•  Is it going to take 10 years and end up like flightgear: GOD I hope not!!

 

OTOH, you have to do this right and smart, else why bother.  You truly need to be a Steve Jobs of Flight Simulation, and if you can do that, the doors will open I'm sure to something quite amazing.  Having creative, visionary minds on your team at this stage, and maybe you have this, to me is paramount.  Take your time and get it very right.  It sounds like you have some good ideas in this regard. If you could spell out this vision clearly you might consider Kickstarter?

A 64bit FSX is something to get excited about. Good luck with this new sim idea.

Just as a matter of interest, how old are you Carmine?

Lot's of good stuff here guys thank you and I just want to address some items:

 

•  Is it a lot of work ahead: YES WITHOUT QUESTION

•  Is it going to be a small team completing this:  NO!  I expect there to be MORE developers/artists/3rd Party companies joining in in the future.  After all the MAIN GOAL is for US to have the simulator WE wanted to see for the next gen!

•  Is it going to take 10 years and end up like flightgear: GOD I hope not!!  That is a LONG time for me to wait!

•  Will there be backwards compatibility.  The biggest goal we have for FSX compatibility is for aircraft importing.  Yes there are 32 bit modules which are going to have to be either recompiled by the developer for 64 bit or we will take an IPC approach (a 32 bit application which talks with the main FSNext 64 bit application)  Other scenery items/objects remains to be seen at this point.

•  Currently the groundwork is being laid out & defining the modules necessary to be built.

•  All the existing FSX keystrokes are planned on being the same

•  I was approached and asked for a blog here on Avsim, so when that is active I will post updates there.

 

Thanks all!

 

Carmine

 

Go Carmin!  You need to have some kind of contest to name the sim with maybe a good marketing slogan. Then maybe even a box cover design.  It will get everyone involved in a way that will have a big impact.

One thing any new sim developer needs to keep in mind is that the sim needs to be compatible and run smoothly on current hardware so that users do not have to wait five years until they can afford hardware that may or may not make the sim run well.

Just as a matter of interest, how old are you Carmine?

I will be 45 in 8 days. 

 

 

Go Carmin!  You need to have some kind of contest to name the sim with maybe a good marketing slogan. Then maybe even a box cover design.  It will get everyone involved in a way that will have a big impact.

 

Good one!!  Takers Name/Logo/Art now open for ideas!

 

 

One thing any new sim developer needs to keep in mind is that the sim needs to be compatible and run smoothly on current hardware so that users do not have to wait five years until they can afford hardware that may or may not make the sim run well.

 

That's the idea.  To utilize the features of DirectX 11 cards which can be had under $100 along with Dual/Quad multithreaded 64 bit processing.  The nice part about DirectX 10 & 11 is when they made it mandatory to require all the features to be DX10/11 compliant.  Previous DX9 you had to actually check if a card supported features.

 

I would think that anyone who wants a good sim experience already has at least an i3/i5 nowadays and a GTX DX10/11 card.  However, 64bit Win7/Win 8 would be required.  This is necessary to get rid of the 2TB RAM limitation and allow more memory cached items.

I will be 45 in 8 days. 

 

 

 

Good one!!  Takers Name/Logo/Art now open for ideas!

 

 

 

That's the idea.  To utilize the features of DirectX 11 cards which can be had under $100 along with Dual/Quad multithreaded 64 bit processing.  The nice part about DirectX 10 & 11 is when they made it mandatory to require all the features to be DX10/11 compliant.  Previous DX9 you had to actually check if a card supported features.

 

I would think that anyone who wants a good sim experience already has at least an i3/i5 nowadays and a GTX DX10/11 card.  However, 64bit Win7/Win 8 would be required.  This is necessary to get rid of the 2TB RAM limitation and allow more memory cached items.

 

 

 

2TB? what are you talking about? 

This sounds like it would make a good kickstarter project.

 

- Don

 

Good one!!  Takers Name/Logo/Art now open for ideas!

 

I, for one, will be thinking a lot about this now.  There are some really creative people here, on Avsim.  You should end up with a wonderful choice of ideas.

The one who could win the box design, may not be the one who comes up with the best name, although the name and logo will probably be done together, by the same person.

Can the prize be like a free copy of the flight sim for the one who wins the name/logo and the one who wins the best box design?  What do you think Carmine?

Also, how will we submit the designs?  Do you just want them to be posted in this thread?

One thing any new sim developer needs to keep in mind is that the sim needs to be compatible and run smoothly on current hardware so that users do not have to wait five years until they can afford hardware that may or may not make the sim run well.

 

This must be accomplished by sliders with a very large range from bottom to top, else the core (and hopefully its myriad 3rd party add ons) will be very short lived and you will be right back at square one within a short time.   People tend to want to see what it can do 5 years from now by moving those sliders too far to the right at initial release, and in doing so can commence to complain the sim doesn't run on current hardware.  Adhering to something that does not support a huge range into the future IMO the sim becomes very weak indeed, at least for a durable platform developers would care to jump in on.  If I were to modify this reply it would be, 'One thing any new sim developer needs to ... is that the sim must run smoothly initially at the lowest settings (FSX didn't do this particularly well) while at the same time containing enough controls over depth, resolution, etc to allow for hardware 6-8 years from now to STILL get something more out of it than say it could do at 3-4 years out...'   This is a reason why FSX has endured for nearly 8 years so far--the engine is now sufficiently out of sync w/ the trajectory of hardware development that we hear more and more about the need for a new simulator.

Id Rather Be Flying, on 29 Mar 2013 - 12:16, said:

...along with Dual/Quad multithreaded 64 bit processing.

Dual/Quad cores? If so, shouldn't you be thinking about 8+ cores and dual+ processors if you really want to do this right?

 

What is the expected service life of the core engine in your team's vision? I ask because if you want to establish this as the gold standard of flight sims my sense is that you must think 6-8 years for the core engine, and that's not very long IF you planned correctly to exploit multicore, multiprocessor, which is the trajectory hardware is moving and has been, etc. Who are you thinking your market is? Maybe your agenda is not to develop the gold standard in simulations? If not, then as the Oracle might say.... 'maybe you're not the one?' Just rambling here because I haven't heard anything super solid yet about exactly what your real mission is, so I could be completely off base.

 

4 and 6 core processors have already been here many years. By year's end we may see 10 core IB E processors (yes, rumored to be leapfrogged w/ Haswell). Even XPlane uses all cores you can muster:

 

'X-Plane will take advantage of as many cores or distinct processors as you can afford. Having 16 cores split among 4 CPUs is not required by any means, but Version 10 would be able to use every one. No more than 4 GB of RAM is necessary, but the more VRAM you have, the better–X-Plane 10 can easily use 1.5 GB of VRAM at the maximum settings.'

I would gladly pay for it, if this comes to fruition.

 

We currently have 4 team members with hopes that others will want to join in.

 

Four part-timers are going to build a flight simulator better than FSX?

 

 
2TB? what are you talking about? 

 

Sorry!  2GB! 

 

4 and 6 core processors have already been here many years.

 

Noel, I was just stating that at LEAST people have a dual/quad at this point is all.

Four part-timers are going to build a flight simulator better than FSX?

That would be quite the ambitious undertaking wouldn't it!

 

The OP's goal is to have a large group contributing to the project. I'm interested!