The New Faster, Leaner Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium is Now Available for Your Input

[TooWings 17]

Well, it not really such a change after all... The "world simulator" should be the basis. Any Flight Simulator basically needs to render the "world" and the idea is to build such a solid base that one could simulate anything in this world.

 

Sure, and we've discussed such multi-sims in the past many times and I feel its a good thing to aim for.  But my point is that Stephen in not only proposing to change the name of his project to The NexGen World Simulator but is also proposing to .. "move into a direction that first creates the World we play in and then builds upon that world through all different kinds of simulation..

 

Like I said, its a change of direction and an expansion on the original remit, which for the reasons I mentioned earlier, ring a few alarm bells for me.

 

But at the end of the day I don't think it really matters as its still just discussion, albeit a slightly different discussion..with nothing concrete as of yet.

 

Just my tuppence worth.

[dtmicro 1]

Actually I see his point about making it a world sim, and I see your point as well about not doing it.

 

Here is the thing though, you gotta pick something as the KEY focus or else you are just building another version of "The Sims meets Train Simulator meets whatever". I wouldn't pitch it as a world simulator at first, I would simply pitch it as a flying simulator. If you are going to make a VR-like 3D multi-player SIM world where people walk around and talk, well that has already been done about a gazillion times, and you can go online right now and play. So I think you have to establish the game as something before you add that kind of functionality.

 

I prefer sticking to the flight sim idea, and letting the add-on developers take it as far as they want to take it. Since flying is the hardest thing to simulate, it's very simple to add the other stuff later to expand it.

 

Then you can actually drive to the airport in a GTA-Style rampage, blow up a couple objects on the runway, hijack the plane and throw the pilot out, and then have a normal flight. Also you can walk around in third person in the plane and parachute out.

 

See all those ideas are fine, got no problem with them, but I'd start with just making a basic simulator first, the rest can always be added later. That is actually how many low to mid-budget games work these days anyhow, rarely do they Finish the game right from the first release.

 

Look at Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, heck I bought ED and paid $80 for it, played it for 1 hour and then decided, what is the point. Yet there are plenty of people that love it, and I'm sure to them it's the best thing in the world.

 

The point is though they sold the game WAY WAY before it was finished. The key to being able to do that, is to create your own market. Who cares if there is no market for a flight sim, make the market by showing something off extraordinary, all you need is one extraordinary graphical or event thing to make your own market. But even that said, I don't believe there is NO market for flight simming, I just think the market doesn't exist to create another clone of FSX or Xplane...

[HiFlyer 9,361]

People always say that, they said the same thing about Space Simulators all throughout the late early 2000's, no-one wanted them. Then Star Citizen becomes the highest Crowd funded, bla bla...

 

Star citizen lets you blow stuff up.

 

While civilian sims languished and continue to do so, warsims continued to do good and even great business. War Thunder is absolutely massive. Another thing those other sims have in common is variety. Star citizen lets you fly and fight (always popular) eventually get out of the ship and fight or explore, trade, do missions (again popular) visit planets, participate in races etc. 

 

The key word is variety. And if the game can be modded (like FSX can be) shelf life can be extended nearly indefinitely until the underlying tech becomes uncompetitive.

 

Underlying civilian sim variety has been.....tepid however. New planes, airports and scenery essentially. Its a mono-themed experience, and all but the most enthusiastic get bored and wander off. Even we get bored, and assuage that boredom by buying fleets of planes and add ons in a never ending stream.

 

(which supports the addon developers, but not the original sim!)

[liketofly1 11]

Sure, and we've discussed such multi-sims in the past many times.  But my point is that Stephen in not only proposing to change the name of his project to The NexGen World Simulator but is also proposing to ...  "move into a direction that first creates the World we play in and then builds upon that world through all different kinds of simulation..

 

Like I said, its a change of direction and an expansion on the original remit, which for the reasons I mentioned earlier, ring a few alarm bells for me. 

 

Just my tuppence worth.

 

Sure, it is a change - but as mentioned before - also in this thread - in the past, developers focused on the Flight Simulation, and built a simulator that - some better, some less good - focused on the Aircraft and it's surrounding...

 

I personally think that if we succeed in creating a base world that is as accurate as possible with todays data available, meaning a spherical Globe, DEM reaching from the mariana trench to the Mt. Everest, athmospheric/meteorological as well as hydrological model and a rendering distance that satisfies the needs of the flight simulation genre, including day-night and seasonal change, with the possibility to add functionality via plugins/modules, and leave the adding of fine details to 3rd party developers by providing a solid SDK, this could become the base of a Next Generation Simulator - being Flight - Drive or what ever... 

[dtmicro 1]

Star citizen lets you blow stuff up.

 

I still disagree, people keep saying the SIM Market is this or that, but no-one has ever built anything better yet. Of course the market is going to fade after 8+ years of the same simulator. Everything out there looks like FSX to the average joe, why buy another one?

 

So how do we know exactly what the market is for a NEXT GEN Sim, we don't.

 

As I noted just now, you do need to add a few extraordinary features to the simulator to appeal to a wider audience, and good marketing.

 

I believe the re-birth of the Flight SIM not to be about how big the market is, but about creating the ultimate extensibility API so that people can have a LOT of fun just placing objects, making their own islands, and crashing into a farmer's field and watching the entire island burn.

 

Create a Youtube video of it, it'll be like Minecraft with better graphics

To the rest of us, it'll just be a flight sim.

[liketofly1 11]

I still disagree, people keep saying the SIM Market is this or that, but no-one has ever built anything better yet. Of course the market is going to fade after 8+ years of the same simulator. Everything out there looks like FSX to the average joe, why buy another one?

So how do we know exactly what the market is for a NEXT GEN Sim, we don't.

 

As I noted just now, you do need to add a few extraordinary features to the simulator to appeal to a wider audience, and good marketing. There is no reason you cannot add some functionality to blow some stuff up, or have some incredibly awesome looking plane crashes. Some war stuff can be added for a wider appeal as a side-thing.

 

Exactly, but we have to get the base correct that allows for all these additions...... and the base is the World itself!

[mgh 89]

The reason no-one wants to move to another SIM is because there is nothing out there that beats our current SIMs by a large enough margin...

 

Surely that is the fundamental truth. We have FSX-SE, Prepar3D 2.5, X-plane,and FlightGear -  with DoveTail's new offering and a possible 64-bit Prepar3D in the future.

 

I don't think anyone is going to put up the realistic money between between $5 - $20 millions suggested here into another new flight simulator, I don't even think anyone will put up the $100's thousands needed to needed to outline a specification to initiate it.

[HiFlyer 9,361]

 

 

and crashing into a farmer's field and watching the entire island burn.

 

And that requires yet another change in attitude. Our current planes hit the ground and go "BONK"

 

Crash damage has sometimes been contentious. I brought it up one time in a thread on the Aerosoft forum, and the reaction was essentially Blasphemy!! This is not a game!! I have seen it brought up since from time to time with usually negative reactions.

 

Burning islands? Hmmmmmmmmm.....  :smile:

[dtmicro 1]

In real life, those planes make big explosions, especially the jet fueled ones.

 

Surely that is the fundamental truth. We have FSX-SE, Prepar3D 2.5, X-plane,and FlightGear -  with DoveTail's new offering and a possible 64-bit Prepar3D in the future.

 

I don't think anyone is going to put up the realistic money between between $5 - $20 millions suggested here into another new flight simulator, I don't even think anyone will put up the $100's thousands needed to needed to outline a specification to initiate it.

 

There are always going to be Pro's and Con's to any big project, it's never easy.

 

Funding is always hard to come by, no matter what you are doing.

 

There is usually someone willing to finance something that looks risky and is counter-intuitive to what people think will succeed. There are plenty of rich people that like to fly, as a matter of fact, most people that fly their own planes also happen to be rich. If you can really make the game go beyond what we have today as an actual training resource to make flying safer, then there is a chance it will get funded. You just have to prove the concept that you can perpetually recreate a higher level of simulation with better physics that is much closer to a commercial simulator. You have to have the right people directing the project, and you don't want to make another FSX.
 

If you can make the graphics look real and get the physics close enough, I think you can sell the idea to GA pilots that it is much safer if they practice the exact flight in the game before they do it in real life. I think there is likely at least one rich bored pilot that might want to throw money at the idea.

 

Anyhow, this is starting to go in circles. There are a million reasons NOT to do something, and only ONE to do it. The big advantage for building a next-gen flight sim is that there is an incredible amount of freely available intellectual material from all the previous FSX developers already out there, and this should and can be used to enhance it. The biggest hurdle is forming a team and getting the funding, that I agree. It needs someone to write a basic design document (not technical specs, just design doc), and then some type of prototype demo showing something interesting happening (like a major crash).

 

And BTW, if somehow someone can get financing for this thing, then count me in, hopefully after all these posts my resume will be moved to the top of the pile

 

I'd love to help program a flight simulator, it's been my dream, but I know I cannot do it alone. I thought about applying at LM or Xplane, but there were no jobs hardly.

[mgh 89]

 

 

And BTW, if somehow someone can get financing for this thing, then count me in, hopefully after all these posts my resume will be moved to the top of the pile

I'd love to help program a flight simulator, it's been my dream, but I know I cannot do it alone. I thought about applying at LM or Xplane, but there were no jobs hardly.

 

Funding isn't going to come by itself - someone has to go out to find it.

 

There are always posts on FlightGear.

[propsfan 52]

According to this post Stephen says "We have immediate access to the UNIGINE Sim evaluation kit" Perhaps some of the interested parties here should have a look at it. It'll not be known what's possible until then. We might all be pleasantly surprised or find it unsuitable, only one way to find out though.
 

[dtmicro 1]

Funding isn't going to come by itself - someone has to go out to find it.

 

There are always posts on FlightGear.

 

I know, that's why I mean if a new flight sim ever got funded with real money. The problem I have with Flight Gear is it looks like an FSX-clone (graphic wise but I never installed it).

 

If I were to walk into a Flight Gear dev meeting *(assuming they have meetings, chuckle chuckle)*, then my first statement would be, what the HECK were you guys thinking?

 

Another FSX clone that isn't as good as FSX, and the point of this is?

 

Let's start over, we need a terra-generator and a good game engine, graphics first. This code has to go.

[codechris 9]

I've been mulling over what people have said about FlightGear and my initial reaction was "yes, that exists, can't we just improve that?" but I've come to the conclusion that improving that, would mean a new engine, and as such a re-write so you're essentially starting from the beginning.

 

However, they have a team, knowledge and experience. So what about the proposal of a crowed sourced fund, using that team? It would need to be proposed to them, and they would need to agree, obviously. You could then possibly pull in other resources from some third parties. Just an idea

[dtmicro 1]

According to this post Stephen says "We have immediate access to the UNIGINE Sim evaluation kit" Perhaps some of the interested parties here should have a look at it. It'll not be known what's possible until then. We might all be pleasantly surprised or find it unsuitable, only one way to find out though.

 

 

That's putting the cart before the horse, even though I know some crowd funding games picked the engine right off the bat (I don't think this is a case where you want to do that). There should be a fairly in-depth game-engine evaluation phase that lasts at least 1-3 months, and that means it might be better to come after funding really. I am a strong believer in not tying yourself to the wrong game-engine until you have done tons of research on the one that fits best. That is why I don't see the point in even looking at the game engines yet, someone needs to study their API's first and then do some independent performance testing on how well it handles the mesh fly-overs.

 

The next step is a design document and some animation prototypes showing vividly wild plane crashes in mountains, now this I can actually do myself using Terragen and finding some explosion particle animation generator.

 

The problem is I have a regular job right now as well as I am invested in a side FSX add-on business, so not sure where I'd get the time, maybe in a couple months.

I've been mulling over what people have said about FlightGear and my initial reaction was "yes, that exists, can't we just improve that?" but I've come to the conclusion that improving that, would mean a new engine, and as such a re-write so you're essentially starting from the beginning.

 

However, they have a team, knowledge and experience. So what about the proposal of a crowed sourced fun, using that team? It would need to be proposed to them, and they would need to agree, obviously. You could then possibly pull in other resources from some third parties. Just an idea

 

Not a bad idea as far as getting them involved, but I think the team would need to be picked very carefully. Picking the team is make or break in this stuff. I would usually prefer to contract out straight to people that we already know can do the best job, hence Rex / Active Sky / etc..., Accusim...

 

I know those guys aren't making tons and tons of money or anything, I can almost guarantee you they'd take a paid dev contract to convert their software to a new platform regardless if they thought the platform would succeed or not.

 

IMO, Rex cloud textures are already good enough, the only thing I would request they adjust is reducing the variety of clouds they offer and getting rid some of the campy cumulus that exist in some of their lists (they have mostly good stuff, but some weird looking stuff as well). Also the clouds can at times look fake, but in reality even REAL clouds outside sometimes look fake, so it's a catch 22.

[mgh 89]

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/469821-pmdg-should-stop-making-airplanes/#entry3250352