General Category > Unofficial F/A-18 Acceleration Pack board

Help with weapons pack uprising

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lvflyer:
Gentlemen and ladies,

I know nothing can be done legally about what is going on, but we can sure show that we can't be put in a box.

I am starting a revolt and I encourage all that can to spread this and make it viral. Captainsim and VRS are stealing ideas and I bet some code that have been in development and released as freeware for the last year. It is not fair for a company to take advantage of our community's contributors time and talent to discover the hidden secrets of FSX and then create a product that practically guarantees that you will have to buy their product in order to use. I am talking about the "Weapons For FSX" and "Tack Pac". The concept of weaponizing FSX with AI SAMs, missiles, droppable objects, guns, and Air to Air weapons have been in development in our community by many dedicated to freeware contribution. This can be seen at http://fsdub.informe.com/portal.html and other posts in the community. Screenshots and videos have been released on Youtube every step of the way and at http://www.dahome.net/fsxpics.htm  Now the greed has begun and the big companies can see an advantage to take what has been in development and wrap it up in a security wrapper and force everyone to pay them in order to use. Captainsim at least is releasing an SDK for development, but anything created will have to use their dll which will cost everyone. Stealing of ideas and concepts from hobby contributors like Sludge JOrdan Moore, and Karol Chlebowski and many others has been happening for years and has damaged our hobby, but we always seem to recover and put the greed out of business, like Alphasim sort of. I encourage all that can to join with me and encourage the development and release of the already being developed stand-alone freeware dll and SDK so it can grow in the spirt of what this hobby is all about, sharing and contribution for mutual enjoyment. We have made major moves in the multi-player environment in the last year so lets join to destroy the GREED. Spread this far and wide and if anyone is familiar with simconnect, gauge development and mission creation using effects and want to join up let me know.  We are dedicated to freeware.  One more thing if these commercial interests, CS, VRS, and MilViz have their way then we will hav eto own all three base packages to see the effects of others in multiplayer.

virtuali:
Although we'll allow your message here, I must say we don't share your view of freeware against payware, nor your definition of payware being an expression of "greed".

The difference between payware and freeware is just than some people chose flight simulation as an hobby, others chose it to be a profession, that doesn't automatically mean the latter are driven by greed. I don't know how old are you but, if you have a day to day job, I guess you wouldn't feel greedy asking a payment. That doesn't mean other couldn't enjoy doing it as an hobby, sometimes with very good results.

About "stealing ideas". Sorry, but unless they actually stole actual parts of your code or art, there's no such thing as stealing ideas. Software is protected by copyright only, and copyright doesn't cover ideas or concepts, but only their actual expression.

Patents (if one applies for them), can protect an idea, but in every debate related to software patents, the stronger opposition always come from the Freeware or Open Source communities, for obvious reasons, since if software patents were used extensively, companies like Microsoft or Adobe would surely patent ideas like word processors or spreadsheets or graphic editors, and free products like Open Office or Gimp couldn't exists.

So, unless they really copied actual part of your stuff, you have simply to accept it as a normal competition, the same we (as a commercial developer) have to face every day, coming either from other competing developers or even freeware.

This sentence is particularly disturbing:


--- Quote ---Now the greed has begun and the big companies can see an advantage to take what has been in development and wrap it up in a security wrapper and force everyone to pay them in order to use
--- End quote ---

It sounds a bit like a veiled hint at piracy, as if they wouldn't use a security wrapper, it might have been somewhat ok, since everyone that didn't feel paying for it, could simply download it from pirate sites. Choice of words is important here: the word "greed" seems to pop up very often on web sites and discussion boards, usually related to RIAA/MPAA sueing someone for having downloaded Mp3's.

Flight sim addon market doesn't have anything to do with major record/movies labels: there's no big money involved, and very few commercial addon developers are able to sustain themselves and their employees doing only that. We might be one of the very few, but just barely, and if you count the workload involved creating an addon, the hourly wage of a flight sim addon developer is not much higher than a kid working at McDonald's...so no, greed doesn't have much to do with commercial flight sim development, not at least for developers that take their time to create an addon and, more importantly, support it after its release as well.

We have toyed with the idea of making a weapons addon in FSX since *before* FSX was released. Having access to Simconnect when it was still in beta version, everybody could see it might be used for something like that. But that was only the foundation, adding weapons (doing it in the right way) is a lot of work beside Simconnect, and we don't believe it would been very easy to recover the development costs, so we stopped thinking about it. If other developers believe they could, we wish them good luck, since it would be an interesting product to see nonetheless.

A suggestion: if you really want to fight these commercial products, and make your freeware project stand out, there's an easy way to do it: release an SDK and make it OPEN SOURCE using a very liberal license, like the Creative Commons one. This way, a commercial developer not wanting to pay license fees to the commercial solutions, could use the freeware one instead, make it a "de facto" standard. And this wouldn't prevent freeware projects using it.

SUBS17:
Tacpac and the Captain sim weapons pack have been in development for a few years all because people have requested it on the forums. VRS is only a small company of a few people and their Tacpac is not a rip off its value for money and from what I've seen on you tube the other one by Captsim looks quite similar. One thing to take note of is this allows full combat in FSX in MP which is a big deal. BTW Tacpac also includes A/G radar which is also a big deal as far as aircraft like the Superhornet are concerned very close to a fully modeled sim. Its quite dumb to complain when devs are actually listening and creating these mods. Tacpac also includes refuelling tanker and other stuff my one big concern is there is no standardisation with these mods ideally you want just one payware mod to fulfill the weapons mod for SP and MP and then build off that using SDKs then in FSX MP everyones flying on the same mod and can see each others weapons effect. What they should do now is decide which mod to stick with in then agree on working together to keep FSX heading in one direction.

fael097:
@lvflyer:
so you mean these people are "stealing" ideas, right?
lol, a modern air combat simulation with a reality level like mfs is wanted probably since they made MFS. or are you saying that before the freeware dudes, nobody ever thought of doing that? what world are you from?

lvflyer:
If you would spend the time and do the research at the links above and look at this video and all the others by the same author you will see each step in the evolution of the freeware weapons for FSX.  Greed may be strong word, but this is not the first time that code and ideas that were released as freeware ended up in commercial software with the intent to make sure that newbies think they have to pay to play.  Lots of times the freeware files are shared in obscure forums or other download sites and sometimes even reserved for members of groups only then slowly get released to all, for example all the sludge updates.  These have been developed out of necessity for military groups because it was frustrating to see a bomb explode 3000 feet above the ground and float to its traget or be limited to bombing from a certain altiude only.  I myself with the help of others worked on the development of precision high altitude bombing of ground targets with explosions that took effect when they hit the ground and left a black mark.  The next step in the eveolution is modeling damage to structures.  The idea of the revolt is to get the minds together quickly so we can work together to release the full effects and controls so that we don't get trapped into having to pay for base packages from all three concerns.

The SDK for these projects are available at the links above.  In addition to Air to Ground precision bombing, there is ongoing development of refueling gauges and tankers that can be called up anytime at the same link.  Air to Air with HUD lockup is also in develpment and ordnance load out selection with corresponding weight and flight characteristics are being created.  Also automated target seeking SAM sites are being developed along with true to life acting RADAR to get away from the GOD mode that we currently use.  This radar will actually be allowed to be jammed along with the SAMs and stealth aircraft would not be easily picked up by this radar.

Believe me that if we can get the right freeware developers together we can have it all without paying anyone.  We are headed down a slippery slope and this article by Jordan Moore tells the history of this hobby and illustrates what happens when companies try to make a buck off it, it isn't pretty  http://www.hovercontrol.com/artman/publish/article_138.shtml  I fear we are started on the not so good cycle that will damage the growth of the community again just when we were starting to get the spirit of cummunity back. 

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