capable of delivering the elusive "Eierlegende Wollmilchsau".

 

You are using the example of a single component and the fact that it did not have a huge development budget as an example for the feasibility of the complete battlefield dream. There's many many orders of magnitude of complexity difference involved here. A component like outerra might make it easier, but that's just not something we know. For example, how well would it integrate into the other components that are needed? Do we even know the specifics of what would be needed?

 

...and is there even a market for this? And by "a market" I mean "a market that is big enough to cover the cost of development and give enough return to justify the substantial risk compared to developing H.A.W.X 2". We need to recall what the realities of the current simulator market is before we start thinking about starting projects that need larger budgets than Square Enix spends on it's JRPGs.

 

It is very easy for people, including developers, to think that X thing will be relatively easy to do - until they've blown their budgets three times trying to make it work. :P

Edited April 16, 2010 by EtherealN

[nemises]

well...

if "someone" develops an open source communication standard for interoperability between engines, and a common co-ordinate system (distances, times, xyz location) is shared across this, then independant software developers can output multiplayer traffic in accordance to this system.

 

difficult for a for-profit software developer to do?..yes.... but less difficult (ironically) for a mod group, or open sourcer to do....

independant development with a common set of tools could lead to this...and as "home dev" tech gets better and better as the years get by, it could happen..and be free...

 

just look at some of the amazing work ppl in this community are doing for free..

 

..of course, it will never be as "tight" as a fully funded under-one-roof project, but community made content is where it's at these days anyway right?

[evilnate]

Evilnate, the reason for my comment is this:

 

 

 

You are using the example of a single component and the fact that it did not have a huge development budget as an example for the feasibility of the complete battlefield dream. There's many many orders of magnitude of complexity difference involved here. A component like outerra might make it easier, but that's just not something we know. For example, how well would it integrate into the other components that are needed? Do we even know the specifics of what would be needed?

 

...and is there even a market for this? And by "a market" I mean "a market that is big enough to cover the cost of development and give enough return to justify the substantial risk compared to developing H.A.W.X 2". We need to recall what the realities of the current simulator market is before we start thinking about starting projects that need larger budgets than Square Enix spends on it's JRPGs.

 

It is very easy for people, including developers, to think that X thing will be relatively easy to do - until they've blown their budgets three times trying to make it work. :P

 

We'll i'm definatly not in the gaming industry, and i'm not even a programmer. So I will have to take your word that this is impossible with today's demand for this type of game. I just notice DCS slowly steering in this direction with the additions of player controlled FAC, walking around after ejection, and modeled solders and wonder if this is the direction the series is going.

 

Wool-pig-cow is now dead to me. :thumbup:

[robmypro]

I find it a bit surprising that some are claiming this project would be so massive that it couldn't be done, yet we somehow expect one company to build everything alone, as they do now? How much better would an F-16, or an A-10 be if the company could focus almost exclusively on that part and only that part of the sim?

 

I think the effort for each company would drop considerably once you got past the initial stage. I think where you are getting hung up is thinking there would be one massive sim that somehow allows for the creation of air, naval, infantry, etc. That's not what I am proposing. In my view, we'd do several things:

 

1. Unify the environments using a common terrain file. There would be different levels of detail.

 

2. Build a communication layer between sims so actions that occur in one sim impact (potentially) the environment of another.

 

If I drop a bomb in my F-16 as I fly over a tank or infantry, I will see the explosion, and I will see the position of those units to a more general level than a FPS player would. And that bomb, and my position, would also be somewhat general to the FPS player, since they do not need to see or know about every minute action I am taking. They just need my general location, and when I perform an action that potentially impacts them (i.e. bomb drop in their area) then it becomes a live event in their world. This type of approach minimizes data transfer between units. If you think about it, every unit in any sim is represented by coordinates. The unit itself is rendered by the players PC. This is no different in the environment I envision. But instead of the players computer processing the positions, it would come from an external source. And this already happens when you dogfight in LOMAC, Falcon, or any other sim. The difference is this time that data is coming from an application external to ours.

 

If you can put 15 jets in the air in multiplayer in LOMAC, does it really matter where the data comes from that tells your PC there is a plane at 5 o'clock, 2 at 6 o'clock, and a few in other locations? It still has to be transmitted real time to your PC, right?

 

The problem is the mechanism each sim uses to process and communicate this information is unique to the sim, and that is what you unify. I know it is difficult, and would take some smart folks to pull off. But look at BS, LOMAC, Falcon, and a long list of others. There are smart people around to do this. We aren't putting a man on the moon.

 

Again, I am not saying build one massive sim. I'm saying unify some of the parts so different sims created by different companies can interact in the same environment.

Edited April 17, 2010 by robmypro

[robmypro]

One last thought. Imagine a team that focuses exclusively on a plane. Say...an F-16. They worry about the characteristics of the plane, the avionics, the weapons systems, the cockpits, etc. They don't care about net code because that is already built in. So is the menu structure, the environment, the terrain. That's not their job to worry about those issues, because the platform already exists where the plane they build can exist in this virtual world. Think about how much easier their job would be? Is this really any different than the aircraft that people create for FS?

 

Someone comes out with a new terrain for New York. As long as the terrain is built to specs, using standards already defined, any plane past, present or future built with the same standards in mind would work. Right now each developer has to deal with all these items alone, and that is just massively inefficient.

[ShadowVonChadwick]

Could everyone put their knives away (actually in BF2 Project Reality pilots don't get one). What a optimistic bunch !

 

Robmypro, I agree it is possible, feasible and In time will happen. How many game today share the same engine. Yes I know its not the same thing.

 

My only fear would be the house that produces this integration becomes the Microsoft of gaming world??

People band from its servers lose their jobs, cant even buy bread. Their family disowns them. They end up living in a old caravan in some derelict suburb and are forced live with an old P2-450 768Mg of PC100 & worst of all Dial up.

 

Im hanging on to this dream & I remember flight sims with 16 colors (not 16bit)

 

PS my son just walked passed & said "Im going to press escape", he was cleaning the kitchen, I thought "Oh no, are we allread living in a virtual world"

But he then picked up his skate board and walk out the front door. Not shore whats out there. So I yelled "dont forget to take a copy of AVG with you"

 

Cheers.Shad

 

I thought it was funny at the time.

Edited April 17, 2010 by ShadowVonChadwick

[ZQuickSilverZ]

Robmypro I just don't understand why anybody would want what your proposing. I mean I "kinda" get it from seeing BattleField 2 (1942, 2142, BC, BC2, Vietnam, Heroes, whatever). But those games take some liberties with reality to stay entertaining. I get that it works for Battlefield but that game is on a small map, it is designed to be fast paced, and its arcadey. I mean who wants to play a SAM simulator? I don't, just sit there and wait for something to shoot at, sounds boring. And yeah a sub simulator sounds fun at first, but when you get right down to it your in a metal tube deep under water with no scenery, just dark water everywhere you look. Really, does that sound fun? (Ok since this writing I have played Silent Hunter 3 and 4 and..... it is fun) How about an aircraft carrier, you just kinda float around while the pilots land and take off. To me this sounds like it would bore me to death. Would you rather play a jet pilot or an anti air ground vehicle? Anyway my point is this. They don't make the "ultimate" war sim because not all roles are created equal. Some are alot more intresting than others and since some roles would never be filled it would kind of destroy the point of doing it. Maybee you could sell me on that idea if you could show me some intresting vehicle interaction. Like what purpose a tank would serve other than to be a target for a ground pounder.

Edited June 12, 2011 by ZQuickSilverZ

[Nate--IRL--]

The Phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind.

 

DiD did attempt this after Total Air War with a game called Wargasm. It wasn't well received IIRC.

 

Nate

[robmypro]

Maybee you could sell me on that idea if you could show me some intresting vehicle interaction. Like what purpose a tank would serve other than to be a target for a ground pounder.

 

Good points, and I can see why you have reservations. Although you and I can agree that subs aren't the most exciting sim, there probably are a lot of people out there that love them. And if I'm a developer of a niche sub simulator, having our unified battlefield might just be the venue to breath new life into the genre.

 

But let's look at tanks. Say we've got this ultra realistic M1 Abrams battle tank sim. Our objective is to take a heavily defended city. The A-10's go in to soften the enemy up, and then I roll in with some squad mates using ARMA II. It's combined forces, each with their own objectives that weave into the overall strategy. If I've got a buddy down there in the M1, I'm going to defend him as much as possible in my A-10, Falcon, etc. It just adds a totally new level to all sims.

 

And that is the point of this. There has to be a campaign engine that gives each unit class meaning in the battlefield. Coordination. I think it would be massive. Nobody would buy a military sim unless it supported this unified battlefield. You take the combined players from ARMA II, BS, LOMAC, Falcon, etc. and you have a huge base of players to sell to. And maybe on the battlefield you and I see the benefit of the sub sim, and decide to give it a shot. And then we see how cool the tank sims are based on how much others are enjoying it. I think a lot of people would buy several sims, just so they can experience battle from other perspectives.

 

And all along, the developers are saving money by focusing on core strengths, while leaving much of the plumbing to other teams. It's a platform, just like the 360 is a platform to host games and facilitate content distribution and communication. Think of all the great sims out there. How much better would they be if the developers could spend all their time on one specific vehicle, or terrain?

 

Put it another way. LOMAC already supports various planes, and you can jump in any of them and interact with others on the battlefield. Instead of that interaction being housed inside LOMAC, what if it was a external library that other sims can tap into? LOMAC's code might not have to change as much as you think.

 

Maybe my vision of this doesn't happen ever, or not for 10 years, but once it does people are going to see the benefits of such a strategy. That much I am sure about.

[robmypro]

The Phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind.

 

DiD did attempt this after Total Air War with a game called Wargasm. It wasn't well received IIRC.

 

Nate

 

And that is exactly why no company can pull this off alone. I'm not talking about one sim engine that everyone develops with. I'm talking about a unified data sharing layer, where different sims can plug into a common environment. BS uses the same graphic engine they use now. LOMAC uses the one it uses. Falcon would too (or some future Falcon). It's a decision to model your aircraft, vehicle, ship, etc. to standards defined by the unified battlefield. It's no different than what is done now with every sim, but instead of having every team build the battlefield, it is shared by everyone else.

 

The last thing you want to do is force all teams to use one development tool. I'm talking about data communication between sims, not everyone building sims from the same engine. That wouldn't obviously work. Again, think about the battlefield now. Let's say you are in a SU-27 and you fly over a city. If there is a tank down there, how is that rendered in your world? It's data. The data includes the type, direction, coordinates, and a zillion other pieces of information. Where does that data come from? In Falcon, maybe the campaign engine generated it. But where the data comes from is irrelevant. You have it, and the data is what is used to render the tank on your screen. It doesn't matter if it is AI data, or a real person. It's still data. Does it matter if that data came from your campaign engine, or a unified campaign engine that is relaying the information from the guy using a tank sim on the same battlefield?

 

Data is data.

 

And before you say how hard it would be to do that in real-time, every time you go head to head via another fighter in LOMAC you are dealing with real-time data. So the capability already exists to do that, and some companies are very good at it.

 

If companies wanted to support the unified battlefield it could be optional. That way BS could develop their sim stand alone, or release a patch/mod to hook into the unified battlefield engine.

 

Again, don't think massive game engine. Think "data sharing".

[GGTharos]

Data sharing is not enough.

[kiss4luna]

infact, it is an old idea ;)

[EtherealN]

Again, don't think massive game engine. Think "data sharing".

 

Yeah, this has been done on small scale for military apps (I think it was TBS and some shooter that was integrated for SPECOPS mission rehearsal), though I don't know exactly how they did it.

 

The problem I do see is more market stuff - lots of things are technically feasible but would require a very large investment. And obviously it'll be a nightmare to perform Q/A and versioning on, say, an integration of FC2, ArmA, Steel Beasts, Harpoon and some nice sub simulator that's not WW2. So many ways a fault in once can cause a cascade of issues in the others.

 

I think what's more likely to be seen relatively soon is things like "RTS features" in a sim like FC2, where each side has a commander that can issue orders to AI units - I'd think something like FC2 but with one player per side having access to a Harpoon-style interface.

[robmypro]

Data sharing is not enough.

 

I agree it isn't enough, but I've already mentioned some of the other pieces you'd need. What do you think is missing?

[robmypro]

infact, it is an old idea ;)

 

Does that make it bad? I know I've been thinking about this for a decade. Maybe it is old because it is the right way to go?

 

Time will tell.

[GGTharos]

I've said my piece well above - it is correct, and it is real-world. Any programmer should be able to understand it.

 

I agree it isn't enough, but I've already mentioned some of the other pieces you'd need. What do you think is missing?

[robmypro]

I've said my piece well above - it is correct, and it is real-world. Any programmer should be able to understand it.

 

I can appreciate your take on it, and nobody said it was going to be easy. But there's a big difference between difficult and impossible, and I believe that what I have stated is not only possible, but ultimately inevitable. It's just an evolutionary process the industry will go through. Integrating FC2 and BS is but one step in that direction. I also agree that integrating something like ARMA II would probably be the most difficult aspect of this, for a variety of reasons. But it is still going to happen IMO.

 

But to answer one point you made...

 

"so now an 'I never miss' missile is launched from ARMAII against a pilot who's 'doing everything right' to evade, but nothing takes."

 

Our unified battlefield is based on real-world physics. It's reality based. So any missile launched by any other participant is going to have to comply with real-world parameters. It's part of the specification. We're not building an arcade world, are we? And in this world reality is reality, and one participant isn't going to be able to bend it.

 

Again, BS and FC2 prove integration is not only possible, but reality. How did the team do it? Smoke and mirrors? Data integration, plain and simple. Just ask them. Of course, there's more to it. But at the core it was a data integration project. You are closer to them than I am. Ask them.

 

Let's see how things play out. Maybe you are right, but I doubt it. This unified battlefield is coming. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But eventually.