Request: Join CMO and DCS and Falcon BMS

[Japo32]

It was some time ago I heared about this possibility.
I am studying C++ and would try to make my idea, but I think I still don't have enough programming skills.

I was playing the first mission in Desert Storm (invasion). When I saw totally clear what I wanted to be the connection between CMO and DCS (or FalconBMS):

1. CMO for the logistics and everything that happens outside the DCS or FalconBMS maps
2. DCS and FalconBMS to use those logistics and units inside the flight simulator maps.

you define in CMO the map areas of DCS and FalconBMS. Choose your war, conflict. And start you campaign carrying all the assets from your country to the front in the DCS or FalconBMS bases. From there you use the units, weapons you have in DCS or Falcon

A) All start with a previous strategic game in CMO. You have a number of planes, boats, men, weapons etc, that you have to carry to the front line in "DCS or FalconBMS" map area. You do it in CMO.

B) once something is in the areas, people can fly it online making the mission, they want, or a central commander order to them. All in DCS or FalconBMS. Nothing will be played inside the area with CMO.

C) CMO players continue movement of assets, weapons, etc.. to allow war continue. Planes are not endless, weapons are limit, tanks, and men have limits. All numbers ruled by CMO. So use well what you got in DCS or FalconBMS.

Wish that the DCS online campaign would be totally realtime connected with CMO. When a transport plane appears in the boundaries of the DCS+FalconBMS area, the information of the position, altitude, orientation, speed and arriving airport is passed to DCS or FalconBMS, so an AI plane is generated in the boundaries and "continue" the flight form CMO. That same CMO plane that passed to the new play area, disappear from CMO.

Of course there are many things to consider, but would it be possible do it in real time mission generation in dCS and FalconBMS? I know CMO can stream data in real time, as it does it to Tacview... but DCS or FalconBMS would admit that data into their map areas in real time?
Of course this would be needed to be an outside to inside only way. No enemy plane could pass the DCS FalconBMS boundary maps to attack something comming in CMO to the area.

I just imagined it playing "invasion" mission from Desert Storm. What do you think?

[DWReese]

Sorry, but I'm against your idea.

There is already "too much" going on in CMO, and you are already beginning to experience sluggish play. Additionally, to add some more "detail" for specific areas would not only further tax the resources, but it could make he game seem less balanced since other areas aren't handled as such.

I say leave it as is.

[Japo32]

It is an option. You don't like it, you don't play it. Wouldn't change anything in the way CMO is played as it is right now.

[thewood1]

As I have said before, as long as you don't expect the devs to take time away from other stuff in the queue.

[Andrea G]

It reminds me of delusions I have heard about a game portraing the Pacific War at the single soldier level [:D]

[Japo32]

Thanks for the "positive" comments.
Delusions was to make a flight simulator that when you landed or parachuted you could walk and pick you gun to continue fighting, and then appeared Operation Flaspoint. Without delusions we never advance...

About the queue of tasks... well.. the devs they were the first that said to possible make that connection in one of the interviews I read. So I am not saying something that I invented. The same they said about multiplayer. Of course they can say no, now, but they also worked (and continue working) in the Tacview solution and it is good for a lot of users. Others of course, don't mind about it.

I don't see a big impact in work flow for the CMO team. I am a developer and has already released some products for selling, some of them programmed by me with success, (but still I don't have enough level to make my own plugin for CMO).
CMO already stream data in real time to Tacview, so I guess it has not to be very complicated to stream also that data to DCS or FalconBMS.
Then they only have to define with boundaries the areas of the maps of DCS and FalconBMS already implemented (something that a user can do), so when the units touch those areas the units disappear and connect with DCS and FalconBMS. Units wouldn't turn back. Only go in.
The big difficulty here is to make it work in DCS and FalconBMS, but as the CMO developers talked with the Tacview Devs to make the changes to allow the connectivity, maybe they can do the same with the DCS and FalconBMS guys.

And just a word about all those fan boys that always defend the integrity of their products. Tired of seeing always the same behaviour. Of course all the thinkings are welcome, but constructive ones. I will never understand why a user don't want to implement something that wouldn't affect him at all in his way of playing the games or sims he plays.
I see this just as 3DStudio Max. In it we have animation, modelling, illumination, texturing tools... if someone say something about "please add a cinematic tool" I wouldn't go against that idea, because it wouldn never modify any of my previous tools. Dev production time is something that always is possible... and devs not alwasy work all days same intensity. Tell you as a videogame dev that I am.
Changes makes more people come to products, and that is always a possitive thing, because devs don't live eating air, and people brings money. I don't think that DCS and FalconBMS users are casual players that would dirt the experience in CMO, rather the opposite. They are hardcore players also.

[Sardaukar]

I don't see a big impact in work flow for the CMO team.

You don't see big impact... Whatever you are taking, I want some of that [:'(]

[thewood1]

Just look at the resources the devs have had to pour into the TacView integration and still working on. What new developments in simulation have had to be set aside for an advanced form of window dressing. An integration to Falcon would make that look like Child's play.

[Sharana]

ORIGINAL: Japo32
CMO already stream data in real time to Tacview, so I guess it has not to be very complicated to stream also that data to DCS or FalconBMS.

Technically it's probably doable considering something like that is developed for the PRO version already:

...
“Some users are looking at how they can hook Command up to their more advanced hardware simulation,” adds Iain McNeil. “Let’s say you’re training someone to operate radar; they use a very detailed radar model but they have nothing that gives them the background picture to pick their target out of, so they’re using Command to provide the targets for the radar to detect.”
...
“At Lockheed Martin, we hooked up Command to their flight simulators, so you’ve got the Command scenario playing in the background, but with people flying two planes in the flight simulators,” says Iain McNeil
...
https://www.army-technology.com/feature ... tion-game/

The right question however is - why would you do something like that for a public game aimed at just gamers? Not to mention the legal nightmare - they couldn't even get a bundle deal for something as small as Tacview and you suggest they can work together with other game developers from another company on such integration...

[CV60]

Just look at the resources the devs have had to pour into the TacView integration and still working on. What new developments in simulation have had to be set aside for an advanced form of window dressing. An integration to Falcon would make that look like Child's play.

I tend to agree. CMO is optimized for a high tactical/low operational level of modern naval combat. In most you play the role of a battlegroup or fleet staff. To make it into a scenario generator for a flight sim is not what it was intended to do. Far more important IMHO is for the developers to continue to implement features that the warfighters at this level are concerned with, such as SAR, Weather, improving the fidelity of the Radar/ESM/ASW models, etc. Further, as others have pointed out, such an integration would be a huge time commitment from the developers while servering only a small fraction of the CMO players.

[Rory Noonan]

[:)]

[Randomizer]

ORIGINAL: apache85

[:)]

+1

-C

[Technopiper]

I remember reading in CGW. A reader wrote-in (yeah, that was during the Age of BBS and dial-ins) that he dreamt of a game in which every aircraft, soldier, vehicle is played by a single player, and they fight in this massive battlefield. The editor replied "keep dreaming". My suggestion: eat healthy, live healthy, and exercise regularly. Because anything is possible if you live long enough to see it.

[Primarchx]

I'd rather have multiplayer Command with the players using a common interface rather than some sort of Frankenstein agglomeration psuedo LVC environment of various games each with a different foci.

[AbuM]

There is an example of something similar, someone had made a software to link Steel Beasts Pro and VBS. The software needed a development team external to both of the companies that made the other two products, and the result was only suitable for training and it limited both simulations that it linked together. From what I saw of it it wouldn't be suitable for the consumer market. Don't get me wrong, something like that for CMO would certainly be interesting, but I would imagine it would require a large amount of effort to get DCS and CMO to communicate with one another, and the end result might be something that wouldn't exactly look good or work smoothly.

[i224747]

Actual a basic simple solution exists already. A Chinese flight fan is able to steer CMANO aircraft with his throttle and joystick: dive, climb, accelerate, slow down and route/course change. Combine this with TacView and you will have a simple flightsim. But don't count on the devs. They are too exhausted with constant bug fixing.

[1nutworld]

Personally, I don't have the rig to be able to play CMO as a "flight simulator", nor do I want to. If I want to play a Flight Sim, I'd play one. I don't play World of Warships because I don't want some 15 year old with the "Yamamoto" randomly blowing crap up, for the sake of blowing crap up because he can, in a simulation of what a tactical world war II naval engagement would be like. Same with World of Tanks or whatever that game is. I want a complete tactical simulation that CMANO and now CMO provide to us. When I want to pilot my F-16 I'll throw in my disc of Falcon 4.0. If you want to develop a game based on what CMO provides and put it in the Falcon 4.0 universe, go for it, I wish you the best and who knows maybe I will even buy your product, but I didn't purchase this game so I could play Falcon 4.0 or whatever its current iteration is with this game. I came here to run this simulation for this purpose. Mixing it with Tacview is useful but not what I am here to enjoy doing. So I hope the developers don't spend a NANO-Second of time trying to frankenstein CMO into into any of that single person flying game nonsense.

[1nutworld]

ORIGINAL: i224747

Actual a basic simple solution exists already. A Chinese flight fan is able to steer CMANO aircraft with his throttle and joystick: dive, climb, accelerate, slow down and route/course change. Combine this with TacView and you will have a simple flightsim. But don't count on the devs. They are too exhausted with constant bug fixing.

sounds like you are unhappy with CMO, and should stick to playing Flight sim instead.

[LargeDiameterBomb]

I am totally against this idea to the extent that it draws any resources from other things the developers are occupied with. If some other company want's to have a go with it, let them do so, but I sincerely hope that this is not the vision that the developers of CMO have for their game.

Now I understand why some user in another thread said it was a mistake to give the flight sim crowd what they wanted, alluding to some argument way back that I must have missed. It was only a little misapplied (implicitly) to my arguments in that thread.

From my perspective there are many flaws with this idea, most of them already articulated by other users in this thread.

What I can't even begin to understand is why one would even need CMO if one wants to play a flight sim? As someone else said, CMO is primarily a operational level game with some amount of tactics. A flight sim is played purely at the tactical level.
And, if the player would start DCS and start playing that game the player would have no influence over what decisions are made in CMO, since the player is 100 % occupied with operating his aircraft, so everything in CMO would have to run on it's internal unit and mission AI. So then, why not just play the flight sim instead? What does the combination of CMO and DCS bring to it?

[SeaQueen]

I just imagined it playing "invasion" mission from Desert Storm. What do you think?

Essentially you'd just be using CMO as the scenario editor for Falcon BMS or DCS. That's cool, because I think CMO has a better scenario editor in a lot of ways. It might also be interesting if you wanted to do something like your friends are all flying in DCS/BMS and you're sitting in the ABM chair, using CMO, and controlling the air battle with radio calls (e.g. "Spidey 3 engage FLANKER bullseye XXX YY miles..." or "Rambo engaging with birds.")

I think it's an interesting/fun idea to play with. It's not high on my wish list, though.