ESP - More Questions for ACES

[jordanal 70]

Phil,A few more questions/clarifications about ESP if you don't mind. I have to brief my employer about possible uses and products, and what ESP brings to the table.1) $99 "Client" - Is this the ESP version of our current simconnect client?2) Will current/future add-ons and enhancements designed for FSX work within ESP?3) Could development of a given widget begin on FSX and then easily port-over to ESP once rebranding and licensing become necessary?4) You mention licenses of ESP in packs of 5; will we be able to purchase a single license for initial development, prior to the branding and re-ship phase of our product?Thanks in advance for your always insightful replies.

[jordanal 70]

I probably should clarify question # 2 above regarding add-ons.This is assuming that a given add-on for FSX/ESP was properly licensed for resale with the originating author/developer. I just realized that this will adversly affect the use of many add-ons in this commercial version.

[PhilTaylor 45]

1) $799 client, $99 SDK2) FSX and ESP v1.0 are quite similar, so in general yes for those 2 versions. But testing will be required as there are some content differences. And for future versions, we have to get there so no promises at this point.3) Possibly. See 2.4) This will depend on some Volume Sales reseller making bulk purchases and re-selling singlets. Given how small we intend to start, it is not clear to me at what point that reseller activity will commence.

[jordanal 70]

Ahh, very good. Thanks again for you valuable time. I will pass along this information as well.

[AWACS 12]

What's ESP?Jeff

[jordanal 70]

It's a comercialized version of FS for industry. You can read more about it on Phil Taylor's blog website or search in this forum for ESP. It was announced on the 14th of Nov.

[Guest timmo]

Hi Phil- If I could get a couple of clarifications as well, that would be great. Im in a similar position as Al and id like to let my employer know about the future possibiities of ESP as a Geospatial visualisation tool for the organisation.a) Will ESP work 'out of the box' or will programming/tweaking need to be carried before use? Basically, all I need is FSX with commercial licensing and I dont see any need, at this stage, to extend the sim using addons/code etc. This would be used to create Geospatial visualisations using GIS analysis output (i.e. predicted flood extents, catchment visualisation, proposed development visualisation etc) for regional/local government needs.:( Do you predict that the SDK tools will be revamped to allow greater interaction with GIS software? (i.e. it would be useful to have a shapefile point to XML > BGL tool to allow quick placement of objects based on existing data, it would also be really good to have a shapefile to agn tool etc) Or would this be the domain of the solution providers?Cheers in advance.Tim

[PhilTaylor 45]

a) I suppose it could be used that way; Tim could answer if additional work is required by the solution provider or if a vanilla install of ESP will just run on the end-customers' machine.:( It is hard to predict the future, we will have to let future releases play out. Customer requests will be used to drive future feature sets is all we know for sure. Certainly solution providers may add value to suit their needs, but I suspect tools developed by them will not be generally released.

[AWACS 12]

So is it better than FSX?

[PhilTaylor 45]

As Tim and I have mentioned, it is a branch of the FSX codebase with a small set of changes.

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL 663]

A couple of other questions for Phil Taylor , approximately when is the release date and will you be assembling a list of professional developers and if so how does one get on it..Freelancers tend to do the work that

[PhilTaylor 45]

As stated in the original PR, Jan 1 2008 is the date ESP appears on the Volume Sales list.I believe I mentioned we are starting small and are working with a small set of solution providers. The solution providers will determine what 3rd parties they want to work with. Send me a PM about the DC3, the original is Aces right?

[beatle 0]

Hi Tim,a) Yes, ESP will work out of the box, but the install program doesn't install any shortcuts to launch it (either on the desktop, start menu, or Games Explorer on Vista), so the minimal amount of required work would be to create a shortcut to launch the app.:( At present we aren't providing any of these sorts of tools, but I know a couple of our Launch Partners have developed tools like this in-house, and its possible they might release their tools at some point (I don't know this will happen, I haven't talked to any of our Launch Partners myself).Check the http://www.microsoft.com/esp site middle of next week, we should be posting some info about our launch partners (including a nice video made by one of them, on their own, we didn't write the script for them or anything :-> ).