Developer kit for Flight Simulator

[Timmo]

Microsoft ESP

QUOTE

• Flight training and rehearsal. Includes cockpit familiarization, checklists and cockpit flows, and capability-based training such as aerial refueling and basic sortie

• Preparedness and decision-making. Includes experiences such as allowing a pilot to pre-fly a new route or become more familiar with new terrain, approach patterns and weather patterns

• Research and development modeling. Allows a user to visualize ideas, create mockups of cockpits or instrument panels, design specs in 3-D, and evaluate runway configurations or lighting schemes


Simulations built on the Microsoft ESP platform can take advantage of an extensive set of capabilities to create dynamic, immersive environments, including the following:

• Configurable weather model. Includes user-adjustable weather conditions, limitless variations using four cloud types, wind-speed and directional controls, visibility effects and precipitation modeling, or use of near-real-time weather from an external data source feed

• Extensive scene generation and scenery support. Has support for up to five seasons including hard winter, continuous time of day, night textures and scenery support including automatic fill-in

• After-Action Review. Allows for effective performance playback and analysis.

• Support of standardized data sources. Supports Digital Elevation Model data, vector data, WGS-84 datum, METAR weather data, dynamic objects, Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound and others

• Multiplayer functionality and Internet support including Voice over IP. Allows up to 30 people to interact around the world using a peer-to-peer broadband connection[/quote]

I like where this is going might see some decent addons for FSX later on.

[Timmo]

Yep im excited by it too.....There are a lot of possibilitys that te 3D engine provides for my line of work, and FSX is something ive been using already for this. But, the FSX EULA prevents me from doing too much commercial stuff so hopefully ESP will overcome this.

The 'proper' GIS 3D visualisation stuff I have access to, as ive said before, simply cant match the visual quality of FSX and costs many many times more- ~$800 seems about the right price

[toprob]

QUOTE (SUBS17 @ Nov 18 2007, 05:55 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I like where this is going might see some decent addons for FSX later on.

I don't think we'll see any FS -specific addons which use ESP -- because of the cost of an ESP license. Phil Taylor states that we won't, for instance, see a killer space sim, as you couldn't justify the US$800 license fee for a retail sim.

[SUBS17]

Compare $800 for a licence to the Falcon 4 code to do Falcon 5 cost $250 000 for G2i to have the rights to make $800 is not much at all.

[Timmo]

No I believe it is $800 per installation...Ie if you made that 'killer space sim' you would need to sell it for ~$800 USD per copy (plus youd have to re-coup development costs etc)

One thing im not clear on is if it ships ready to use? I.e. What I need, since im not a coder, is basically FSX without the Flight simulation part.....would I need to code everything that I need or will it work out of the box and then could be tweaked?

[Christian]

QUOTE (Timmo @ Nov 23 2007, 06:40 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No I believe it is $800 per installation...Ie if you made that 'killer space sim' you would need to sell it for ~$800 USD per copy (plus youd have to re-coup development costs etc)

One thing im not clear on is if it ships ready to use? I.e. What I need, since im not a coder, is basically FSX without the Flight simulation part.....would I need to code everything that I need or will it work out of the box and then could be tweaked?

After reading some comments from Phil Taylor I'm pretty underwhelmed. It seems to be nothing else than FSX with a commercial license attached to it. Using FS for commercial purposes has alsways been a grey area, not anymore, now you have to pay the commercial license fee. While $800 doesn't seem to sound so bad, Phil wrote that 5 copies is minimum, so you're suddenly looking at $4000. That's paying $4000 for FSX basically, as Phil wrote we shouldn't expect any other features than what's in FSX.

So, I'm not really all that excited. A software platform that lets people add their own code and maybe interface FS with GIS, now that would have been cool. Doesn't look like it though...

Christian

[toprob]

QUOTE (Christian @ Nov 20 2007, 01:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

After reading some comments from Phil Taylor I'm pretty underwhelmed. It seems to be nothing else than FSX with a commercial license attached to it. Using FS for commercial purposes has alsways been a grey area, not anymore, now you have to pay the commercial license fee. While $800 doesn't seem to sound so bad, Phil wrote that 5 copies is minimum, so you're suddenly looking at $4000. That's paying $4000 for FSX basically, as Phil wrote we shouldn't expect any other features than what's in FSX.

So, I'm not really all that excited. A software platform that lets people add their own code and maybe interface FS with GIS, now that would have been cool. Doesn't look like it though...

Christian

Yes, Phil makes it pretty clear that this is an attempt to tidy up the licensing. However I do support the concept -- scenery designers have a skillset which would transfer very well ,and if a few big organisations were convinced to go this way (not too likely...) then I can see a time when I can do exactly what I do now, without the scramble for retails sales:)

[Timmo]

Hmm true $800 dollars for FSX is expensive to a 'simmer'/'Gamer' but, comparitively it is cheap for a 3D Visualisation package with the realism that the FSX engine offers.

Currently, the competition is a) ArcGlobe and b) a NZ program called K2Vi. Now these are proper 3D GIS' so cant be compared on an apples to apples basis (this distinction is important as there is a whole lot of textural data sitting behind the 'visual' stuff) However:

ArcGlobe is 'sold' on a per license basis and you need other supporting software/licenses to be able to do anything meaningful. When my boss gets back ill get him to refresh my memory about the licensing/support costs for this but it is, from memory, around $20-40K per year, per license! Weather effects? Nope, Water effects? Nope. Advanced 3D objects? Nope, Realtime terrain shadowing? Nope, Automatic generation of vegetation and proper textured polygons? Nope etc etc.

K2Vi is in constant development and is a solid 3D GIS ). I havent used this for a few years but when I did a project a while back I believe it was around 15K for the "Pro" version which allowed you to add the data etc etc (A full 3D viewer was free) and we got to have that for 2 months....Weather effects? Nope, Water effects? Nope. Advanced 3D objects? kindof....dont think it supports bump mapping/reflection etc Realtime terrain shadowing? Nope, Automatic generation of vegetation and proper textured polygons? Nope etc etc.

So these are the competition that I am aware of....FSX gives you pretty comprehensive world wide data, acceptable data conversion tools (I wonder if these will be tidied up at all for ESP?) a great 3D engine for ~ $800 USD. Id say, comparitively, its a bargain.