I downloaded and tried FlightGear. It has to be freeware because, compared with my FS9, I wouldn't pay a penny for it. It may be a valiant effort but it just doesn't compare.

I agree, but that statement is where my entire point lies here. We can change it. We don't have to wait for a developer to do it for us. It's not a better game at the moment because it doesn't have the support of Millions of people like MSFS does, or even the number that Xplane has. When you're the biggest, you draw the best talent. If the 'freeware' community got behind a 'freeware' sim, there is no one to stop them from having everything they ever wanted in a sim.When you introduce the need to make money, then the compromises, and lack of quality support shows up and people follow the money. If Aerosoft, or CLS, or Flight1 made stuff for Flightgear, do you think it would suck? Now, how about Section8 or Milton Shupe or KBT, if they made addons for Flightgear, do you think they would allow less quality?It's all in who's in the game, and for what reason. Change is hard, but worth it sometimes, at this moment, the community has the power to decide who comes out on top next. Do we once again give all the say so to the big money makers, or do we take this ball that's been handed to us for nothing and run with it?And trust me, I LOVE my FS9, and I always will. But after the FSX debalcle and the gutting of the ACES team, I would rather have the choice of deciding the future of simming instead of it being made for me.

I agree, but that statement is where my entire point lies here. We can change it. We don't have to wait for a developer to do it for us. It's not a better game at the moment because it doesn't have the support of Millions of people like MSFS does, or even the number that Xplane has. When you're the biggest, you draw the best talent. If the 'freeware' community got behind a 'freeware' sim, there is no one to stop them from having everything they ever wanted in a sim.When you introduce the need to make money, then the compromises, and lack of quality support shows up and people follow the money.

You're wrong! The best "talent" has been doing programming for years and years. Unless your life consist's of nothing but a keyboard with no family or friends.........................then you must at least make a partial living from the massive amount of time and expenses of creating a truely realistic model. You'll seldom see freeware that approaches the realism of payware, and I doubt that you ever will. I've been around this desktop flight simming since the invention, and have seen the scenario repeated over and over. Almost all freeware developers have turned to payware somewhere along the line; or they just quit. IMO, if you can't make part of your living from spending countless hours at a keyboard, then you shouldn't be spending so much time in front of a CPU. L.Adamson

I agree, but that statement is where my entire point lies here. We can change it. We don't have to wait for a developer to do it for us.

Your assumption that such a freeware simulator could ever compete with a commercial one is flawed because you fail to account for who will actually spend the tens of thousands of manhours required to make sure the simulator is working as it should for all folks, on all machines, in just about all corners of the earth, especially so once you start piling addons on top of it. Who will support it for free? You? No one will is the simple fact of it. What professional developer would take the risk of developing and then publishing addons actually worth buying for a simulator which is run by volunteers? There will not be a single one. Guaranteed.You only have to look at where Linux and co. are today - they've been taking over the world with their OS since forever...

I agree, but that statement is where my entire point lies here. We can change it. We don't have to wait for a developer to do it for us.

I downloaded the FlightGear source code. There's more than 450 megabytes of it and in consists of more than 8,600 files. How do you think we are going to develop it. There wouldn't be a single identical version once we started.It's also still buggy. See this quote I found at random from ls_step.c:Revision 1.3 2000/10/23 22:34:55 curtI tested:LaRCsim c172 on-ground and in-air starts, reset: all workUIUC Cessna172 on-ground and in-air starts work as expected, resetresults in an aircraft that is upside down but does not crash FG. Idon't know what it was like before, so it may well be no change.JSBSim c172 and X15 in-air starts work fine, resets now work (and aretrimmed), on-ground starts do not -- the c172 ends up on its back. Isuspect this is no worse than before.I did not test:Balloon (the weather code returns nan's for the atmosphere data --thisis in the weather module and apparently is a linux only bug)ADA (don't know how)MagicCarpet (needs work yet)External (don't know how)known to be broken:LaRCsim c172 on-ground starts with a negative terrain altitude (thishappens at KPAO when the scenery is not present). The FDM inits toabout 50 feet AGL and the model falls to the ground. It does stayupright, however, and seems to be fine once it settles out, FWIW.There's no later evidence in that file that they've been fixed. As someone else said before, it's a valiant effort but just not up to scratch.

It's not a better game at the moment because it doesn't have the support of Millions of people like MSFS does, or even the number that Xplane has.

The reason it's not a better game because it hasn't had the support of a professional team of developers.

When you're the biggest, you draw the best talent. If the 'freeware' community got behind a 'freeware' sim, there is no one to stop them from having everything they ever wanted in a sim.When you introduce the need to make money, then the compromises, and lack of quality support shows up and people follow the money

How is a bunch of amateurs like us (the 'freeware' community) going to provide achieve a quality product with quality support? (I include myself in that definition of amateur!) How could any sort of quality control be enforced, SDKs written, support provided etc etc? Anyway the community would never agree what it wanted in a simulation. I suggest you read the Aerosoft forums to see the wish-lists for something that's only being thought about.

If Aerosoft, or CLS, or Flight1 made stuff for Flightgear, do you think it would suck?Now, how about Section8 or Milton Shupe or KBT, if they made addons for Flightgear, do you think they would allow less quality? It's all in who's in the game, and for what reason.

But they're not going to make add-ons for FlightGear for the reasons others have already mentioned.

Change is hard, but worth it sometimes, at this moment, the community has the power to decide who comes out on top next. Do we once again give all the say so to the big money makers, or do we take this ball that's been handed to us for nothing and run with it?And trust me, I LOVE my FS9, and I always will. But after the FSX debalcle and the gutting of the ACES team, I would rather have the choice of deciding the future of simming instead of it being made for me.

Just how are we going "to take this ball that's been handed to us for nothing and run with it" in reality?To reiterate, a bunch of amateurs fiddling about in isolation with FlightGear isn't going to produce a worthwhile product.

You are missing a lot of things, especially the fact that normally, open source devs collaborate..... Most times, there would be an SVN server for the source code, and a branches section in that SVN. People would put their mods in their own branch, and eventually it would be merged into the trunk build once up to snuff.... It isn't because people are not going to be able to work together, as there is stuff such as bug trackers to watch for who is implementing what.... The question is, can you find the right people to develop it....As for X-Plane, X-Plane's downfall isn't so much because of the sim itself as the poor documentation of how to mod it and the fact that groups like PMDG don't want to experiment with it a bit....

You are missing a lot of things, especially the fact that normally, open source devs collaborate..... Most times, there would be an SVN server for the source code, and a branches section in that SVN. People would put their mods in their own branch, and eventually it would be merged into the trunk build once up to snuff.... It isn't because people are not going to be able to work together, as there is stuff such as bug trackers to watch for who is implementing what.... The question is, can you find the right people to develop it....As for X-Plane, X-Plane's downfall isn't so much because of the sim itself as the poor documentation of how to mod it and the fact that groups like PMDG don't want to experiment with it a bit....

I haven't missed the fact that FlightGear is nowhere near the quality of my FS9, despite being under development for the last 15 years by knowledgable enthusiasts - based on dates in the source files.Of course open-source developers co-operate with each other. FlightGear uses CVS (Concurrent Version Systems) for this.My point was in response to a poster who argued that the community should "...take this ball that's been handed to us for nothing and run with it." The community can't and won't do that. A few knowledgable enthusiasts may, but not the community. For example, FlighGear's site points out that, as well as the FlightGear source, developers need the following pre-requisites installed before they can build source code:

• GLUT
• ZLIB
• PLIB
• MetaKit
• SimGear

plus a knowledge of how to make use of them. FlightGear confidently(?) states "If you attack these prerequisites in the order listed below, you should be good."How many enthusiasts with a knowledge of C++ are prepared to wade through that before even starting? I suggest very few, with the result that the pace of development will hardly change.

I haven't missed the fact that FlightGear is nowhere near the quality of my FS9, despite being under development for the last 15 years by knowledgable enthusiasts - based on dates in the source files.Of course open-source developers co-operate with each other. FlightGear uses CVS (Concurrent Version Systems) for this.My point was in response to a poster who argued that the community should "...take this ball that's been handed to us for nothing and run with it." The community can't and won't do that. A few knowledgable enthusiasts may, but not the community. For example, FlighGear's site points out that, as well as the FlightGear source, developers need the following pre-requisites installed before they can build source code:

• GLUT
• ZLIB
• PLIB
• MetaKit
• SimGear

plus a knowledge of how to make use of them. FlightGear confidently(?) states "If you attack these prerequisites in the order listed below, you should be good."How many enthusiasts with a knowledge of C++ are prepared to wade through that before even starting? I suggest very few, with the result that the pace of development will hardly change.

Absolutely correct. FS is my only computer 'game' and I know nothing about programing languages at all. The only possible way for me to contribute is to purchase FS products that I want - which I do. I suspect I'm not the only one.