Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucselx!crash!jcs From: jcs@crash.cts.com (John Schultz) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Flight Simulator 4.0? (also realism) Message-ID: <5854@crash.cts.com> Date: 24 Nov 90 17:34:50 GMT References: <37096@nigel.ee.udel.edu> Organization: Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA Lines: 84 In <37096@nigel.ee.udel.edu> fhwri%CONNCOLL.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu writes: >Unfortunately, FLIGHT SIM II for the Amiga is marketed and developed >exclusively by SubLogic. I called them about a year ago and asked if they had >any plans to port 3.0 (that long ago!) to the Amiga. They said that they had >no such plans...when FS II came out for the Amiga in '87, it was state-of- >the-art. Now, it's getting pretty long in the tooth... A colleague of mine had the opportunity to do the UFO port to the Amiga. It seems subLOGIC subCONTRACTED the project to a company which was going to be subCONTRACTED to an Amiga programmer. They sent him a preview package with the finished PC version and some Amiga flight sim code. He took a look at the code for both the PC version and the Amiga version. He stated that the code for the PC was fairly documented and looked ok, while the Amiga code appeared to be a very sloppy port, with little or no comments and terrible coding style (not maintainable or useable for anything). He checked out the running PC version and after seeing the game (simulator), decided that he didn't want to port a UFO simulator where the goal was to suck energy out of buildings for power, plus the fact that he was going to have to rewrite the thing from scratch (they also wanted the project done in a month). He declined, and they gave the project to someone else. To date, I have not seen UFO on the shelves, or heard of anyone who has seen it on the market. If subLOGIC feels it is worthwhile to port FS 4.0 to the Amiga, they should produce a pseudocode version that is system and language independent for developers to port. Then all they'd need are programmers that knew the machine to be ported to, not cryptologists... A while back, I compared a few flight simulators to see if any are actually modelling flight realistically (no special case hacks). The test I used was a power on stall. First I tried Jet. After the stall warning came on, the nose just dropped and stopped as if though it had hit an invisible force field when the plane was level. Further, the rate of rotation was fixed: an obvious hack (and a poor one at that). Next, I tried the newly released F-19 Stealth Fighter. The thing's stall warning was highly inaccurate- when banked to past (about) 60 degrees, the *very* annoying stall warning comes on. This is at full throttle, full speed, level flight. Apparently the designers are not aware of lift produced by the fuselage and vertical surfaces when the plane is knife edge. Further, with full throttle and max speed, the plane is almost ballistic (doesn't need lift to counter gravity; thrust alone can do the job). Finally, stall can occur at any attitude and any speed (any time the angle of attack of the main lifting surface exceeds the critical angle and the lift drops rapidly as the smooth airflow breaks up into turbulent drag with little perpendicular lift force). Anyway, F-19's stall is only slightly better than Jet's: F-19 doesn't hit an invible force field when it becomes level, it hits the invisible force field at nadir (straight down). It still has a constant rotation rate. I don't (now) have F-18 Interceptor of Falcon to test. But, I can say that of all the Amiga flight simulators, Interceptor has by far the most realistic flight and sound model. I have heard that Falcon is fairly accurate too, but from the one time I used it, it was completely wrong (When the plane was rolled to knife edge, the stick controls were relative to the world frame of reference (not the jet's). This may have been because the "easiest" mode was in use, and may be different when used in the more advanced modes. I have no idea how A-10 Tank Killer, F-29 Retaliator, Fighter Bomber, F-16 Combat Pilot, or Blue Angels deal with realistic flight and motion. Finally, I tried Flight Sim 4.0 on a colleagues PC. He stalled the Cessna, and it stalled correctly. The whole plane fell downward (no rotation), and as the force of drag increased, the moment arm of the tail surfaces rotated the *tail* upward about the center of mass (cockpit), hence a correctly implemented torque about the center mass. FS 4.0 (PC) passed the stall test, both power on and off. It also does adverse yaw, ground effects, slips, skids, random wind/clouds, and other traffic. Most important to some users is the accurate instrumentation (ie. you really can learn from them). You can fly from point A to point B using just instruments, and some users get a real kick out of that. Porting FS 4.0 to the Amiga would be a major undertaking (probably all in 80x86 assembly), and subLOGIC (or Microsoft) probably do not feel that their effort is worthwhile in terms of time and money. If enough users wrote letters, that may make a difference. Or if some really talented Amiga programmers convinced subLOGIC that they could do it profitably, that may also do it. John PS: Falcon 3.0 for the PC is supposed to use the 80287 and have a realistic flight model, as well as ground terrain.