Getting community involved in an improved AI wouldn't be difficult. Look at all the community that jumped into improvements for the IL2 Sturmovik. This would not be difficult at all. There are a myriad of enthusiasts of the IL2 series that would be very interested to help develop the AI performance.

At the least I would think the people that are doing IL2 mods would be interested to pursue such a project. The IL2 still has good possibilities from all we have experienced in the past year. The AI would be more difficult, because there are just sooooo many flight models represented in IL2. Possibly, if some type of performance spreadsheet was created for each of the various aircraft it might not be as difficult as I perceive. The data from the spreadsheet could be plugged into the Ai performance coding possibly without too much work.

I remember the 1% flight model spreadsheets made by 3rd party developers for the MSFT CFS2. All to get players on consistence basis of performance, yet the AI never were improved by MSFT to take it to the next level.

The COD devs may not have the option for opening the code for quite awhile, unless they can provide a window for coding as per an SDK or something.

Thanks for the extra information Buddye.

It's yet to be seen how many members of the Cliffs Of Dover community would be interested and committed enough to put in the work required to get the AI up to the highest level. Even amongst the large amount of work done by the modders and hackers of the old IL-2 series, advancing the AI wasn't something that figured prominently IIRC, though maybe that was because the old series already had better AI than what we seem to have now in Cliffs Of Dover.

From what I can gather though, there's no way it's going to happen anyway without the co-operation of the game's developers.

It seems to me there are only two (legal) ways the AI in Cliffs Of Dover will reach the highest level of refinement possible.

One is if the developers hire some hard-working and talented individual who has access to a large crew of play-testers, and get them to work full-time for years on nothing but the Cliffs Of Dover AI.

The other is if they separate the AI source-code out and allow it to be modified at it's most base level by the modding community.

And looking at it that way, I think I know, in the long run, which way would have a greater chance of success.

I'd put my money on the group that can work on it whenever they want, however they want, just because it interests them. The group that can determine for itself, as actual end-users of the game, what exactly needs to be worked on. The group that may even have amongst it's members people as talented and capable as anyone the developers may be able to hire.

Of course, opening up a part of their game like that would be a slightly unconventional approach for a developer to take. But surely the question should at least be examined, is following convention in this instance doing what we have to do to give our sim the best chance of reaching it's fullest potential?

Ideally, what I'd like to see is the AI-modding community working in conjunction with the individual in charge of the AI development at Maddox Games. To have the modders and the developers working on the same page, with a common aim of improving the AI to an unprecedented level. What could be better for the game than to have the enthusiasts doing what only they can do, in line with the efforts of the official developers themselves?

Definitely not top of my list.

Before we worry about the AI we need to be able to fly properly ourselves and we can't with the current FMs.

1. FMs
2. AI Comms
3. Dynamic Campaigns

And for some there is this...

Doesn't matter how far you go with anything, you will always come up short... for someone.

Actually Klem, the AI is an extended labor that could take years. The FM could be fixed within a few days or weeks a most.

What you finally get for FM, may not satisfy you either. Afterall, there are still complainers about IL2 flight models, whose complaints have echoed on forums like this one for years.

I'll take Rotol Prop Spits that perform close to their RL performance versus 109s that do the same. :)

If it gets so close that it comes down to hair-splitting I'll live with it.

Maybe you will get what you want, hopefully not at the expense of an improved AI performance.

Well I understand its a 50/50 call.

I fly exclusively on-line so I'm more interested in human players and our FMs.

For the off-line players the AI is a big issue.

Actually, good FM is a must for the AI, if the AI is subject to the same laws of physics as the player (which is a "must" in MHO).

It would be almost pointless to have well designed, tested and refined AI maneuvers/performance and have poor FM controlling the AI trying to fly the maneuvers.

The Ai as it is is just downright cheating. Tonight I was just messing around and shot the end of a Hurricanes wing off. Instead of losing maneuverability he did a few barrel rolls as quick as a Red Bull air race and lost me before I even had a chance to react.

Thats what i thought. don't they go hand in hand? You cant tell AI to behave a certain way in a FM that's incorrect or doesn't have the correct parameters?