We’ve got a great new update from Jason Williams and the Combat Pilot team thanks to developer diary number seven! April 1, as it turns out, is the first official day that Combat Pilot began development and Jason’s update talks a little about the journey from then until now. There’s also talk about assets, the engine, and even the possibility that we may be playing an early prototype. There’s so much to talk about so let’s have a look!
Flying Combat Pilot sooner than later?
One of the big reveals in this latest diary is that the team are working on packaging up a version of Combat Pilot that they are calling Combat Pilot: Experimental Prototype. It is what it says on the tin as this is an early version of the sim that they intend to be playable with the basics. That include a flyable airplane, some floating aircraft carriers, sky, ocean, Midway Atoll, a GUI and controller support. This early version may end up being something that they sell access as a kind of preview for dedicated flight simmers – I’d sign up for that in a heartbeat!
The branding very plainly distinguishes this as an early offering and separates it from a fuller featured offering later.
Jason talks about their future plans too:
We plan to make Combat Pilot a long series of titles, not just one. Remember, this is just the beginning of our journey and we won’t get there in one big jump. Nor will we tease you for years and years while we develop it, we will continue to be as upfront and transparent as we can without giving trade secrets away.
Jason Williams
The update indicates that they intend to have a playable prototype by the summer with the basics working.
There may also be opportunities for crowdfunding. While the product already has investors, crowdfunding might help the product along and so Jason reports that they are investigating the possibility of doing crowdfunding with a Patreon model or t-shirts, posters, calendars and other items through a storefront. He also says that they expect this might help offset costs but aren’t expecting to see Star Citizen-like investments.
It’s Unreal!
One of the things that Jason and team haven’t talked about very much yet is the underlying technology. But now that development is underway and they have explored their options, they are going to start talking a little bit about what underpins the sim and its quite interesting.
The engine they are using is Unreal 5.3. A few years ago, using Unreal Engine for a flight sim might have seemed silly, but Unreal 5 and beyond have pushed the limits of what old Unreal engine technology could do to the kinds of scales that a sim like Combat Pilot demand.
From the sounds of things, you can’t just drop a few assets in and make a flight sim. That said, Jason talked about some interesting information around Epic and the Unreal Engine being used for commercial sector aerospace and defense companies. I’ve written about that in the past.
Akagi videos, Wildcats, guns and more!
We’ve got the official launch of the Combat Pilot YouTube channel and our first two videos from the project. The first video is an early preview of the Akagi showing off the model in-engine with tons of modeled detail already on display. It of course has no textures yet as that work is still to come but its a great first demonstration of what they are currently building.
The second video is also really interesting as Jason talks a bit about the underlying engine technology and shows off how fabric and wind interact in the engine. Because they are utilizing something that has already been developed, there’s tons of capability already built-in.
We also got a ton of development images showing off various models. And that starts again with Akagi which is LOD0 complete (the highest detail level). Enterprise is also finished at the mesh level and both carriers are heading over to the texture artists to start receiving the details that takes this to the next level.
A bunch of guns are on display in this update too ranging from this Japanese 25mm Type 96 AA gun to the 12cm Type 3 Gun, Water-Cooled .50 Cal. and 7 in. / 44 Cal. Artillery.
Next up, we have the very latest on the F4F Wildcat showing off gobs of detail. The gun access panels are open and the engine cowling is off. The details are incredible!
Another item on display are buildings and we have several examples, including this building which comprises the mix of civilian and military buildings present on Midway in 1942.
Skin artists wanted
One of the last pieces of the update includes a call for a skin artist. The position appears to be aimed as a volunteer artist for now to create some liveries for the Wildcat. Experience with Substance Painter, Photoshop, and knowledge of PBR and materials texturing techniques suggested.
FSExpo
The last thing to take away from the update is that Combat Pilot will be at FSExpo this year in Las Vegas. The expo event has been mentioned several times throughout this update as Jason indicates that the team are working hard to show something off by the show.
I am pleased to report that I will be there on the show floor to check it out. If you are thinking of going, be sure to use the Stormbirds FSExpo 2024 link right here.
Summing it up
That was an impressive developer diary! While Combat Pilot remains a combat flight sim in its infancy, you can see the clear progress from the early days to now. The massive amount of content that is required to make this happen goes well beyond just the airplanes and also includes key items that range from anti-aircraft artillery gun models to aircraft carriers and buildings.
Getting from here to a releasable product is going to take time although their Experimental Prototype release would give us a fantastic little preview and let us, the community, experience a piece of the puzzle while the rest of it is built. For those less enthusiastic, the wait will of course be longer while a full product is built but things are definitely looking really good here. I can’t wait to see more!
Those were just some of the key takeaways but I encourage you to visit the developer diary for more images (including several artillery and AA gun models). Read the full update right over here!
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