Microsoft ACES studio (Flight Simulator) closed, an opportunity?

[jslinux]

bad news
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21981

An idea...

Some Aces developers move to id software and develop an amazing combat/simple civilian flight sim using id Tech 5, which is cross platform in development. Since id has seriously entertained the idea of eventually releasing Tech 5 as opensource, the studio appeals for a degree of investment and an advertising campaign with Ubuntu. Tech 5 is expanded along with a Linux games/opengl market. The result would be quite a feather in Mark Shuttleworth's cap.

Or is that ridiculous?

[cdekter]

If something could be developed that would replace MSFS and run on Linux, attracting the entire flightsim community to Linux... it would be a MAJOR win for Linux adoption.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Agreed. And two of the awesome upcoming technologies that I love mentioning could really come in handy. Libtelepathy could be used for some interesting multiplayer stuff (with geolocation information piped from the flight simulator, perhaps?) and MPX would allow people to interact really intuitively with the onboard controls.

First step: Make sure the necessary input devices have solid hardware support ;)

Personally, though, I think we need an open source (and fancier) version of the Orbiter space flight simulator. Terrestrial flight can come later. Then the dream for geolocation data over Telepathy would convince developers to support multiple planets in those standards early on so we'll be all set for when people actually do start to colonize the moon. Then Linux would become the defacto interstellar operating system.

[mips]

There is actually someting better than MS Flight Simulator, it's called X-Plane and runs on Linux, OSX & Windows.

It also has FAA certification for certain levels of flight training.

They also have a spaceflight/orbiter simulation. They use physics models to determine plane behavior unlike normal flightsims that use lookup tables, this allows you to design new planes that behave according to physics.

They currently have special pricing for MS users wanting to migrate.

Check it out:
http://www.x-plane.com/
http://www.x-plane.com/demo.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_(simulator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_%28simulator))

Space Shuttle & Mars flight:
http://www.x-plane.com/features.html (http://www.google.co.za/search?q=x-plane+9+review&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a)

[Mr. Picklesworth]

I didn't realize X-Plane ran on Linux! I've always been impressed by the weight of its retail package :P

[jslinux]

FAA do not certify the software, they certify a platform, either a simulator or flight training device, which includes software, such as PFC with X-plane http://www.flypfc.com/ The hardware/feedback is much more important. Microsoft simply never catered to that market until recently-ESP with companies such as Redbird Flight Simulations http://www.redbirdflightsimulations.com/rbfmx.asp
While Microsoft vaguely claimed to be fulfilling previous contracts, the future of ESP is uncertain.

People often say this about X-plane but do actual comparisons-and ask actual general aviation pilots-and you will find that X-plane is not inherently better than Flight Simulator. Throw in a few top notch payware add ons-e.g. Active Sky, Radar Contact (forget about ATC on X-plane), Dreamfleet, RealAir, Level D Simulations, RealityXP-and you will find that much more realism is available than with anything for X-plane-which is not to say that it isn't possible with X-plane, but rather that the development quality has been pushed higher for the more popular sim.

The fidelity of certain airliner add ons, such as those by PMDG, again Level D, and Leonardo is pretty amazing, particularly if you add hardware. Also, Project Magenta isn't yet compatible with X-plane.

Table look-up is pretty sufficient for simulating the physics of normal (key word) plane flight-lift, gravity, drag, thrust-unlike driving where there are multiple tire axes. Outside that envelop neither X-plane nor Flight Simulator fair so well; but to my knowledge, RealAir have done the best approximation of spin behavior, for example, developing for Flight Simulator, not X-plane. Nevertheless, X-plane's model concept may ultimately prove itself to better accommodate outside-the-envelope behavior-though it hasn't yet. And helicopters on X-plane are not that much better. Helicopters must be too complex to simulate properly at this point, it seems.

Just because you can throw an imaginary construct into the X-plane sandbox style environment and it immediately takes "flight" doesn't mean the end result is more realistic. Nor does twitchy mean more realistic.

Brian Beckman, who worked on Forza Motorsport, talks about game physics at length...
https://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Brian-Beckman-The-Physics-in-Games-Real-Time-Simulation-Explained/?Page=3

X-plane continues to improve and I imagine the add on market for it will expand, yet just because I hate Windows doesn't mean I automatically ignore everything related to the product of a studio owned by Microsoft.

[mips]

I didn't realize X-Plane ran on Linux! I've always been impressed by the weight of its retail package :P

Well right now it's going at US$40 and I'm seriously considering putting my credit card details down.

[mips]

FAA do not certify the software, they certify a platform, either a simulator or flight training device, which includes software, such as PFC with X-plane http://www.flypfc.com/ The hardware/feedback is much more important. Microsoft simply never catered to that market until recently-ESP with companies such as Redbird Flight Simulations http://www.redbirdflightsimulations.com/rbfmx.asp
While Microsoft vaguely claimed to be fulfilling previous contracts, the future of ESP is uncertain.

People often say this about X-plane but do actual comparisons-and ask actual general aviation pilots-and you will find that X-plane is not inherently better than Flight Simulator. Throw in a few top notch payware add ons-e.g. Active Sky, Radar Contact (forget about ATC on X-plane), Dreamfleet, RealAir, Level D Simulations, RealityXP-and you will find that much more realism is available than with anything for X-plane-which is not to say that it isn't possible with X-plane, but rather that the development quality has been pushed higher for the more popular sim.

The fidelity of certain airliner add ons, such as those by PMDG, again Level D, and Leonardo is pretty amazing, particularly if you add hardware. Also, Project Magenta isn't yet compatible with X-plane.

Table look-up is pretty sufficient for simulating the physics of normal (key word) plane flight-lift, gravity, drag, thrust-unlike driving where there are multiple tire axes. Outside that envelop neither X-plane nor Flight Simulator fair so well; but to my knowledge, RealAir have done the best approximation of spin behavior, for example, developing for Flight Simulator, not X-plane. Nevertheless, X-plane's model concept may ultimately prove itself to better accommodate outside-the-envelope behavior-though it hasn't yet. And helicopters on X-plane are not that much better, despite marketing claims. Helicopters must be too complex to simulate properly, it seems.

Just because you can throw an imaginary construct into the X-plane sandbox style environment and it immediately takes "flight" doesn't mean the end result is more realistic. Nor does twitchy mean more realistic.

Brian Beckman, who worked on Forza Motorsport, talks about game physics at length...
https://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Brian-Beckman-The-Physics-in-Games-Real-Time-Simulation-Explained/?Page=3

X-plane continues to improve and I imagine the add on market for it will expand, yet just because I hate Windows doesn't mean I automatically ignore everything related to the product of a studio owned by Microsoft.

Which company do you represent? I ask this from seeing your post history which is zero. I'm not saying your opinion is invalid but it does raise an eyebrow.

Physics models will always trump lookup tables.

[CarpKing]

Which company do you represent? I ask this from seeing your post history which is zero. I'm not saying your opinion is invalid but it does raise an eyebrow.

Careful with accusations. Posts in the Cafe don't contribute to post count, so he could have thousands of posts and it would still say zero.

Edit: Nevermind, I looked it up and these are his only two posts.

[phrostbyte]

There is also FlightGear

http://www.flightgear.org/

[mips]

Careful with accusations. Posts in the Cafe don't contribute to post count, so he could have thousands of posts and it would still say zero.


I think you might not understand how post count work. If you have say 10 posts in other areas of the forum your post count will always be displayed as 10 posts even in the Cafe. If he had thousands of posts it would say so in the Cafe.

Zero posts means exactly that, zero posts across the entire forum. Posts in the cafe however will not contribute to your post count.

There is no need to look it up.

[jslinux]

"Physics models will always trump lookup tables."

It's not an absolute world: depends on the application and especially the models.

"Which company do you represent? I ask this from seeing your post history which is zero. I'm not saying your opinion is invalid but it does raise an eyebrow."

If anything sounds like an advertisement it's your first post. Do you work for X-plane?

No, I don't work for any software company. I'm a student almost full time and would detest the business world. In fact, I haven't touched a flight simulator in months and don't plan to. I just had an idea that's pretty outlandish-delivered in a fashion that would be silly as a business approach-and I wanted to see what people thought. Most of what I mentioned about Flight Simulator and its enhancements is merely echoing what is talked about on the enthusiast forums.

I've been reading these forums/using ubuntu and distro hopping for years. So I don't appreciate that tone of inquiry. You also totally ignored the meat of what I said.

[mips]

If anything sounds like an advertisement it's your first post. Do you work for X-plane?


I've been reading these forums/using ubuntu and distro hopping for years. So I don't appreciate that tone of inquiry. You also totally ignored the meat of what I said.

No, I don't work for Laminar Research and have no affiliation with them whatsoever. Would be hard seeing my geographical location.

Apologies. Many posts where the user has zero post count dissing or promoting a product is usually spam on these forums and get jailed. I apologise as this is not the case with you.

[jslinux]

I see, thanks for that.

And I was only being rhetorical when I asked if you worked for X-plane.

So I'm sorry too...

[mips]

And I was only being rhetorical when I asked if you worked for X-plane.

So I'm sorry too...

No problem, thanks.

[3rdalbum]

Flightgear seems alright from a non-pilot's perspective, but I tried downloading some of the maps from real locations, and they didn't bear any resemblence to those actual parts of the world. I was disappointed. That's not Flightgear's fault though.

I used to love Chuck Yaeger's Air Combat for the Macintosh, it's just a shame there's not a realistic air combat game for Linux. Or is there?

[mips]

I used to love Chuck Yaeger's Air Combat for the Macintosh, it's just a shame there's not a realistic air combat game for Linux. Or is there?

I dunno about Linux but I saw previews of H.A.W.X. on tv the other day and it looked really cool. Maybe it will run in WINE?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Air_Combat
http://www.hawxgame.com/
http://blog.ubi.com/hawx/