A New Simulator (May edition)

[FAlonso22 2]

Two importants things for me:

1) A good ai traffic system, atc, ai planes approach, parking in correct gate without radius and similar....

2) Performance. It is not acceptable to get 16 frames in fsx with an E8500@4,2, evga GTX280FTW and 4gb ram. The graphic differences between fs9 and fsx isnt important enough to swap 40 FS9 frames for 20 in FSX.

Thanks

[Boerries 24]

My first thought about "features" was a "Career mode" as an option wihin the new sim.

Starting with a "base aircraft" like the Cub or C152 you will be able to advance to more complex aircraft with "hour building" and neccessary exams ( in theory and operational experience).

Just my 2cts.

[jmig 0]

I believe you should focus on the 80% rule. Give us a good core package that meets 80% of the wanted features and 100% of the needed features.

Make it open ended for other developers to add additional features and add-ons. For instance, maybe someone like A2A who focuses on WWII aircraft could turn the clock back to 1940's. Or a Golden Age version could later be made by someone as an add-on.

I also add my vote for combat and weapons systems ability.

One other request, part of the 20%. As a cockpit builder I would love to see the ability to port gauges to a second computer for viewing on an additional monitor(s) in the cockpit.

[timc 1]

It's been said and will continue to be said; this is exciting and very interesting. I hope that Aerosoft (and others concerned) can make this a viable proposition in all respects and wish them the very best with this potential endeavour.

The concept of a base package upon which users can add is attractive although in some respects is what we have with FSX. Clearly a FS appeals at different levels of immersion for different users so providing a platform package which would give the casual simmer the ability to hack around carelessly with a few aircraft could work. In many respects it would not need to be master of all things - the number of aircraft, the weather, ATC etc could all be basic offerings albeit the proviso is that the standard would need to raise the bar in terms of visual and performance quality from FSX. However, the dynamics would not need to be so detailed, eg a very simplistic weather model. It would then be the user's choice to extend the immersion level with those add-ons they felt appropriate to their specific requirements.

The method of adding on would need to be user friendly and based from within the master package -ie, no need to mess around with files and .cfg's where paints are added.

I suspect this approach would be appropriate in order to appeal to such a huge range of flying desires, from the tubeliner pilot to the chopper flyer to the military buff - and all the sub-sections thereunder! It also opens up an interesting concept for ongoing developer business. Again, in essence, this is what FSX tries to achieve but I cant help but wonder whether MS would have got away with a more simplistic base model having paid attention to the detail within a bit better.

[computerguy307 0]

1.I want the concord back

2.improved "virtual cockpit"

3.more carrier options

4.more military jets

5.air to air refuling

6.real livery's

7.more realistic AI

Thank you for your time.

[pontiuspilotus 1]

Choice of flight dynamics models ala Flight Gear, e.g. both mechanistic and empirical. And having some tools to tweak them easily.

[DC-8 Jet Trader (Jessy S.) 2]

And 2 posts above this one: an easier way to do air-to-air refuel by using a key combination ...

Some sort of bounding box that would trigger the fuel transfer ... It doesn't need to be included but the option should be there for other add-on developers ...

[Slater 0]

I'm with the base package concept too. That will allow faster development and quicker addons integration since many 3rd party will want to get involved. An open SDK and certified-for-aerosoft payware addons, this to ensure high quality and not just a simple port over from FS9/FSX to AerosoftFS.

This flightsim must contain everything FSX lacks, correct FSx defects and perfect FSX virtues. That's why many of us still haven't switched to x-plane 9... there's something odd about it instead FSX contains a magical easy-approach warmy atmosphere.

I've been reading through all these 4 pages of wishes and so far many are, in short:

-better flight model (especially for helicopters)

-better weather engine

-career mode

-better graphics

-reasonable better performance

-more inmmersion (clouds shades, screen shakes, rain splashes on the windshield)

-physics engine integration

-Improved ATC

-weapons and damage

-open and easy SDK

-Downloadable satellital imagery

-custom controls configuration save per aircraft

All of these could be in a basic implementation and easily upgradeable for addons that can be executed and managed within the sim not from a diferent application on windows/any OS.

I estimate that we can start seeing a beta of this perfect flight sim in... roughly... two years. By that moment all of us will hopefully have a computer with at least a quadcore CPU and 60GB/s bandwith GPU.

[jt8d-9a 1]

I would really love to see and feel damage/deformation... losing parts, flat tires etc.

A better effects system... heat blur, exhaust effects, correct vortices.. for any aircraft, calculated by the Sim and no botching via e.g. light switches.

And environmental influences like icing, fogged-up windows, rain etc.. cool visual effects for any aircraft but also real physics. I want to see AND feel it.

A much more realistic sky and cloud environment.. and cloud shadows

Hazards like bird strike, wake turbulence, icing, lightning, deer, birds or coyotes on runways.

Maybe a project like that would be interesting for nVidia or ATI to showcase the true capabilities of their Hardware.

It's great that someone is doing something and i wish Aerosoft the best of luck.

[George W 3]

1) Right now we are not even thinking about what MS will do. But when we did think about it we always concluded that a simulator that is web based and more or less closed to external developments is a nogo for most of our customers. We'll see, we actually got the commercial rights of the sim that FSX is based on so we got something to say, lol.

2) We are currently not in any contact with any of the ACES devs other than what we always did, many of them are online friends, this has not been discussed with any of them however. But yes we have been talking to 3rd party developers for a few weeks now and this has been expanded in the last few days. We sure like to hear there ideas.

But in the end it all comes down to money, if we start this project in any other stage than just me talking to people and typing documents, there is a lot of money involved. We can't do it on our own (we really do not see this as a Aerosoft sim with Aerosoft add-ons, that would be a dead-end) but at the same time we are a commercial development and publishing company. This however is a topic handled by my CEO and it is the reason we all love him to death. We do the easy bits, he gets to handle the tough #####.

In the end, all major developers and publishers know my email and they all know Aerosoft understands the importance of a platform others can build on. Seriously, we would be happy not to make a penny on this project as long as it gives us an extension of the business we got with FS2004 and FSX. We are doing very well in the professional market, but the FS addon market is one we love and we like to keep. It's been good to us for over a decade. We got customers that trust us. The majority of our customers own 3 of our products, many own 10 or more. Aerosoft would be silly not to try to offer them a new platform for low costs so we can continue the same thing that made Aerosoft to what it is now.

Have you thought of selling 'shares' in the new project? - with shareholders reaping some of the profit after R&D costs have been recouped.

[Lololopoulos 0]

Hi I am very excited at hearing a new FS is being developed.

1 things that I can think of right now is:

-You gonna want to target a wide range of users, so make sure you create an realistic environment that look good which attracts basic users and a realistic flying mode that attracts more sophisticated users.

As far I know, many basic users of Microsoft FS are just interested 'flying' the airplanes. They don't care about the GPS, Flight Planning, ATC and stuff like that.

Now what the microsoft FS does not do well are: the engine sound, many visual effect, many things still look fake. But I think make object and weather look more realistic is totally achievable with today's technology.

[Juergen_LOWW 21]

Besides all the mentioned wishes and suggestions I would prefer a sim that doesn´t have to be tweaked to get good results. Think of all that tweaking and modifying oft the FS9.cfg or FSX.cg

I would like to have streets, railways and objects in different ".bgl-files", not all together in one "file". So if you want to use a third-party-addon you can easily deactivate the default-streets and use the addon-streets. Just an example for many other purposes : weather, textures, and so on...

I would like to have an easy-to-use "Control Center" for much more settngs as now in FSX. Just have a short look at the config-setting-tool of Ultimate Terrain X, maybe something like this :

Item - - - - - - - Use Sim´s item - - - - Use Addon´s item -- deactivate item

Main streets.............YES.........................NO..........................NO

Railways..................NO..........................YES (Aerosoft Railways 2014)........NO

Ferries.....................NO..........................NO......................

....YES

Weather

Textures

Traffic

ATC

Online

and so on......

For there is an standard each Addon can directly communicate with this control center and no tweaking or searching for reasons why something doesn´t match is neccesary. Each Addon could be managed through this control center. People should spend their time to use this sim, not to tweak or fix it

And there should be no neccessarity to edit the whatever-the-name-of-the-new-sim-is.cfg

I would prefer more "activity" and "live-signs". More of Oliver Pabst´s AES. Not only at or near airports, also in the rest of the countryside. Trains, Cars, cable-cars, Bikes but also people at beaches, ships, boats. Take a look at Lord Howe Island : good-looking addon, but (besides on the airport) no person there, absolutely blank beaches. No action, no life, no fun.

I would prefer airports where two or more runways are active, not only one. (say crosswind or so ? sorry, don´t know exactely)

I would like to have Waves on the sea. Not just moving white textures, no, real rolling waves. Jsut like on the screenshots of the new shipsimulator 2009. And if I´m flying over the sea (low level) abd there ist stormy weather, grey clouds, wind and thunderstorm...I woul also like to have a rough sea, not a nearly even surface of water

More soundeffects. When the engine is running you don´t need to hear birds voices or the breaking of the waves. But stop the engines of a Floater...then you should here waves, the clonk-clonk, noises of nature, and so on.

As mentioned before I also would highly appreciate a modular system of the sim. So I can decide If I use GA as a professional and airliners as a newbie. So addons (and default airplanes) have to be available in several "user-levels" : easy - normal - pro.

There a days where I love to plan a flight and love to configure the plane, but there are also days where I like to jump in my plane, turn on engine and fly away. But I want to use the same plane, one day easy, other day as a pro.

I would like to have the possibility to activate or integrate a "user entertainment system"

Yeah, why not ? Cruising in FL380 and watching the last episode of Grey´s Anatomy through a tiny .avi-Player. Maybe integrated in the Panel, or a seperate Gauge. And why not playing CDs or MP3 from my harddisc ?

Somtimes I like to know where I am when I´m crosing a wonderful area. Ok, I know the coordinates and where the next airport is. But what´s the name of this little city below ? What´s the name of this mountain or this river ? What´s this monument or this memorial site ? Maybe direct link to Google Earth or Wikipedia, displayed in a seperat gauge ?

For all these (crazy) wishes could be managed via the control center people who don´t like this rubbish stuff don´t need to acitivate or buy them. But people who like such gimmicks would be very happy, maybe they don´t need FMC or SID and STAR.

I would like to rely on a normed standard of I/O, SDK, and all the other program/software stuff. Many designers complain for MS changed somewhat in SP2 and things aren´t the same as they were SP1 or even Default-FSX. Reliable and stable conventions and standards.

So this new Sim could be the basic platform for many many possibilities. Simple core, upgradable architcture, open but stable standards. Easy config, modular possiblity to expand, open doors for addons and connections, online/offline usable and ...surely not tooo expensive

(so many wishes will cost a lot)

OK, where can I subscribe ?

[Samuelson 0]

My nice and easy wish (yet hard to accomplish):

Please give us stable and reliable game play with clean and super smooth graphics, high fps all the way with no flickering and stuttering.

I could rather do without some sophisticated gimmicks but have some ultra smooth and stable simulation instead!

best wishes for your project

Gerd

[qwertz1992 0]

Hey Mathijs!

I'm not sure, if it's been mentoined before:

I wouldn't try to work on a simulator, that includes everything right from the begining!

Maybe two GAs, two jets, a helicopter, a fighter... But not too much of everything!

Make it a STRONG BASIS for all the other stuff! There are addon-producers for aircraft (PMDG, FeelThere, JustFlight, ...) and there are producers for scenery... There are programs for ground facilities already!

The things that were implementable into FS9/FSX have already been built by addon-producers!

Why scrap all of that?

A strong basis is important. A simulator which sends realistic output to the addons (wake turbulence, thermals, rain, hail, snow, grass on runways, air streams). I think X-Plane has already done a great job there!

What should be important are realistic inputs from the addons (thrust, models, materials-> wood or aluminium, profiles of wings, aerodynamics, weight, you know what I mean)

From that the simulation should be able to compute, HOW THE REAL AIRCRAFT WOULD REACT in a specific situation.

If you make it easily compatable to addons, the firms already out there will love you and do the rest of the work for you.

So in conclusion:

- Realistic atmosphere for realistic situation in flight

- Output of current situation in the simulator simulator to the addon

- Input from the addon into the simulation's physics engine

- Realistic physics computed in realtime for realistic behaviour

- High compatibility to addons

I would make all the other things like ATC and satellite imagery modules you can add or not add if you wish or don't wish to have them.

Not everybody wants IFR, or VFR, or military.

That way you could keep the costs down for the basic simulation and produce a strong platform! The result would be a really detailed and awesome simulation that could be expanded to what you want!

*EDIT: Grammar

[Vispilotion 0]

Hi guys! If you're really doing brand-new flight simulator which is supposed to be the heir to FSX, I have a few advices, which are full of experience and other MSFS users comments-suggestions!

The emphasis of my admonishment is - REALITY!

And of course, it's accented to civil and general aviation. Military FS's are very numerous and we don't need one more.

I will partially compare it to FSX as this should be the next simulator.

GAME

As we want it

And that's the reality. Why don't you add some fresh air to flight simulator world? I'm sure you're gonna like it, as we, "players", would too. At first place, I would mention sound. It's terrible at FSX. Both interior and exterior. Please make a realistic sound, so we can feel the power of engines when we add full power. Next, I would suggest you to make controls similar to MSFS, as people got very used to their graphic-user. The next thing, which is desparate at MSFS, is lighting system. Give us, please, the very real, and strong blinking lights! I like the look of "3D Redux" (A2AS Addon) when watching the landing from tower view, but I don't like the way it's lighting the ground. Almost same as FS default lights. Also, in FSX, ATC system is very bad and unrealistic. It's doing it purpose but it could be very better. You can make a real-recorded voices, and spend a day more to that feature, rather than do the boring, automated and annoying voice. The very wanted feature is birdstrike! Please do something with that! It's the part of reality. And sure, to make available online playing, with good lobbys. It would be good if we could have an option to set real-world actual forecast. Some of the next options that are wanted are more ATC and in-game options, like declaring emergencies if something goes wrong, ability to manage fuel on aircrafts, visible icing, sloping runways, air-to-air refueling, turbulence caused by other planes, advanced and longer contrail, and actual damage and crash effects. I very hope you have the policy to make the WHOLE WORLD COVERED, not only few cities in the USA. It's one big, important thing in development. I also hope your Perfect Simulator will have more options to play with, like pilot carrier, advanced logbook and so.

AIRPLANES

Make them flyable

Please be different than MSFS! Please don't be commercial as they do! People want reality! Make planes responding to controls in real timing, with adequate physics! Some planes in FSX acts like they're made from paper, and on the other hand, some are harder to fly than in real life! If you find the golden middle, you will be the winner!

Make them real-looking: Exterior

Some planes can look so bad, that even my draw could "pawn" them. Make the plane look like real! I'm sure you can, because of your addons. But if you can make more advanced graphic system than FSX, your planes could look even more realistic! Sure, all parts which have purpose to change position (flaps, gears, elevators...) should be moveable.

Make them real-looking: Interior

If you make passengers views, it will be the golden shot. I don't mean on wingviews, as they aren't so real. The realistic thing is, to make a windowview, with double glass, as real. And of course, to have an option to move head - look through the window, to next seat, up to ventilation switches, and so on. It would be really nice if you can make realistic people in the cabin. And the main thing, to put adequate physics to those people too. I mean, if we're are looking through the window on TOPS (Take Off Power Set), that means the view should go slightly to the back, due to G-force. G-force is applyable to turbulencies and some other situations, too. And ofcourse, to shake a bit when touchdown. It would be great if we could stand on, walk to the bar in 380, or in the toilet in 737. When we come to cockpit, situation should be perfect. I strongly recommend - make ALL panels, and ALL switches available, to permit real procedures! Virtual cockpit should be an obligatory. Improved, of course.

SCENERY

Give it a realism

When we come to scenery, things should be very advanced, as we ALMOST ALWAYS look down there. Takeoffs, landings, cruising at FL370... We see ground, or sea. Of course, if not rainy or foggy. Or it's just night. It's quite easy to make quality and realistic massive mesh which can be seen from high altitude. But I give advantage to low level textures. I mean, it's almost impossible to make all cities perfect (if not using satelite images and doing building by building) as they are, but you can make at least close to it. If you just generate similar structure, it's a big step! Make it according to the seasons, spring-summer-autumn-winter. Animated trees that furl in the wind would be perfect shot! And also, when it's raining, and we add full power, it would be nice to see "cloud" of water behind, that dilutes.

The world is moving

Other thing that should be generated is surely ground traffic - on the surface that looks like a road, no piece of pixeled gray line like in FSX. It could be good if you can make intesity of traffic, and more models. It's not realistic when you look at 5 same cars and 1 truck that drives one behind other with distance of 1 meter 0-24. Semaphores and crossroads are also welcome. I would like to see people moving, too. Either on airport, going to the plane, or at the city. I don't mean on detailed Lamborghini Gallardo with 25" wheels or 12" antenna, but realism just as needed when on airport or landing. I hope you have air AI traffic as an obligatory; which is advanced though. It would be nice if you could make some other traffic, like bicycles, or tractor on the plain. But I know it would taken a lot of computer process power. Just saying.

AIRPORT

Welcome to the airport

Airport is place when we spend a lot of time and it should be of quite good made. At first i would mention airport services. When ATC leads you to your gate, a "follow me" car is very welcome on smaller airports. When the gate or stairs connects to the plane, all other car services should come, as an man who set the parking barrier to the wheels. The lighting should be realistic, at parking spots, taxiways or runways. Option to have a runway-light-switch is also wanted. In real life, on smaller airports, when there is no traffic, runway lights are turned off. That should be the case here, too. It should have other traffic, too, but option to set an traffic intensy is welcome. Feature: passengers moving and getting in - VERY WELCOME! De-icing service at cold temperatures would be great!

So, my Aerosoft's... If you do so, you will enter the history. If not, you will just make one of continuous products which are numbered at thousands, nothing special, practically effort for nothing, and you will not get a bit reward (in money). There is NO flight simulator like described above, REAL, INTERESTING, and which takes you into the pilot job! I'm just giving you informations what to start with and helping out. People know mistakes of MSFS and they're telling you them, please use that!

If you make a simulator, it can be expensive, it can require super computer (people will buy it because of this, believe me), and it can be just for skilled people - I mean realistic (hard), but not impossible. Lets stay on the realism. Sure, option to set skill level would be very nice. I, and a lot of other FS users want GRAPHIC, REALITY in the FS, and noone can give them that. Until now (I hope so!).

If you're doing the simulator, or if you will just start, please do not hurry. It's better to make a great product later, than bad one earlier. People are disappointed with boring MSFS, especially when they know MSFS development is down for ever, and they're waiting for something like this! With quality software, you can make very big amount of money, and the users will be happy and thankfoul!

So, people are waiting for FS revolution!

[Paul K 93]

I'd love to see this as a new platform for creating a WW2 day and night bomber simulator. Its something thats been half done in IL2, and B-17:TME. What it would involve, I don't know, I'm not even an amateur at this sort of thing. However, as an example, take RAF Bomber Command / Luftwaffe Nightfighter campaign...some basic requirements are

Mutiposition: players taking the roles of pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, air gunner and so on, all in the same aircraft.

Radar: navigational, bomb aiming, ground control and airborne intercept varieties.

Such ideas might be outside the current early design briefs, but if you can incoporate both military and civilian capabilities into this sim, or provide a comprehensive SDK for those who want to go in that direction, it would be wonderful.

Oh...and make sure the Catalina is compatible.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

For me, a lot of what's missing is the subtle things that make an airport feel unique to those around it:

-Ability to fade markings/"age" the surfaces

-Sloping runways/taxiways, along with the interaction with surrounding terrain that makes some airports dicey if the winds pick up.

-Ability to choose the color patterns for markings around the field; Some have all enhanced markings, some a mix of regular and enhanced markings, and some just the original paint that came with the airport.

-Default T/regular hangars can open.

-Ability to create custom ground signs/taxiway signs, such as the airport name along a taxiway as seen at smaller fields, and taxi directions for Cat II/III operations at larger airports.

-Ramp hold short markings.

-Runway hold short markings that cover more than just the taxiway, but can be angled or include run-up areas as well.

-Better priority for runway markings

Yes but as far as I know all that is possible in FSX now, or am I mistaken?

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

5. Built-in pop-up "guage" to read PDF's, Charts, flight plans, checklists, go online etc. Also built in media player to listen to some tunes, watch internet tv in flight etc. Would be muted if any com were active - a bit like when your cell rings in the car and it mutes the radio. I know some of these are already available as addons but this kind of stuff should really be built in.

I like this one, but if we allow MS IE to work in windows inside FS (as the checklists now does), we would have most of that right?

[atco 63]

Being a part of a major AI group, my main focus is AI.

I would say a massive no to a VATSIM only approach to ATC. The fact is, the vast majority of simmers do not use VATSIM, and VATSIM cannot control AI.

There has to be another solution. My recommendation would be to either implement some kind of basic ATC system that can be improved on by a third party product, or what would be even better the ability to use a kind of "simconnect" module to allow a custom written thrid party program (a la Radar Contact) to have complete control over ATC that can be run on another PC.

I would really love to see the ability to offload tasks on another PC in some way. So you could have the main PC using its multi cores to render the sim, then using a module have the ability to use other networked PC's to handle AI, weather, ATC, Road traffic etc. I think in this way it would be possible to have very high end visuals while adding complexity and maintaining frames.

Going back to AI.

Things the AI community have been crying out for for years:

Ability of AI to fly SID's/STARs and hold

Ability for AI to fly real routes

Get rid of the 100 leg a week flightplan limitation

Be able to have "2 week" rotations - some ultra long haul flights only work with plans of 2 weeks not one

Better ATC spacing on final approach

Ability to choose runways in use

Better ground ATC of AI to avoid nose to nose confrontations

I would strongly suggest having a talk to some of the guru's of AI - Jime Vile, Reggie Fields and Jon Masterson. Their knowledge of the AI system, what MSFS does well and does not do well is unrivalled and they would be able to give you the best idea of how to proceed in that way.

I will point them towards this topic.

If there is anything we can help with the Alpha India Group has expertise in modelling, flightplanning, painting and ADE/AFCAD design -we have most of the AI World wrapped up, we would gladly offer whatever assistance we could in helping with AI.

On a personal level:

Some kind of converter for MSFS models possibly - although I am keen to get away from the "backwards compatibility" ways of the ACES team

Support for FSDS models ! Please, I beg LOL I only know how to model in FSDS and I have a few things on the go at the moment !

Sloping runways - definately. Imagine landing at EGBB with that famously humped runway, would add all kinds of challenge to landing

Weather - We all know that FS has some serious limitations with its weather engine - How about getting the Active Sky folks to write a complete weather generator, again that could be run either outside the sim or even better on another PC

There is probably a lot more I can't think of at the moment, and I have to head out to work now, but if I think of anything else I'll pop back in

I wish you all the best with this venture, it's certainly not for the faint of heart.

[koala 0]

My humble request, considering all the extra things people are requesting for, keep it smooth even on a moderately powerful machine. Maybe that can be part of the "modular" concept.

Another, similar, point - not everybody has 20 Mbits internet connections, so please not too much "download as you fly" stuff, or at least keep that as an upgrade option.

Otherwise, really exciting idea, let's hope you can see it through.

Regards

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

I cannot allow myself to get bogged down in the minutiae about `ATC this`, or `bird strike` that.

Instead I will say what I have said before - that no sim product can EVER be all things to all people.

It is simply not possible from a design or conception point-of-view, as the compromises and trade-offs necessary to achieve one objective in a `more realistic` manner will impact to the detriment of something else.

....

As to how this is achieved, modularity is already industry-standard in Operating Systems, so simply use that, with no need to reinvent the wheel!

See that's why we allow your rants on the forum. I like a modular system a lot, it is more or less included in what I written down now. If the borders and communication between modules are well described it would make it possible to exchange complete parts.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Make it a STRONG BASIS for all the other stuff! There are addon-producers for aircraft (PMDG, FeelThere, JustFlight, ...) and there are producers for scenery... There are programs for ground facilities already!

The things that were implementable into FS9/FSX have already been built by addon-producers!

Why scrap all of that?

Well they done things based on the the SDK for FS, the aircraft we all done have some intelligence (some more then others) but without FSX they are just silly files. No matter how advanced some of those are, we are not trying to build aircraft or scenery, we are trying to build a simulator, the bits the aircraft uses. We have spoken to many developers but actually there are only a few who can help us. PMDG can do great aircraft, but they have no experience in building the structure that makes there aircraft work. Now for the bits you see (aircraft models and scenery) things are simple. As long as it is made in any of the well known professional formats it will always be able to be imported.

But take a very basic thing like altitude. No FSX aircraft actually knows it's altitude, every altimeters just ask the sim engine to tell it its altitude. We are building the bits that tell aircraft what altitude it is at. Not an altimeter that shows the altitude. Huge difference and that's why most FS developers can't really do a lot for this project in this early stage. We need mathematicians, engineers, flight dynamics specialists (not people who can use the flight model of a existing sim). See the difference?

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Some kind of converter for MSFS models possibly - although I am keen to get away from the "backwards compatibility" ways of the ACES team Support for FSDS models ! Please, I beg LOL I only know how to model in FSDS and I have a few things on the go at the moment !

If FSDS can export models to standard formats like those of 3D Max there will be no problem. But there is no way we will support 3d formats that are not industry standard. The whole idea is to get rid of those legacy issues.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

I'd love to see this as a new platform for creating a WW2 day and night bomber simulator. Its something thats been half done in IL2, and B-17:TME. What it would involve, I don't know, I'm not even an amateur at this sort of thing. However, as an example, take RAF Bomber Command / Luftwaffe Nightfighter campaign...some basic requirements are

Mutiposition: players taking the roles of pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, air gunner and so on, all in the same aircraft.

Radar: navigational, bomb aiming, ground control and airborne intercept varieties.

Such ideas might be outside the current early design briefs, but if you can incoporate both military and civilian capabilities into this sim, or provide a comprehensive SDK for those who want to go in that direction, it would be wonderful.

Oh...and make sure the Catalina is compatible.

No, I am sure this is way beyond the scope of the project we now envision.

[Slater 0]

Wow! What a hard work you have ahead... Good Luck. I'll be supporting you