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Would you support Outerra making FSNext?


Dillon

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Outerra would like to make their engine into a full blown world coverage sim like FS9/FSX is today, switching gears from a scenery based effort to a full blown simulator. This effort would need community support financially and otherwise to be clear. I'd love to see them partner up withAerosoft again. I am in no way part of Outerra but I'm excited about the prospect. Seeing as my thread in 'Outer Marker' wasn't clear here's a direct quote:



"That's one of the things we were interested to find out here using the feedback - whether there exists a subset of features that can gain support from the sim community in the form of community funded development, in a similar way like various other developments got funded on Kickstarter.

A simulator project will require a dedicated development team working solely on the simulator specific code, basing it on the generic OT engine. Development of the simulator part itself will take a couple of years regardless of the relatively independent development of the Outerra base engine running in parallel. It will require a separate, skilled development team and sufficient funding for it. There's a considerable risk in the project, the simulator market is both demanding and relatively small.
The questions here were aimed to find if crowdfunding was a viable option for the development of such project, and what requirements it would have to meet to get the support from the community.

Many people here (including me) think that crowdfunding won't work for this case (for flight sim), because of the specifics of this sim base, the complexity (and thus the amount of money needed to fund it). There are other, more classical funding options with their advantages and disadvantages, but these require a different approach and it wasn't the subject of this inquiry at all.

OT is being developed independently, licensed to special simulation projects already. But even if it was ready tomorrow, it's basically "just" a world rendering engine with simulator hooks, and you'll still have to invest 2-3 years into the development of the simulator itself. That part can be started in parallel, or one can wait for all the proofs and begin only after OT is complete.

Brano Kemen, Outerra"

Taken from Avsim:
http://forum.avsim.net/topic/411219-...4#entry2697083

I hope this one get's off the ground.

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Hi Dillon,

i love
Outerra, or i guess many of us love it, but from now Outerra is far, far, far away from become the next flight sim.
I think we do have right now 2 upcoming flight
sims, Xplane still grows really wells, as we see new developers (like pmdg...) told they going to start develop stuff for xplane, i guess this could be a real game changer.
Also we have P3D, which is still really strange for me. They tell they ll have a 64Bit, better, faster, cooler "
fsx" soon, but i cant see big movements of them in the last years (i could be completely wrong but thats my point of view).

For sure we could have some new players in the flight
sim playground, but at last its really hard - look at xplane, there are still tooooons of addons missing we love to see there to make it that game changer it could be.


Greets

Fabian

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  • Aerosoft

Outterra, beautiful as it is, is just a small part of a simulator as is indicated in the text. In development time we think it is only 20% of a simulator. We did look at it seriously but for this reason it was just not that attractive to us. And as a terrain display engine it does have serious competition.

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Hi Dillon,

i love Outerra, or i guess many of us love it, but from now Outerra is far, far, far away from become the next flight sim.

I think we do have right now 2 upcoming flight sims, Xplane still grows really wells, as we see new developers (like pmdg...) told they going to start develop stuff for xplane, i guess this could be a real game changer.

Also we have P3D, which is still really strange for me. They tell they ll have a 64Bit, better, faster, cooler "fsx" soon, but i cant see big movements of them in the last years (i could be completely wrong but thats my point of view).

For sure we could have some new players in the flight sim playground, but at last its really hard - look at xplane, there are still tooooons of addons missing we love to see there to make it that game changer it could be.

Greets

Fabian

X-Plane still has a ways to go. The cities still don't look as good as they could and the horizon doesn't extend as far as FS9/FSX making it look more like Fly! versus a mature flight sim. Unless X-Plane updates their city/rural scape to better match real world data or a developer releases a product that addresses this the feel is like flying over 'fantasy land' versus a city like Minneapolis. The limited horizon distance at altitude only they can fix. I'd say a few more refined updates (X-Plane12) should bring it fully into prime time. Outerra is in development and their stating they'll do what they need to do in the code to make it a true simulator. Why would you pass something like this up?

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Why would you pass something like this up?

With all due respect Dillon, I think Mathijs and Fabian gave enough information in their posts to answer that question, if you read carefully.

Even your original quote from the Outerra developer gives a lot of reasons why I wouldn't bet my money on Outerra making it into a full simulator in the forseable future.

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I think the real question is.. do we need another flight sim.. my answer at this time would be no as flight sim is a specialised area that apeals to a certain amount of people. Getting developers to move to a completly new sim is not an easy task and if the developers dont back the sim then people wont use it.

Flight is the perfect example of what can go wrong with a sim when you dont listen to what the developers/customers want from the product.

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I also looked at Outerra, as part of a government project.

It doesn't fit the bill. Yet.

Pretty pictures are but a small part of a true sim engine. Their dynamics are good in parts.

So not only is Outerra not suitable as a flight sim in its present iteration, can anyone reveal one marketed software package where it has been used as part of the game engine? I would very much like to review it as an integrated part of a `wholistic` game package.

Not at all sure where you get the enthusiasm from Dillon? How can you enthuse over something that has yet to find a single application. Something which you have no facility to test for the flightsim engine you aspire it to be.

Enthusiasm is nice, but blind optimism? That's foolish.

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Hi,

I am a follower of Outerra evolution and I always enjoy flying with its basic aircraft models in its immersive environment that, despite being a non man's land for now, is already very true to life...

Also as a flight simmer, I thought at first, like many others that Outerra has to be licensed to become the next PC flight simulation engine.

However I am now much more ambitious to see Outerra evolve and get a finished aspect as a Planet Earth simulator using procedural processes to simulate planet earth in its soil and atmosphere, dynamically and in real time... I think this is the goal of the developers initially?

The reason I thought so, is that in my opinion, Flight Simulation engines, until now, at least those we use on our PCs, are 3D worlds that evolved around flight dynamic code, just enough to support these flight dynamics... Being at the early foundation of the simulators we know, flight dynamics had worlds features evolving around them and not the opposite... Either FS or Xplane, both started back then as mainly flight dynamics against ultra basic visual...

Now if Outerra evolves and succeeds to become a planet earth simulator as I think it was meant to be, it will be able to host a wide variety of simulation physics... Also by implementing Flight simulation features in an earth simulation Outerra, I suppose the result will gain much more immersion and realism than by taking it as is now and developing the only world features needed to support a flying object... And thus I think the result would not be different from what we have now in our simulators worlds (other than by the beautiful atmospheric and landscape effects)

I wonder if I explain myself clearly here :)

Outerra has already a true to life effect as a world engine in its atmospheric light, depth, the sense of altitude, landscape even if it s basic, procedural methods to generate elements that can be seen from few inches away or from outer space in fast motion etc etc...

We did not see yet how the weather effects will be, regional fauna and flaura, urbanism processes etc etc...

For now FS in my humble opinion is better than XP in the overall illusion of being in an outside environement (atmospheric light) and the rough FS landclass / autogen is more pleasing to the eye as an illusion compared to the clean cut plausible 3D cities of XP... That's my artistic observation...

But I admit that the simulators we use now have old fashioned engines and none of these simulators we have now on our PCs have the immersion along with the look and feel of the basic Outerra or other top notch (finished) world engines...

For example, here is Uningine solutions for simulation... Perhaps you know it already... However I do not know to what extent it is an engine that handles a whole planet with its curvature, geography, regional particularities etc etc but the demo looks light years ahead, in terms of immersion, compared to FS or XP :

http://unigine.com/press-releases/130612-helicopter-demo-preview/

http://unigine.com/sim/

Cheers!

Michel

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I would gladly donate 300 Euro for a kickstarter project for getting a sim engine into Outerra. In terms of graphics we really life in the dark ages with FSX and X-plane. And also having graphics like this in a sim sure would attract alot more "new blood" into simming, than todays engine because old style graphics like FSX has doesnt attract gamers at all that are used to have fancy looking games.. I know alot of gamers that would take a step into simming if the graphics was upto date.

I hope one day that these engines can be the future of simming, that would be a dream come true.

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I would gladly donate 300 Euro for a kickstarter project for getting a sim engine into Outerra. In terms of graphics we really life in the dark ages with FSX and X-plane. And also having graphics like this in a sim sure would attract alot more "new blood" into simming, than todays engine because old style graphics like FSX has doesnt attract gamers at all that are used to have fancy looking games.. I know alot of gamers that would take a step into simming if the graphics was upto date.

I hope one day that these engines can be the future of simming, that would be a dream come true.

My question to Simon Evans and Mathijs Kok, is there any graphic engine worthy of your approval that could host FSNext? I just want to get a feel for where some people are at. Right now it seems FSX/Microsoft is the end all and we never need look at another project again (too bad Microsoft doesn't feel the same).

Outside of Outerra this really looks good:

http://unigine.com/p...r-demo-preview/

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My question to Simon Evans and Mathijs Kok, is there any graphic engine worthy of your approval that could host FSNext? I just want to get a feel for where some people are at. Right now it seems FSX/Microsoft is the end all and we never need look at another project again (too bad Microsoft doesn't feel the same).

Outside of Outerra this really looks good:

http://unigine.com/p...r-demo-preview/

Yes, there are a few, but I really can't go into that too deep. I'll attach three (very) small images of one we are looking at right now.

One very important aspect is that the display engine and the world modeling engine need to be easy on the hardware. Outerra leaves us not too many cycles for weather, flight models, systems, sound, multiplayer, etc etc. All the developer of these modules tend to eat up all the resources that the machine has. I even have a weather engine that without showing (!) anything, just calculating it, brings a core i5 to it's knees.

post-43-0-57659000-1372078994_thumb.jpg

post-43-0-54816100-1372078995_thumb.jpg

post-43-0-05565200-1372079089.jpg

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Yes, there are a few, but I really can't go into that too deep. I'll attach three (very) small images of one we are looking at right now.

One very important aspect is that the display engine and the world modeling engine need to be easy on the hardware. Outerra leaves us not too many cycles for weather, flight models, systems, sound, multiplayer, etc etc. All the developer of these modules tend to eat up all the resources that the machine has. I even have a weather engine that without showing (!) anything, just calculating it, brings a core i5 to it's knees.

Those pics look outstanding. You guys need to go ahead and cash in on doing FSNext. You might not see it at first (worst case scenario) but as Aerosoft Flight Simulator sits on the market and add-ons like SimWing's scenery, Airbus X Extended', Ultimate Traffic 4, and Activesky start making their rounds with awesome screenshots people around the world will take notice. The only slowness in adoption rate I could see would be Aerosoft's name isn't as big as Microsoft.

The key is can someone load up a base sim looking like the screenshots above and fly without performance issues. An average user doesn't feel like learning how to overclock a CPU just to run a Flight Simulator, that's ridicules. As much as everyone hates Flight that was one key they got right, accessibility to the lowest common denominator (both hardware and user knowledge). You put a stellar base engine together looking like the above screenshots and add-ons like what's available for FSX currently (Caranado, PMDG, Flight1, and FSAdd-on to name a few), you won't be able to keep up with demand from aviation enthusiasts and schools the world over...

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Those pics look outstanding. You guys need to go ahead and cash in on doing FSNext. You might not see it at first (worst case scenario) but as Aerosoft Flight Simulator sits on the market and add-ons like SimWing's scenery, Airbus X Extended', Ultimate Traffic 4, and Activesky start making their rounds with awesome screenshots people around the world will take notice. The only slowness in adoption rate I could see would be Aerosoft's name isn't as big as Microsoft.

The key is can someone load up a base sim looking like the screenshots above and fly without performance issues. An average user doesn't feel like learning how to overclock a CPU just to run a Flight Simulator, that's ridicules. As much as everyone hates Flight that was one key they got right, accessibility to the lowest common denominator (both hardware and user knowledge). You put a stellar base engine together looking like the above screenshots and add-ons like what's available for FSX currently (Caranado, PMDG, Flight1, and FSAdd-on to name a few), you won't be able to keep up with demand from aviation enthusiasts and schools the world over...

Considering how reluctant (nigh on anti) Prepar3d Flight1 are, why would anyone think that they would even consider porting Ultimate Traffic to an all new simulator. As for running a sim looking like what Mathijs posted without performance issues is well to put it polite dreaming if you want to simulate: a round earth, with sloping runways, high detail terrain mesh, accurate AI, real world weather, the best looking reflective water and a boat load of autogen. And thats without your high end addon aircarft such as the A320/321 extended, NGX etc. As for the average user not wanting to learn to overclock, thats BS. The average flight simmer tends to have a higher technical aptitude than the average home user and lets face it with the latest i5's and 7's overclocking is far from hard. If you don't own the latest i5 or 7 then you can not expect to run such a high end program as a flight simulator without performance issues pure and simple.

Comparing Flight to any other simulator (X-Plane, FSX, P3D, FS9 or even DCS World) is foolish at best. There's a very good reason Flight had such impressive performance, they modelled only a tiny bit of world, Hawaii and the apparent (from MS Flight website) 586,000 square miles of Alaska, which most certainly doesn't make up a whole world or put any way near as much load on a system.

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Considering how reluctant (nigh on anti) Prepar3d Flight1 are, why would anyone think that they would even consider porting Ultimate Traffic to an all new simulator. As for running a sim looking like what Mathijs posted without performance issues is well to put it polite dreaming if you want to simulate: a round earth, with sloping runways, high detail terrain mesh, accurate AI, real world weather, the best looking reflective water and a boat load of autogen. And thats without your high end addon aircarft such as the A320/321 extended, NGX etc. As for the average user not wanting to learn to overclock, thats BS. The average flight simmer tends to have a higher technical aptitude than the average home user and lets face it with the latest i5's and 7's overclocking is far from hard. If you don't own the latest i5 or 7 then you can not expect to run such a high end program as a flight simulator without performance issues pure and simple.

Comparing Flight to any other simulator (X-Plane, FSX, P3D, FS9 or even DCS World) is foolish at best. There's a very good reason Flight had such impressive performance, they modelled only a tiny bit of world, Hawaii and the apparent (from MS Flight website) 586,000 square miles of Alaska, which most certainly doesn't make up a whole world or put any way near as much load on a system.

Wow, how low our expectations have fallen concerning performance after FSX's arrival. With statements like yours fully explains the anger many have had over the years with FSX. Aces didn't get a chance to finish the job and now some believe this is how it has to be. It's like accepting FS2000 as the best it could have gotten if Microsoft had pulled the plug back then after the 9/11 attacks. I'll start off in saying just because a sim models the whole world doesn't mean the whole world is loaded up all at the same time. When flying in FS9 or FSX what you see around the immediate aircraft is all that's loaded. As you fly across the sky scenery, AI, and autogen load as you go along (you can actually adjust this as well). It's unfortunate many of you feel FSX is the best it could ever get. If we flew men to the moon with far less technology surely we can get more out of our sims today. You should know FSX wasn't written for today's hardware technology (single core computers were on their death nail before Aces got the news). How in the world could you have such low expectations of future products that would take into account all hardware has to offer? We really don't know (I do know it would be better than FSX), Flight truly showed us what's possible.

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Wow, how low our expectations have fallen concerning performance after FSX's arrival. With statements like yours fully explains the anger many have had over the years with FSX. Aces didn't get a chance to finish the job and now some believe this is how it has to be. It's like accepting FS2000 as the best it could have gotten if Microsoft had pulled the plug back then after the 9/11 attacks. I'll start off in saying just because a sim models the whole world doesn't mean the whole world is loaded up all at the same time. When flying in FS9 or FSX what you see around the immediate aircraft is all that's loaded. As you fly across the sky scenery, AI, and autogen load as you go along (you can actually adjust this as well). It's unfortunate many of you feel FSX is the best it could ever get. If we flew men to the moon with far less technology surely we can get more out of our sims today. You should know FSX wasn't written for today's hardware technology (single core computers were on their death nail before Aces got the news). How in the world could you have such low expectations of future products that would take into account all hardware has to offer? We really don't know (I do know it would be better than FSX), Flight truly showed us what's possible.

I fully understand how a flight simulator works thank you very much, your preaching is wasted on me. Nowhere did I say FSX is the best it could get maybe you should read what I actually typed, though as a side note you would be very haird pushed to find a simulator that does all FSX does and does it better (X-Plane 10 doesn't). I just don't see the world through your somewhat rose tinted glasses. One has to ask are you getting paid to big up Outerra by any chance because lets face it as a games engine its kind of failing, or is it as Simon say's blind optimism? You could say why don't we all use something like the Frostbite engine (other than EA most likely not licensing it), it sure looks nice in Battlefield 4 but would it scale up to a flight simulator, I doubt very much it would. As for having low expectations, that is not the case at all. But back to the subject of flight simulators, its such a niche market I very much doubt we will see a new simulator any time soon other than Prepar3D V next, which excusing the whole BS licensing debates (yawn) is not aimed at the entertainment market. You are stuck with X-Plane's plausible world or FS9/X, I really don't see simulators being developed for the home entertainment market any more. The market just isn't big enough to justify the vast expense of developing a whole new simulator. Though I'm sure if you were to give Mathijs a couple of million Euros you would get your new simulator.

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I fully understand how a flight simulator works thank you very much, your preaching is wasted on me. Nowhere did I say FSX is the best it could get maybe you should read what I actually typed, though as a side note you would be very haird pushed to find a simulator that does all FSX does and does it better (X-Plane 10 doesn't). I just don't see the world through your somewhat rose tinted glasses. One has to ask are you getting paid to big up Outerra by any chance because lets face it as a games engine its kind of failing, or is it as Simon say's blind optimism? You could say why don't we all use something like the Frostbite engine (other than EA most likely not licensing it), it sure looks nice in Battlefield 4 but would it scale up to a flight simulator, I doubt very much it would. As for having low expectations, that is not the case at all. But back to the subject of flight simulators, its such a niche market I very much doubt we will see a new simulator any time soon other than Prepar3D V next, which excusing the whole BS licensing debates (yawn) is not aimed at the entertainment market. You are stuck with X-Plane's plausible world or FS9/X, I really don't see simulators being developed for the home entertainment market any more. The market just isn't big enough to justify the vast expense of developing a whole new simulator. Though I'm sure if you were to give Mathijs a couple of million Euros you would get your new simulator.

Unfortunately I have to agree with you about the market and no I'm not paid by Outerra.

I will say this, I wonder why the interest in Aviation has dwindled so much? I can understand economics but the actual interest isn't there with the youth. It took us thousands of years to learn how to fly and now it's another thing we do like walking down the street. Has things went amiss because one no longer can look on the store shelves and see these sim products? It's all online now meaning less visibility unless your directly looking for it.

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Has things went amiss because one no longer can look on the store shelves and see these sim products? It's all online now meaning less visibility unless your directly looking for it.

This is sad i must say. Gone are the days of popping into PC World or Game for whatever and checking out the FS addons they had in but, things move on and times and tastes change, for the better or worse? In this case i opt for the latter but thats how it is :(

But, Aerosoft are here ready to sell us a boxed product or two, and to be honest is the first virtual shop i visit in this ever changing modern era! :)

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Unfortunately I have to agree with you about the market and no I'm not paid by Outerra.

I will say this, I wonder why the interest in Aviation has dwindled so much? I can understand economics but the actual interest isn't there with the youth. It took us thousands of years to learn how to fly and now it's another thing we do like walking down the street. Has things went amiss because one no longer can look on the store shelves and see these sim products? It's all online now meaning less visibility unless your directly looking for it.

Could be one of any number of reasons. As flight gets older those who remember its golden age are slowly getting fewer and fewer. Memory and stories passed onto their sons and then onto their sons sons is gradually getting more and more dilute over time. It's no longer what dad or granddad did but potentially what great granddad did, who I never met, you can see how it would be difficult to kindle a child's interest. Plus you have to look at it as changing times, museums are getting less and less popular. Its only recently been rumoured that in London a couple of the larger and more popular museums are struggling to draw in customers. As for the store shelves or store fronts, its the 21st century, the internet has become the worlds store front. For better or worse, pretty much everything is right there for you. Now I don't have to get a bus into town or drive and pay for parking to pickup my copy of Mega Airport Heathrow. I can buy online and be "playing" with it in minutes. This in itself is akin to the progress from late 1930's piston biplanes to mid 1940's jet fighters. Not being a marketing guru I couldn't comment on the pro's and cons of physical v's boxed only from my somewhat biased point of view. But I would guess the move from physical to download hasn't really had much affect. Simming is an addiction, one that much easier to feed via online purchases.

This is sad i must say. Gone are the days of popping into PC World or Game for whatever and checking out the FS addons they had in but, things move on and times and tastes change, for the better or worse? In this case i opt for the latter but thats how it is :(

But, Aerosoft are here ready to sell us a boxed product or two, and to be honest is the first virtual shop i visit in this ever changing modern era! :)

I was always more partial to the Electronics Boutique :lol: Back in the good old days of Jane's Combat sims. I must confess that I embraced the whole online shopping with great joy. A day's parking in Cambridge costs £26 thats a £1 more than a illegal parking ticket! Then ontop of that you have lunch etc it soon becomes ever so expensive, plus being male I loath shopping and also those psycho women going for your ankle with their buggys, or brollies in the eye when it rains. No thanks! I'll sit at home in my boxers do my food shopping online to be delivered when I when suits me, clothes are jhust as easy I no what size fits me, I know what I like and I don't feel compelled to try on a gazillion other things only to buy what I know I like lol. By the time I've done all that its opening time at the local and the cash I've saved goes into the till at the pub :D

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One very important aspect is that the display engine and the world modeling engine need to be easy on the hardware. Outerra leaves us not too many cycles for weather, flight models, systems, sound, multiplayer, etc etc. All the developer of these modules tend to eat up all the resources that the machine has. I even have a weather engine that without showing (!) anything, just calculating it, brings a core i5 to it's knees.

I would really like to know where this assertion about eating all the resources comes from, Mathijs. I can post our pre-NDA communication about this where we talked about how much resources Outerra is consuming (the figure was 14% of CPU time total on an old Intel core 2 Q6600 CPU, running the terrain engine and the JSBSim FDM), to which you didn't reply btw, so it surprises me to read this again.

Outerra is leaving pretty much all of the CPU for the simulation (notice how you named only the CPU side tasks), as it was designed that way. You may argue about other things that it lacks yet, that make it unsuitable in its current state for a flight simulator, but not this.

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I would really like to know where this assertion about eating all the resources comes from, Mathijs. I can post our pre-NDA communication about this where we talked about how much resources Outerra is consuming (the figure was 14% of CPU time total on an old Intel core 2 Q6600 CPU, running the terrain engine and the JSBSim FDM), to which you didn't reply btw, so it surprises me to read this again.

Outerra is leaving pretty much all of the CPU for the simulation (notice how you named only the CPU side tasks), as it was designed that way. You may argue about other things that it lacks yet, that make it unsuitable in its current state for a flight simulator, but not this.

I stand corrected and apologize.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Yes, there are a few, but I really can't go into that too deep. I'll attach three (very) small images of one we are looking at right now.

The fact that in a lot of forums (here, at ORBX, etc) this topic of the next generation is more and more often asked makes it obvious that FSX/P3D is no longer up to date and that XP cannot (yet?) replace it.

Look at modern games and you will find how modern graphic looks like (and that is what the next generation of kids, gamers and also professionals are looking for).

I made my view clear this morning in a post over at the ORBX forum (I don’t know if it is o.k. to post a link here).

Basically I think the leading add-on-developers should join forces and found a development company (“DevCo”) for a Sim Operating System that is state of the art (64-bit, multi-core, multi-GPU, etc). The return for the DevCo should come mostly from license fees from the add-on developers (x% of the purchase price) for their no sold add-ons. Freeware developer receive the license for free. The basic package of the Sim Operating System could be sold to the user for a small price.

The DevCo could be a stock company and/or could be crowed funded (if you need help with that, please let me know).

Since all this will most likely take its time I look forward to P3D 2.0 and will see how that will fix at least some of the issues we have today.

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Would you support Outerra making FSNext?

Ans: No. But If Outerra makes a complete and final FSXI with their engine I would buy it. The whole thingy.

Cheers,

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