Beware!! Virtual Pilot 3D

[rprather]

A question popped up on another forum regarding the realism of a new simulator called Virtual Pilot 3D. As soon as I clicked the page, I was like "oh crap, not these guys again!" Many of you may remember when someone outright STOLE the free and open source simulator Flight Gear and re-branded it as "Pro Flight Simulator", which they sold. Now their website is shut down for violation of service (http://proflightpcgames.tk/).

Well it looks like they are back again with a new name and more stolen material. As I scrolled down the oddly familiar page page, I recognized one of the "screenshots" from elsewhere, but not from software. A few years back, NASA purchased software from me and hardware from Flight Deck Solutions for their Flight Deck Display Research Lab (FDDRL), and guess who's passing off the real shot as a "screenshot" from their software... Virtual Pilot:

Photo From NASA's website
http://humansystems.arc.nasa.gov/groups/FDDRL/images/cockpit_side.jpg

"Screenshot" from Virtual Pilot 3D
http://www.virtualpilot3d.com/images/real-scenery-new.jpg

Worse still, they stole 1 or more screenshots directly from Flight Gear's website:

http://www.virtualpilot3d.com/images/real-scenery-new.jpg

http://www.flightgear.org/wp-content/gallery/gallery-v2-6/thumbs/thumbs_fgfs-screen-147.jpg

Really pisses me off to see such blatant theft especially with ALL the hard work Gene and the crew continue to invest into an open source endeavor. If these thieves go by any other names, please post them here so it will pop up when people are researching on Google.

Robert

[Efe]

Correction on that second link:

"Screenshot" from Virtual Pilot 3D
http://www.virtualpilot3d.com/images/vs-side4.jpg

[Perik]

Hi

Here is a statment from Flightgear:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/VirtualPilot3D

and a Avsim thread:
http://forum.avsim.net/page/index.html/_/pri-news/virtualpilot3d-scam-alert-r299

SCAM / Fraud delux.