Hooray, going to moon is *not* primarily a rendering question - it is a question of the numerical stability of the FDM.
Yes, I was only referring to rendering actually. Sorry for not mentioning this: I don't think FG's current FDMs should even be considered actually - because they were designed with completely different requirements in mind.
On the other hand, it is already easy enough to interface FG to other/external FDMs and you can even create your own pseudo FDM in scripting space. So, yes - I was really thinking in terms of compromises to get this going. I don't know enough about JSBSim (or FDMs in general) to tell if (or how) JSBSim could be adapted to be really usable here though.
But I also don't think that the FDM issue qualifies as a "core" FlightGear problem (like vitos mentioned), due to the "plugin" nature of FDM support in FlightGear.
I do agree with the points you made regarding earth-centered rendering.
And yes, there's at least one FG core developer currently working on this. And it's also the same guy who is working on the HLA effort, which would also address multiplayer issues. I am not convinced that we should even try fixing/replacing the current MP protocol therefore.
Vitos, I read your comments and it is getting clear to me that we are disagreeing (again), so I am going to refrain from posting further responses, because that would not help this thread (knowing you, knowing me) - which is about something that we obviously both care about.
You know obviously a lot about 3D modeling and aircraft design, I am on the other hand only really familiar with coding and software design (unlike you, I have
never developed a complete aircraft model or an FDM from scratch).
So I think it's only natural that we have different opinions because of differing backgrounds. However, a number of people have proven that the aircraft/scenery department is NOT the problem here (yourself included), you keep suggesting that the FlightGear core code is the bottleneck and needs fixing (and a number of dedicated people to work on this). Knowing some of the code in question, I can only reiterate my earlier points that once you got the FDM accuracy sorted, there are not any real showstoppers to keep pursuing the approach that Thorsten has come up with, many of the issues could be worked around by disabling some features or by making them more configurable using properties.
Finally, like Thorsten mentioned already there is someone working on this part of FlightGear - the same clever guy who did the OSG port and who's considered among all contributors to be a real rendering specialist. His work also touches the multiplayer system, too. So, I am trying to say: even if you don't agree with the points I made, someone else is already working on improving the core code. In the meantime, there shouldn't be anything stopping us from appreciating Nasal-space workarounds.