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A next gen flite sim is coming?

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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Hooray » Sun Oct 18, 2015 5:40 pm

The relationship between the engine developer and the content developer is important, there has to be a level of mutual respect, we're not their slaves and we don't give them orders as to what should be done next, it's a team, and communication is key..


that applies both ways, and also applies to the FG community as a whole.

As for T4T, they could have been up and running (flying) quickly had they looked at what flug's bombable addon is: a compelling foundation for anybody looking for dogfighting/MP support using FlightGear, not requiring a single line of C++ changed, and working with most recent FG releases, too.

And not being tied to the FG core development community either
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby LesterBoffo » Sun Oct 18, 2015 5:57 pm

Well I'd prefer the contribution go though my own channels. Some of what I've done has content from other sims with permission granted, that it not be used commercially.

And as Hooray said, we've had a combat patch for FG for some time in Bombable, and just recently, (if I'm getting my information correctly) we've been 'patched' to have working turrets with weapons submodels. Which means we can man the turrets through the 'v' key and shoot back at attacking aircraft, which is something Mossie was wanting for some time. I've done a few WWI two-seaters with 'mouse view' controllable turrets, thanks to collaboration and major Nasal coding work done by 5H1N0B1.
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Bomber » Sun Oct 18, 2015 7:05 pm

Your choice.....

I gave mossie a working turret in FG, 2 plus more years ago...

If you think bombable is the way forward for you, so be it.. Good luck.
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby stuart » Sun Oct 18, 2015 8:12 pm

I've had a look at the the website for both the graphics-engine vendor and the project itself, and while I'd like to be optimistic I really can't see it going anywhere. I'm frankly sceptical about the graphics engine given the main thrust of the website is that they use double-precision floats for vertex locations, and the lack of detail of their staff.

However, a bigger issue is the development cost, I just can't see how they can get the funding to develop the simulator full-time - and developing a simulator in spare time is a very protracted experience as most people on this forum can attest to :).

As a finger-in-the-air estimate, it's surely 10 man-years of effort to develop a viable simulator from scratch (excluding graphics engine), and I suspect significantly more. So at minimum 5 people for two years.

From my own business experience, and absolute minimum gross cost for a software engineer is going to be in the region of $200k per year. That's the cost to the business - salary, office costs, taxes paid by the company, infrastructure to support them. A good software engineer is going to be more.

So it'll cost a minimum of $2m to write the software. At $50 per copy, they'll need to sell 40k copies. That's excluding a whole world of other costs (the cost of funding the $2m, marketing, distribution costs...)

I just don't see it happening.

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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby stuart » Sun Oct 18, 2015 8:18 pm

I've removed various arguments regarding T4T and Targetware that aren't relevant to this topic.

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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Bomber » Sun Oct 18, 2015 8:51 pm

Over moderation..... A disgrace I call for moderator privileges to be revoked....

People have disagreement that life, treating people with respect throughout and after is what displays our humanity....

Sorry but I'm very disappointed
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Bomber » Sun Oct 18, 2015 8:53 pm

Lester I call on you to make a stand...
"If anyone ever tells you anything about an aeroplane which is so bloody complicated you can't understand it, take it from me - it's all balls" - R J Mitchel
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby LesterBoffo » Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:13 pm

:lol: Meh, I'm far too easy going Simon, I'm sure Stuart is glad he missed those heady days at TW.

It's not like TW 0.64 was anything all that great. Well honestly it was, in weird small ways.
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby LesterBoffo » Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:16 pm

Bomber wrote in Sun Oct 18, 2015 7:05 pm:Your choice.....

I gave mossie a working turret in FG, 2 plus more years ago...

If you think bombable is the way forward for you, so be it.. Good luck.


Huh? I must have missed that thread, you wouldn't have a link to it per chance? Is the turret coding still available?
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby openflight » Mon Oct 26, 2015 11:32 am

"As a finger-in-the-air estimate, it's surely 10 man-years of effort to develop a viable simulator from scratch (excluding graphics engine), and I suspect significantly more. So at minimum 5 people for two years."

Which makes me realize the value of Flight Gear, really huge, product of immense value, much unappreciated.

Volunteer efforts usually are.
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby stuart » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:45 pm

Hi Guys,

I've been keeping an eye on NGiS, particularly their update in November.

Reading between the lines on their recruitment, it's clear that they don't have any financial backing to pay for full time development - they are phrasing it as a "golden opportunity" to join their team (which is aiming for a closed total of 40 members) being prepared to contribute a minimum of 5 hours a week. So, I'm pretty sure they are wanting people to develop for free in their spare time in return for a share in the ownership of the sim.

Note that that team of 40 covers the full gamut from coders to aircraft developers, systems development, weather, graphics.

So we're talking about a team approximately the size of the FlightGear team, starting from scratch and developing in their spare time.

I haven't seen anything to change my original opinion that they will struggle to deliver something valuable in a reasonable timeframe. I reckon we'll see a graphically advanced demo with a single aircraft and very limited FDM and systems, and nothing more.

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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Hooray » Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:52 pm

On the other hand, someone starting from scratch using OSG (and its various node kits like osgOcean/osgTerrain/osgEarth) or gre, and using existing standalone components like JSBSim, would not be affected by some of the issues that a legacy code base like FlightGear has been facing, despite its adoption of OSG roughly a decade ago.

Many of the things that are currently prioritized by core developers, could be directly "solved", i.e. in terms of better multicore support via OSG, HLA/RTI, but also a better/native GUI using Qt5, or getting rid of legacy OpenGL code in the main loop.

And if something like this were using osg::CompositeViewer right from the beginning, it could easily be fairly compelling within a rather short time-frame, while still providing better performance/visuals than the average/stock FlightGear installation.

The main issue is probably going to be content, i.e. aircraft/scenery and matching shaders/effects. From a core development standpoint, much of FlightGear's architecture is in the process of being modernized/replaced anyway, due to being -quite frankly- obsolete.

But all the non-core stuff is going to bethe bottleneck probably, i.e. terrasync/scenery building, model submission etc
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Bomber » Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:49 pm

There's no ownership of the sim being offered....
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Thorsten » Thu Nov 19, 2015 7:58 pm

The main issue is probably going to be content, i.e. aircraft/scenery and matching shaders/effects.


There's no ready-made tool to generate weather either - which is rather important for a flightsim.
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Re: A next gen flite sim is coming?

Postby Hooray » Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:08 pm

right, I am also not aware of any existing standalone frameworks/libraries that would provide an all-encompassing weather simulation (open source) - but proprietary stuff should be possible to find with a little research e.g. see "WXSIM" (even just to learn more about the UI): http://www.wxsim.com/screenshots.htm

Intro at: http://www.wxsim.com/intro.htm

And I guess there are similar packages available, whose data could be used in a proprietary sim.
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