FSX vs. ESP

[Guest malton12]

What is the difference between FSX and ESP? Is it the same thing, except that FSX is for general gamers, whereas ESP is for commercial organizations and requires the buyer to purchase a minimum of 5 licenses?

[PhilTaylor 45]

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007...ore-on-esp.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007...p-part-iii.aspxmay be of interest

[Guest fsxmissionguy]

Think of it this way.Suppose you thought there would be a market for Giraffe Simulator (where people would ride around on giraffes and race them in Reno, NV the day after the airplanes leave.)You could create that game using ESP, brand it, and sell it to the public.With FSX, all you could really do is sell people the simulated giraffe ... with ESP, you could resell the complete package (world and all.)

[n4gix 4,947]

>Think of it this way.>>Suppose you thought there would be a market for Giraffe>Simulator (where people would ride around on giraffes and race>them in Reno, NV the day after the airplanes leave.)>>You could create that game using ESP, brand it, and sell it to>the public.>>With FSX, all you could really do is sell people the simulated>giraffe ... with ESP, you could resell the complete package>(world and all.)That's not quite accurate. You could sell the "Solution Package" only. The customer would still have to purchase a minimum five license copy of ESP before it would be useful......at least, that's how it is at this juncture.

[Mike T 208]

Not very much, except for the intent and licensing schema. FSX was meant to be utilized by the consumer space and ESP was meant to be utilized by the Government / Commercial space.For instance let's say you, at home, are bent on being a Naval Aviator. You purchase FSX for $59.00, develop your own hyper-detailed aircraft carrier and F/A 18 Hornet with every switch modeled. A year later you finish and you utilize it to practice carrier landings and everything else you can do with an F/A 18 until even Tom Cruise is jealous of your Top Gun skills and your friends start calling you Maverick. YOUR cost is $59.00 and your time to make the sim what you want it to be.Now, let's say you graduate from the Naval Academy and you are now Lt. Maverick, Naval Aviator and wish to use FSX to train your class of wanna-be pilots. As it were, you could buy a bunch of copies of FSX and use it to train each class of Naval Aviators with your Aircraft Carrier / FA-18 Hornet that you developed. Microsoft sees this as a "gray area". Enter ESP.You buy 5 licenses (minimum) at $799.00 US a pop and distribute your Aircraft Carrier / FA-18 hornet to Lockheed Martin and four other military contractors to refine and make even more realistic. Lockheed Martin wins the bids, buys 10,000 more ESP licenses at $799 a pop, then sells the rebranded ESP, the Hi-Fidelity Aviation Retraining Technology Simulator (F.A.R.T.S.) back to the Navy for $1,000,000 per license so that they can train your new aviators.What's the difference? Nothing. Same sim, same world, same SDK, same limitations, but aimed at getting commercial/government users of FSX to be more in alignment with with FSX EULA.

[PhilTaylor 45]

this is not entirely correct.sure, ESP 1.0 is based off the FSX+XPack product but does have both functionality and content differences. it is similar enough that it is close to the same world and can be developed for with the FSX SDK ( with some care ) but using the ESP SDK is more straightforward. and the ESP SDK is slightly different.it is certainly true that a commercial license is provided, as opposed to the single-user entertainment license of FSX. which means we have arranged a commercial license from the content providers whose content is contained in the product. that is why there are certain content differences, some content providers did not want to provide said commercial license.and there is the notion of enterprise level support for ESP solution providers. the ESP developer center and forums on msdn.microsoft.com are an example of what is being provided there.given the idea is to compete against higher-priced products with a comparable product at a lower price point - your pricing example is extremely unlikely. the next competitor price point is around 10k and that isnt for a complete world, so ESP is actually a significant savings over competitors.so it is somewhat the same, but somewhat different.

[scott967 62]

When I was in we had a huge number of mission planners from different vendors. Most of these were designed to "fly" the completed mission on "autopilot" to validate it. It would make a lot of sense to buy a COTS flight simulator, and just add the valued-added stuff like missile envelopes and masking and terminal tactics.scott s..

[jrhoads 6]

All of us including MS have known for quite sometime that "FS" is an extremely flexible platform that can do much more than being being simply a Flight Simulator. Although not optimized for much anything else, it certainly does lend itself to many other potential options and as stated previously, it is quite flexible.Many people including some very high profile customers have been using FS for research and development, training and familiarization, and many other specialized uses although the EULA strictly prohibits it.(Drum roll please)... Enter the MS Marketing dept... :D You gotta hand it to these guys to take a 50 dollar title and figure out how to sell it for 800 bucks a pop, minimum 5 copies.And enter ESP (which does not stand for anything specifically)ESP is simply a "Platform" Look at it as an OS of sorts.To get a "Solution" that works for your specific needs on the "ESP Platform" you need to either develop the "Solution" yourself, (good luck with that based on the current SDK) or enlist a "Solution provider" to do it for you.Personally, I welcome ESP for many reasons.And... Flight1 Aviation Technologies has indeed developed a solution not only from a solution provider perspective, but also addressing known limitations in the ESP user interface.Look for it very soon. VisPro. Virtual Instructor Station Pro.Regards,Jim RhoadsFlight1tech

[DadJokeCinema 145]

Giraffe Simulator would be fun.