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Sure would be interesting to play in that theater where China is expanding those man-made reef bases like Fiery Cross, etcā¦
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More info here:
http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2771770&postcount=52
[QUOTE]Reading these responses, I perceive excitement and hope, but I also perceive doubt about eventual success. I also neglected to mention some important details in the initial announcement (updated). Iād like to explain my battle-plan for the programming effort, in the hope that the whole effort will be believable.
First off, I picked the Tu-22M3 because itās largely an analog airplane. Most systems or cockpit indicators just do a few simple things, and they donāt talk as much with each other. The code for them will have low complexity. One measure of this is cyclomatic complexity. Contrast this with the F/A-18 ED is working on, or any modern real world aircraft for that matter. Their cockpit displays and aircraft systems are extremely integrated, and as the degree of integration or complexity increases, the development effort increases exponentially. Thatās just my experience. The Tu-22M3 has redundant systems, but they are a āsimpleā redundancy: they are in parallel, like power buses, or there are two or more physical units like airspeed indicators. If something breaks, you donāt have to program a reaction to it. On modern systems, if something fails, all the computers have a stupid confab about it, and often decide to DO something, like swap channels, or vote on the best source of data, or average the remaining sources of data. The options are endless, and the powers that be dictate that all options must be implemented. Tons of code results. Ask the ED guys about it on the F/A-18. The Tu-160, B-52, B-1B, etc all have at multiple integrated digital systems that would have ground things to a halt. With the Tu-22M3, I donāt have to deal with that. If the BNās airspeed indicator dies, he asks the pilot to read him airspeeds. If the autopilot goes out, he starts giving course corrections to the pilot. This isnāt ideal in the real world, and thatās why we have progress, but for our simulation purposes, it makes my life much, much easier. An Su-24 is similar to to the Tu-22M3 in this respect, but it requires a single player to be in two places at once during the final critical phases of a bombing run or weapons launch, as the pilot is truly directing the airplane, but he doesnāt have the attack radar in front of him, and in the final moments, you need EVERYTHING for cross-checking. The Tu-22M3 is a bit old fashioned, in that the pilot hands off the plane to the BN entirely, and you only need to be in that position during the bombing run. Youāve got the optical bombsight, autopilot control, attack radar, nav radar, and standard six pack instruments all at that single station. Some weapons controls are at EW but you can preset all that, and pickle from the BN seat. A single player doesnāt have to go mad. There will be optional AI for the RWR for single player mode. For these reasons of complexity, and a reasonable single player experience, there is only one option in a modern bomber: Tu-22M3.
Now, before I produce a single line of code, I create a monstrous Design Document (DD). Thatās where you spell out in plain English or with engineering diagrams what every cockpit indication does, how every single system works in detail. It keeps the software project organized. It highlights work scope creep. It gives you a metric to measure progress. It also, most importantly, allows you to split up work, and I will be delegating like gangbusters. I am in a position due to experience and training, to go through tons of Russian documentation, translate it, and then incorporate the stuff thatās relevent to simulation into the design document. In just that respect, I am doing something by myself. But A design document is sufficiently detailed for a programmer with no knowledge of the system to go and implement it in code. My wife is a programmer. Tons of my friends are programmers; they are engineers too, so they have tools like Simulink, detailed below. DD. Delegation. Those are what will make this project awesome and on time.
Engineers like me who have to incorporate electronics on our aircraft or engines are programmers by circumstance, and even then, under duress. We think and communicate in diagrams, equations, concepts. A fuel system isnāt a bunch of ones and zeros, itās twelve damned fuel tanks with various pumps, vents, fire suppression systems and cockpit indications. Engineers have long switched to graphical programming environments like Simulink, and to a lesser extent NPSS (Numerical Propulsion Simulation something-or-other) to program simulations of physical systems faster and more accurately than with hand code. It looks like this:
Simulink takes those diagrams and converts them to C-code, and can them compile them into the dll(s) that DCS will use. I can test my logic at a very high level, within simulink, I will do a validation check of the added system in DCS, and it gets checked again when alpha and beta (since there are four positions, maybe we have alpha, beta, gamma and delta testers?) testers get their hands on it. I can even program HUDS (there isnāt one in this case) and displays within Simulink/Matlab, and trade args with the airframe and cockpit in this environment. Itās far faster and easier in this way. Eventually, there is C++ and lua programming required to tie everything together, but high level stuff is done in Simulink.
Iām not sure I can give a quick explanation here of how I am going to do the flight and engine models. Maybe later. I will be using some modern tools for both that should let me create accurate models quickly, that can then be validated by open source information I have on both. The Tu-22M3 has one or two aerodynamic bugaboos, a nasty stall with the wings swept, plus the wings flex as much as eight degrees at high sweep, high load factor and high angle of attack. That cannot be ignored aerodynamically, but all of these issues have been faced and solved by others before me.
To summarize the things that make this simulation tractable:
- I chose an aircraft with significantly less complexity than itās brethren.
- Design Document
- Delegation
- Graphical programming environment (Simulink/Matlab)
- Modern software tools for speedy flight and engine modeling
In the midst of all this, I personally have two unknowns. At present Iām not sure how to impliment multi-crewing. I know itās been done for two; I assume there is some way to do four. If any of you have solid thoughts on solving that particular item, Iām all ears. Iām also not going to take the time to model the radar reflectivity of the terrain for the radars, so I hope to lean on EDās experience for that, but weāll see what happens.
I hope this was informative, and not preachy.
Brian[/QUOTE]
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Wow - I love this info.
That guy seems extremely confident in his ability to complete the project. I like it. Now All I need is a single massive map so I can fly it from Kirovsk, around the north cape, down to the azores and back.
level of trust in this new dev increased by 9000% He sure brings some strong arguments on how and what.
Prospective release date!
- Two releases are expected, the first in July 2017 and the second six to twelve months after that.
In hopes that this is somewhat related to the topic of the post, I have looked at a few more water maps that could be done in DCS (now with less snark!) and what they might look like. The possibility of this aircraft screams new environments to fly it in.
Before we get to the maps here is my reasoning, such as it is:
- That if the map is made up largely of water it would be easier and less time consuming to make. This is not an exercise in cool maps to fight over, but cool maps with large amounts of water to fight over.
- That if the map is made up largely of water it can be bigger than NTTR due to less detail in the water sections and performance will still be acceptable.
- I have no idea if either of those are true. Seriously, no idea. Seems reasonable though and makes for a fun exercise.
Taiwan 397,000 sq. meters (NTTR=366,000)
The Chinese airforce isnāt that well represented in DCS, but they operate a sizable amount of Su-27 and Mig-21ās Lots of room to the east for U.S carrier groups.
Yellow Sea 450,000 sq meters (NTTR= 366,000)
Seoul and Pyongyang and the Chinese airforce and water.
Guadalcanal 449,000 sq meters (NTTR=366,000)
Yorktown carriers anyone?
Falklands 443,000 sq meters (NTTR=366,000)
There ya go @BeachAV8R
Iceland 500,000 sq meters (NTTR=366,000)
Here is the biggest and the island alone is big enough to be just as time consuming as Nevada was, but I couldnāt resist.
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You can delete all the other screensā¦I might make that one my screen saverā¦ LOLā¦
Maybe we can throw them a BONE
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Ohhhhh man o man o man, i have no idea what was said in technospeakā¦
Butā¦ andi am sure you all heard itā¦
Whilst the tu22 is underway, the f111 wont be far behind. 
looking forward to seeing this progress
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Ah, Simulink. I still have that on my school laptop and play around with it sometimes in conjunction with SCADA. The guyās taking an engineerās project management approach to this project, and like others, this definitely increases my confidence in this kind of an undertaking.
Why cant more designers come up with a game plan like this? This is pretty well thought out and achievable.
-Jeff
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I know right? The way he explained it it seems like to way to go to create modules. Sometimes introducing some new blood can be really refreshing to an industry. Someone with new ideas.
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I think I comes down the fact that many of the, 3rd party, developers at least do not have professional background in managing projects like these. I would not be surprised if ED used plans like these, all be it much more complicated.
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Is there a āsimulinkā that deals with logistics and campaigns?
As for the maps:
I also had some ideas about that topic, and basically it burns down to a few things:
- size of the land mass. The smaller the better.
- size of populated areas on the map. This one is MUCH more severe than the one above. Japan is small, but vastly more difficult to model than the Falklands.
- Tools. We need those terrain tools.
Quoting myself from the ED forums a while back:
I like the idea.
Or perhaps a not completely blue map, like Midway, Wake, South Georgia
(the island), Diego Garcia or something like that. Lots of water, little
island, not that hard to build.
In fact I had planned to build such a map myself, as soon as the terrain
tools would be released. Itās a pity they wonāt be released now.
A reasonable rule for a map that contains mostly water could be: a
rectangle or square, maximum dimensions 1200km x 1200km, with not more
than 4000 square kilometers of land. And that only if it isnāt populated
and or doesnāt have much vegetation, because that is hard to model
well, too. (like my South Georgia example. That island is quite large
but mostly barren rocks and ice)
More fitting would be some really small islands, because those are
rather easy to model. Aim for islands with not more than, say, 100
square kilometers of area. Thatās why I listed Wake, Midway, and Diego
Garcia. All of those are very small. A part-time DCS modder could do
those.
I actually would have used modern times for the first try. It makes
things much easier, and once the navy planes are here (F/A-18, A-7,
F-14) that would make for a great training map. One carrier, one air
field, a few hundred kilometers of water in between.
The WWII scenario based on the same map would be the second step IMO.
btw: For placing objects and making textures: Google has Streetview on
the complete Midway Island. It is like being there if you build a modern
times map.
EDIT: In that case also a positive point: For the buildings you would
only need a few new ones, most buildings there look pretty generic. All
in all there arenāT many buildings on that island anyway.
I even played around a bit in my GIS system, you can get terrain meshes for some of them in high detail for no cost. But without tools I can do nothing. I talked to Polychop a while back but they are pretty busy now.
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Well @Aginor, I did develop maps and models for the Eurofighter Typhoon Databse- care to see if putting together our brains we can pull off an Alpha stage for the Malvinas/Falkland map?
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Iād love to do some research on maps!
But to be honest: I expect to come to a screeching halt as soon as we want to get something into the engine. We would need to have a third party license by ED to even qualify, and it seems the requirements are tough to meet. (Someone posted them a while ago, canāt find them right nowā¦)
I suggest starting with something smaller though, like Midway Island. Just to see how the workflow could be manageable. I expect it to be something like
Terrain Mesh from USGS ā GIS system ā fill holes and stuff ā export to some format ā 3DsMax? ā change mesh around ā texture ā ED tools to place buildings?
I have only done the first four.
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