Well...
The guy is still running
Fighter Ops Not much has changed - same vapor ware - same style. I came across this gem in their forums. Hell it even reads like Voss.
It reads:
http://www.fighterops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8016Regarding leaked info...
As many of you might already know, very specific and extremely confidential Area 51 terrain pictures with the latest developer’s diaries were leaked by an Area 51 forum individual... as a result they began appearing and circulating in various forums abroad, including the new DCS (Black Shark) website.
As a consequence to this, a few thoughtless forum members on the DCS (Black Shark) website believe they are doing everyone a huge favor by inappropriately accusing XSI of redistributing screenshots that are not from the Fighter Ops development, essentially playing a very immature senseless and tasteless game, based on their own futile assumptions. To the greater extent, they are generally making extreme fools of themselves.
This may be the result of feeling threatened or just plain resentment to our development, many accusations have been made against us with a demand for an explanation. First of all, we of course do not owe explanations to anyone; however we have made the decision to make a post to clear up any confusion and save certain people from looking more foolish.
We are certainly not in direct competition with DCS (Black Shark) or anyone else, in fact we support their development very much, but nevertheless we do see the rivalry forming between members.
To be frank, we were expecting some retort to these leaks, but not with this level of intensity… our position naturally is that we are more than flattered by the comparison some have expressed to our massive spherical Fighter Ops terrain engine in its progressive development to “Terragen”. Terragen and the Fighter Ops terrain engine are obviously completely different programs, designed for completely different purposes. All of our images have been produced in run time, where as Terragen renders single images only.
This is the situation which has occurred in this instance; the water rendering algorithms in particular were based off a number of ideas concepts and research thesis papers from 2004 and coded ourselves, into our engine, by Fighter Ops coders. This is the by-product of our research.
On the other hand as developers we are very conscious of the technology that is being developed at this level for various software products, how can we not be. Fighter Ops has been devouring this technology for some time, and it needs to draw on tomorrow’s software technology that is based fundamentally on ideas and examples that are profoundly researched and brought to existence in various forms.
Many of these forms consist of research papers, thesis papers, and dissertations etc that have been released for public domain. We are using many of these ideas to shape this technology for us… some of this is shown through examples. The same holds true for every cutting edge software entertainment developer… many development companies devote entire departments to this type of research, and that is precisely how games such as Crysis etc, are fashioned.
In fact you could do the same for many of the technologies in Crysis as with any other game; they have their roots in research papers and techniques in the public domain from which you could easily find similar demonstrations and programs. We do the same intense research through various departments, and because of that we are able to show off a development cycle of progressions through various mediums such as screenshots etc, and then substituted by new mediums that null the older previous versions. There is a very important reason for keeping this technology in-house and in Area 51, and that is for the reason that we can manage and control them with various technical and appropriate responses from experienced and qualified team members. They are not for inexperienced non developers to exploit.
There is no denying our existence in this market place and beyond, perhaps some see us as a future potential threat… we are not trying to protect ourselves, we are simply very confident in our abilities.
Fighter Ops Staff.
