Attention Fsxi Developers

[metro752]

I want guns, missiles, and death in the next version of Flight Simulator.

That is all.

[RyanbATC]

wewt

[xxmikexx]

metro752,

Why confine yourself to FS?

There are many excellent non-Microsoft military flight sims. Because they are special purpose systems, it is easier for the vendors to produce excellent graphics combined with high frame rates, detailed panels, detailed weapons systems, and so on.

In addition, many of them feature true multiplayer action, though at the moment I know very little about that aspect of military sims.

[RyanbATC]

metro752,

Why confine yourself to FS?

There are many excellent non-Microsoft military flight sims. Because they are special purpose systems, it is easier for the vendors to produce excellent graphics combined with high frame rates, detailed panels, detailed weapons systems, and so on.

In addition, many of them feature true multiplayer action, though at the moment I know very little about that aspect of military sims.

There's no great modern day sims anymore

Jane's ATF owned all back in the day, Jane's USAF was pretty good too

I have been tracking this one a little, but who knows when it'll be done:
http://www.fighterops.com/index.php?page=faq


Lock-On is just weird, fairly fun
Falcon 4 Allied Force is good, but graphics are lacking and there's a steep learning curve

[xxmikexx]

RyanbATC,

Sure, the Janes stuff was excellent. I still have all of it, I believe. There is also Mig Alley, for example, which is perfecty valid even today. I'm too lazy to look in my office closet to see all the games that I still have but have forgotten about.

As for Falcon IV, that one is really about the avionics and weapons systems, which are faithfully modeled in very high detail. You are correct that it is a steep learning curve. In fact, the user manual is 600+ pdf pages.

For that reason, while I own Falcon IV for test purposes, I would never fly it for pleasure. I'm a "kick the tires, light the fires and let's go flying" kind of guy. I want action with the impression of realism, not time-consuming full realism.

That's the nice thing about the overall spectrum of military sim product offerings -- different strokes for different folks, just as with FS.

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Now ... Why do you say that Lock-On is weird?

[vortiz56]

It's all too apart....game titles and functions.....from the few events I'd be interested in:
Dambusters (would like ack ack and bomb drops, dams going up)
Doolittle Raid (would like to pick any of the cities attacked, same above, except no dams)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Pearl Harbor (with accurate looking ship models that shoot back, ai B-17s and P-40s, same for the Japanese fleet); And any other cool Pacific battle (Midway, Coral Sea, Turkey Shoot)
Since I've played generic campaigns, I'm perty much done.

[RyanbATC]

RyanbATC,

Now ... Why do you say that Lock-On is weird?

Because it contains the most bugs of any piece of software I've ever used....

I get video card glitches, crashes, freezes, artifacts and all.

I've played that game on 3 entirely different systems and still the bugs persist.

If you look at the Ubi forums they have a huge thread dedicated to bugs....lol

Years after it's made I think I have the system to run it and it still crashes LOL!!!!

[xxmikexx]

vortiz56,

Pacific Fighters covers both Pearl Harbor and Battle of Midway, among other things. I'm fairly sure that there are AI ships that shoot back.

Re the B-29 stuff, I seem to recall that somebody did a Hiroshima mission simulator for the original Combat Flight Simulator.

Re Dambusters, there was a DOS-based game of that name around twenty years ago. My guess is that it would run in a "command window" today though you might need a freeware program called "DOSbox" to slow things down if the game for some reason cannot run on today's relatively fast machines.

If anybody cares, I could locate my copy copy of DOSbox and make it available. Then you'd also be able to run the DOS-based games written by FlightSim.com webmaster Nels Anderson, available at FlightSim.com/arcanum, including the world-famous Mah Jong II.

[tigisfat]

to me, the "jane's" titles seemed just about right. It's a perfect time for Jane's to release a title with modern graphics and features. It'd kick butt if the campaign was simulated out of the middle east, just like Jane's F-15E.

[jwenting]

well, the design group no longer exists. They were a department of Electronics Arts, the Jane's name was only a franchise they no doubt paid a lot of money for.
EA decided to disband the group and discontinue all development of flight (and other military) simulators because the profit margins were just too low.

And NO, I do NOT want to turn FS into a military sim, a game.
The mission system is bad enough if it's a taste of things to come, the removal of the freeflight option.
There's enough trouble as is with kids buzzing people on vatsim and other online networks in their fighters, if they get the weapons to shoot you down the disaster would be complete.

If you want to kill something, install some military sim instead.
There are good ones out there. BoB II, Il-2 1946, even LoMac is still good.
Or dust off that Windows 95 disc and install F-15 or F/A-18.

[vortiz56]

I'm with Wenting on nixing the military option.

[xxmikexx]

Facetiousness Alert! I repeat, this is a Facetiousness Alert!
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jwenting and vortiz56,

I'm against all the airplanes I never use because they simply drain development time away from the things I want, one of which is a military option, the other being a 727-200 with steam gauges.

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Seriously, I can see not putting something on your "I Want" list, but why would you ever oppose something that somebody else wants? If there's more stuff that people want, Microsoft will hire more people, yes? Because they want the product to have broad appeal, yes?

[vortiz56]

I'm with you, Wenting. That is what the other military games are for.

[Kurtvw]

It's all too apart....game titles and functions.....from the few events I'd be interested in:
Dambusters (would like ack ack and bomb drops, dams going up)
Doolittle Raid (would like to pick any of the cities attacked, same above, except no dams)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Pearl Harbor (with accurate looking ship models that shoot back, ai B-17s and P-40s, same for the Japanese fleet); And any other cool Pacific battle (Midway, Coral Sea, Turkey Shoot)
Since I've played generic campaigns, I'm perty much done.

Vortiz, you'd have a good time in Aces High Friday night Squad operations...

[vortiz56]

Geez, that was an ancient reply of mine. I will look into your suggestion Kurtvw.

[ED_4]

We don't need to turn FS into a military sim. That's what Microsoft CFS is for isn't it? To appeal to those that want shooting things down out of the sky.

And this is also why I keep my Falcon4 around. Or if I want some carrier action, I load up my old Jane's F/A-18, which still works nicely by the way. And for helicopter action I got my old Gunship! (the second title) by Microprose. And all of them works fine in XP.

They may be old, but they do accomplish what they're meant to - for shooting stuff.

Now I may have some military aircraft in my FS9 hangar,but by no means do I want to use those to start shooting stuff out in the FS world. Again, if I like to do that, I fly the other sims I already have. In FS9, I like flying them without having to worry about some bloke shooting back at me or being blasted out from the sky from the ground. I just want to fly them.

[xxmikexx]

Ed 4,

I guess my feeling is that your remark might as well have read "We don't need the Acceleration expansion pack, it's equivalent to turning FS into an air racing sim."

With the advent of Acceleration, Microsoft just rewrote the rules regarding addon aircraft -- $10 each for debugged mid-range capabilities, $5 for the media, introduce some new missions. (And if F-18 carrier landings aren't a military component, I don't know what is.)

It would not surprise me if, given the marketing success of Acceleration, they rewrite the rules regarding the base system too -- civilian plus military with Acceleration-like addons for each of the two flavors. Or maybe they'll test the waters for spacecraft simulators and include some of that in the base system.

Based on public statements by Aces Studio's Phil Taylor, the next generation of FS is going to be based on a very general purpose simulation platform. That platform will serve as the foundation for Train-Sim as well as FS, and for other things that have not been announced.

So it may be that what we today call "FS" will actually be radically different in its basic architecture, so different that in principle one could have elements of FS, CFS and TS all in the same base system as "teasers", with the customer deciding what direction to take the base system in through the addition of expansion packs.

I'm not saying this will happen, I'm saying that if I were the king of Aces, as a marketing guy that is what I would do -- try to interest my gaming customers in as many different areas as possible by having several different flavors of expansion direction rooted in a common base system.

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I also think it's significant that FSX includes not only the direct-connect-to-IP method of cockpit sharing, it also can use GameSpy. My guess is that this is Aces Studio testing the technology waters for how to get in on the massively multiplayer business.

So while I certainly could be wrong, I think that what we know today as FS -- a product that has no exploitable relationship to any other sim -- will be replaced by a base system that is expanded in any or all of several different directions via a mix-and-match suite of Acceleration-like addon packages.

[vortiz56]

I agree, Ed. Now, I do like that some fighter models come with an aerial refueling option, giveng a sim pilot the chance to try that maneuver out.

[ED_4]

Air racing is one thing, but having a full blown shooting military kind of simulator is another. You don't shoot stuff in air racing. And carrier landing operation is not one where you get shot at.

Imagine having to go into stuff like the regular VATSIM and then someone comes in and blows the towers up since they're carrying a military aircraft. And that goes with shooting other guys in the skies too.

That is one component I could do without. Like someone already mentioned, this is something we really don't need in terms of others trying to shoot someone just because they are in a plane that can.

My statement stands in the terms of FS not becoming a full blown shoot em blow em up kind combat simulator. There are full combat simulators just for that.

[vortiz56]

ED,

I agree.

[maniaspeed]

I'm kind of on the fence with this. On one hand, I think it would be great if you could basically "plug in" a full shooting war package into FS, or trains or boats or whatever. I also agree it would be ridiculous to have loose cannons flying around online destroying everything at random. So I think it depends on how it's implemented. For offline I'd say anything goes - it's your sim do whatever you want with it. For online perhaps there could be some kind of "weapons safe" mode where depending on what server or session you log onto it will not allow you to use weapons. I think there is great potential in it being a modular base for a broad range of things, but like anything the way it's implemented will be critical.

On the other hand, nobody here has mentioned the Third Wire series of combat sims: Strike Fighters, Wings Over Vietnam, Wings Over Europe, First Eagles (WWI) and most recently Wings Over Israel. "Hardcore" combat simmers (like the Falcon crowd) often scoff at them because they are "lite" sims - they don't make you read a 600 page manual or learn the real world way to lock up a target at BVR range or learn a missiles maximum and optimum kill range etc. And the flight models are more loosely interpreted but they aren't arcade games - it is a somewhat stripped down sim. They are however easy to learn, fun, and the graphics out of the box are not as good as Lock On but WAAAAYYYYY better than Falcon 4:AF. Here's the great part: they are like the MSFS of combat sims - open to modding and expansion. Nearly everything in them has been improved and expanded upon by their community much as FS. They can present quite a challenge with difficulty on "hard". If you're looking for a "light the fires, kick the tires" flight combat sim the Third Wire series may be just what you're looking for. They were developed by the same person who was behind "European Air War" in the late 90's. Also with the release of almost every new game the developer has offered a patch that updates the older titles to the same level. How's THAT for supporting your product and fanbase?

[xxmikexx]

maniaspeed,

Thanks for the info. I don't have a lot of time for flying these days but when a lull comes up I'm definitely going to look into the Third Wire sims that you mentioned -- exactly because I'm a kick-the-tires, light-the-fires guy with very little experience with military stuff.

[tigisfat]

Air racing is one thing, but having a full blown shooting military kind of simulator is another. You don't shoot stuff in air racing. And carrier landing operation is not one where you get shot at. I think it'd be the greatest plug-in ever!!


Imagine having to go into stuff like the regular VATSIM and then someone comes in and blows the towers up since they're carrying a military aircraft. Yes, but that's what you have dedicated rooms and organization for.



My statement stands in the terms of FS not becoming a full blown shoot em blow em up kind combat simulator. There are full combat simulators just for that. Maybe we need a new version of combat flight siim with modern aircraft, wide capablities, and the same cross-compatibility with FS11 or even FSX!!

[maniaspeed]

Consider this regarding having a modular base program with various plugins: Developers have a common framework to use. If we get the whole world as we do with current FS, you don't need to create a whole new "map" for a given scenario - maybe just a new set of scenery tiles/textures and objects. Maybe even have a control panel with in the Sim that switches out time eras on demand. Want 1940's / WWII? Check the box and the FS world becomes 1943 or whatever, lining up appropriate period aircraft and scenery. Maybe even a general combat on/off option or even "weapons free" zones like the Nellis Air Force Range. 3D modelers/painters, mission builders, all have a common set of parameters to work with. Sure it's ambitious and keeping it under control would be a huge challenge but if done carefully, could make it a hugely attractive product. I don't even know if this is really what they're thinking of if it's just "pie in the sky" stuff but it's intriguing.

[fsfilmworks]

Oops there were 2 more pages of posts...

I doubt this thread will be seen by any of the Flight Sim team due to it's location...

Anyway I want combat ops in Flight Sim because I want to be able to jump in an F-14 one day and go on a mission in the same scenery as I fly in a 767-200 or a Piper Tomahawk...

I learned to fly in the air force cadets and we would have F-111's buzzing around the circuit with us, and I want to be in a sim where the F-111 pilot can go do a training mission while another Tomahawk pilot can go fly circuits at the air force base...

CFS2 used to be good in that you could import Flight Simulator scenery into it... That was why CFS2 was so successful...

Now if you ask me FS needs to have a combat ops X-Pack....

[xxmikexx]

fsfilmworks,

I'll bet I can get Microsoft to read this thread, by summoning the forum search spirits ...

Phil Taylor :D
ACES :D

Phil, please tell your people that we demand the ability to recreate the shootdown of the KAL-007 747 by the Russki Mig-25. :D

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Dean,

I very much like your idea for a combat addon package. I hope they'll consider it.

[robystar]

Hi,

Nope, I am not into combat flight sims but I would indeed like the possibility to have weapons on a military craft that does do some damage in FS9, FSX, FSXI or FSXII (wouldn't do it but just the idea that you CAN is satisfying).
But there are so many things that could be improved that the list would be too long to sum up. In the last ten years time we saw quite some developments, didn't we? Don't think 5 years ago someone in his right mind would have asked for the things he is now asking for.
For the nearer future I would say that integration of CFS and boat and train simulators and space exploration simulation would already be a revolution.
Also, improved interaction through ATC and an updated special effects engine would be a big plus. And so on.
Thinking of a more distant future with more powerful computers, a more immersive virtual reality could be possible. I was thinking of a movie of which I forgot the name but was all about virtuality although the 18+ subject could have the title of the book 'Fear of Flying'.
Nice to dream on, isn't it?

Roby

[fsfilmworks]

Mike, what you said is exactly the thought I had yesterday... *what if* a combat addon was done like XPack...

That way even in multiplayer users can only see combat ops if that user has the combat sim xpack installed... If in multiplayer, then they can't shoot down civilian aircraft if the user doesn't have combat ops xpack or it gets turned off in MP by admin choice...

Having said all that though I'd like to see all the FSX bugs get stabilized first then FS11 be more stable, then they can look at a combat xpack...

I'm wondering if ESP will have any effect on combat for the sims seeing as both Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are developing on ESP now...

I'd also love to see a ship simulator... Better AI shipping and even America's cup races...

Some may say a ship/boat simulator is boring, but I remember the days of waiting nearly an hour for Arnie Armchair's America's Cup to load in the computer via a tape drive... Sometimes it would fail on Side B of the cassette which meant having to restart the entire load process... Was well worth the wait though...

http://www.fsdreamscapes.com/screenshots/arnie1.gifhttp://www.fsdreamscapes.com/screenshots/arnie2.gifhttp://www.fsdreamscapes.com/screenshots/arnie3.gif
http://s64.emuunlim.com/gameinfos/americascup/americascup.htm

Most of the game was played in the second screenshot's mode...

The game would take hours and hours to play and even for the Commodore 64 I still haven't come across anything even close to this game since the 1980's when it comes to simulating the America's Cup... Maybe I haven't looked hard enough...

Dean.

[xxmikexx]

Dean,

There will be no further bug fixes to FSX, this from the product manager himself. Unless they come out with another expansion pack that happens to fix some bugs, what you see with FSX+Acceleration is what you get.

Speaking of Acceleration, it does fix some bugs in some of the default FSX aircraft, so there are reasons for buying it beyond the additional aircraft and missions.

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I have a product called Ship Simulator that's very interesting. Also, member skylab emailed to me a couple of old DOS-based ship sim games. Antique software technology but realistic enough that it was, I believe, a containership captain who gave them to him.

Someone (in this thread? another?) suggested that it would be nice if one and the same platform would simultaneously support simulations of aircraft, trains, cars, etc.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to settle for the real world.

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Folks,

Acceleration is available from the Pilot Shop here
http://www.fspilotshop.com/product_info.php?products_id=1327&ref=135
at the reduced price of $22.95 US, price subject to change without notice.

[fsfilmworks]

Mike, I think you may have misunderstood me, I wasn't talking about bug fixes for FSX, I'm talking about fixing all the bugs for FS11 and not having them carry over from FSX...

Trust me I know the status of FSX...

I don't want other simulators, I want the Microsoft platform to provide plugins that work together, that includes, ship, combat, cars etc...

[xxmikexx]

Dean,

Sorry for my having misunderstood you. As for the rest of it, I want the same thing you want.

[fsfilmworks]

No worries...

Actually we're getting pretty close to that, and I'm sure ESP is going to have an impact on that...

I just got DillinghamX and the road next to the airport is so close to being drivable... I tried the Deltasim luxury yachts as well but they're FPS killers...

I really want to make the stock carriers and luxury yacht pilotable...then I'd have some fun...

For water based simming though we need better FS water... Maybe phsyx based... :)

[Ragtopjohnny]

I admit that it would be cool to have an interactive environment were weapons could be deployable, and there would be a military side seperate from Civillian side, but I don't see the need to have to follow say Airliners just for target practice and stuff like that. After all, it is a flight simulator - not combat flight simulator.

Don't get me wrong - with them in the RIGHT PLACE it would be cool to have though and strict perameters on using them. It's not a shoot 'em up sim.

[xxmikexx]

Ragtopjohnny,

I think the point some of us are making is that in principle it can be ANY kind of sim depending on which addons are installed, and that there's nothing wrong with this. In fact, there's everthing right with this from an end user viewpoint though not necessarily from ACES' viewpoint.

You get to have your civil sim. Other folks will want military stuff only. People like Dean and me will want a mixture of addons so we can pretend to be the Military Bad Guys in order to recreate the shooting of Civilian Good Guys out of the sky. (Well, maybe Dean doesn't want that, but I do.)

What if those F-18s had been patrolling the skies over NYC at the time 9/11 was unfolding? What if the CIA attorney hadn't disapproved the launching of the Predator-borne Hellfire missile that had Bin Laden in its sights?

And so on. Lots of reasons to allow you to get what you want while still allowing me to get what I want.

[CoNa]

Because it contains the most bugs of any piece of software I've ever used....

I get video card glitches, crashes, freezes, artifacts and all.

I've played that game on 3 entirely different systems and still the bugs persist.

If you look at the Ubi forums they have a huge thread dedicated to bugs....lol

Years after it's made I think I have the system to run it and it still crashes LOL!!!!

Did you stay with the Lockon 1.02 version or have you upgraded to Flaming cliffs?
That solves ALOT of the bugs...not all... but It's as stable as ever.
Compared with FSX... which stops on me now every now and then...its a dream.

[xxmikexx]

fsfilmworks,

If you want to drive a luxury yacht around, check out Ship Simulator. No aircraft carriers but it does have the Titanic. :)

Harbors are Rotterdam, Hamburg and NYC. If there are others I'm spacing them out.

[fsfilmworks]

No Mike, as I've clearly stated before I don't want to use other sims... I want to work within the Microsoft platform INTEGRATED with Flight Sim, Combat Sim, Car Sim, Train Sim...

How many times do I need to repeat that?

The ESP/FS Platform is one teensy tiny step away from being able to be a ship simulator, just needs 'SimObject' coding and better ports, waypoints and AI...

No I don't want to look at other sims, I have been looking at other sims for over 20+ years, I know what they have to offer and they're junk...

Does it integrate with FS? No. Does it integrate with Train Sim 2? No. The answer to such statements is NO NO NO...

Why am I so adament about this?

A) Because it can be done through the FS/ESP platform easily

B) Because I want to go for a flight across the world in the sim, land in Lyon France, take a helicopter down to Monte Carlo and hop into a luxury yacht (already modeled in FSX) and cruise on over to Cannes... No I don't want to leave FS, go to the start menu, load some bogus 3rd party non large company supported proprietary ship sim that doens't have the addon capabilities of the FS/ESP platform... I want to build a city fly over it and then see it from the water...

C) I want my friends to be able to fly their helo and land on my moving helipad on the luxury yacht in multiplayer

Sometimes in the sim I just want to switch to a car or a yacht *without leaving the sim* just to do something different...

Nuff said...

[xxmikexx]

fsfilmworks,

You perhaps were speed reading my remarks. You wrote "I want to work within the Microsoft platform INTEGRATED with Flight Sim, Combat Sim, Car Sim, Train Sim..."

I do too. That's what I said -- one sim -- and Microsoft is planning to do exactly that. However, you're saying that you want all the addons present all of the time from Day One, which is not going to happen in a business sense.

I'm saying that as long as I can populate my world with whatever dynamic or static objects I want, I'll be happy. As long as there is a marketing "menu" of potential dynamic objects -- a list of available freeware or payware addons -- I'll be happy.

I agree that you might not be happy. Apparently you want it all there all of the time from the very beginning, perhaps with the ability to apply addons. But I think that there is no conceivable business model that would support this approach to the end user market -- because it would be a one-time sale of a system that would be far more complex than the typical end user would want even to try to get into.

Now you may reasonably disagree with what I've written, but please be gentle.

[fsfilmworks]

However, you're saying that you want all the addons present all of the time from Day One, which is not going to happen in a business sense.

I never at all said that Mike and please do not ever put words into my mouth that I ***never*** said...

Twice you've recommended other sims and twice my answer has been no...

I don't care about other sims, I know what is happening with both FS and ESP so please don't talk down to me about this subject.

[jwenting]

I wouldn't want any kind of weapons in FS at any time. There's enough pressure to ban "violent video games" as is, and with FS being looked at weird already for being used as a "terrorist training tool" it could well tip the scales and get the product banned "for security reasons" and "for the good of the children".

I'd also hate it when some kid zooms up in his F-16 when I'm flying an approach in a 767 on IVAO or VATSIM and starts shooting at me.
And that's exactly what would happen.

[xxmikexx]

Dean,

I'm not talking down to you ...

What you quoted was my interpretation of your words given your original pushing me in the chest, which had me completely baffled, and which now has me baffled again. What did I say that set you off like that?

[tigisfat]

I wouldn't want any kind of weapons in FS at any time. There's enough pressure to ban "violent video games" as is, and with FS being looked at weird already for being used as a "terrorist training tool" it could well tip the scales and get the product banned "for security reasons" and "for the good of the children".

I'd also hate it when some kid zooms up in his F-16 when I'm flying an approach in a 767 on IVAO or VATSIM and starts shooting at me.
And that's exactly what would happen.

true, but I'm sure those hosting sessions would be given the option to 'safe' all weapons.

I don't know how terrorists could be trained with MSFS any more than they can be now. Terrorists don't usually utilize 40 million dollar attack aircraft.

[jwenting]

I don't know how terrorists could be trained with MSFS any more than they can be now. Terrorists don't usually utilize 40 million dollar attack aircraft.

We know that, but I'm more concerned about press weenies and Homeland Security flunkies (and their counterparts in other countries) who are all too keen to do something, anything, for the purpose of being seen "doing something" to safeguard their budgets.

Someone who can ban people from taking bottled water on aircraft is someone who can ban a computer game because it could be a "terrorist training aid".

[xxmikexx]

jwenting,

Fortunately the jurisdiction of the Transportation Safety Authority does not extend to books. However, I agree with you -- you can see that kind of censorship from here, by the Department of Homeland Security in general, just as you say.

[H_Kev55]

That young jet jockey could be surprised when the 747 fires back.

[Michael E.]

We know that, but I'm more concerned about press weenies and Homeland Security flunkies (and their counterparts in other countries) who are all too keen to do something, anything, for the purpose of being seen "doing something" to safeguard their budgets.

Someone who can ban people from taking bottled water on aircraft is someone who can ban a computer game because it could be a "terrorist training aid".

Several of my fellow builders have had visits from FBI and HS personnel. They have been cordial, friendly, and in all instances, full of questions about "Can I try it?" and, "Will you teach me to fly it?", after they see just what can be acomplished by the home builder. My 727 is small potatoes compared with what many have done with the 737NG, full shell, full interior, twin FMC's, the works.

I do not, under any circumstances condone what the Government does regarding visits to private sim builders. It is none of the Government's business what anyone does in the privacy of their home. 4th Amendment.

Most of us do not build Level-D simulators. Those are quite out of reach for most of the community except for the very well-heeled, and then, why wouldn't they just buy a jet and learn to fly it?

Our simulators border on the Level-B to Level-C+, from a static procedure training device, to a static instrument trainer.

[jwenting]

it's a sad state of affairs when police cronies play home invasion and harass law abiding citizens for executing their hobbies while criminals are let go because there's not enough manpower to investigate their crimes.

[xxmikexx]

jwenting,

I have a story that argues the other side of the case. Let's look at it.

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My son is the noted science fiction author Wil McCarthy. About two weeks after 9/11 the CIA called him asking that he attend an emergency meeting of CIA+futurists regarding warding off terrorism, which he did.

From that meeting he relayed a request -- did I have anything to contribute in the area of aviation? Yes, I did ...

1 - I told them to check all the records of FBOs changing hands because this would be a way for the Bad Guys to acquire aircraft without anybody noticing.

2 - I told them to correlate a list of people who purchased FS with a list of people who purchased ATC since anybody who had thoughts of bringing an airliner down might be very interested in the subject of approach flight paths. (The correlated list would include me.)

So ... From an invasion of privacy viewpoint I should not have done either of these things -- encourage CIA intrusions. Yet from a public safety viewpoint I should have done it, which is why I did it.

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By the way, through my son I got an attaboy from the CIA, who immediately closed the FBO loophole in a monitoring sense, presumably through the FAA. As for the other matter, you could stand among the approach lights on a side street at LAX and do all kinds of stuff. I'm not revealing anything important here because lots of people do what I do. Whenever I'm out there I let the medium jets scream over me 100 feet up -- and usually I have lots of company.

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So how do you view the ethics of situations and considerations like these? What's the appropriate balance between undesirable government intrusion versus desirable public safety? What would you have done in my shoes?

[jwenting]

nothing wrong with doing a paper study like that. What I oppose to are police officers storming your house under false pretenses and taking the place apart.
It's come to the point where anyone who even looks at an aircraft is now viewed as a terrorist suspect.

There must be a middle ground somewhere, where we don't loose our freedom because of mostly baseless fears.

90% of what's done in the name of "preventing terrorism" does nothing except limit peoples' civil rights while leaving terrorists alone.
The TSA doesn't frisk Arab men travelling alone because that would be "racial profiling", but they do frisk 75 year old white people because their walking stick set off the metal detector.
You can't take some bottled water onto an airliner but they still miss knifes and guns because the staff are incompetent at using the X-ray machines.

[xxmikexx]

jwenting,

I agree with you 100%. There's nothing wrong with profiling, whether racial or not. It's common sense, but common sense has been made to walk the plank of political correctness regarding this and so many other matters.

[jwenting]

jwenting,

I agree with you 100%. There's nothing wrong with profiling, whether racial or not. It's common sense, but common sense has been made to walk the plank of political correctness regarding this and so many other matters.

which is why both of us are having such a hard time not getting attacked on forums and elsewhere. We both aren't afraid to state our opinion even or maybe especially) if it doesn't match the PC crowd's point of view.

[tigisfat]

I'm still shocked that we haven't seen a military flight sim based on the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'd love either one.

[xxmikexx]

tig,

Such a game would be acceptable only if it portrayed the USA as the Ultimate Bad Guys, out to slaughter as many innocent civilians as possible, in their insane bloodlust to wreak as much collateral damage as they can on the various local infrastructures, and to bomb first responders as they try to help the victims of earlier bombings, and to behead innocent news reporters on internet streaming video ... ...

... Oh wait. That's the opposition.

[tigisfat]

jesus, it's sad that you're so right. Any new combat game would have to be created for the world market, and everyone hates us right now.

[jwenting]

Rather it would have to be created BY the entertainment industry in the US which is controlled by people who hate their own country.

Most people don't hate the US. There is the typical envy that there has always been of the US which is always more prevalent in times when the US is active on the world stage of course, but I don't see more "hatred" of the US here than in the past. What nutcases there are may be more active, and the ultra-leftists who control the media are more vocal than they used to be now that they no longer have to fear a major backlash from the population in general what with the US no longer providing active protection against the USSR, but the people in general (at least those I speak) don't have the US or Americans.

They may be more suspicious about the motives of US political action, but that's a symptom of the general distrust of all politicians which is growing by the day in Europe (and I suppose elsewhere) as people are ever more becoming aware that their political masters don't care one bit about the people they're ruling except as sources of money for their own enrichment.

[xxmikexx]

That's an interesting analysis, Jeroen. I'm glad to hear that the opinions of everyday people about the USA and its citizens haven't changed much.

What you say is certainly true in Canada, where the government-controlled and/or censored news media are virulently anti-American, yet where 100,000 ordinary Canadian citizens stood in Ottawa's Parliament Square in solidarity with the American people three days after 9/11.

My wife and I were speculating yesterday that the USA may well be the only nation on earth with no important restrictions on free speech. What do you think?

[jwenting]

I don't know. From what I hear there are many restrictions on free speech in the US, but they're mostly local or regional (specific states or counties having enacted restrictive regulations that have never been challenged against the constitution).
That's why groups like FIRE are so important.

AFAIK the USA is however the only (or one of the only) country that has free speech recognised as a constitutional right rather than only paying lipservice to it under the UN charter.
In most countries (at least democratic countries, which are almost by definition not counrties with the word in their name) the situation is similar to what you saw in Canada.
The press (either controlling the government or controlled by it) holding one opinion while the population at large holds another.
The same holds for the US as well. What is visible of US television and movies here is mostly highly anti-American or looks almost designed to give people the impression that the US is a country where a small rich elite lives in oppulence and oppresses the poor homeless masses.

People just don't understand that what Hollywood shows them is 90% themselves and inner city poor areas, not the vast middle class who have a standard of living that's far higher than anything seen in Europe except for a very few.
They get envious, and envy is a very strong emotion often expressed as hatred in an attempt to destroy that that you're envious of. "I don't have it so noone else should" is far easier a statement to make and live by than "I don't have it, so maybe I should work to gain it".

What people also don't understand is that all that luxury is often a lot cheaper in the US than it is over here.
Very few families can afford more than one car here, and mostly it's a VW Rabbit or smaller. They see in movies American families with 3-4 cars, each of them the size of a BMW 5 series. What they don't realise is that those 3-4 cars together cost less than twice the price of their own single car, and that that US family has more than twice the disposable income they do because of higher wages and lower taxes in the US.

It's a massive socio/economic and cultural mismatch, no different from anthropologists and greens stalling efforts to bring electricity and sanitation to remote African villages because they want to preserve the "native way of life" of those people, never mind that those people live in abject squallor, have a life expectancy of maybe 35 years, etc. etc.
They project their own conditions on those people and think they have the same things in some weird, "quaint" way that should be preserved (some even dream of getting everyone in the world to live like that, "in tune with nature", never realising that "in tune with nature" means 50% of your children die of disease before the age of 5, and every year several more get killed by wild animals, things that they just don't have experience with).

Or the "aid organisations" using slogans like "2 billion people live on less than one dollar a day" without mentioning (and likely without realising) that the cost of living for those people is far lower than it is for us so the comparison makes no sense.
If your rent is 10 cents a week and a loaf of bread 5 cents, you can get by on a lot less than when the rent is $200 a week and that bread $2.50.

[xxmikexx]

I accept what you say about relative standards of living. You will know far better than I.

Regarding free speech in the USA at the state and local level, there aren't any governmental restrictions in the usual sense of that word because the federal constitution pre-empts would-be state law in these matters. However ...

Some states have the concept of "hate crime", so if you were to utter "You dirty N-word" during the course of an assault with a deadly weapon you might find five or ten or fifteen years added to your sentence for having spoken too freely in that kind of situation.

The other situation where free speech is regulated -- and TIGHTLY regulated, is in the public schools and in the public and private universities. These days essentially all such entities have "speech codes" which spell out in the vaguest terms what forms SpeechCrime -- and even sometimes implied ThoughtCrime -- are imagined to take.

There is also another weird form of free speech restriction. In many/most federal agencies, and in many/most state and local agencies, it is becoming a no-no to say "Christmas". It's okay to have Kwanza, or the Chinese New Year depending on where we are in their 12-year cycle, and so on ... But it is not okay to have Christmas, and with discouraging frequency it is becoming not okay to have Chanukkah either.

[data65]

Now the FSXI team no longer exsists ....guess you are S.O.L. lol