POLL/QUESTIONAIRE - for new flight simulator, kick starter project

[aviator738ops]

Hi all,

I am starting this thread to try and get some feedback, opinions, and thoughts about a new flight simulator platform. There is a method to my madness so your cooperation is appreciated.

***A Current platform is in development that has potential to support a flight/combined simulator*** your opinions are needed.

I am in an information gathering stage. Please answer maturely and honestly from the perspective of a general simmer, enthusiast simmer, and potential simmer;


1) Would you support a kick starter project for a new flight simulator or combined simulator platform?

2) What would your expectations be for a new flight simulator or combined simulator platform?

3) What would convince you to switch to a new flight simulator or combined simulator platform?



Please think about your current experience(s) either with FSX or X-Plane and other simulator packages you use (including combat sim i.e DCS) and answer as clearly as possible. The more (genuine) responses this thread gets the more reliable the information gathered is.

Feel free to add anything else you think that relates to you (hypothetically) supporting a kick starter project and (hypothetically) switching to another simulator platform.



Yours seriously,

Kelvin.

[tennyson]

Hi Kelvin.

Whilst I am not doubting your sincerity for a minute, the fact that this is your first post on this site and the question you ask is a bit far fetched, I have trouble in answering it.

There is no doubt that there are great minds out there whittling away at the answers to our flight sim problems, but when we see the likes of Microsoft fail with Flight, the current state of economies around the globe and the likes of P3D and FSX (revamped with all the add-ons), I'd be hard pressed in putting my money or resources elsewhere.

I wish you well and I'll be watching this thread for ground breaking news. Good luck,



Frank Cooper

[XOrionFE]

I agree with Frank.  Proper forum etiquette would suggest introducing yourself first and giving everyone a little background before jumping right into market research polling.   

How about giving us some more information about yourself in the intro forum.   I'm sure everyone would love to answer your questions once framed better.

Scott

[Maurice]

Kevin,

To add to Frank's & Scott's comments, if you seriously expected a serious response here, perhaps you should have added some details about who you are, your qualifications, your resources, your reasons for asking, your objectives etc...

You said a "current platform is in development"... I say fantastic! I want to know more about it.

As it is, your question sounds like someone asking would you support another aircraft manufacturer or another gold exploration?... Seriously?

Maurice

[MLeavy737]

   Yeah your definately going to have to do better than that first post If you want to get people on board with a project like that Kelvin..

Heres a few questions for you to get started...

1) who are you and what is your experience in aviation?

2) programming.. Give us some examples of software you developed, i would think you have a website showcasing some of your stuff or your teams demos.

3) sim building.. Any experience there?

Things along those lines.. Honestly Kelvin, im very much into game and app programming and i see questions like these in forums constantly that go nowhere. I would assume you realize that a flight sim is no platformer or angry birds type game lol..

If you plan on writing the next hit flight sim i think you should be living and breathing aviation! And if that were the case you would probably be writing one anyhow and not asking for funding.. Just my guess though.

Anyhow, good luck with the project and it would definately be interesting to see something new in the works!

Mike L

[aviator738ops]

Hi all,

I have misrepresented myself here and apologies for this. I don't meant to gate crash of that comes close to my entrance here.

Seeing as it is late here and I have an early start at work tomorrow I will post back here most likely tomorrow evening (my time NZT) giving you an introduction about myself and my intentions here.

The posts that go nowhere are too frequent, I completely agree. I am one of many who have to put up with this. I'll be back to introduce myself.

Regards,

Kelvin

[Garys]

Sorry Kelvin,

FSX took a team of developers at microsoft years to write. Now the team at Lockheed are taking just as long for Prepar3d 2.0. Same story for xplane 10. Flightgear has been a work in progress for god nows how long now.

The fact that you cant take 10 minutes out of your day to introduce yourself because you have to get up for work in the morning, tells me that this project will never see the light of day. Sorry but Im not interested.

Gary

[HarryZ]

Kelvin,

I won't repeat what others have already stated about your survey.

But there is one big aspect of a possible new flight simulator platform....profitability!

It is no secret that PC gaming has been and continues to be a slowly dying venue.  Just ask Microsoft.  Stores which once sold a ton of various PC gaming programs now sell few, if any.

At the moment there is a decent number of PC flight simulator customers out there but in the big commercial picture, this number represents a  very small market.  The industry has shifted to high end users and professional training simulators and that really reduces any possibility of large, viable sales. 

In order to make any kind of decent profit in this area, any company establishing a new simulator platform would need a huge distribution network and big sales to make it work.  And under the current situation that isn't happening. 

I've heard that MS is going to stop production of FS X.  I doubt Lockheed Martin will replace FS X's presence in the flight simulator market with Prepare 3D and that leaves X-Plane trying to stay afloat.

The third party industry, which once thrived on add-ons for FS X, will have to change their mode of business to survive.  I've been in the flight simulation software business for over 14 years now and have seen the changes taking place, slowly but surely.

I more than most hope this business can survive but a lot of things are going to have to change for it to do so.

Harry

[aviator738ops]

Let me start by giving you a little rundown about me and my intentions here.

My name is Kelvin and in addition to having many years of experience with Flight Simulator I also have real world experience flying. Actually I am trying to complete my PPL. Overall, I have spent a few thousand dollars to get a flight simulator setup to recreate my experience as a private pilot used mainly for my training in single engine aircraft.

I am not a programmer but a very keen supporter and texturer of a specific project you may have heard of (called Outerra) mainly creating for the upcoming biome system. I'm sure quite a few of you have heard of this ambitious project. If not, you can pop over to the forum here (www.outerra.com).

I am actually polling for the Outerra developers to try to ascertain whether a project like this would draw crowd funding, and if so, what people would be prepared to invest to support such a venture.

I must apologise about the apparent secrecy in my initial post but it was not to confuse or create conflict. I see that a lot of people take this seriously which I have realised which is also why I am posting inquisitively and objectively.

I'm not sure how you all see this type of project being supported but to understand your view on it will give some clarity on the possible direction of development with a flight/combined simulator platform. The only way to find out if or how people may support a project like this is to ask.

I realise the cost aspect of a huge undertaking like this and there is just cause for people to resist support for it. I would hope that this explanation could now take away the focus from me in this thread and return to what the thread is about so that the developers can see how the community reacts to the following question

"What would convince you to support the development of an Outerra-backed and -based flight or combined simulation platform?"

I am acting impartially here so I don't want to contaminate the thread with persuasion rather I am more interested in feeding opinions with questions so they can be analyzed further to gain a better understanding of the population who may support this project.

I do appreciate and respect people's opinions. 

Warm Regards,

Kelvin

[XOrionFE]

Thank you for the explanation Kelvin.   Now having seen the Outerra site you have my attention.   Crowdfunding is a great idea also.   I would be supportive.   Probably to the tune of $100 only but multiply that by tens of thousands of sim fans and it adds up.   Outerra looks like it would be an awesome playground for our sims.

Scott

[Trevor Hale]

Kelvin.

All this seems fine and well and enough to get us all excited, but I think most of us are gun shy.  Like candy being dangled in front of a baby, we have had many promises and no delivery. 

I for one would like to see something concrete and working, even with one basic aircraft before I could even think about shelling out.  I have to agree with Harry above, there is no money in this for developers...  Never before has a developer "cared" for the guy building a simulator in his home, Developers care about the bottom dollar.  How much money can they make, and although there are thousands of simulator enthusiests, its not enough to make a team of developers rich. 

I think it is an awesome, Idea..  I think if you can make it happen I will be one to look at it, but at this point it is all ideas and nothing concrete.

But for the record your screenshots look amazing.

Trev

[tennyson]

You have mine, too.

I do remember seeing outerra a few years back and imagined a sim with that sort of graphics back then.

From your post, I've visited the site and downloaded the demo, with the $15 trial.

It's extremely impressive and would make for a perfect sim engine.

If this sim engine has been around for this long, why haven't the owners waited this long for input. From what I gather, you are not the owner of the engine, so why haven't they approached the forum?
I'm not trying to be difficult, just strikes me as an odd way of going about things.

These guys obviously have the goods and could easily port this over to something that the flight sim community could use, right now, so why do they need funding?

And from what I see on their forum, there are no shortage of game and real world opportunities happening with it (even oculus rift support!!!), so I'm not really sure why you think they need us.

I'd be interested in seeing where this goes and also to see if Outerra can get something happening within this industry.


Frank

[aviator738ops]

Thanks all for your open mindedness with this thread, I really should have been a little more tactful coming here from the beginning.

I would also like to mention that Outerra is not my baby per se but is developed by a small team of Indie developers, I am a massive supporter of their project having also creating textures for the biome system yet to be implemented into the Outerra Engine.

I would like to send you over to Avsim at the below link s well as my home forum NZFF for you to see further comments and suggestions regarding this topic to perhaps open you up to a wider scope of opinion to see other people make up their minds as to whether they would support/crowd fund Outerra.

The Outerra project is in Alpha state and many more elements are too be implemented (if you go to the Outerra forum linked on the Outerra.com site you will get a better picture of the project).

Avsim thread
http://forum.avsim.net/topic/411219-pollquestionaire-for-new-flightcombined-simulator-kick-starter/

NZFF.org Thread
http://nzff.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=20143

And my youtube channel with some videos of the engine
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbrCtQCzlg7xZcoA1e1QQ0A

Kind Regards,

Kelvin

[Maurice]

This is a really impressive graphics engine which would make flight simming a quantum better than with FSX or even XPlane.  The only hesitation I would have in giving any kind of financial support would be because I currently have no idea where the developers are headed with this.

By that I mean, are they going to mostly or entirely aim their amazing graphics at virtual reality gaming and if not just gaming, are they thinking of something similar to what Microsoft tried with Flight, meaning a flying game as opposed to a serious flight simulation engine with all the inherent difficulties associated with the simulation of flight dynamics and realistic avionics software.

The developers may be geniuses at programming graphics software (and they certainly look like they are geniuses), but aerodynamics is a different ball game, so what is their expertise in that subject?

Assuming they are serious about serious fight simulation, what kind of interfacing would they use to attach to real or other  instrumentation currently available now. In other words, would we need to abandon everything we own hardware wise? Hopefully FSUIPC or a slight variant would be available to allow us to use existing hardware and Avionics software that we currently use in our simulators.

These are important questions which may have been answered in the forums you mentioned. But I do think this is a very exciting & promising development which certainly merits the attention & full support of the sim community if the intent is to develop it further as a viable & realistic flight simulation platform.

Heading for the forums now to search for answers

Maurice

[aviator738ops]

This is a really impressive graphics engine which would make flight simming a quantum better than with FSX or even XPlane.  The only hesitation I would have in giving any kind of financial support would be because I currently have no idea where the developers are headed with this.

By that I mean, are they going to mostly or entirely aim their amazing graphics at virtual reality gaming and if not just gaming, are they thinking of something similar to what Microsoft tried with Flight, meaning a flying game as opposed to a serious flight simulation engine with all the inherent difficulties associated with the simulation of flight dynamics and realistic avionics software.

The developers may be geniuses at programming graphics software (and they certainly look like they are geniuses), but aerodynamics is a different ball game, so what is their expertise in that subject?

Assuming they are serious about serious fight simulation, what kind of interfacing would they use to attach to real or other  instrumentation currently available now. In other words, would we need to abandon everything we own hardware wise? Hopefully FSUIPC or a slight variant would be available to allow us to use existing hardware and Avionics software that we currently use in our simulators.

These are important questions which may have been answered in the forums you mentioned. But I do think this is a very exciting & promising development which certainly merits the attention & full support of the sim community if the intent is to develop it further as a viable & realistic flight simulation platform.

Heading for the forums now to search for answers

Maurice

It is very impressive indeed given that it is still in Alpha state. I completely agree when you say you don't know the direction of Outerra. This thread and others I have made at other forums are intended to be able to see whether crowd funding is possible with the project. I'm sure your posts are being read by Brano (a lead developer of Outerra) for him to see the consensus.

As for the flight dynamics, JSBSim is used but I would go over to Outerra.com and get to the forum to ask this question and get an answer.

[fsaviator]

Mau, you read my mind and took the wind out my sails.

I'll say what we are all thinking.  If Outerra is interested in funding from this Community, we want assurances that they will build with the Flight Simmer in mind, and not the game enthusiast.  If I can't interface tens of thousands of dollars of parts, pieces, and hardware then I am not interested.

If they want to build a game, I would suggest they take a lesson from Microsoft, change direction and port it to the XBox

I love this emoticon: 

[Maurice]

  I'm sure your posts are being read by Brano (a lead developer of Outerra) for him to see the consensus.

If that is truly the case, it would be really nice if he could log in as well and enlighten us about his ultimate goal (it should not be a secret). Reading his personal answer would go a long way into making believers & supporters out of us.

Maurice

[cameni]

Hi everybody,
Let me briefly introduce myself - I'm Brano Kemen, one of the Outerra developers. Outerra is a small independent technology company developing a world rendering engine, designed to maximally utilize modern GPU architecture and to provide a scalable 3D environment for use in simulators, visualizations and games. We are based in Slovakia, EU.

One of our many goals with it is a global simulation platform able to support multiple simulation cores and content from 3rd party developers, unifying the worlds of flight, rail, ground, space and water simulation into a single shared environment (not necessarily online). We believe that such a unified environment will have man positives for the developers and users, like:

• a larger market and exposure for the developers
• not having to deal with environment rendering for developers of specialized simulators (gliders, wingsuit ..)
• ability to switch between the simulators seamlessly in-game, e.g arriving at an airport driving a bus, taking off with a plane
• ...

What Kelvin came up with here was the result of our discussions about a development of a flight simulator based on Outerra (OT). I wondered if the flight sim community would be able to crowdfund the development of a new simulator in a similar way like various other developments got funded on Kickstarter. Mind you, this was our private discussion, but Kelvin being a man of action didn't hesitate and made this poll with 3 questions in hope to get the answers.

But originally there was just one question - do you think that flight sim community as such can get together and successfully fund a new global simulator project, given what your realistic estimate for the cost of such development would be? The question wasn't particularly tied to the OT engine, but knowing the project would be based on it can significantly alter the outcome.

Just to be sure that there's no misunderstanding - OT engine itself still needs 2-3 years of development to get all the features and capabilities that a complex simulator requires. The development of such a simulator itself will take at least as much, if we are talking about a serious simulator platform and not a toy. It will require a skilled development team. There's a considerable risk in the project, the simulator field is both demanding and relatively small.

To be honest, I have my doubts whether the crowd-funding will work for this and will be able to reach the required critical mass, but I'm interested to hear your opinions and will also gladly clarify anything that may be unclear about OT.

Cheers,
-Brano

[bernard S]

AH.... now I understand what you are trying to achieve ... HLA  Universe... I agree with you the flight sim community may not be the place to get such funding DCS have such an environment underneath it all as the games we see are dumbed down big time....   

[Maurice]

Thank you Brano for clarifying your goals/intentions. I do not want to speak for anyone else, but for me, waiting that long is not a viable option at my age.

Based on what has happened to FSX, MS Flight, P3D and the emergence of XPlane as a viable option for cockpit builders, I doubt you will get very much interest from the cockpit building community at this time.

However, I think there would likely be more interest from desktop simmers but typically, they are much more frugal with their money so financial support at this stage is not too likely either in my opinion (but I could be wrong

That is really too bad because a realistic flight simulator with Outerra graphics would really be something, so I hope my assessment is totally wrong and that you are able to obtain funding from other interested sources.

Keep in mind as well that this is just my personal opinion which may very well differ from everyone else.

Best regards,

Maurice

[tennyson]

I thank you too, Brano, for clearing up some of the misconceptions here.

I'm still a little confused, tho.

Kickstarter has to have a defined start and finish of a project and if you are talking about years of development, then how would that work?

I was also under the impression that Kickstarter was for new projects within the USA and UK, and that it raises funds , from what I've seen, typically no more than a few hundred thousand dollars.

How would you qualify for Kickstarter as you are based in the EU?
And how would a few hundred grand help start a full blown flight simulation?

Surely, there are far better funding options that would suit the scope of Outerra?

I'm sorry to be so inquisitive here, but that is what you asked for in your initial post.
I'd just like to ask one more question, tho, if I may?

I toured the Outerra site after Kelvin's first post , downloaded the demo and tried it.
I was so very impressed. The speed and rendering were so far ahead of everything I've seen up to this point.

What I'm wondering tho, is how fast will it be once the weather engine is in there, the various nav aids and extra airports (21,000), and all of the other associated information that we need for a full blown simulator?

Please don't take my scepticism as criticism as I'm hoping that I'm wrong here and that this was a project that could really take off, so some answers to those questions would go a long way to affirming my interest.


Frank Cooper

[cameni]

I'm still a little confused, tho.

Kickstarter has to have a defined start and finish of a project and if you are talking about years of development, then how would that work?

Well this here was just in search of your opinion whether a project like that could be community funded. Lets say it was decided that yes, then one would have to prepare a careful plan and find out how much money and time is required for a goal that has the potential to gain the support. Then a Kickstarter (or another) project could be launched, with a defined start/finish.

I was also under the impression that Kickstarter was for new projects within the USA and UK, and that it raises funds , from what I've seen, typically no more than a few hundred thousand dollars.

The most successful crowd-funded video game project Star Citizen, a "space trading and combat simulator" raised $10mil (project's website: $8mil, Kickstarter: $2mil). For Kickstarter funding alone here's a list of top-funded games: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/video%20games/most-funded#p1

Obviously the user base is much wider for these, and it's quite likely that even a higher commitment from fs fans won't compensate that, but that's basically what we wondered about.

How would you qualify for Kickstarter as you are based in the EU?

There are many more options than Kickstarter. What Kickstarter gives you is an exposure. However, in the case of a hard core simulation, that kind of exposure (mostly gamers) is probably not that significant factor, as the marketing would have to be carried on flight (and other types of) sim sites primarily.

It's also possible to establish a subsidiary for that purpose, and OT practically has to make one anyway because of dealings with US mil companies, although this would be better to keep separate. But that's just Kickstarter, there are other crowd-funding sites that may be usable.

Surely, there are far better funding options that would suit the scope of Outerra?

The funding is not for the Outerra itself, we are developing and licensing the engine normally regardless. It's purely about a hypothetical global simulator created with the help of Outerra and based on the tech, and it would have to be probably a joint venture with some of the existing sim content makers. Other funding options are possible, but they also come with disadvantages - partial loss of control being one, and generally they tend to push away a work of love and make it a strict business case. Which in case of a relatively niche area probably isn't very good. Tell the potential investors that "yeah, Microsoft pulled off, but we are soo much better ... "

I toured the Outerra site after Kelvin's first post , downloaded the demo and tried it.
I was so very impressed. The speed and rendering were so far ahead of everything I've seen up to this point.

What I'm wondering tho, is how fast will it be once the weather engine is in there, the various nav aids and extra airports (21,000), and all of the other associated information that we need for a full blown simulator?

It's of course hard to say the exact numbers now, we can only extrapolate here. But as an example: when you are on the ground level in a field, there's around 5 million triangles of grass rendered, atop of 3 million triangles for the scene. When Aerosoft came to us they talked about a scenery with half a million of triangles in FSX. Recently, a guy at avsim measured GPU utilization of FSX and OT and came up with 55% vs 99%, respectively. While he meant to sink us down with the numbers, thinking they imply OT uses more resources for the same kind of output, the utilization talks about how well the GPU pipeline is utilized. For FSX those 55% mean that the GPU waits for the data 45% of the time, doing nothing, while the CPU struggles to push the data through the narrow CPU-GPU bridge.

There's a huge difference what GPUs can do and how they are actually utilized by the existing software. Consequently, what people often assess based on the performance of the existing software is many times off the mark for a solution designed for the GPU from the start.

That said - nobody says it will be completely without problems and that it won't require a sophisticated tuning etc. But I believe we can use the existing performance to predict it, given that we continue in creating solutions tailored for the GPU platforms, while making sure that the parts that run on the CPU can exploit multiple cores (OT has its own thread/job scheduler for that).

Please don't take my scepticism as criticism as I'm hoping that I'm wrong here and that this was a project that could really take off, so some answers to those questions would go a long way to affirming my interest.

I eat skepticism for breakfast
Seriously, I'm much more afraid of a careless optimism, of people who aren't aware that there's a huge amount of work behind every serious thing and tend to oversimplify the matter beyond "what takes so long to add yyy when you already have got xxx"

-Brano

[blueskydriver]

I've been reading the thread and here is my best opinion. Forget Kickstarter, you and your team need your passports, and then you fly to the USA. There you show your product to companies like Boeing, JPL, NASA, US Military and etc to become a simulation contractor.

Think about it, look where P3D is and what it is...old, hyped up, FSX, but it is being used by an aircraft company to get contracts with the military and etc. Thus, with your Outtera engine, you would smoke P3D easily. Trust me when I say 3D animation anything is normally a "one time" rendering operation. In other words you render for one project at a time like what is done in the movies. Well, those agencies I listed use a lot of the same methods the movie industry does.

If you sold them your idea of a "Whole World" concept, but being a real-time (non-one time) rendering/simulation, it would go over great. Just replace bus and plane with tank and jet fighter, or better yet, unmanned tactical vehicle and jet drone. In any case, a more realistic simulation is needed for them...you should know this by now because one of your earliest videos is using a military vehicle, something like the US Hemmitt wheel vehicle.

Even though my opinion is not relating to benefit the flight simulation community now, it would be a benefit later as the trickle done effect would happen. By getting big bucks from a government agency, you would have the funds to develop for them, but in the end, the product would make its way to the civilian/commerical world...like everything else does. Remember the internet was made for the military right?

John

[tennyson]

They're good answers, Brano.

I wish you and Outerra every success. I'm happy to say I'd get behind it and make a contribution based on the kickstarter principle.

Let's hope others get behind it, too.


good luck,


Frank Cooper

[jskibo]

Brano,

One thing I haven't seen talked in depth here is.....

.....FSX, P3D and XP10 are just worlds for us and an aircraft model.  We all use another piece of software for the Aircraft Sysytems backend that interfaces our displays, switches and systems to that flight model and both sends it data and receives output to drive the guages, annunciators and switch states.

That software that we use, be it ProSim737, Project magenta or SimAvionics, is not cheap and it would be difficult for me (and I imagine quite a few others) to move to a new "FSX / XP10" type program if we had to purchase a whole new systems suite to do so.

If I were you I would also be talking to the ProSIm, Sim Avionics and PM folks about what interest they have in interfacing to a new flight sim and what kind of data and data formats they need from you to keep up from having to pony up another $1700 to use your world.

Just my 2 Kopecks....