SDK : good news for the freeware crowd

[Dominique_K 10,149]

From FSElite.

Whilst developers have already gotten their hands on the SDK, Microsoft confirmed that anyone who buys the simulator will get access to all the same tools the team uses to create aircraft, scenery and missions. 

Can I say  : yeah !

In an unrelated info, MS has decided to be a Gold Member of the Blender Foundation. Just sayin’...

[arsenal82 120]

44 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

From FSElite.

Whilst developers have already gotten their hands on the SDK, Microsoft confirmed that anyone who buys the simulator will get access to all the same tools the team uses to create aircraft, scenery and missions. 

Can I say  : yeah !

In an unrelated info, MS has decided to be a Gold Member of the Blender Foundation. Just sayin’...

that is the way to do it

they need everybody onboard !!

Edited July 30, 2020 by arsenal82

[andyjohnston.net 617]

Let's hope the tools are user-friendly.  Or that user-friendly versions become available in not too long.

[andrecarli737 177]

User created missions, freeware scenery, aircraft. Oh boy, I'm hyped!!

[jlund 380]

I hope the SDK can be used of us non programmers as well. I would really like to see something like Instant Scenery Designer like we had for FSX to place all sorts of things in an quick and easy way.

[wim123 763]

3 hours ago, andrecarli737 said:

User created missions, freeware scenery, aircraft. Oh boy, I'm hyped!!

yesss, but you need to remember this, thsi sim is way more complex than any previous ones, so making addon planes...

well i dare say thats going to be a heck of a job. i do hope missions will be a bit easier.

[Dominique_K 10,149]

55 minutes ago, wim123 said:

yesss, but you need to remember this, thsi sim is way more complex than any previous ones, so making addon planes...

well i dare say thats going to be a heck of a job. i do hope missions will be a bit easier.

Very few of us can do a decent aircraft but making small sceneries if not easy was not too difficult in FSX/P3D.  The P3D SDK was completed by an array of free powerful tools developed by the gentlemen of FSDeveloper.  I’d say that many of us would love to continue. 

[tweekz 2,165]

Would be awesome if a capable freeware dev modifies the default A320 (or any other aircraft) -> like the XP Zibo.

[Farlis 2,287]

With the level of visual fidelity the aircraft have in this sim, I simply don't see anyone making this kind of quality for free.

Those days are probably over.

[RudyB24 296]

That's good news!

[virtualstuff 758]

6 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

From FSElite.

Whilst developers have already gotten their hands on the SDK, Microsoft confirmed that anyone who buys the simulator will get access to all the same tools the team uses to create aircraft, scenery and missions. 

Can I say  : yeah !

In an unrelated info, MS has decided to be a Gold Member of the Blender Foundation. Just sayin’...

Great times ahead 🙂

[bonchie 2,305]

6 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

Let's hope the tools are user-friendly.  Or that user-friendly versions become available in not too long.

I think the airport editor at least has a visual UI. They showed it in a feature discovery video. That's a huge part of freeware development. Biggest favor Asobo could do themselves is to have an airport gateway like XP11. 

[dtrjones 356]

2 hours ago, Farlis said:

With the level of visual fidelity the aircraft have in this sim, I simply don't see anyone making this kind of quality for free.

Those days are probably over.

Interesting, we will see. Third party developers I understand have already gone WAY BEYOND default planes visually in the exterior and interior from some of the comments from Aerosoft. So that would make it even more challenging...

[dtrjones 356]

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Very few of us can do a decent aircraft but making small sceneries if not easy was not too difficult in FSX/P3D.  The P3D SDK was completed by an array of free powerful tools developed by the gentlemen of FSDeveloper.  I’d say that many of us would love to continue. 

Can I put my requests through to you Dominique! I was thinking Straford Olympic Park in East London 😉

[Chock 17,769]

3 hours ago, Farlis said:

With the level of visual fidelity the aircraft have in this sim, I simply don't see anyone making this kind of quality for free.

Those days are probably over.

Maybe. I doubt you'll see a freebie complex airliner, but a more simpler obscure type which wouldn't necessarily be a big seller, yet is one that is someone (or several people's) personal obsession to the point where they would create it as a labour of love, is still in the realms of possibility.

In some ways, the capabilities of a fancier sim which can indulge in more graphical whistles and bells, make things easier because you don't necessarily have to jump through hoops or think outside the box to pull off things which a lesser sim is capable of displaying. Anyone who has ever designed an aeroplane or some scenery for a previous version of FS or P3D with its older DX-bound limitations and limited amount of animation presets will know what I'm talking about here, for example, having to use the wing fold animation assignment for a different animation you want, or creating an effect to try and mimic a heat blur because the sim won't support it visually with a GPU call.

A lot of the visual fidelity is a function of two things which don't really impact on the difficulty of creating things in any really more significant amount of work than was previously the case with older sim, and in some ways it is even less work. For example, if you have to draw a curved leading edge for you model, when you have to keep the polygons down, as you did in FSX, you have to think carefully about exactly how many vector points and where they will be on the curve of that leading edge to still depict it reasonably well, but with more recent stuff where the sim won't crash because it isn't 32 bit, you can simply draw the curve you want with a few more vector points without the necessity to thin about where to shave off a few points, so it is actually a bit quicker as well as looking better. Similarly, if you use PBR textures to replicate materials, instead of having to hand-paint a representation of them, this is a much speedier working method overall.

I guess time will tell when we see exactly what is in that SDK, but no SDK is designed to be a deliberate PITA, since it is intended to be a usable set of tools, so presumably they've done an okay job of it.