

Real Stories of Simulation Development - bryanl
http://www.simhq.com/_commentary/all_047a.html

======
starpilot
Oh wow. I played a lot of Jane's F/A-18 in my youth, and recall some of the
names and public issues mentioned in the article. There were many complaints
about low framerates in the game, which had so-so graphics for the time. The
developers stated this was due to the very complicated radar modeling loading
the CPU, which apparently included raytracing and cloud penetration modeling.
It's fascinating to see how far they took the radar simulation for a video
game.

> We had CJ who had intimate knowledge of the radars, and we had Matt who had
> been at the CIA and knew about the information systems. So when I was doing
> the part of the A2A radar that identifies enemy planes by their radar
> signature, I had put something in and said to CJ ‘Is this how it works?’ he
> looked at it then went into Matt’s office and closed the door (something we
> never did unless we needed privacy). They were in there for 10 or 15
> minutes, and then CJ came out and said it would be fine. I learned later
> that what I had put in was close to what the classified system actually
> does, and they needed to discuss whether it was too close to ship with, but
> they couldn’t tell me that (because then I’d know what the real system was
> like).

Also, funniest bit I found:

> We were now using EA’s QA department to test the game and quite frankly they
> didn’t impress us. One of the bugs they sent us was if you Alt-Tab out of
> Jane’s F/A-18 and delete the game directory the game will eventually crash.

~~~
azth
Do you still play flight sims? Apparently Matt Wagner is with Eagle Dynamics
now, who are shipping a very good flight simulator series called DCS (a
follow-on to LOMAC). Their next study plane is the F/A-18C, and I am extremely
looking forward to it!

Falcon 4 came a long way since then too, thanks to the humungous effort of the
community (and a source code leak). Look up Falcon 4 BMS if you're interested.

