Skelthos

You can also use Discord in a browser, no app is needed. Discord is also easier to use and read on a phone or tablet than the forums. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers but I would wager that there are more users overall on Discord. Right now there are almost 400 people not counting devs signed into the Combat Pilot Discord server. I would be extremely surprised if the forums even came close to reaching as many users as Discord.

For a large part forums are a dying format. The Discord server is way more active so posting there likely reaches a wider audience. At least that is my take on it.

This applies to video games as a whole. It seems that games, in general, have gotten shorter in terms of hours of gameplay, and we see fewer unique mechanics and gameplay options. When 3D accelerators became common, it seems that the focus shifted from game design to looking at pretty graphics. Less willingness to take risks; rinse and repeat the same high-selling games repeatedly (Call of Duty comes to mind). At least, this is my opinion based on my playing video games and flight sims since the late 80's.

I am so eager for the F4, but I'm not sure it will be day 1 for me. I might hold off for a while on it, as I am still learning so many other planes.

Unreal does have some built-in AI functionality. I am not 100% sure how suitable or scalable it is for a flight sim, but it is there and is fairly easy to set up and use if you are familiar with the engine. One of the great things about C++, though, is the ability to integrate libraries from outside sources. You can always borrow functionality from these libraries instead of writing 100% from scratch. There are also prebuilt suites available, such as SmartEngine, that can be licensed, which would reduce the workload.

A skilled team can do a lot, but every single game engine has some underlying elements that cannot be changed. They can be worked around to some extent, but there are also some of the engine's underlying fundamentals that cannot be changed or worked around. In this case, I am not worried about it. I have confidence that the Combat Pilot team has analyzed the available engines and picked the one that best aligns with their vision for the game.

The engine will provide certain limitations, this is true regardless of the engine, they could build their own from the ground up and there would still be limitations. You either design your own engine, or license the engine that aligns closest to your design goals. You then do your game design to work around those limitations.

This is awesome, will definitely attend this panel.

With the way video game development is now this was always going to be the case. Years and years and years of continuous improvement and tweaking. I have been doing some of the F-15E as well and honestly not worried about it at all. By the time I get even close to competent with what is already there, this will be a distant memory. If nothing else is added I will still have gotten my money's worth out of it, if more is added then great.

The commercially available cockpit setups like the one above come with the center mount. The stick is attached to the mount with screws or bolts. Here you can see it.

Absolutely amazing how far you guys have come! Every update gets me more excited to see the final product.

It does not need to be buttons on either a keyboard or a hotas to be "real buttons" You could also make your own button boxes or even a complete, custom cockpit. There are also other options available such as the one from Winwing that replicates the F/A 18, but adds a lot of physical buttons to your setup.

Hand tracking has more to do with headset support than game support. If your headset and its software support hand tracking you can usually make hand tracking work in any title. For most consumer-grade headsets hand tracking is not where it needs to be for 100 reliable use. As much as I would like to see hand tracking functional, I think button boxes or similar will continue to be the go-to for cockpit interaction.

As much as I am looking forward to the F-4, I personally would rather see them take extra time to get it right than rush it out.

I'll be there for sure, although the ~20 minute drive to the Rio might be rough 🙂

Looking Great!

To be fair, cheating in one form or another has been an issue since the first games hit public servers. This will just be one more tool in the arsenal of those who are going to find a way to cheat no matter what.

I am on a break as well although mine is not fully voluntary, in the middle of moving across the country so everything is packed up. Cannot wait to have everything set back up and be back flying.

Looking good, great to see the attention to detail and the continued progress.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Hope everyone has a great holiday and new year!

This has become common on many forums to delay posts from new users for moderator approval. It is meant to cut down on spam posts. Not sure what the settings on here but as wheels said it should drop off after a set number of posts.

Agreed I would much rather a different solution was found instead of timers. Really hope the damage model goes beyond cosmetic and impacts flight systems appropriately based on where the damage was taken.

I use PCem for this, not only does a VM but emulates the hardware which can help with game compatibility issues that sometimes crop up. I think there is likely a lot of truth in this, if you look at hardware over the last 10-15 years, the improvements have been much more incremental than during the earlier days. It would make sense if our software follows suit with incremental rather than revolutionary changes. Also, have to keep in mind that devs need to balance between optimizations that the average user can run and what the high-end PCs can handle. Not sure if it was the first WW2 combat sim I played but definitely in the running.

It looks really good, and like things are progressing at a decent pace. Excited to see the continued progress.

RTS is a real-time strategy, typically in an RTS, you would control multiple units usually from either an isometric or top-down perspective. First-Person Shooter would be more like an air combat sim where you play a single character usually from a first-person perspective. I have not played Gates of Hell but it appears to allow you to switch views between top-down and first-person, but the primary focus would be controlling multiple units.