The biggest Flightsim news that NEVER was.

[Mike T 208]

I'm happy to report that the Flight Sim community has an Open Source Flight Simulator that has the vast majority of the features of FS. http://www.flightgear.org/Flight Gear has the following features:>Over 20,000 real world airports included in the full scenery set. Correct runway markings and placement, correct runway and approach lighting. >Taxiways available for many larger airports (even including the green center line lights when appropriate.) Sloping runways (runways change elevation like they usually do in real life.) >Directional airport lighting that smoothly changes intensity as your relative view direction changes. >World scenery fits on 3 DVD's. (I'm not sure that's a feature or a problem!) But it means we have pretty detailed coverage of the entire world. >Accurate terrain worldwide, based on the most recently released SRTM terrain data.) 3 arc second resolution (about 90m post spacing) for North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Scenery includes all vmap0 lakes, rivers, roads, railroads, cities, towns, land cover, etc. >Nice scenery night lighting with ground lighting concentrated in urban areas (based on real maps) and headlights visible on major highways. This allows for realistic night VFR flying with the ability to spot towns and cities and follow roads. >Scenery tiles are paged (loaded/unloaded) in a separate thread to minimize the frame rate hit when you need to load new areas. You don't need a $5,000,000 Cray Cascading Organic Elephant Neuron Array to run it. AND it comes with a shared cockpit, multiplayer environment. Some other things to note are volumentric clouds, 3D lights and all for the grand price of $FREE.00Okay, then, so now we have a terriffic base flight computer totally opensource and ready to be filled up with FREE opensource addons by the enormous talent that we have here right?This is the moment we've all been waiting for and not a single post to be found or news of the new suite of product addons to come. No pre-release screenshots of the new opensource cloud pack, opensource high fidelity 3D cockpit or opensourcehyper-realistic airport. Why is that? No money to be made?Why is it that after a decade of work with no compensation that FlightGear 1.0 has not one single 3D party addon? The entire source code is freely available so surely that is not the problem?So what is the problem. Someone tell me WHY the most important development for the flight sim community in our history has gone totally unnoticed?Mike T.

[LAdamson 240]

X-Plane and MSFS have not had good success with sloping runways. Not enough elevation data points, and too much individual "hand massaging" would be required to get them all to fit. I can only assume that Flight Gear wouldn't be in any better shape (runway wise) either.L.Adamson

[MD83 1]

>So what is the problem. Someone tell me WHY the most important >development for the flight sim community in our history has gone >totally unnoticed?>Why is that? No money to be made?That's it! :)

[Johan_Dees 84]

its simple.. really.MSFS have a enormous headstart, with the ammount of addons.. its nearly impossible to close in. The community is gigantic.It isnt the best, like the VHS and BETA max in the old days..JohanA LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, AND A LITTLE MORE ACTION PLEASE..http://www.jdserver.mine.nu/johan

[Orlaam 306]

Looks too dated for me, sorry. Needs a lot of work.

[Egbert Drenth 250]

Hi,>> Why is it that after a decade of work with no compensation that FlightGear 1.0 has not one single 3D party addon <> Someone tell me WHY the most important development for the flight sim community in our history has gone totally unnoticed.Why is it the 'most important development' in history? Because it is freeware?Don't get me wrong: I think anyone developing a flightsim from scratch accomplishes a huge milestone, but to call it the most important development in history goes a bit too far for me.I don't think that money is a (big) issue. Personally I don't mind paying $50-$150 for a Sim, if I know it is backed up by a huge community (both payware & freeware).For now FlightGear unfortunately lacks such a community but that may change in the future.

[Bruce Nicholson KMFR 20]

If you think things get hostile around here when a developer charges for a commercial product and the AVSIM folks think the price point is too high, don't even think about going to an open source community and asking them to pony up money.After all, you'll get the very same argument you see here at AVSIM: What?! You want me to pay more for the add on than I did for the entire base sim?!?!?!Bruce

[Mike T 208]

Hey Bruce:The point here is that there would be no cost because FlightGear is OpenSource and FREE therefore all addons would by default have to be OpenSource and FREE too!The argument has always been that everyone needs to be compensated for their valuable time. FlightGear folks developed a whole simulator...so how now brown cow?Mike T.

[ubersu 78]

Actually, unless addons are developed using GPL'd code, they need not be free. In general, open source code need not be 'free' at all - most licenses simply require the source code to be released with the product.Really, though, that begs the question. FlightGear hasn't been ignored to the extent that you propose - I've seen references to it in every FS forum that I've visited. It's just that no one particularly cares to develop for it or use it. The code has changed constantly over the development cycle, there have been a number of personal conflicts over who will steer development (hearsay, since I have had no direct contact with the project), and all the usual shenanigans that accompany a large open source release.Given the existance of a well developed, fairly priced, commercial simulator - the real question is who cares about FlightGear, and what's the driver for developers?DJ

[Bruce Nicholson KMFR 20]

Mike,My comment was definitely tongue-in-cheek. I've followed the development of FlightGear and it's really become an impressive piece of work since the early versions. The point isn't whether anyone would develop for OpenSource, but how much enery would they dedicate if they have the option of compensation with a competing product. I think the answer is self-explanatory in that FlightGear has always lagged behind FS and version upgrades are slow to be released.Perhaps the OpenSource idea in FS arrived too late. Five years ago, and most definitely 10 years ago, FS add-on development was better aligned with the OpenSource model. Today, judging by what is sold on SimMarket, just about anyone that can create something for FS has the storefront to sell it.Bruce