Friday 2010-10-22 Dev. update and Discussion

[C_G]

Thanks to those who replied re: AI infor (Mazex, Pilot Error)... I'd like to hear it from the Big Cheese himself, of course.

I can imagine how making the AI unable to see through clouds would be a very computationally expensive undertaking.
Unable to see through their wings/fuselage would be fairly easy as the parameters are fixed.
But for the clouds, you'd have to define the 3D parameters of clouds and you'd have to calculate the position of the AI pilot in relation to the cloud to define areas of "visual obstruction" beyond which the AI could not have "knowledge".
On top of that, ideally, the RAF AI (but not lufties) would be given some "approximate" but not precise knowledge of Luftwaffe position to take into account the advantage conferred by radar (so as to enable general vectoring but not accurate shooting while in clouds, for example).
And all that would be further complicated if you wanted to take cloud opacity (on the fringes of clouds, for instance) into account, rather than just boxes of space where the AI can either "see" or "not see".

When you think of the calculations that would be necessary to calculate the relative AI bot views of a flight of 20 aircraft spread out over 2 kms of airspace on a day with puffy white cumulus dotting the sky every kilometer or so! I dunno.... (literally, I don't- I'm not a programmer).

Perhaps Oleg will find some magic shortcuts (perhaps the calculations could be reduced by calculating only the view of the AI flight leader and assume that the AI aircraft in that flight all share the same field of view?)....

The more I think about it, the more I think I understand why RoF did not include this feature!

C_G

[Chivas]

The AI programming is the most difficult by far feature to develop in any sim. If it were easy we would all have robots doing everything around our homes.