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Linux Air Combat: free, lightweight and open-source combat flight simulator
- kookamamie 3y agoJesus fuck, its graphics look horrible and so 90s.
- airdjinn 3y agoI would love to play this on Apple Vision
- pjmlp 3y agoI guess it would be kind of nice if I would still be playing F-19 Stealth Fighter on MS-DOS, or F/A-18 Interceptor on Amiga, but for modern systems, not really, unless I am on retro mood.
- thetoon 3y agoDisclaimer : I have not yet played LAC, but I used to play GL117 (which LAC is heavily based on). Though visually it's bit behind what we've been used to, I found some of the fun I had when much younger in F22 Retaliator. And at least, in GL117 (and LAC, I guess) we have a bit of height variation in terrain ;)
- michaelcampbell 3y agoGod, the time and money I spent on Kesmai's Air Warrior...
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoMe too! And Aces High 1, Aces High 2, and Aces High 3....
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoI just discovered this. IMHO the best link about LAC is this one -> https://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LacOnlineDocs.htm https://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LacOnlineDoc... Pretty much everything about LAC is easy to find thru the links there.
- jacquesm 3y agoInteresting that they decided to stick with Sourceforge after the malware debacle.
- paulcarroty 3y agoSourceforge has new owners AFAIR.
- dspillett 3y agoGoes to show how much better bad news travels, and/or how it sticks in the mind. I could have sworn that the DevShare thing was more recent than from 2013 to 2016, and until looking it up just now I was unaware SF had officially ended the practise (with the change if ownership in 2016).
- badsectoracula 3y agoAnd by "new" we mean since 2016 - the current owners own Sourceforge for almost double the time the previous owners that bundled malware did :-P
- teekert 3y agoIt’s forever a tainted name, I know about the owners, still feels bad.
- joecool1029 3y agoSF has been through like 2 or 3 owners since then, ancient history at this point.
- samstave 3y agoMaybe, but after that - I havent used them in a very very long time - so their credibility is lost to me, for good.
- badsectoracula 3y agoIt was only sold once after the debacle, the new owners just changed names at some point.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoLooks as if OpenGL support was added to Temple OS.
- whalesalad 3y agopraise be
- slicktux 3y agoMust have been a pain porting it to machine code…lol
- declan_roberts 3y agoAmazing how low the bar is for FOSS games on Linux.
- thomond 3y agoThere's usually no bar for FOSS games. It's sort of the point, the makers are doing it for themselves.
- dmonitor 3y agoopen source doesn’t really mesh well with artists, so most open source games just have terrible graphical assets
- anthk 3y agoYes, like Flare, sure. Saying that it's like saying every AAA game it's like an unoptimized Ubisoft crap.
- anthk 3y agoAmazing changes to GL117 =) Now if they did the same to ACM... Call me odd, but these games were insta-fun. Run, load the levels in seconds, instant fun. The same with Search and Rescue 2. Or the Marathon series. Simple graphics, but engaging gameplay.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoYeah, I don't think "lightweight" is very honest when the game looks like this.
- CptTightpants 3y agoClaims RPi can handle it, so if true then it's a reasonable claim (depending upon how much you have to disable to get it to work well). It's not like it's claiming to work on a 8MB 486 or similar.
- elmomle 3y agoSure it is. Nothing in the word "lightweight" implies stellar graphics. If anything, it implies that heavy and nonessential things (like cutting-edge graphics) are totally out of scope.
- badsectoracula 3y agoFor a 56MB AppImage binary it looks very good.
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoYes. It does look surprisingly good for such a small AppImage. Digging around on their forums, I found this thread describing their struggle to thrive in spite of the old-school graphics. It includes three embedded YouTube clips that make it easy to compare LAC with some other famous sims like Aces High 2 from about 10 years ago, Aces High 3 (current), and Aces of the Pacific from 1992. Here's the link: https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxaircombat/discussion/general/thread/c59952805a/ https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxaircombat/discussion/general/...
- dharmab 3y agoy copy of DCS World (a popular combat flight sim) is around is 426GB. This is positively featherweight for the genre.
- orangepurple 3y ago
- sufficer 3y agoAces High 3 is a really fun similar fighting ww2 based combat sim
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoI wonder if Aces High 3 works well on LINUX thru an emulator like WINE. And I wonder if you'd need a monster computer to get a smooth frame rate through emulation like that. LAC, BTW runs very very nicely on cheap laptops and even does pretty well on Raspberry Pi 4b.
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoBut I certainly agree that Aces High 3 is magnificent on Micro$oft Windows.
- almostnormal 3y agoIt's probably the best of its kind (mmo), but the number of players is constantly (slowly) decreasing. Mostly from players getting too old or dieing. Alternatives: Warbirds has even lower numbers. I'm not sure about the current state of the war in the air in WW2-Online. Can an open source game of this kind find players? Probably not many, but possibly dedicated ones. The problem with that target group is that someone will reference the charts from the POH or from published test flight data and complain that the simulation does not match the numbers.
- TylerE 3y agoWait, Warbirda and WW2 Online are still around?
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoLAC looks and flies a lot like Aces High 1 (from back around 2005 or so).
- FlightSimGuy 3y ago...only for LINUX, of course!
- wiseowise 3y ago> New: LAC is now available in a special, precompiled, optimized version for Valve Corporation's fabulous "Steam Deck" portable gaming PC. All of the controls are configured by default for best use, and it's easy to fly in LAC's online, multi-player, server-based missions without ever needing a keyboard. Even voice comms among players are supported! Perfect.
- dargscisyhp 3y agoFolks here are harsh this looks like a lot of fun.
- whateveracct 3y agoPeople here don't even play games they sit at their keyboard and drive-by comment
- _ea1k 3y agoThe people who liked it are too busy playing to comment?
- DrNosferatu 3y agoIs there anything like a source port of Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat? I suppose this is not it.
- FlightSimGuy 3y agoLAC is not Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, but I've flown both and I get the same kind of thrill with both. CYAC was brilliant in its day and it was my fav for 3 or 4 years. But that was a long time ago! If your old enough to imagine CYAC with network support and graphics advanced about 15 yrs you get a pretty good idea of LAC. BTW it runs very smooth on my oldest laptop computer, a LeNovo T61p from about 2010. And with LAC you get full source code. Compiling it from source was easy.
- nocoiner 3y agoYou might be interested in Tiny Combat Arena on Steam. Definitely not a source port, but shaping up as a spiritual successor.
- tmtvl 3y agoThe first entry of the Ace Combat flight arcade (as opposed to flight sim) series was released under the title of Air Combat, so I hope Namco ain't gonna bop them for trademark infringement.
- nateb2022 3y agoAccording to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco), Namco went defunct on 31 March 2006
- jkim1258 3y agoI think it'd be safe to assume that Bandai Namco holds the IP of the former Namco
- wtallis 3y agoIt merged in 2006, with Bandai. The combined company is anything but defunct, and their IP is not abandoned or up for grabs.
- cxr 3y agoTrademarks are up for grabs when they're abandoned—which this one is. Whether the company still exists is a separate matter.
- easeout 3y agoAce Combat 7 was published by Bandai Namco in 2019.
- andirk 3y agoAir Combat was the best jet game ever. It taught me all about how to lock on to targets and how to escape lock. I cant forget that beep-beep-beep sound in my head. Now my car makes that sound when I'm parking in a tight spot. I hope this version has combat.
- wbl 3y agoIANAL but trademarks are complicated and the more descriptive a trademark is the less protection it has especially for a decades old video game no one is selling anymore.
- dahjelle 3y agoHas anyone ever tried to get this working on macOS?
- paines 3y agoYes. I just compiled and ran it on an M1. You need to fetch SDL and SDL_mixer from homebrew and fiddle with the Makefile. Thats the easy part. The sucky part is the data is expected in in /usr/share which i do not want to pollute. The sources are (sorry guys) a disaster. If I find an elegant solution to easily set the datapath I will push it to github and rename it to OpenAirCombat....
- mr_briggs 3y agoThis reminds me of a super lightweight flight simulator I played circa 2014 - I cannot remember the name for the life of me, but unlike LAC and GL117, it was only a few hundred kb in size, but was well featured with joystick and network multiplayer support.
- themodelplumber 3y agoThat's a pretty sweet domain name right there. From the HP (as they say in Japanese): > We're your online technology videomagazine, and we're different from other online magazines because we create all of our own content, and because most of that content is published in sequentially organized YouTube Playlists arranged for easy learning. We offer hundreds of hours of free, high-quality, technology-focused content, with subject matter ranging from how the Internet works through setting up and securing your own home-office network to writing high-performance online game/simulation software! Way to go, there are actually a lot of interesting playlists in there. Even one on running Jane's flight sims which were a favorite back in the day.
- myth_drannon 3y agoAnyone wanting to get into flight simulator programming, I found this little gem of a book "Flights of fantasy" https://archive.org/details/flightsoffantasy00lamp https://archive.org/details/flightsoffantasy00lamp It's old but some concepts still apply
- breckinloggins 3y agoI bought this over 20 years ago and still have my copy. I definitely recommend it.
- nurple 3y agoFound this at a Saver's a few years back (amazing place to find odd books)! Great book to own even if only to see the history of serious flight sim dev from the early days.
- tonyarkles 3y agoYou have just solved an issue for me that has, apparently, bothered me for 30 years. When I was a kid, I saw that book at a bookstore and was so enthralled with it, but I had just started learning C and it was way too expensive for my parents to buy. I have occasionally over the years tried to figure out what book it was but didn’t have any success… until today! So thank you!!!
- paines 3y agoNever heard about the book, but I am truly thankful it was mentioned. I always dreamt about re-creating LHX Attack Chopper.
- sdfghswe 3y ago> I saw that book at a bookstore and was so enthralled with it, but I had just started learning C and it was way too expensive for my parents to buy Man, this just made me really sad :-(
- tonyarkles 3y ago
- Buttons840 3y agoI've wanted a more accessible combat flight simulator. Something like DCS or Falcon BMS with realistic flight physics, but more arcade controls (the aircraft should handle realistically, but I shouldn't have to spend 20 minutes starting the aircraft and pushing simulated buttons and switches in the cockpit, even though I have a great appreciation for that level of detail). I don't want my aircraft to have 99 missiles, and 9999 machine gun rounds. I want to have 2 bombs and 4 air-to-air missiles, and I want to fly a tense 15 minute mission into and out of enemy territory. Battle Royal games have shown players are willing to go 5 or 10 minutes between combat if the tension and possibility of surprise combat is there, and have perma-death, give me that in an air combat game.
- Daz1 3y agoEvery aircraft in DCS has an auto start function.
- kfrzcode 3y agoIf MSFS was a Bethesda game that mod would be the best-selling mod of any mod
- flangola7 3y agoWho sells mods for money?
- squarefoot 3y agoNo idea if there is something similar native to Linux and Open Source, but back in the day I had lots of fun playing "Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers", which today works with WINE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48L16mmR19Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48L16mmR19Y
- fock 3y agoI don't know if it's memory failing but the old Microsoft Combat flight simulators (not sure about physics, it's 20years now) seemed to tick a lot of those boxes (+aircraft models were not thaaat shabby to look at).
- jamesy0ung 3y agoLooks cool, but I think I've been spoiled by DCS
- nocoiner 3y agoFinally, the graphics of an N64 and a 1989 DOS interface, together at last.
- ranger207 3y agoA couple other lightweight flight sims I haven't seen mentioned yet are VTOL VR (VR only as the name suggests) and YSFLIGHT
- nurple 3y agoCan't recommend VTOL VR enough. Started out with one semi-futuristic jet-pod VTOL aircraft, but has since added a camancheesque helo and an F15-like strike fighter. It does have _some_ pomp in the startup, but really just enough to get you immersed. Something really compelling about pulling the canopy down, waving to your gunner up front, and starting the rotor spinning before easing the collective up and heading to the first waypoint. Weapons systems are similarly difficult-but-not-complex. Have had tons of fun in multiplayer with my kids dogfighting, doing missions, and even full-on wargames with randos online.