FSX-SE New Flight Simulator

[Azone 39]

It's probably still two or three years away.

[SWFan 2]

There already is one, it's X-Plane.  While not new, its been around for quite some time, it's still actively developed and improved by the developer and every year more developers jump to XP to make scenery and aircraft.  Everyone knows FSX is a dead-end and lets be honest, the FS community is small compared to other gaming genres making it a risky bet for a new developer.

 

Instead of adding yet another developer into the mix, further segmenting our small market, I'd rather see the community start to get behind one of the existing alternates that is currently alive and well.  And in my opinion X-Plane is the best alternative.

[learn-by-flying 37]

Enthusiast and Developers:

 

Is it really that difficult to develop a new flight simulator? With so many bright developers out there I wonder why no one (or a team of several developers), come together and develop a new FS? Instead, they keep feeding an old, and broken flight simulator.

 

Can you imagine the amount of money the new developer would make? I once read Aerosoft was going to develop a new simulator- not sure what happened.

 

Are you Prepar3d?

[audiohavoc 24]

The question is whether the time and costs required to produce a flight simulator are worth the potential financial returns. Think about how much resources it would take to produce something of the level that Microsoft did with FSX. Manpower, knowledge, experience, capital, legal concerns, time, data/research, platform, marketing, etc. are just some of the issues/challenges facing anyone who wishes to produce the next most popular flight simulator. Microsoft had many versions to build off of, and massive resources towards the end. Look at what happened with Flight. I imagine bringing a complete flight simulator to market is massively more difficult and less financially rewarding than you think.

 

Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk HD

[Johnny767 40]

Are you Prepar3d?

 

Hi Tom, no I am not. Is it much better that FSX? Does it uses all CPU cores? Or, would one not see much difference?

[CyberMike 18]

A while ago I saw a project to run Fsx with addons etc. in a browser. Now that would be neat but there are also Flightgear or Fly!Legacy especially for developers.

[learn-by-flying 37]

Hi Tom, no I am not. Is it much better that FSX? Does it uses all CPU cores? Or, would one not see much difference?

 

Johnny,

 

I am using v1.4, with the affinity mask tweak Prepar3d will use more CPU cores, I have 6 cores and 6 virtual, I've got it using 11. LM have drastically improved the sim and made it smoother. There's a thread somewhere that details why the ESP or FSX engine hasn't been dropped, I'll have to see if I can dig it up. One note is the licensing issues that always seem to arrise. Some devs will code products to not work within the Prepar3d environment while still working with FSX, some simply rely on the EULA to restrict usage, while others actively support the Prepar3d platform.

 

Just based on minor tweaking and no serious testing, I average 30% better frames with Prepar3d than FSX. Look in my profile and you will see I have a beefy system. If you have any questions on Prepar3d, head over to its subforum, lots of good info in there.

 

Best of luck

[mslim 14]

 

 

The question is whether the time and costs required to produce a flight simulator are worth the potential financial returns.

 

We tend to look at the product strictly thru the lens of the FlightSim person.  If the demand for the product could be broadened into military, academic, climate, oceanic, hydrograpny, and entertainment venues then the cost of development could be shared by many groups.  I think this is maybe where P3D is headed.  MS FSX was just a quick base for them to start with.  Kind of like Dee Howard buying up old bomber parts to make a corporate airplane.

 

Slim

[Boeing or not going 578]

There is no need for a new discussion of a topic just discussed at length

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/403367-new-fsx-flight-simulator/

[FIVE-BY-FIVE 453]

Are you Prepar3d?

P3D is ok but it's still FSX with more updates and still only using 32bit code.

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Is it really that difficult to develop a new flight simulator? With so many bright developers out there I wonder why no one (or a team of several developers), come together and develop a new FS? Instead, they keep feeding an old, and broken flight simulator.

 

It absolutely is difficult. The amount that the add-on developers around know is likely not nearly enough to develop an entire platform. Writing a graphics engine alone is already a difficult task. To be done properly, a programmer really needs to know what they are doing. While there are many developers that have no problem writing C++ gauges for FSX, it is a completely different animal to write the rendering engine that displays the terrain, aircraft, weather, etc. Then you've got physics, the weather calculations, ATC, AI, missions system, SDK with extensive documentation, tools, and API...the list goes on. To put it simply, creating a new simulator is no easy job.

[learn-by-flying 37]

P3D is ok but it's still FSX with more updates and still only using 32bit code.

 

You do have a point, I'd be willing to jump on the x-plane side if there was a broader 3rd party following. Unfortuneately this is also the issue with X-plane getting 3rd party support although I have seen that changing slowly. The question will be if we are going to see a game changer in v2 which is in the works.

[TurbofanDude 50]

I have to say, I wish developing a flight simulator was as easy as people seem to think.

 

Sarcasm aside, Brandon is right in that developing an aircraft, although difficult, is a minuscule project comparatively. Have you ever read the credits at the end of a high-profile game? The list of developers who had their hands in the physics and rendering engine is quite long. The task is simply too large for even a few developers to do well and in a timely manner - this, in combination with the concept of battling the enormous existing market competition, is what discourages most developers from doing this.

 

I imagine that a new platform will emerge as king once FSX is no longer compatible with the latest Windows operating system - that's when we'll get to see what it really takes to create such a massive product.

[z06z33 781]

I have to say, I wish developing a flight simulator was as easy as people seem to think.

 

Sarcasm aside, Brandon is right in that developing an aircraft, although difficult, is a minuscule project comparatively. Have you ever read the credits at the end of a high-profile game? The list of developers who had their hands in the physics and rendering engine is quite long. The task is simply too large for even a few developers to do well and in a timely manner - this, in combination with the concept of battling the enormous existing market competition, is what discourages most developers from doing this.

 

I imagine that a new platform will emerge as king once FSX is no longer compatible with the latest Windows operating system - that's when we'll get to see what it really takes to create such a massive product.

If the next Windows is anything like 8 I think I'll stay with 7 for a long long while haha.

[mgh 89]

I once read Aerosoft was going to develop a new simulator- not sure what happened.

 

My understanding is that it's dead and that Aerosoft is concentrating on X-Plane.

 

Also, relevantly to this thread, Mathias Kok of Aerosoft posted:

 

- There is NO way we can offer out of the box compatibility with FSX addons (FS2004 addons are even harder as they sometimes use non standard stuff). Not only because it would be wrong to drag in old 16 bit code, but mainly because it would create massive legal issues

.

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/32868-aerosoft-flight-simulator-2012-worries/