There's some pretty amazing stuff hidden within FlightGear. I feel that it would be unwise to dismiss it so quickly.  The capabilities it offers for extremely high fidelity flight models is quite something, for example.  Most of the issues revolve around a lack of resources, in my opinion.

 

I agree with you that there is some amazing stuff within, and I'm not dismissing it because of it, but because I think that Open Source (meaning: work for free) won't get us "there" faster.

The guy I was replaying to said that if FSX had been open source, could be more advanced today, but flight gear was always open source and is always catching up.

 

Do you imagine that Star Citizen could achieve what it says is gonna be if it is Open Source?

Do you imagine that Star Citizen could achieve what it says is gonna be if it is Open Source?

 

Nope.

 

OpenSource is entirely motivation driven, while commercial involves money. And as we all know, money is serious business and the root of all deadlines.

 

 

I think that Open Source (meaning: work for free) won't get us "there" faster.

 

I personally don't think either model gets us there faster.  Each has its benefits and drawbacks.  While commercial software development can allow for a (generally) more polished and complete product, within open source developers have the freedom to focus on minute details that may otherwise be dismissed in a commercial project as unprofitable.

 

I actually think that our hobby would benefit greatly from a marriage of the two.  Currently with FSX we have a closed source, unsupported base platform, with a rather large (all things considered) third party developer ecosystem sitting on top.  In a perfect world, it would be ideal to have an open source base, one that could be improved and refined as years go by, that can actively be community maintained, but that can also support a commercial developer ecosystem on top. 

 

The commercial ecosystem sitting on top would theoretically be healthier, since the base platform can evolve with hardware over time - less chance of user base fragmentation as new platforms evolve and compete.  And because the commercial ecosystem would depend on the open source platform, it would be to the various commercial developers interests to help improve the base platform.  This already happens to a large extent in the large open source communities - various large software companies paying employees to do nothing but contribute to an open source project.

 

But of course the world isn't perfect; we already have a simulation community with significant fragmentation, one where it's unlikely that such a project could ever get off the ground.  I doubt that many of the major developers would, or even could, contribute to such a thing, even if it were to benefit them and perhaps secure their business in the long term.  And of course, I would venture that there's likely not an overly large pool of flight sim enthusiasts that also happen to be coders, creating a significant barrier to contribution for those who aren't already developers.

 

Anyway, I apologize for the long post.  I guess as much as I feel that it would be great for the flight simulation version of Linus Torvalds to come along, I'm also cynical enough to know it's never going to happen.

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There's some pretty amazing stuff hidden within FlightGear. I feel that it would be unwise to dismiss it so quickly. The capabilitiess it offers for extremely high fidelity flight models is quite something, for example. Most of the issues revolve around a lack of resources, in my opinion.

In the reality is that posters here most have already dismissed FlightGear - the last post in its forum is dated 28 March 2012. It isn't very good comparing with its rivals.

In the reality is that posters here most have already dismissed FlightGear - the last post in its forum is dated 28 March 2012. It isn't very good comparing with its rivals.

 

The official forum is quite active though.

In the reality is that posters here most have already dismissed FlightGear - the last post in its forum is dated 28 March 2012. It isn't very good comparing with its rivals.

 

How? I can see lots of posts made in 2014 in the FlightGear forum.

How? I can see lots of posts made in 2014 in the FlightGear forum.

But how many were posted in the FS9, FSX, Flight and X-Plane forums?

 

MS FSX Forum has 628,092 total posts, the Prepar3d General Forum has 27,575. All the FlightGear Forum can manage over the years is 2,246 posts in total over a 10 year period.

Pc gaming is on the brink of extinction, flight simming is a niche of pc gaming... most of us were born before 1970 and feel that 1990's nostalgia when flight sims were extremely popular..

 

Tower, I'm not sure why you got a bunch of down votes for your thought but I'll give you an up vote.  I remember when this used to be fun, it's just not, any more.  I'm not sure if its because we have been doing this for so long or if there was something really superior in game design back then, but I do miss the flight sim heyday of the 90's.

The olden days, the olden days. Everyone wishes for the olden days.

Pc gaming is on the brink of extinction, flight simming is a niche of pc gaming... most of us were born before 1970 and feel that 1990's nostalgia when flight sims were extremely popular..

I am afraid I made a mistake in writing this, I have been playing pc games since 1985 and never owned a console. Of course I would like to return to the days MS updated FS every three years, but I don't see anything new coming up.

It doesn't matter what P3D do with FSX anyhow, I've got everything installed from Orbx, all sceneries, global, mesh, vectors and airports, the complete collection, it's not FSX flight sim anymore, its Orbx! flight sim now, and better off it is as well....brilliant!

Apologize for going a little off topic but just wanted to pass on a friendly reminder that we have changed our signature policy again and we are kindly asking everyone to please put their system specs and flight sim information in their respective "My Profile". More details can be found at the following link -  http://forum.avsim.net/topic/436632-new-signature-rules or under the Forums tab above. Thanks for your cooperation.

 

Best regards,