Has anybody seen this?

[stevenp 1]

I'd rather put this in here instead of the general forum as I usually get a much better response here.Anyway has anybody seen the engine "outerra"http://outerra.com/

[Chock 17,769]

Yup, it's been brought up a few times in Avsim's Hangar Chat as a potential candidate for a flight sim basis.One of the problems is that the company which developed the engine is only a small indie team and so it isn't set up with a massive array of development tools to make it easily marketable for every purpose. They are working on that though and have demoed some vehicles in it, including choppers, which seem to fly well, but they were apparently considering making their own game with it to showcase it before really going for it as a commercially available engine. Nevertheless, they have been in talks with a few other companies by all accounts, so you never know.I daresay Aerosoft had a look at it when considering creating their own flight sim, but as we know, that's on hold at the moment, with them stating they could not find a suitable 3D engine to use, and you will note that Rockwell bought ESP when they surely must have been aware of this too. Obviously simply having a terrain engine, even one as good as that is only one aspect, you need weather systems, communications and nav stuff, AI capabilities etc, so there's a lot to consider.Al

[Kobradelta1000 0]

from my amateur pov, it seems that PMDG (as A2A does) programme the most stuff outside of the Fs´s to overcome the limitations of the Engine- so you they would need "only" a 3d engine for the graphically experience- is it this simple, or am i totally wrong? :(

[BAVTim 0]

from my amateur pov, it seems that PMDG (as A2A does) programme the most stuff outside of the Fs´s to overcome the limitations of the Engine- so you they would need "only" a 3d engine for the graphically experience- is it this simple, or am i totally wrong? :(

You are not totally wrong.As an example, the Aerowinx 744 suite has its own graphics engine, however someone has made a programe so you can use MSFS as a graphics engine. The software for the 744 works outside of FS. As I believe what happens is that essentially the location of the 744 is then sent to FS via the slew command I think anyway and so they get around it that way. Technically they could use Outerra as long as it is possible to inject the location into the engine. Navaids, ils etc... are all contained within the 744 programme. Ok so you only get a 2d cockpit view but you do get a fully simulated 747. I hope that makes some kind of sense.Cheers,Tim Mitchell

[Chock 17,769]

from my amateur pov, it seems that PMDG (as A2A does) programme the most stuff outside of the Fs´s to overcome the limitations of the Engine- so you they would need "only" a 3d engine for the graphically experience- is it this simple, or am i totally wrong? :(

Theoretically yes, you can indeed piggyback anything you like to a 3D engine, so long as you are prepared to jump through the potential hoops necessary to achieve that (and know how to do it). In practice it is much easier to do that kind of thing via an established interface or SDK with development tools that are already in place that will tell you how to best achieve it. Occasionally developers will create their own such tools for that kind of thing, but in the case of all the stuff you would need to create in order to have a fully working simulation that could rival such long established efforts as X-Plane and FS, you are not talking about a small amount of work. It could be done, but someone would have to be very serious about doing it.Take a look at this gaming engine package, as a simple example of how something with all that in place becomes an attractive proposition:http://www.3dgamestudio.com/While not exactly a high end package, what makes it popular with people (aside from it only being a couple of hundred quid for the mid licence) is that it is complete in the sense that it has its own set of development tools already in place, these being: GED (the in game editor), MED (the model creation tool), WED (the level editor) and SED (the script editor).With all those tools 'good to go', it makes planning and tackling what you want to do and what is achievable apparent from the outset. You can use custom coding to get the engine to do stuff beyond the normal capabilities, but the basis of what you create is sat on a code and language format that is already developed and in place, which makes prototyping and creation a far more practical process, and more attractive to people, so it is very similar to how a serious developer would look at any 3D engine's capabilities they were potentially considering using.Incidentally, if you fancy having a crack at producing something like GS can do, I do recommend it, as it is remarkably cheap considering the capabilities it offers, and it is actually fairly easy to learn it all. But back on topic...As far as FS is concerned, when developers step outside the normal SDK parameters of FS, they can get FS to communicate with their custom creations via development tools and communications protocols which MS provided, but a difficulty presents itself in the fact that such 'extra' parameters will by definition be outside of 'FS proper'. A typical problem which occurs with that, is when FS developers create something such as a custom autopilot which then talks to FS. Because it is running outside of FS, FS itself cannot always call upon that outside data and deliver it to the sim in a fashion which the FS engine can then deliver to other things in the sim or indeed peripherals, which is why you get things such as Go Flight not working with some add-ons, and why you sometimes get one FS add on not being able to 'talk' to another without there being an SDK from the developers of at least one of those add-ons so that the other developer will know how to go about accessing the data from the other add-on to get them talking to one another. In other words, developers want a well established playing field on which to commence their efforts. This last point highlights why having a firm set of development parameters, even for someone prepared to step outside of them once in a while, is fundamental to making a game or sim platform an attractive proposition to developers. If they can get all that in place, Outerra would be a far more attractive proposition, since it certainly has the potential to be that.Al

[Kobradelta1000 0]

thanks (again :( ) for the answers guys!!Kobra