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A New Simulator (June edition)


Staffan

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Hi all,

So good to see that us flightsim lovers still have a chance of continuing our hobby on a new platform soon.. (well, soon-ish, i hope).

Someone brought up the subject of IMMERSIVENESS somewhere in this thread, but it seemed hard to explain what exactly that would consist of. Wellm it is hard to put in words indeed, but let's have a look at the example of Condor Soaring Simulator.. which happens to be the most immersive flightsim i know. I suggest the developers have a real good look at it to see what exactly it is that makes it as immersive as it is.

It's not super-glitzy graphics, nor 39156190 polygons onscreen, nor do you need a supercomputer to run it... anyway, have a look for yourself:

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=647...01065&hl=nl

As fun as it looks, flying it yourself is an amazing experience, and gives you a real feel of what it's like to fly a glider. If Aerosoft-FS manages to accomplish this level of immersion in their flightsim, we're looking at a bright future for flightsimmers indeed :)

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My thought is that in the real world, VOR's and ILS fail, NDB's are turned off and so on. Within the sim this doesn't happen. I can always tune Compton at EGLL for example, whether or not the RW notams say its unavailable. I am perhaps pushing the limits of realism to the extreme here, but how about if the area controller for a network such as IVAO or VATSIM was able to turn off a VOR or the ILS as you're on short final? What if the CAT II & CAT III Holds actually worked and if there was an incursion the guy on the ILS could lose it for a moment?

These would all be items that would require a tickbox or something in the realism options, as many (the majority?) wouldn't want to suffer such trauma but food for thought anyway, and that's what these threads are all about.

While I find this interesting, I'd really like to have a good on-board ATC with different levels of realism.

Not only does my internet connection not allow me long online times, but also my spare time is too limited to make complete online flights - and I'm surely not alone with this.

Different ATC realism levels would enable beginners (like me ;) ) with a mouseklick on "low" to let ATC guide you to the destination airport without too much of aviation knowledge and still arrive there while real world pilots could chose "high" and have everything between those SIDs and STARs - something you just cannot deal with, if you did not achieve a good amount of IFR flying knowldge before.

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Guest CFG278

i don't know if it was written before: i would also like an accurate simulation of sun, moon and stars including correct (main) star constellations.

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Hi all,

So good to see that us flightsim lovers still have a chance of continuing our hobby on a new platform soon.. (well, soon-ish, i hope).

Someone brought up the subject of IMMERSIVENESS somewhere in this thread, but it seemed hard to explain what exactly that would consist of. Wellm it is hard to put in words indeed, but let's have a look at the example of Condor Soaring Simulator.. which happens to be the most immersive flightsim i know. I suggest the developers have a real good look at it to see what exactly it is that makes it as immersive as it is.

It's not super-glitzy graphics, nor 39156190 polygons onscreen, nor do you need a supercomputer to run it... anyway, have a look for yourself:

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=647...01065&hl=nl

As fun as it looks, flying it yourself is an amazing experience, and gives you a real feel of what it's like to fly a glider. If Aerosoft-FS manages to accomplish this level of immersion in their flightsim, we're looking at a bright future for flightsimmers indeed :)

I didn't see any attribution for who was responsible for that. It was pretty good with the exception of some occasional blurries and the poor resolution. I'd like to see it in HD. It was pretty good altogether.

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Others have touched on this but on my wish list is the ability to change the game play to an ATC simulator. If a new sim has AI traffic that operates in a similar manner to FS, that is able to replicate real scheduling, it would be be great to be able to control that traffic with regards to separation, landing and take-off clearances and ground control.

What I have in mind that when used in the flight sim mode, AI traffic operates much as it does in FSX or FS2004, essential moving scenery. But the sim pilot can switch to sim air traffic controller, able to direct traffic at a nominated airport. Traffic heading to and from other airports remains AI. The user can choose approach, departure, tower or ground control - or any combination of the four. Traffic not under direct control continues to operate as AI, so ground traffic may be AI while the user controls the tower, but with the the ability to intervene to clear jams.

Additional displays required would be "ground radar" and "area radar". Mouse control would be essential as anyone who has used a typed commands in an ATC game will understand. Commands would be height, speed, heading, take off and landing clearances, line-up clearance, cross runway clearance, intercept ILS. Approaching traffic would not need to be talked planes down like the old GCA approach. Simply telling a plane to join the approach or intercept the ILS would be enough to ensure it tracks to the runway.

At the end of ATC game play, switching to flight sim game play sees the AI take over again and it sorts itself out after a while.

David

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...

Add to that a clear set of tools so that the right compatibilities are available for 32 bit and 64 bit - and please do watch the OS updating systems that microsoft have in place. They happen so often that a non-MS software might be compliant one day and not the next. Maybe it is even worth considering making a new sim operate in its own "virtual machine" completely free of the OS. Just the Intel assembler, nothing else. That way it could also run on Mac systems. It would make the sim more complex as a software, but if it is free of the OS overhead, you could then have another virtual computer running the OS in parallel for all thos "needed" apps such as a multiplayer, internet browse, weather and graphics programmes.

It would certainly be useful to have two completely separate environments on one PC. It may even become desirable for Sim owners to have a separate terminal and monitor (or even separate PC) so that the sim is uninterrupted while the user is doing other things - like navigation, using the cellphone, painting texture alterations for live testing.

...and while we're here, if this were to happen, then installing addons should be allowed outside of the OS, i.e. you would download and install a new item via windows and a web explorer, but it would not be added in the registry, but rather pushed into a separate sandbox where the sim resides.

I am thinking something that automatically puts the OS and all associated activities into hibernation while the sim environment is live.

OR AT LEAST ... a tool that really does kill all not-needed apps without any complicated learning requirements. Just a single command to "minimise Windows activity" and not have to worry if this or that strangely named activity is OK to kill or not.

Hi

interesting attempt in my opinion ... just some thoughts that came to my mind when thinking about this:

- maybe it could be worth to think about something like a "flight sim console"

- based on or/and adressing pc-standards (you could sell e. g. in corpration with a manufacturer an optimized base system, users can by upgrade-kits for more convenience (triple-head, double/triple graphics card for multi-monitor, cockpit-building...) oder build based on your software kit a complete system on their own or even use their FSX-PC in multiboot-environment ...)

- basic OS - maybe Linux-derivate, downsized to the minimum needs (or if you look at something like BeOS was: highly multithreading, multicore, multimedia-OS...)

- X64 code, OpenGL, standard interfaces and protocols (important to connect joysticks and other stuff like that)

- Open SDK (for hardware _and_ software) ... use flight-sim community to enhance and improve your system

- add-ons could be incorporated via product CD/DVD, download, live-download ...

- network-balance/distribution-options (better use of multi-monitor setup or for complex cockpit projects...)

So you could get rid of the need to support multi OS and become independent from Microsoft and its unpredictible behaviour

Just some thoughts - maybe too complex, expensive, but integrating the simulation engine with a standtalone operating system could be an interesting attempt getting a more optimized less computing power consumpting system...

Regards

Michael

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Hmm, if you're going to make a new sim you need to make it 'useable'.

It's al very well having trees the sway back and forth, swells that increase/decrease according to weather, having numerous people hop in their little buggies to come and service your aircraft or including a virtual D-Check. You've said that this is going to be a multi-million dollar project if it goes ahead, then some how you're going to need to get those millions of dollars back. And if Aersoft creates a simulator that'll only reach 40 FPS on a $5000 machine without the inclusion of add-ons.

But, I wouldn't want you to hold back from making a brilliant Flight Simulator, just be cautious. Keep making sure that your product will return that money by keeping it within the standards of the year you plan to release in (I'm not saying that you must make it so a computer with a 512MB GPU and a 3.0 Ghz processor can run it easily, just make it for the day and age for your planned release). There'd be nothing worse than spending money, time and effort on a product only to find that only 10% of simmers will buy the product because it simply won't run at 'useable' standards on the other 90% of simmers' computers.

That being said, I wish you the best of luck! :)

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Hi,

I would like to wish you best of luck trying to make the "Best simulator ever" I Know you can do it!! ;)

I realize this might be a bit longwinded but please do read my thoughts, there are some new thinking there I think.. :)

Here are "My Opinions" :

Making it modular like forum-user "Snave" pointed out earlier in the May-Edition post #50

That Would be nice, and the right way to deal with the issue.. upgradeability over the product-cyle, and be able to overhaul the the diffrent parts of the modules independently

1.

Performance as everyone says, this is Really Really important!! Give us slider-controls for everything in advanced settings.

This do not have to be avaliable to the novice and casual user, we could use need an animated pictures showing whats hapening when we adust this and that slider..

I have some Ideas/tips here which might push it into the next millenium Performance-wice:

Say for instance you hawe a quite ok computer for the new Aerosim NG??(Aerosoft's New Simulator )

In the past you have allways upgraded your existing computer with a better videcard, a better CPU, and bigger Harddrive...

What if it was the possibility to offload the AI-traffic-module or a Weather-module to a spare Pc? Most of us have some spare parts around from recent upgrades of the PC, so we most problably have at least part to make one extra PC to use towards somesomting else. So Even if that is not enough we could try and offload the Flightdynamics to a second spare computer.. Now you Would have a lot of processing power towards the Flightsim, and it should run much much smoother. All modules modules should be stand-alone sort off, and it should be possible to trow as much Processing power towards the sim as there is money in your wallet ;-) I mean if you feel want more really good graphics,it should be possible to designate for instance 4 extra PC's towards graphics computing only, and then you would be able to run insane amounts of AA and Anisotropic filtering and really High resolution and widescreen image..

But the beauty of this system is to bulid it out as you see it fit.

If set at Low graphics setting on a single computer, it should atleast provide FSX-graphics maxed-out, for todays multicore graphics-cards and multicore cpus. I hope this is possible to achieve in a flightsim, that would just be awesome!! :D

2.

THE SOUND IS SO IMPORTANT!! The fs sound-engine is horrible :angry: , we should be able to get the real sound from airplanes when making soundclips taken of real aircraft, if you do this today FSx sound-engine will just completely mess up the sound-clips even if you take the time to set it up properly in the sound.cfg.

It's just a complete PAIN to make soundsets, because the sound-engine completely mess it up!! if you go in and out of the cockpit or zooms in or out in the sim, the the sound WILL be messed up, making a completely anoying rocket-like sound or a swishing kind of sound(its rolling and looping) when back in the cockpit.This just PLAIN KILLS the imersion-factor in my opinion!! :angry: As much as a stuttering(bad peformance) or blurry graphics display <_<

There should be more sounds in this flightsim,

-There should be completely Realistic sounds on startup and shutdown from all aircraft(EXACT COPY, THE REAL RECORDING of the aircraft, NO SYNTETIC-sounds or SHORT-CUTS )

Just forget all about how Microsoft(aces) made the sounds, and start all over.. Making it perfect :rolleyes: take a look at LOMAC for instance though never played that game just a demo..

-Sounds from rain or hail hitting the fuselage,

-Variation in the precitipapation-sound

-Better more frightening ligtning sounds,

-Windsounds coming from wen you extend the landing gear or flaps, vibration-type sounds,

-Squeaky noises from the fuselage,

-Noise when you bank quickly from side to side when sitting in the cockpit(not sure about this)

-Noise from extending the airbrakes,

_Noise from APU's standby-instruments(tickers?) aircondioning-fans, generator noise

You can see by now that I am a complete sound-buff, everyting sound-related anything with great sounds interest me: hifi, car-engines, airplanes

guitars.. :blush:

3.

Lighting engine Need a complete overhaul.. Others before me have said it farely well for the main part on other features.

4.

if you take a look at the very old classic Flight Unlimited 3, you would see that they got a lot things right there the first time,

It has ten times better night lighting,

Much better feeling on takeoff, it does not feel glued to the runway,

Better flightdynamics feel?

Better autopilot(not as jumpy as fs)

Better atc a bit fun and sarcastic, instructors really give a good cozy feeling in this game(though fs is much easier to use)

Also I really like that you MUST unlock reverser buckets, and stow them again, and you can use the throttle for reverse thrust when you have unlocked it

not digigital crap F2-command from fs..

This game(fu3) even had simulated flameout(turbine-stall?) in bad weather :blink: It also had the possibility to pulse the landing lights.

5. This might be extreme, But Just ditch windows completely, make a flightsim specific OS- which do not at all comsume resourses like windows

this could be a dual boot if it is posible I do not know for sure?? But it should be completely independent of windows, so you have complete control the OS and sim.. As I said this could be a bit extreme for some.. but a pro-verision or something?

Ok, thanks For listening to my 2 cents :)

Best regards

from Norway

Rune_ENHD

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I might be a bit behind the times but i got a internet survey through from microsoft the other day because i was signed up for the FSinsider newsletter, it was entirely about what we would like in a new flight sim. Does this mean that microsoft are going to release a new one that will be in direct competition with aerosoft's!!!

Dan

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_Noise from APU's standby-instruments(tickers?) aircondioning-fans, generator noise

But then I want the option to turn it off. That contant whining and clackety-clack is so annoying in some real cockpits. ;)

make a flightsim specific OS

What is this new OS business about all of the sudden? I thought the mission was to create a new flight simulator? Creating an OS from scratch is not only a much more complex task, but also completely redundant. There are so many great operating systems out there (Windows not being one of them ;)) - just use them. And if you're so worried about the OS overhead or non-essential tasks (both of which has become a non-issue with the advent of dual-core CPUs anyway), just install the flight sim on a dedicated, clean Windows (or Linux, or whatever it runs on) on another partition.

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But then I want the option to turn it off. That contant whining and clackety-clack is so annoying in some real cockpits. ;)

What is this new OS business about all of the sudden? I thought the mission was to create a new flight simulator? Creating an OS from scratch is not only a much more complex task, but also completely redundant. There are so many great operating systems out there (Windows not being one of them ;) ) - just use them. And if you're so worried about the OS overhead or non-essential tasks (both of which has become a non-issue with the advent of dual-core CPUs anyway), just install the flight sim on a dedicated, clean Windows (or Linux, or whatever it runs on) on another partition.

Yes I know some dont like those sounds, so may as well ask for some extra sliders on the audio setup in the next sim for all those seperatly controllable volumes

You see I am a Cockpit builder so would like to get it as realistic as posible :) Espesially in the Flightdynamics department, weather and atmospherics, would also like to see a complete overcast again one day, it worked in fs2002 sort of.

I was just throwing out some Ideas for Mathijs(from Aerosoft) to check out, I have been thinking about those Ideas for many years I just had to get get them out at the right time which is now it seems.. B)

If we could get Linux to work with the sim, that would be great, it's free so thats nice.. But as I said it in 5. it was a Extreme Idea about that new OS :rolleyes:

Regards

Rune_ENHD

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Hey guys,

This really is fantastic news, and as with everyone else I would love to help out, FSX is good, but its no where near as good as it could and should have been, so here are a few of my suggestions, or backing up others :

- Sloping Runways

A very important feature I think, its only really seen in a payware product for Courchevel, and if modeled well is a very impressive and challenging factor. No runway in the world is completely flat, and curved runways, even only slightly like at Manchester EGCC would make landings ever so slightly more interesting and, as mentioned before, challenging.

- Realistic ATC

I think most people want this, and unfortunately I think it will be one of the most difficult tasks. However, realistic ATC will be one of the fundemental factors of creating an immersive enviroment, where you are communicating with ATC, not just listening and reading back. Also, FSX misses oppertunities for Emergencies etc, and when you switch your Transponder to 7700 for example all that happens is that you are told to reset to your assigned code. What would be better is if ATC asked to confirm maydays, and then followed real-world procedures to divert to the nearest available.

- More realistic Weather

This is broken down into two parts :

1) More realistic weather representation, through use of dewpoints that actually affect anything, aswell as moisture like Mathijs mentioned before. Also, I think turbulence could be modelled better, with better sounds and vibrating effects.

2) Much more appealing textures, I think getting the folks from REX on board would be perfect. They have turned FSX from a series of dull textures and boring clouds to an extremely beautiful "world". On the same note default ground textures and runway textures should be better than the FSX counterparts, which in comparisson to REX are just plain rubbish.

However, saying this, I do realise the performance hit that would be created, however I have heard somewhere that FSX wasnt designed or coded well enough to fully eek out all the potential from one's computer system, and therefore if this new simulation was coded well enough these improvements could in theory be made without a performance hit. If i'm wrong however do point it out.

- Better Online Mode

However good IVAO and VATSIM are they are a faff to get started with. Now, as we all know, the intergrated FSX/Gamespy online mode is utterly shocking and barely works, so a better version of this, which is easy to get started with , would be great - and this would fix the atc problem, however I do not think that purely online is the way forward for atc or the whole simulation as it does leave some people - ironically without a voice on these forums for lack of internet - out.

- General Factors yet still important

Runway rumble and noise - When landing or taking off I think the feeling of actually running over puddles/centre lights/ holes in the runway can be better modelled through aircraft movements and noise. I see this is a feature of AES, so it may not be the most difficult thing to intergrate.

Better airport service movements - Again a feature of AES, de-icing, fuel trucks, catering vehicles etc should play a bigger role.

Allow for serious 3rd party involvment - Not having Captain Sim's amazing 757 would be a crying shame :mellow: also I think that fully modelling aircraft will just add to Aerosoft's work load, and as amazing VC's and Virtual Cabins are not a must, but a real plus point, allowing for others to create these wonders is a fine idea.

There will be other ideas which i may add later, but for now, i hope ive covered some interesting things :)

Alex

P.S - Best of luck Aerosoft, this is what the FS commuity needs ;)

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I think that this sim's default planes need to be pretty good quality. The default planes in FSX aren't! I know that Aerosoft is going to have a lot of other things to work on, but it would be nice to have some good quality default planes. After all, planes are what Flight Simulator is about! It would also be nice to have some older planes, like a Cessna 140 and maybe an older model Cessna 172.

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I would like to see passenger in the cabin of the plane and at airports that have no jetways you see people walking down the stair going in to the airport and most importantly , cabin announcements build into the airline specifically.

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I would like to see passenger in the cabin of the plane and at airports that have no jetways you see people walking down the stair going in to the airport and most importantly , cabin announcements build into the airline specifically.

I could be wrong, but I think sim and computer technology is a few years away from being able to depict that number of moving people. A couple for stewardesses and the like ok, but not sure about an airplane worth of passengers.

And I think cabin announcements specific to airlines would be best left to third party developers. The amount of work needed to create the diversity here would be better spent on building a stronger foundation.

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How about a Xbox360 version?

I think there are a lot of xbox360 users worldwide waiting for a "real" flightsim.

No more problems with configurating and settings, etc...

And that all on your 42" 1080P full-HD tv. :-)

Bring a flightsim to the consoles, you can sell content (add-ons) by xbox live.

Keep up the good work!

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ok ok i haven't read all the posts, but i'm sure the following has not been said before, since most of what i come out with may seem out to lunch....so....bon appetite.....

....a little window on the bottom corner of the screen, which can be brought up...... where one can adjust the color of the sim itself without having to adjust the main display setting......to adapt to each persons artistic leanings and computer tendencys....i apologize a head of time, if its a silly idea....cheers......

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How about a Xbox360 version?

I think there are a lot of xbox360 users worldwide waiting for a "real" flightsim.

No more problems with configurating and settings, etc...

And that all on your 42" 1080P full-HD tv. :-)

Bring a flightsim to the consoles, you can sell content (add-ons) by xbox live.

Keep up the good work!

hahahahhahahaha oh!! c'mon!! a real hardcore flightsim in a console? How will you bind all the functions and keys needed to a 12 button and two axis controller? Who will buy it? Same people that love Ace combat and HAWX?

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I dont know if this has been mentioned in any other post, but if possible, I would also like to see control sensitivities and null zones tweaked 'on the fly'. If required, we can bring up the sliders as we are flying as it would make our preferred fine tuning much easier and precise rather than going in and out of the menu and setting the sliders to a "guess"timate value. This is in addition to a request I made earlier on having individual sensitivities for each aircraft.

Looking forward to more news on the status of the project.

Cheers,

Dinshaw.

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hahahahhahahaha oh!! c'mon!! a real hardcore flightsim in a console? How will you bind all the functions and keys needed to a 12 button and two axis controller? Who will buy it? Same people that love Ace combat and HAWX?

Did you know that you can use the Xbox controller for FSX? For Xbox there is also a keyboardpad that can be plugged into the controller. But there is someting new comming in 2010. Project Natal, a motion controlling system without controller!

Wacth this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACt9R9z37U

If that can be used in a virtual cockpit...

AND, Xbox is not for kids! It's a serious world. Also for developers. If you bring a good game to the consoles, you can sell millions op copy's.

I'm 38 and I like the way of gaming on a Xbox, FS is the only game that I play on the PC. With a PC we all used a lot of time/energy/mailing in tweaking our PC's and re-installs instead of flying. Is that hardcore flightsimming?

I think there is realy a market for bringing a flightsim to the consoles. I also think that Microsoft stopped with the Aces Studio, because they can earn more money by investing in XBox gaming than on PC gaming. Microsoft knows what's the future. The most flightsimmers still don't know what is possible with a console these days.

Greetz, Marco

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Did you know that you can use the Xbox controller for FSX?

Yeah, but can you use your FSX controller, say an USB yoke, with the Xbox? How about your Precision Flight Controls Cirrus Console, for that matter? Also, can you plug in three of those 42" TVs? Beside that, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Microsoft presented their own FS-Xbox anytime soon. Remember they said they wouldn't be getting rid of 'flying games' altogether?

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