Cameni (Outerra developer) is a member of Avsim, and has in fact posted multiple times......

 

And where has he asked what we would like to see in the next flight sim?

And where has he asked what we would like to see in the next flight sim?

 

That would actually be right here, where he requested feedback. http://forum.avsim.net/topic/450677-outerra-roadmap/

 

In fact it was also right around this time that Tom got in touch with the developers and offered assistance in promoting the possibility of a sim..

There was also another semi-procedural engine I tried from several years ago called Viewterra. It was very promising, and an mmo was actually made from it, but the whole venture ended in lawsuits and icky types of legal nastiness. A shame, as in many ways they were far (really far) ahead of their time, and had many features even Outerra has yet to even dream of implementing, yet.

 

You might add them to your list, as they are still out there in some form within the professional market.

 

 

 

OK... I'm officially impressed! Most definitely worth looking into more.

I'll make contact and see what the current state of the software is... 

Looking at numerous (older videos) my biggest concern would be popping. If they've eliminated or seriously diminished the popping... VWorld/ViewTerra would be some pretty strong candidates.

 

Cheers,

Stephen B.

Viewterras problem, back in the day was that it was CPU rather than GPU dependent, and while the visuals were eye-popping for the time, it was also quite, quite slow. Still, the memory of driving vehicles through variable depth snow, sandstorms, blizzards, geographically accurate fauna and animals walking across the plains was super impressive.

 

Whether they have optimized the engine in the intervening years is completely unknown. One would hope so.

 

The old, and probably wildly outdated demo is still on thier ancient website, and still works. http://www.viewterra.com/platform/Download.html

Viewterras problem, back in the day was that it was CPU rather than GPU dependent, and while the visuals were eye-popping for the time, it was also quite, quite slow. Still, the memory of driving vehicles through variable depth snow, sandstorms, blizzards, geographically accurate fauna and animals walking across the plains was super impressive.

 

Whether they have optimized the engine in the intervening years is completely unknown. One would hope so.

 

I've sent an email asking those very questions. Hopefully I'll hear back from them soon.

 

- Stephen B.

 

For the rest of you folks out there... see how this works? You present an idea and you pursue it until you get the answers you need to make a qualified decision..... 

 

Now... if we can just get the move of the NGFS SIM-Posium out of the way quickly we can get all this done over on the SIM-Posium.

 

For those of you who aren't aware... the SIM-Posium is in crash mode again... I'll post again when it's back up.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

OK... The NGFS SIM-Posium is back up again... at least for the moment. 

 

I am so sorry for all of this... hope you folks can remain patient as well as enthusiastic about the possibilities while we get things ironed out.

 

- Stephen B.

Outside of Outerra, and Proland... I think UNIGINE Sim would be a very good candidate for a 3D platform. I've already got a couple members volunteering to do evals. Head on over to http://sim.unigine.com/en//

and click on the sub menu items to see some of it's features.

 

There were some "Wow! Look at this!!!" type posts with videos on this forum regarding Unigine, and it's true that the engine is super impressive. Unfortunately, the round earth coverage demanded by users seeking a next gen FSX doesn't seem to be even theoretically available within the engine at this point, which will limit its attractiveness quite a bit for enthusiasts. 

 

Quite a while ago now, when Aerosoft was contemplating a bid at creating a sim, they set certain base parameters for any potential engine candidates, and amongst the most upfront and and unnegotiable was the requirement of a round earth and a minimum of 100 mile visibility range.

 

Right now I think the Unigine maximum map size without doing something drastic to the coordinate system is about 100k

That would be Outerra, which I mentioned before

 

Outerra certainly looks impressive..if a bit lonely and devoid of life (for now).

Does Outerra have any sort of crash detection or damage modelling built in I wonder?  or would it be similar to FSX and X-Plane in that respect, i.e. static 'crash' screens when colliding with objects, and/or planes slicing through ghost trees and buildings? 

 

Another feature I'd like to see in a future flightsim is realistic looking hard landings, complete with gear damage etc...as in GTA..

 

Outerra certainly looks impressive..if a bit lonely and devoid of life (for now).

 

It has crash detection. As for damage modeling, it's an open question. Bomber, who formerly worked on Flightgear, collaborated with Levi, who ported in many of Outerras planes, on a glider (The ASK-13) which was released specifically with damage modeling in mind. There seems no reason besides philosophical concerns, that that functionality would not eventually be uncovered.

 

Tree collisions have also been mentioned. (remember that Outerra is using the Bullet physics library for non-aircraft vehicles and JSBSIM for aircraft. Both are fully capable of crash modeling and precise collision detection)

 

Of course, Unigine has all of this already, and if it was suitable for creating an entire world it might even be the more fully featured (currently) choice. I keep coming back to Outerra because it seems to have the magic mixture of just the right current and potential features to possibly become a Flightsim of the type we are familiar with (world coverage) amongst other things.

 

Unity is also a possibility, but despite its mature content creation capabilities, everything I have seen created with it has a strangely cartoonish quality, or is more comfortable on an ipad. I'm not convinced yet, though other people's milage may vary.

 

I'm also keeping a wary eye on Aerofly. Thier great weakness was photo-scenery (impractical for whole earth coverage) and a non round earth, but there are rumblings of a coordinate system change and more advanced systems functionality, as well as working with a few interested developers. I keep wondering if they will come charging out of left field one day with a big surprise.

Edited May 21, 201511 yr by n4gix
REMOVED EXCESSIVE QUOTE.

As far as UNIGINE SIM, which is based upon Unigine, the subject of round earth may be a mute point. 

 

Now admittedly, I'm under the impression that UNIGINE Sim surpasses the limitation of Unigine as it's sole purpose is for the building of simulations. In order to confirm anything, I'll need to reconnect with their contact and ask those questions specifically. 

 

"Right now I think the Unigine maximum map size without doing something drastic to the coordinate system is about 100k"

 

Here's a couple of quotes from the link that I provided in the post above.

 

"UNIGINE Sim was designed to handle virtual worlds of unprecedented scale without limits. Some examples include:

• Coast-to-coast transportation
• Detailed urban planning projects
• Countrywide military operations
• Flight simulators of the continent scale
• Space ship simulation"

"UNIGINE Sim features 64-bit double precision floating point math (instead of regular 32-bit float precision) to define coordinates of objects in the virtual scene. Therefore it is possible to create virtually unlimited worlds with the highest level of details (maximum coordinates are effectively 536,870,912 times larger than for 32-bit float precision).

 

In reality, float precision limitations are noticeable even on scenes larger than 10x10 km due to the accumulation of positioning errors, so double precision should be used for anything larger to maintain accuracy." - Unigine Sim

 

"Advanced Level of Detail (LOD) system with various performance optimizations allows unmatched visibility distance. Thanks to the advanced atmosphere model a... Earth curvature simulation is also available for high-altitude aircrafts." - Unigine Sim

 

It's important that we report the facts as they really are...

_________________________________________________

 

In the discussion regarding Outerra vs Proland, it was mentioned that Outerra is a derivative of Proland... which I have no doubt, but... some of the key features within Proland such as non-popping as well as assets, such as trees, out to the horizon... seems to have been diminished in Outerra. I'm sure that has to do with speed of rendering. With that being said, if I had a choice between Outerra and Proland, I start with the foundation, Proland, and build from there.

 

___________________________________________________

 

Ok... now that I've written those two comments. I'm going to ask those who post to this thread to not include the discussion of specific 3D engines, assets, etc.  That's what the SIM-Posium is for. Specific topics should be discussed in the forums that they are intended, whether it be on the NGFS SIM-Posium or here at AVSIM.

 

Thanks,

Stephen B. 

 

 

Read people.... read.

 

 

 

Ok... now that I've written those two comments. I'm going to ask those who post to this thread to not include the discussion of specific 3D engines, assets, etc. That's what the SIM-Posium is for. Specific topics should be discussed in the forums that they are intended, whether it be on the NGFS SIM-Posium or here at AVSIM.

 

Ummm.... Wow.

 

 

Scott

 

 

Ummm.... Wow.

 

Exactly!

"Ummm.... Wow." - Scott

"Exactly!" - Jim

 

Scott & Jim,

The point, which seems to have been missed... is that conjecture does no one any good. In order to find the tools necessary for the development of a next generation flight simulator... we must collect facts and report facts. Sorry if I offended anyone and I've taken the liberty and changed the wording so that it's clearer.

 

The second comment that Scott quoted...

I don't believe that the Staff here on AVSIM would appreciate the diversion of specific topics taken away from the forums that they are intended. Also, in a way, to divert the topic from the conversation of a Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium and to focus on specific topics other than the Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium on this thread is a form of hi-jacking. Just want to be very careful here to not step on anyone's toes.

 

- Stephen B.

 

"Ummm.... Wow." - Scott

"Exactly!" - Jim

 

Scott & Jim,

The point, which seems to have been missed... is that conjecture does no one any good. In order to find the tools necessary for the development of a next generation flight simulator... we must collect facts and report facts. Sorry if I offended anyone and I've changed the wording so that it's clearer.

 

The second comment that you quoted...

I don't believe that the Staff here on AVSIM would appreciate the diversion of specific topics taken away from the forums that they are intended. Also, in a way, to divert the topic from the conversation of a Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium and to focus on specific topics other than the Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium is a form of hi-jacking. Just want to be very careful here to not step on anyone's toes.

 

- Stephen B.

 

 

I would go into more detail to explain the limitations but as you have already requested no discussion of specific engines I will just leave it there and maybe go into more detail on your forum, to not risk any appearance of hijacking.

 

You may have just killed your own thread, though.

 

 

The second comment that you quoted...

I don't believe that the Staff here on AVSIM would appreciate the diversion of specific topics taken away from the forums that they are intended. Also, in a way, to divert the topic from the conversation of a Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium and to focus on specific topics other than the Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium is a form of hi-jacking. Just want to be very careful here to not step on anyone's toes.

- Stephen B.

 

That may be your intention, but it comes across as "don't talk about this stuff here, talk about it over at my website instead".  Which is ironic, since Devon's very knowledgeable insights regarding the development status of existing engines such as Outerra could really only serve to help your cause.  It gets more people, some of whom may be on the fence about joining your website, talking about the possibilities...

"You may have just killed your own thread, though." - HiFlyer

 

If I've redirected the conversation of specific topics other than the invitation to get involved in The Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium to their appropriate settings then that was the purpose. It's better than having the thread taken down completely because the topic of the invitation to "The Next Generation Flight SIM-Posium" was not adhered to.

 

Stephen B.