A New Simulator (June edition)

[fitzgeba 0]

What FSX doesn't have ...

trans-atmospheric flight:

i would like rockets and thrusters and a flight model that allows for exo-atmospheric operations (it is the 21st century)

dockable/transportable player objects:

i'd like to hop in a jeep , drive inside a C-130 and then be para-dropped in the middle of nowhere , only to be picked up by a helicopter later

...or perhaps snuggle up to a tanker and make contact with a re-fueling boom/drogue and take on fuel

...or fly up to the International Space Station orbiting at 17,500 mph and dock with it

control avatars:

a person model that can board an aircraft as either a passenger or aircrew.

currently the player is the aircraft. i'd like to be the person that operates the aircraft.

We could actually hop in, fly somewhere, and then de-plane for that $100 hamburger with a few online friends, or we could just fly out to the bush and go fishing

[Ayr Junior 1]

I think that we have a good space simulator on the market today! Called Space Shuttle Mission 2007.

[Staffan 1]

Not sure if I understand this one...

Hi Mathijs,

In FSX they took away the possibility to have 2D sideview bitmaps in the cockpit.

Unfortunately you can only have VC sideviews in FSX.

[Slater 0]

Indeed, indeed... A lot will depend on the graphics engine we'll decide to use. I know some have some options for this. Very usefull comments though.

The seasonal/night-day textures system obviously is a limitation of the MSFS series engine. I also say that a season engine feature is necessary in this flight sim.

The engine Aerosoft chooses needs to be able to allow this seasonal color/appearance change in the default texture via a pixel shader -just like the FSX default runways dry/wet effect.

Now achieving a night apperance without extra textures takes a little more effort. One solution I could think of would be to mark/paint some "light Spots" using an alpha channel in the default texture so these Lights spots don't get dimmed when low or no lightning is casted upon them. These light spots could be specific metro areas and most lit buildings on that texture tile. Otherwise, you're gonna need to use thousand of actual light to illuminate the ground but that is just not possible at reasonable perfomance these days.

[LANSA 0]

Well, excuse me if I repeat any idea.

1. Multiplataform, Windows, Linux and MAC.

2. Clouds shadows: very important in VFR flight specially if you don't have a Meteorologic Radar.

3. Follow-me cars. Better option than the arrows.

4. Realistic fuel calculator. One with main variables as endurance, passengers and cargo weight, flight level, alternative airport and emergency reserve.

Thank you,

[gregoryp 0]

Please!

Use a 6-Dof Flight Model with standard aerospace terms. We have so many tools to create flight models from USAF DATCOM to CFD terminals. This data should be directly used to define the flight model. And use all the terms in at least AoA, and Mach. So many companies short cut here thinking HARD = REAL by leaving out terms. You need all terms to make the aircraft fly smooth and easy to fly. I’m working on the FM of 2 Combat sims with missing terms and it’s hard to fly them because they jerk around as they transition from one flight mode to another. A good example of how to do a flight model right is JSBSim.

Allow Military aircraft to fly air combat. When we were decoding the FS AIR file we didn’t make any progress until the FS guys and CFS guys joined forces. You’ll find they totally complement each other and make a better sim. Combat guys live near max AoA and the post stall area, this will benefit the GA/Airliners on landing and emergency situations. GA/Airliners develop engine and fuel simulation which benefits the Combat guys with the ability to fly those long distance flights. Missions, Loadouts, ATC, Navigations both bring a unique perspective that adds to the sim. I can’t stress how much these two improve the quality and fun of a sim.

[wyoming 2]

Come to think of it and just landing from 90' in my training 150.It might be a good idea to simulate risk somehow. What I mean by that is that the concentration/stress level goes up when in rw flight whereas in a sim... Well, what are you gonna loose? Maybe injecting some risk/sanction, like for example, if you screw up you can't fly for 1 day or worse (just an example!!) would increase the tension enough to have the real focus kick in a little more and more realistically. This dimension seems important to the overall experience as well, in fact.

[skull 0]

Game engines are an art that only a few do well. If it was my money on the line I'd go with a proven winner. I would hire someone with a lot of experience programming successful game engines like John Carmack to build the basic framework. If you end up hiring people that don't have this kind of game engine experience the new flight sim will probably end up like Microsofts attempts, too many software engineers writing inefiecent bloated code.

[BPL 39]

Two things that should be done better than they were in FSX:

In FSX grass runways have huge fields around them and the runway sticks out like a sore thumb. To my observation, most grass runways in real life look more like narrow rectangular fields, sometimes with a worn out strip down the center. They also sometimes have markers along the sides.

Also, MS apparently used either out-of-date or inaccurate data to place things like lakes. In my hometown an entire lake was left out in FSX. The lake was manmade sometime in the early 1990’s, so the data could have been out-of-date.

[Silent Bob 0]

First of all it’s great somebody is taking over and trying to make a good flight sim. Reading through these threads I see lots of people have made good suggestions. Too me a lot of them would be nice to have but aren’t critical, may be in later additions they could be incorporated into the program.

The 2 most important things to get right are flight modeling and performance, 2 areas were FSX failed dismally, if you can’t get these right I’m afraid there is no reason to move from FSX. 3^rd on the list would be accurate weather modeling followed by how pretty everything looks. Just focus on getting this right in the first release and let add-on providers do the other stuff, just give them the tools for them to do it.

As for performance may I suggest a few things, I’m not a programmer so I could wrong on these things.

- As others have suggested multicore and DX10 & above

- 64 bit, I read that 64 bit can give as much as a 30% improvement in performance which is huge. In fact I would consider just focussing on 64 bit and ignoring 32 bit. They haven’t made 32 bit processors in years and by the time this out most people would have a 64 bit cpu.

- Physx compatible.

- Lastly I don’t know if this is feasible or even possible but some kind of network load balancing. For example if I have an old pc lying around I plug it into my network at home and install an agent on that computer, that computer can then do the processing for some aspect of the flight simulator, perhaps running the AI traffic or weather modeling or even the actually flight model and only send the required information back to the main pc. The more PC’s the more you can delegate out and the more load we take off the main PC the smoother it will run. (If the agent could run under linux even better, no license fees to microsoft)

Lastly 2 features that I would like to have and I haven’t seen mention so far:

I don’t know what they are called but those screens that help pilots guide their aircraft into gate and TCAS.

[ap1190 2]

Also,

Ask the guy who does AES to build it into the flight sim for ALL airports.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

This shouldn't necessarily be a problem if Aerosoft raised capital. Listed software companies generally do not have shareholders influencing the direction of the product development pipeline. Though I can understand the hesitation to have large block shareholders, especially those with a vested interest to the outcome of the project. Obvious from the Porsche attempt to take over VW what a large minority shareholder can do to muck up your well laid plans.

Ah yes, the biggest short squeeze in history. I was lucky to get a little piece of that action

On topic of the new sim from what I have read so far it's hard to add much to the ideas already presented. The three main things besides performance that I can think of are:

1. If regular or GEX style ground textures are used, please make the night textures look more believable. IMHO the only good looking night textures are the ones from the MegaScenery series. I have always thought that there was too much light on the ground in regular night textures.

2. Please add cloud shadows. I have never used X Plane, but the screen shots with cloud shadows look great.

3. Make the sim sync with the real time better. I don't think FSX changes sunrise/sunset time based on being on daylight savings time.

BTW, Mathijs I'm glad to hear that your balls are ok after your force feedback incident.

[Thord 0]

Hi, as a newbie at FS-World I have some things I want to work better.

The top-down view I would sometime like to turn on city names like a map. I often get lost. And geography is interesting and I usually travel by maps.

I want to choose the tower position well as I choose a gate or parking place.

I want to save a flight any time whit out losing data for the flight. When I for example want to practice an approach on a difficult airport.

A default school plan whit shared cockpit for newbie’s.

And the most important thing for me is that I don’t want to spend time to looking for software update. I want the software to handle that by him self.

//Thord

[OpenStandard 0]

We do intend to build a very open platform

Again, go crossplatform (Windows, MAC, Linux) and use OpenGL. You should have learned the lesson Microsoft taught you recently. It is never good as a entrepreneur to bind yourself too close to a monopolist even when it is tempting. And it will be for your company a long and painful and expensive way to establish a new simulator platform to allow you to keep your addon business alive. If you do not succeed with your project you will perhaps disappear thanks to Microsoft. I keep my fingers crossed for you.

Good luck

Chris

[canopolus 0]

This is my first posting at all, so I hope all will run properly.

Hello Mathijs

I think it could be nice if a new flight simulator provides the need of a correct engine start procedure. That means for instance - no boost pump on or no primer: no engine firing. Too warm or too cold outside and wrong handling: no engine firing. And furthermore, taxiing or take off with cold engine: engine trouble, game over.

Talking of piston engine aircrafts - turbo props and jets I have no idea - over the years from FS2002 on I came across a curious behavior on all (all?) constant speed prop aircrafts, no matter whether default planes or add ons. In the cruising situation one would pull back the blue knob in order to twist the prop blades somewhat steeper which results in a decrease of RPM. You can watch this on the tacho. Within the governors range you might then move the throttle back and forth, and the RPM on the tacho remains constant. But the audible impression of the engine sound implies an up and down of engine revolutions, which IMHO is definitely wrong. There is no correlation between tacho and the engine sound. I think a new simulator could do better.

Talking of sounds: Wouldn't it be nice if the outside airport noise or the own engine's sound increases if one opens the plane's door or window?

With regards, Alwin

[VH-DUX 0]

My only wish is that you develop a flight simulator that does not need Microsoft Windows.

[Sharrow 107]

I think it could be nice if a new flight simulator provides the need of a correct engine start procedure.

With regards, Alwin

Hi Alwin

The things you mention are ALL related to aircraft development as opposed to simulator development. Take the A2A P-47 Razorback with Accu-sim for example - it does just about everything you mention and a whole lot more you did not. Aerosoft's PBY Catalina also comes very close in certain places, as does the Do-27. People very often underestimate what can actually be done for FSX by third party developers. In a lot of places to this very day the limit is NOT the sim (FSX) itself, but rather the hardware capabilities of the average user and the skills set and passion of the developer.

My point is your wishlist is in fact no such thing because it is all available today.

[Tim_A 1]

Use a model whereby vector features -- lakes, rivers -- can be anchored to the terrain. There's nothing worse than installing some super-duper accurate addon mesh, only to discover all the rivers are now 200ft in the air!

[FH16 0]

Realistic effect that when spoilers are deployed upon touchdown, the wings IMMEDIATELY loose lift and you see the aircraft relax down on it's suspension/hydraulics.

Sorry for double post - server lag.

[FH16 0]

Realistic effect that when spoilers are deployed upon touchdown, the wings IMMEDIATELY loose lift and you see the aircraft relax down on it's suspension/hydraulics.

[th3flyboy 0]

Hey, I thought I would add my 2 cents....

First of all, for the love of god keep TrackIR support.....

Realistic weapons deployment and usage, including damage to other aircraft

Realistic damage models

Possibility of using PhysX for things such as graphics and even the FM (it's already been done for use as a FM)

Realistic weather and environment...

Cross platform support... (not just windows, but linux and mac support as well)

correct regional autogen and ground textures

Here's a possibility I came up with.... Take Google Earth imagery, and set up an algorithm to allow for the photoscenery to be used as a template for applying default textures on to areas that look like that texture in google earth, for instance something that looks like a pasture may have a high resolution grass texture applied over the pasture in the orthoscenery. Furthermore, place autogen based on regional and top down placement, allowing for the objects to be placed where the actual ones are in the photoscenery, and combine it with a regional autogen setup, where different building architechures will be used in the appropriate regions, along with different vegetation in the proper regions. On top of that, where grass texture is, put actual 3d waving grass shaders on top of the grass textures at low altitudes. This would allow for low level flight to show grass on the ground rather than just a texture. You could also possibly use the upcoming PhysX APEX for use for applying physics to vegetation among other things.

Use the GEBCO terrain data for the terrain mesh, and change the ocean to actually be water rather than just a texture. This includes caustics, allowing for realistic oceans and water over areas where for instance, you will actually see the depth of the ocean changing from above, allowing for the color of the water to change in the process of the depth changing. The GEBCO mesh is a combination of various bathymetry, SRTM, and Geotopo mesh data. This would allow for the most complete terrain mesh, and it would even be possible to merge greater detail terrain meshes than that using various tools into the mesh to make the mesh as accurate as possible.

When selecting a multiplayer service, for the love of all that is good don't use gamespy, it kicks you for being idle causing you to have to re-login, which is a pain in the butt while planning flights.

Don't make us pay for patches, additional content, maybe, patches, hell no.....

On that same note, don't charge over 40 dollars for ANY additional content for the sim, when a AAA title that just got released that week costs less than a flight sim addon, something is horribly wrong.

One of FSX's biggest pitfalls, that must be avoided, is that FSX needs payware aircraft to have anything really detailed, everything out of the box is simplistic at best, try to implement some more advanced stuff, payware quality, into the default sim. This would allow for people to not have to sink in extra money just to have a good aircraft to fly.

Also, the overstressing system needs a major fix, I was able to far too easily overstress the hornet in acceleration, IRL that thing has a computer that prevents that from happening, and will even auto-right itself if it detects the pilot in GLOC.

FSX also feels too sterile in flight, it feels too much like it's on a string and not like you are actually flying. IRL air is a fluid, so why isn't your aircraft handling like it's in a fluid environment in FS. It should be much more prone to air knocking it around.

Add birdstrikes and various other animals to the default scenery based on where they would actually be.

Improve the thermal coverage to be more realistic.

Add true 64 bit, multicore, SLI, and OpenCL support.

Try to take some of the load off the CPU and put it on the GPU, this would really help performance, as modern GPUs can vastly out preform modern CPUs.

Add some real combat, make it have the ability to be a CFS rather than just civilian flight.

Improve helicopter flight modeling, for one add Ring Vortex Effect and rotor blade stalls....

[th3flyboy 0]

Two things that should be done better than they were in FSX:

In FSX grass runways have huge fields around them and the runway sticks out like a sore thumb. To my observation, most grass runways in real life look more like narrow rectangular fields, sometimes with a worn out strip down the center. They also sometimes have markers along the sides.

Also, MS apparently used either out-of-date or inaccurate data to place things like lakes. In my hometown an entire lake was left out in FSX. The lake was manmade sometime in the early 1990’s, so the data could have been out-of-date.

Be thankful, my hometown wasn't even there (but the airstrips were....)

[DidiTopGun 0]

Hi all !

An improved network and multicrew experience is what I'm waiting for.

My dream is to fly a hardcore liner like a pmdg or others with my friends in the same plane under good AI or real men ATC (like IVAO/VATSIM).

It's more realistic, less annoying and is a very good way to learn.

Bye !

Didi, France.

[jt8d-9a 1]

Hi Alwin

The things you mention are ALL related to aircraft development as opposed to simulator development. Take the A2A P-47 Razorback with Accu-sim for example - it does just about everything you mention and a whole lot more you did not. Aerosoft's PBY Catalina also comes very close in certain places, as does the Do-27. People very often underestimate what can actually be done for FSX by third party developers. In a lot of places to this very day the limit is NOT the sim (FSX) itself, but rather the hardware capabilities of the average user and the skills set and passion of the developer.

My point is your wishlist is in fact no such thing because it is all available today.

That's true. At the moment all depends on the developers.

But i think it would be better if the Sim would do more. The Sim should be really a Sim and not only a wide-open Platform, which allows nearly everything but all has to be done by single developers.

That's a perfect concept for ESP but not for a hobbyist-community, where people only have limited time.

Of course no complex systems like PMDG or others, but the basic stuff, all the physics and the resulting visual effects.

Today's hardware is really capable to do amazing things if you choose the right techniques and if you don't simply increase numbers...

I would even buy a powerful second graphics card which would be only used to calculate physics and AI

[Guest musicpete]

Hi! I've been flightsimming for more than 17 years, reading here frequently but now I registered to add some points of my own. Many good suggestions were already done, I read about 12 pages but skipped the rest so please bear with me if some of this is redundant:

* Shared cockpit function: I envision a mashup of what is in FSX together with the good bits from the horrible failure that was Fsnet (how I loved the beta, how disappointed I was with how it turned out...)

* Virtual cockpit technology that allows for high frame rate operation of sim AND gauges

* For the multiplayer online part: Please get in contact with IVAO, VATSIM etc. and listen to their needs. It would be great if you could offer a unified platform for online play. Much better than the array of independent programs one needs nowadays.

* The ability to switch flight models: Prop, turboprop, jet engine, heli, sailplane, ...

* The hardcore simmers will hate this: A "smart speedup function". Right now the time acceleration in FS9 will result in deadly oscillations of the airplane. Switching to a simplified flight model during acceleration could be great.

* Hardcore simmers will hate this even more: A "Smart skip function". OK, so I am a working man. I often have only something like 15 minutes of free time every few days. Loading up the sim takes most of the time. Ever tried to make a decent flight with the PMDG747 in 10 minute segments? I propose a function that would allow the hobbyist simmers to skip the "less interesting" parts of the flight: Let's admit it... after switching the autopilot on, there is not soooooo much to do anymore. The function could be set up so that it the sim skips to any important event (Top of descent, a certain time [user defined], at crossing the ILS, in case of emergency, ...) and then pauses, waiting for user input. Of course this must be optional: Those who dont have time will skip some parts, those who want to do the whole flight won't have to use it.

* Hardcore simmers may like this even less: A "Quick interesting situations" collection, similar to the missions in FSX. User-Expandable, community (web) based ratings, ....

* The ability to save "states" quickly and easily. Up until PMDG invented the saving of "panel states" the saving and loading of situations was highly erratic and (let's admit it) a pain in the backside... I propose a "real" save function that saves EVERYTHING and makes loading, replays and re-playing quick, easy and hassle-free.

* "Just in time" download of models & paints for online multiplayer scenarios: I propose an extension to the current airplane specification. In addition to the normal model&paints, every modeller should (or must?) include a "higher & lower polygon" model with "higher & lower resolution textures" to the package. The "standard model & textures" would be used for display as the actual aircraft in the sim (i.e. as it is right now). The other models would be uploaded to other players just before they enter visual range, so they would see the actual aircraft & texture instead of a standard one. Additionally I suggest the option of allowing players to select which model should be downloaded to their computer: None (display of an ugly standard model for very slow connections), low poly (for medium connections), high poly (very detailed model for fast connections).

* Make the atmosphere around the airplane react to the terrain: Maybe it would be possible to find low-cpu algorithms for calculating airflow not only around the aircraft surface but also the surrounding terrain. That could simulate rotorwash, ground effect, turbulences, etc.

* Per pixel collision detection instead of huge hitboxes. Alternatively hitboxes that are not rectangles but a low-poly approximation of what the aircraft actually looks like.

* Lots of "useful" default view options: Simmers love the copilot seat, the passenger cabin view, the wingviews. Maybe the airport specification could be expanded to include a useful "tower view" position and some cool spotting places? I also love that feature from Active Camera (FS9) that lets me position the camera anywhere on the ground where I want it - always great for screenshots.

* Encourage a "minimum quality standard" for addons to the sim: Maybe a community based ratingsystem for addons already built into the whole simulator-webbased community system? Maybe a minimum size for textures? Maybea minimum requirement for documentation?

* Standardized Addon installation: I envision you as the sim programmers giving the community a program that allows the creation of "installation packages" which the sim can natively read. No more cumbersome manual installations or amateurish installers which break the sim installation. No more "How in heaven can I uninstall that addon? What did this addon install that makes my sim crash?". Ever tried removing an addon from Firefox? It's so easy and convenient, even a child could do it!

* X32 & X64 compatibility. Hey, I got 8GB RAM in this machine. Let me use it all!

* Quick startup times. If the main screen loads longer than 5 seconds it starts to annoy me greatly... the sim itself may of course need longer to load, but I don't see why I should wait 1-2 minutes only to set up my flight, then wait another few minutes. I am sure there is an ingenious solution for that problem.