Ask Dovetail Games about DTG Flight School & Flight Simulator

[pmb 5,137]

Martin, may I repeat the Saitek support question above (#52). And perhaps add one on CH products. I think these two product ranges (and I mean indeed ranges, not only yokes) are by far the most prevalent in the flight sim world, aren't they?

 

Kind regards, Michael

[Barnes 192]

Thanks for your response Martin.

 

Yes indeed, I did give it a shot and even purchased some add-on scenery. It just didn't hold my interest for very long, despite the advancements.

 

Speaking for myself, I really enjoy using FSX (P3D now) as a "study-sim" by using some of the well known 3rd party add-ons. I didn't see that type of future in Flight.

 

Dave

[WebMaximus 372]

 

 

Eventually (and I mean a few years down the line) we want to have a living and breathing world of aviation for simmers to explore. A world which reflects the modern aviation world around us. Basically think a huge aviation based sandbox experience in which you could run a virtual airline or manage an airport with friends from around the world. Now to be clear (look I have even underlined this!) this is not what DTG Flight Simulator will be at launch but that is certainly the dream we have in the long term. A few people have told us we are crazy and perhaps we are. Maybe it is destined remain a dream but we believe in aiming high and at least trying. Be it one small step at a time.

 

What a joy to read stuff like this, my gut feeling get better and better the more I read of what you say Martin! Fact is what you say here is pretty much a 1:1 copy of something I wrote about in these forums many years ago and how cool that would be so amazing to read about it here and now many years later and this time not only from someone like myself dreaming but from someone who actually has a chance making it more than just dreams :smile:

[Guest]

What a joy to read stuff like this, my gut feeling get better and better the more I read of what you say Martin! Fact is what you say here is pretty much a 1:1 copy of something I wrote about in these forums many years ago and how cool that would be so amazing to read about it here and now many years later and this time not only from someone like myself dreaming but from someone who actually has a chance making it more than just dreams :smile:

 

You took the words right out of my mouth! I was VERY happy with Martin's reply to my post!!! "A living and breathing world of aviation"! Oh,yeah, bring it on! And: "Maybe it is destined remain a dream but we believe in aiming high and at least trying." Well, count me in on that dream!!! I am getting more excited with every post here. :wink:

[HighTowers 1,434]

4 years or so things were pretty bleak for future flight simulation. P3D gave us a little reprieve in the meantime despite it being mainly commercial/corporate sim oriented.

 

Reading thru this thread makes for a very bright future it seems and a very long time coming. Flight simulation is one of the longest standing games/simulations for the PC going back to the 80s. It still lives strong.

 

One thing I would still like to hear from is what 3PDs think of all this. Ive only seen one comment regarding it, but havent seen a word from the likes of PMDG, FSDT, etc. Perhaps they are required to remain quiet, but would be nice to know if they are optimistic about it and eager to work with the new tools and if current projects for p3d or fsx are on hiatus for resources to be met for the new sim?

[LB777 100]

Hello Martin and welcome!

 

Sorry if this has been asked somewhere already but I was wondering if you plan on making an improved view system integrated in the sim, similar to what Ezdok is doing. I think this might be one of the most used addon in flight sim, but also one of the most hated ones :wink:

[Joe Flyer2 3]

 

 

If you want to know about Commodore 64 BASIC however, then I am your man.

 

 

I already like you.  :wink:

 

Some really great things I'm hearing on this thread! By the way, the studio team sounds like a great group of people.

I am still left with a few lingering thoughts, however, back on the simulator topic: 

- I recall you mentioned that third-party developers were also taking part in some aspects of the new sim? If so, which developers? Are they new or would the community be familiar with them? (or are you obligated to not say?) 

 

- Complexity. I know you've discussed an amount about user accessibility and a refurbished UI (which I am pleased to hear about), but in terms of literal aircraft functionality in the later simulator (not Flight School), what aircraft would be expected (general aviation like in Flight School, or also "heavy metal" and fighter jets)? And an important follow up: if commercial aircraft are incorporated, to what extent would they be functional? In other words, will there be some aircraft that approach the complexity of, say, PMDG or Aerosoft aircraft (which is why I assume, along with the studio team, third-party developers are helping), or will default aircraft have a similar functionality as that of a default FSX 737-800? Well, then again, this brings up the whole topic of user accessibility and not forcing them to "study the aircraft operations for 6 weeks" (myself guilty!). 

Thanks again, and sorry for badgering you with questions! 

 

Best regards,

  Joe.
 

[Murmur 3,941]

Hi Martin,

 

I know that you're still working on DTG Fllight Simulator and specifically on its rendering engine, but I was wondering if you can already tell us if it will have:

 

.) cloud shadows on terrain

 

.) volumetric ground fog (i.e. ground partly foggy and partly clear)

[HiFlyer 9,359]

By far the biggest thing we found was accessibility france89. 

 

This doesn't mean that would be simmers wanted a more simplified experience. In fact we found the opposite was true - they wanted the same level of realism and detail that most simmers demand. Instead they wanted the way they engaged with the sim to be simplified. Many people here have probably been flying various sims for years now. It is often hard to think back to the days of when you first started. A lot of people we spoke to told us that they were simply confused by what most flight simulators offer. They would load one up and spend 30 minutes just trying to figure out what the menu did, yet alone actual flying anything. When you have a family, a job and only an hour a day to sim such confusion and time wasting can be a real sticking point. 

 

They really wanted that process presented in a more accessible fashion and one which reflects modern gaming. We heard time and time again that people felt like they had to sit down and spend six weeks studying before they could even attempt to fly. It felt like a chore to many of them and put a lot of them off. They expected that over time things would become more complicated and that they would have to learn more complex features, they simply wanted a reasonable learning curve for them to do that. 

 

This was the motivation behind DTG Flight School. To offer simmers the chance to dip their toes in the flight sim waters with a sim that was focused totally on teaching them the basics. We have carried that idea over to Flight Simulator. For example we have a brand new and fresh UI which looks great. All the functions are still there but the presentation has been brought up to a modern 2016 standard rather than something which looked great a decade ago. 

 

- Martin 

 

I'm glad that new people will finally have something aimed at them, but I also think some long term simmers will benefit as well. One of the things that came to light in the MS Flight forum was how many people (kind of sheepishly) admitted that despite simming for years, they had never learned (or even forgotten) certain procedures, and enjoyed the opportunity to return to basics in a fresh environment.

 

I suspect that more than newbies will find things to ponder in Flight School.

[DTG Martin 213]

I was a beta tester for MS Flight, and was wondering if you are perhaps building off Flight's ESP, which is an improvement over FSX's ESP. Flight also seems like the logical base for creating Flight School.

 

I was also a beta tester for FLY!, which had an excellent helicopter flight model (a Bell 407). Flight never included any helicopters and FSX/P3D never got the helicopter flight model right.  Will a helicopter be included in your Flight School?

Hi Arwen,

 

Flight removed many of the elements we believe necessary for the flying experience we wish to convey.. ATC and AI traffic being great examples. It made more sense for us to focus some of our efforts on necessary graphical improvements and build on top of the complex systems already inherent within FSX. Rather than try to build them all over again or find a way to integrate them back into Flight.

 

Flight School will not feature helicopters and at the moment it is looking like DTG Flight Simulator will not included them on day 1 either. It is certainly an area we want to explore long term though, 

 

- Martin 

Hi Martin, 

 

 

           I know this sounds far-fetched, but what pricing range will Dovetail Flight School and Simulator be in? Any faint idea?

 

It is a bit early to be talking about price sidhantsv. We are still making the sims! What I can say is that Flight School will be priced cheaper than Flight Simulator. We will have more information about the exact pricing closer to the launch dates. 

 

- Martin 

Martin

 

One of the 3rd party features which has been missing since everyone transitioned to P3D was the FSRecorder function. FSX and P3D have abysmal flight data recording functions for smooth and realistic playback. I'm assuming you already know what I'm getting at so I won't go into any more detail.

 

Will the new flightsim include a smooth, solid recording and playback feature with selectable parameters for the recording function?

 

 

 

This is another one of those features that we have on our long term plan list but is not something we are actively working on at the moment. 

 

- Martin 

Martin,

 

Will the new sim feature an efficient way to handle textures to eliminate the need for a temporary texture to be put in it's place while the full texture is being loaded in?

 

Here's an example:

 

 

So once the textures have loaded into video memory, this temporary texture goes away, and you can see the runway, sky, etc.

 

We have made a number of changes to the existing graphics engine which I have spoken about in detail in other posts. At the moment we are really focused on scenery as a whole. We want to get our new scenery into the sim first, then we will look at how the graphics engine loads it and if we can optimise that process. 

 

- Martin 

Hi Martin, just a quick one:

 

Are we going to see upgraded textures, vector and Landclass data of whole worldin the Flight Simulator?

 

That is the plan and what we are aiming for in the long term. That said, doing this is a big task so we might not have the whole world done ready for day one. If all goes to plan we will have some very exciting news next week about this. 

 

- Martin 

[DTG Martin 213]

Hello Martin and welcome!

 

Sorry if this has been asked somewhere already but I was wondering if you plan on making an improved view system integrated in the sim, similar to what Ezdok is doing. I think this might be one of the most used addon in flight sim, but also one of the most hated ones :wink:

 

I have answered this one LB777 but no problem. Here is the answer I gave. This is another one of those features that we have on our long term plan list but is not something we are actively working on at the moment. 

 

- Martin 

[DTG Martin 213]

 

 

I already like you.  :wink:

 

Some really great things I'm hearing on this thread! By the way, the studio team sounds like a great group of people.

 

I am still left with a few lingering thoughts, however, back on the simulator topic: 

- I recall you mentioned that third-party developers were also taking part in some aspects of the new sim? If so, which developers? Are they new or would the community be familiar with them? (or are you obligated to not say?) 

 

- Complexity. I know you've discussed an amount about user accessibility and a refurbished UI (which I am pleased to hear about), but in terms of literal aircraft functionality in the later simulator (not Flight School), what aircraft would be expected (general aviation like in Flight School, or also "heavy metal" and fighter jets)? And an important follow up: if commercial aircraft are incorporated, to what extent would they be functional? In other words, will there be some aircraft that approach the complexity of, say, PMDG or Aerosoft aircraft (which is why I assume, along with the studio team, third-party developers are helping), or will default aircraft have a similar functionality as that of a default FSX 737-800? Well, then again, this brings up the whole topic of user accessibility and not forcing them to "study the aircraft operations for 6 weeks" (myself guilty!). 

Thanks again, and sorry for badgering you with questions! 

 

Best regards,

  Joe.

 

 

 

10 Print "Thank you Joe"

20 GOTO 10

Run

 

We will have more news on this hopefully next week Joe. What I can say is they are definitely developers you will all know. We just can't talk about it at the moment due to some very boring behind the scenes business reasons. Over the past 2 years, we have made our intentions clear with respect to welcoming and working with developers, both big and small, on FSX: SE. We fully intend to continue those relationships and looking forward will be welcoming both existing and new developers to the Dovetail Games Flight Simulator platform.

 

I can't really answer your second question at the moment. As you would expect our focus is really on the sim engine and not the content at this stage of development. Although we do have a few ideas. 

 

What I can say is that we will probably not go down the same lines that FSX did. That tried to offer simmers a taste of a diverse range of aircraft from day one and while that is great from a freedom point of view, it resulted in a selection of basic but functional aircraft that all felt the same to fly. We are more likely to concentrate on a smaller range or perhaps on a particular type to start with and then look t broaden the experience over time as part of long term development plan for the sim. This could of course all change between now and launch but that is certainly the direction development is currently heading down. For us the platform is really the focus for day one. 

 

That all said, something we are really keen to do is find ways to increase the connection between simmers and their aircraft. We don't want you to feel like you are just flying Aircraft A from options A,B,C and D. Instead we want you to feel like you are flying your aircraft. So for example, one idea we had was that each aircraft in the Flight Sim world will have a unique identification number, it won't just be generic Piper it would be your Piper. The sim would then track the history of that aircraft, how old it is, how long and how far you have flown it. Perhaps even requiring you to perform maintenance on it over time as it ages and parts break down. Once again to be clear (look I have got my underlining pen out again!) I am not promising that this will be in Flight Simulator day one but it is certainly areas like this that we are keen to explore long term as part of our goal of creating a living world of aviation. For now they are just ideas.

 

What do you think? 

 

- Martin 

Hi Martin,

 

I know that you're still working on DTG Fllight Simulator and specifically on its rendering engine, but I was wondering if you can already tell us if it will have:

 

.) cloud shadows on terrain

 

.) volumetric ground fog (i.e. ground partly foggy and partly clear)

 

This is something I have spoken about in some other answers Murmur. The best I can say is that we are making improvements to the graphics engine and this includes a brand new lighting system in the sim. I can't really talk about the fine details or features of that at this stage though. 

 

- Martin 

[JSilva 42]

 

 

We will have more news on this hopefully next week Joe. What I can say is they are definitely developers you will all know. We just can't talk about it at the moment due to some very boring behind the scenes business reasons. Over the past 2 years, we have made our intentions clear with respect to welcoming and working with developers, both big and small, on FSX: SE. We fully intend to continue those relationships and looking forward will be welcoming both existing and new developers to the Dovetail Games Flight Simulator platform.

I can't really answer your second question at the moment. As you would expect our focus is really on the sim engine and not the content at this stage of development. Although we do have a few ideas.

What I can say is that we will probably not go down the same lines that FSX did. That tried to offer simmers a taste of a diverse range of aircraft from day one and while that is great from a freedom point of view, it resulted in a selection of basic but functional aircraft that all felt the same to fly. We are more likely to concentrate on a smaller range or perhaps on a particular type to start with and then look t broaden the experience over time as part of long term development plan for the sim. This could of course all change between now and launch but that is certainly the direction development is currently heading down. For us the platform is really the focus for day one.

That all said, something we are really keen to do is find ways to increase the connection between simmers and their aircraft. We don't want you to feel like you are just flying Aircraft A from options A,B,C and D. Instead we want you to feel like you are flying your aircraft. So for example, one idea we had was that each aircraft in the Flight Sim world will have a unique identification number, it won't just be generic Piper it would be your Piper. The sim would then track the history of that aircraft, how old it is, how long and how far you have flown it. Perhaps even requiring you to perform maintenance on it over time as it ages and parts break down. Once again to be clear (look I have got my underlining pen out again!) I am not promising that this will be in Flight Simulator day one but it is certainly areas like this that we are keen to explore long term as part of our goal of creating a living world of aviation. For now they are just ideas.

What do you think?

- Martin

I'm kind of interested on how that would turn out.

[DTG Martin 213]

Did any of your pick up this months issue of PC Pilot Magazine? Did you see the first look article about Flight School and the interview with Steve Hood? 

 

What did you all think? 

 

- Martin 

[ErichB 3,643]

Is the pic of the aircraft taxiing on the cover page an in-game screenshot?