Welcome to Linux Air Combat
Combat Flight Simulator for LINUX. WW2. Network and VOIP. Open-source.
Brought to you by:
bbosen
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Getting Started with Linux Air Combat
As of this writing on 06Apr2016, LINUX Air Combat has been released for early "Alpha" testing. I developed it on top of the good foundation obtained from gl-117, the well-known, arcade-style flight game. It is written in C++ and uses .wav files for audio resources and .3ds files for 3d aircraft models.
I did all of the foundational development work on PcLinuxOs, and I've found all of my work compatible with every version of PcLinuxOs that has been available since the middle of 2015.
I used the well-known "CodeBlocks" Integrated Development Environment to manage the project, and the downloadable source code includes a ".cbp" CodeBlocks Project file to make it very easy for you to compile everything within the free, popular CodeBlocks environment too, drawing upon other popular, free gnu/LINUX resources as necessary.
The best summary of Linux Air Combat is available from my web site here:
https://askmisterwizard.com/2019/LinuxAirCombat/LacOnlineDocs.htm
That page links to numerous YouTube video clips with a lot of details including a detailed walk-thru showing how I download, install, configure, and fly Linux Air Combat onto my PcLinuxOs system.
As of this date in April of 2016, this project is NOT completed. There are still lots of bugs. The flight models are still pretty rough, and I want to add a lot more aircraft and missions. There are no airfields and no concept of ground attack. All missions commence in the air and continue until the simulated aircraft is destroyed or until the operator exits the mission by pressing ESCAPE.
The network code is primitive. As I write this summary of my early development work and initial publication, only two players can participate, but it's a lot of fun, whether exploited for air racing or for combat.
I hope you enjoy this!
Help me please....
I'm not very good with the well-known "Blender" 3d renderer. If I were really good with Blender, I could create my own low-polygon 3d aircraft models. If you are able to do this, you could really help advance this project by creating low-polygon .3ds models of the popular aircraft of World War II. I'm especially anxious for these:
FW-190
Me109
F6F
F4F
F4u
P47
P40
P39
Ki84
N1K1
Thanks!
Last edit: bbosen 2023-10-29
[Six and a half years later....]
At the time of this writing in December of 2022, LAC has come a long, Long way since I started this "Welcome to Linux Air Combat" thread!
The current version is 8.95, and LAC has become the world's leading open-source combat flight simulator for Linux.
Fifty four World-War II aircraft are nicely rendered and faithfully simulated. Network support is robust. Players can land and take off from numerous airfields, any of which might be defended by powerful anti-aircraft facilities. Multi-player missions are deep and engaging, even if no other players are online. Player management is sophisticated, with powerful inter-player communication via text and voice. Flight Performance is smooth on all types of desktop LINUX systems, and precompiled, "AppImage" executable versions are available for all of the leading desktop LINUX distros using industry-standard, 64-bit "x86" architectures.
Although full source code is published and available to anybody that wants it, and although it is easier to compile LAC than to compile any other comparable, graphically intense, network-centric simulator, free availability of our LAC AppImages ensures that you will probably never need to compile it. (See our "LAC and AppImages" forum HERE.)
In addition to our generically pre-compiled executables for all of the most popular desktop LINUX distros, two other precompiled, preconfigured, highly optimized versions of LAC are also available for:
A generic LAC download supports flight controls based on Keyboard/Mouse, aircraft-oriented joystick, or console game controller.
About 50 copies of LAC are downloaded each week through SourceForge, and about that many more are downloaded from itch.io and other Internet web sites. THANK YOU for helping the LAC community enjoy this simulator and for your participation therein!
Please help our little online LAC community to grow. When flying in one of our online missions, please be welcoming and helpful to new players. LAC's learning curve is steep, and new users need several days of dedicated practice before they develop the skill necessary to prevail. Let's help them out!
Last edit: bbosen 2023-06-23
Until September 2023, LAC's development only departed ONCE from the gradual, evolutionary path documented in our online ChangeLog page. That event was big news, and resulted in widespread availability of LAC's free online server.
However, beginning in early 2023, an important new branch of LAC's development was needed because a few very popular LINUX distros stopped responding to LAC's built-in menus. All of the menu buttons were displayed as expected, but clicking on them yielded absolutely no response. We haven't yet figured out why these few, newly updated LINUX distros no longer respond to our legacy menu buttons.
In October of 2023 we announced the new "LacMenuLauncher" utility as an optional companion to Linux Air Combat for people whose desktop LINUX platforms no longer respond to LAC's built-in menus. During its alpha test and beta test phases, this LacMenuLauncher has become increasingly sophisticated, and some of our testers have told us that they actually prefer it to our legacy menus. Perhaps YOU will like it too???
Read more about the new "LacMenuLauncher" from THIS thread of our "General Discussion" forum:
https://sourceforge.net/p/linuxaircombat/discussion/general/thread/2e6ef638a3/
Last edit: bbosen 2023-10-28
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