Hi everyone.

 

My name is Martin and I am the Community Manager for all flight simulation projects here at Dovetail Games. It is great to see so many of you talking about the recently announced DTG Flight School and Flight Simulator.

 

With so many threads popping up about these two titles here in forum it is simply not possible for me to respond to everyone and keep track of everything.

 

To this end I have created this thread where you can talk to me and ask questions about the upcoming sims.

 

Please keep in mind that both titles are still in development so I do not currently have answers for everything you might want to know, however I will do my best to answer as many questions as I can. 

 

- Martin 

Great initiative Martin.  Thanks

Will there be an open, publicly released SDK?

 

Will there be updates to the textures and buildings used by the land class and airports?

Will the handling of autogen be improved (no more popping up)?

 

Will there be shadows for everything (including clouds)?

 

Will 64 bit also mean we can expect a larger LOD?

 

P.S. Great idea to start this topic, Martin! It's VERY nice to see developers get into contact with the simmer this way! (Something some others failed to do...)

I'd like to start by saying thank you to reaching out to us simmers on the AVSIM board. Thank you.

 

1) As a person who likes complex sims: Have you tested backward compatibility with 3rd party aircraft?

2) Will you follow the same model as FSX/P3D by having addon developers provide airports/weather/landclass, etc... OR will DTG make its own addons?

3) I'm very excited by the change to 64 bits. Can you tell us what 64 bits mean for the end user? There is a lot of speculation and I'd like to hear from DTG on this.

 

Again, thank you for reaching out and good luck!

Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

 

Will ATC be along the lines of default FSX/P3D or can we expect better IFR capabilities (SIDs, STARs, improved vectoring, emergencies)?

 

 

 

PK

I agree, really nice initiative Martin!

 

The first questions I would like to ask are

 

- can we expect to see aircraft models equally advanced as the models from PMDG for example or will your title mostly target the more casual simmer or even gamer

 

- will you be working with the online networks such as Vatsim and IVAO to make sure people will be able to fly online in order to simulate real world OPS as close as possible where both live/human controlled ATC and traffic play a major role

 

- will you cover the whole world or only parts of it

 

- are you already in contact with some skilled addon developers with a well-known and equally good reputation within the community or will everything be developed in-house

 

- is there a rough ETA and of course not talking about dates but more months or maybe even years

Great initiative Martin.  Thanks

 

Too many threads and not enough of me it seem! 

 

- Martin 

Hi Martin

 

Thank you and welcome to the Avsim forum. As you can imagine, we're all very excited by the news of the new flight simulators.

Thanks for reaching out to us, Martin!

 

- Will third party devs be able to sell their addons through their own/independent stores? Or will they all have to go through steam?

- will flight simulator include ATC and AI aircraft? If yes, are there plans to improve from FSX' default ATC?

Will 'external' flight model's be possible?

what about the core of the game, will you use real ungine 4 like TS2016

Too many threads and not enough of me it seem!

You have no idea what you've just let yourself in for. :smile: But we are glad you did anyway

Perhaps over-specific at this point but it includes the kinds of things that are on my mind...

 

Flight School

-------------

 

Will there be interactive lessions along the lines of Rod Machado's lessions in FSX?

 

Will the reading and use of VFR, IFR and approach charts be covered?

 

Will navigation be taught in detail e.g. including DR, pilotage, NDB navigation?

 

Will IFR flight and instrument appraoches be included?

 

Will there be simulated emergencies and failures for the student to deal with?

 

What range of aircraft will be included?

 

Will there be a logical progression from simple single engine aircraft to muliti-engine turboprops and jets?

 

Will there be assessments and milestones along the lines of checkrides, cross country flights?

 

Will proper engine managaement be taught (with consequences)?

 

 

Flight Simulator

----------------

 

Will the following features be present...

 

Thermals and ridge lift?

 

Windhear and microbursts?

 

Realistic turboprop modelling?

 

Realistic engine management?

 

Failures?

 

Better ATC?

 

Modelling of sea states (not full bathymetry but enough to matter to float planes)?

 

Flame-outs in thunderstorms?

 

Sloped runways?

 

Runway contamination effects?

 

Improved crash detection?

 

Which aircraft are planned to be included?

 

Will there be planet-wide scenery coverage?

 

 

Thanks

Will there be an open, publicly released SDK?

 

Will there be updates to the textures and buildings used by the land class and airports?

 

We have been asked this a lot recently.

 

First off, DTG Flight School is standalone experience and there are currently no plans to offer an SDK for this or expand upon it with third party development at this time.

 

In regards to Flight Simulator the response you might have seen give elsewhere is as follows:

 

"We recognise the passion that exists in the flight simulation community around enabling players to create user generated content. We will have more information to share on this as we get closer to the launch of Dovetail Games Flight Simulator." 

 

Building a new flight simulator on this scale is massive undertaking within itself. Building the infrastructure around a new flight sim, like the currently one for FSX: SE, is an even bigger task. It will all take time and we are exploring the options open to us like Steam Workshop for example. The bottom line here is we are very aware of the demand for an open SDK. We are certainly making steps towards that demand but we cannot promise that all the pieces will be in place day one! As the quote says - We will have more information to share on this as we get closer to the launch of Dovetail Games Flight Simulator.    

 

As for textures and buildings, this is area we are working hard on. We know that these are important to simmers. We all want to fly in a world which looks great and reflects aviation today. I can’t go into detail at this stage but we do have something very exciting in the works. As soon as we are in a position to talk about it we will be shouting about it from the rooftops. 

 

- Martin