Hi criss. Sounds good. However how do you play a game in excell? I'm not really good with it I hardly used it. I'm used to pushing left right up and down arrow keys, ctrl and space and other things. Is this just a text game or does it have sound. I wander if any dev is interested in making this an actual game with sounds and such, I am interested. At 05:27 a.m. 28/09/2006, you wrote: >I have recently been learning how to fly a Microsoft Excel-based >flight simulator that an air combat gamer by the name of Dean Essig >wrote to facilitate the playing of air-to-air engagements in the >World War I and II eras, with a few extensions to the Korean War. I >was initially excited to hear about such a creature because I thought >it might provide some accessibility in an otherwise grim part of the >gaming world. > >After two weeks of evaluation I can report that if one is willing to >invest a little time, and one is at least a moderately good Excel >user, this simulator is completely accessible. The other requirement >is a well-developed sense of spacial relations as you need to >translate heading, pitch and roll expressed in degrees to a >representation of the aircraft's attitude. > >The simulation consists of a core flight engine, the worksheet that >does all the calculations for the control inputs you provide and >several files that contain specific flight characteristic and >armament data for over 200 aircraft ranging from the biplane fighters >of WWI to most of the active service fighters and several bombers of >WWII, plus a few early jets. You provide four control inputs, two >for stick position in an x-y plane which in turn translates to roll >and pitch controls, throttle setting and rudder position. You have >limits on where these can be set, based on the aircraft's speed and >the G-loading you have put on the wings and the pilot. > >To date, I have flown a duel between a Spitfire and a BF-109, a >bounce of three A6M type 21 Zeros by two Brewster Buffaloes as might >have been part of the morning of June 4, 1942 over Midway Island, a >four-on-four melee of Wildcats vs zeros that took place in the China >Theater in late 1941, an attack by 2 FW-190A4s against a wounded >B17-f escorted by two p-47s and a 2v2 f-86 sabers against 2 >MiG--15s. In each case, the simulation correctly showed up the >differences in aircraft performance, firepower and toughness, the 109 >couldn't turn with the spit, the zeros can outturn anything in the >early war American arsenal, the thunderbolt is deadly if it gets a >clean shot in, and I have ripped the wings off a saber by pulling an >11-G maneuver. > >Now, before one gets excited, the simulation provides good >information about each individual plane's flight path. Using it to >play an actual engagement without using some sort of map board is a >far more difficult exercise that requires the ability to construct a >moderately complex simulation in Excel or some other such tool. I >have cobbled together things that work for me but aren't ready for >prime time yet. My next project is to fly a squadron of 12 >lightnings in a free-for-all with 12 FW-190s, and to create for it an >engine to handle the mechanics of actually tracking 24 aircraft, >computing the shot possibilities and giving info about relative pitch >and bearings for one aircraft to another to allow for intelligent >flying. This is no small project, but should end up with a game of >high complexity but manageable data loading that others might be >interested in playing. > >If I do it correctly, it should be scalable to combats of an >arbitrary size, though the sheer weight of data will become >overwhelming long before the theoretical limit of several thousand >aircraft would be reached. I don't envision flying more than >squadron vs squadron engagements myself. > >Sadly, the files aren't available on the web, or at least the web >site that I was originally directed to didn't have them available. I >am willing to email them to other interested parties who may have >other ideas on how to turn the excellent modeling of aircraft flight >into a usable game engine. Dean flew his aircraft on a hex grid, but >provided the facility to track aircraft in Cartesian coordinates. I >have fixed a few small bugs in these calculations and they now >function correctly. > >I have asked Dean, and he enthusiastically gave me his permission to >spread this simulator among my fellow blind gamers. He was extremely >helpful in my learning how to fly the thing. As a pay-it-forward, >and since I may now actually know it better than he does (it's an old >project for him) I will provide support on an as-I-can basis for >anyone who is interested. It is my hope that if I or someone else >develops a useful way of taking the output data of the simulator into >a tracking worksheet, we will be able to play engagements over email, >and possibly even run actual missions with several players each >controlling one or a small group of aircraft. As I said, the >learning curve is fairly steep and a good knowledge of trigonometry >would be a useful asset for any fellow designers, but once the combat >simulation portion is done, I think it would highly reward many >people who would like to take the role of Ken Taylor and George >Welch, or the other four Wildcat pilots who managed to take off on >the morning of December 7, 1941, or that of the German pilots >engaging the massed bomber formations in 1943. > >So, who's with me? > > Christopher Bartlett > > > >_______________________________________________ >Gamers mailing list .. 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