GEOWEPS - Gratuitous end-of-week post of screen-shots

Airbase preview at our SimHQ forum.

Gluing the airfield into place has been an interesting job, using terrain 'visibility' to cut out terrain chunks and fit it into place. Shindand airfield is used for medical and humanitarian flights, it's currently VFR only and no lighting system. We might modernise it a little for our scenario.

I think the helipads will benefit from being 'baked' into the rest of the taxiway geometry to prevent problems with taxiing. This is the general layout of arming and take-off areas.

They need to be big enough to comfortably take a Chinook.

Most NATO flights will come and go from here. A node system for AI aircraft to follow the taxiways and tank-off/land will be added.

Multiplayer options starting to appear. The base sat-dish serving as network startup/shutdown. I'm using a red light on the dish to indicate offline and blueish-green to indicate connected status. We're using the tried and tested Raknet library, it's the only one I have experience with and quite reliable.

These screens are from my forest test area and for testing purposes only.

Command tent (that hanging light, I stole from an underground bunker). This is a spacious area where you'll find the mission terminal, chalkboard (scores/stats) and overhead projector display.

Reality check. These command and briefing tents are normally enclosed/air conditioned and inflated. But in homage to older 90s sims we're using this. It's roomy and allows quick access. MMOs typically have overscale interiors/doorways to ease player mobility.

This week allowed me to finish off the missing elements of the arming procedure. Loading rockets into zones and building the weapons page inventory. I did run into a slight discrepancy. As I allow each pod to be loaded with 3 different kinds of ammo, in the Apache you can only select 5 zones. I was torn between giving more flexibility to the player and keeping it simple or hardwiring 5 zones and cross-linking zones. For now I'm going to let the players have the extra zone and bump the additional level of realism to a post release update.