The New Faster, Leaner Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium is Now Available for Your Input

[codechris 9]

But if you're goal was to ignite conversation on the other website, where fruitful conversation may come about, then I thought this had run it's course. As I said, it just looks to be a ######ing fest now. But, I'm only one person, and I was just voicing what I thought

[srborick 0]

 

 

3. For the record, I've read every single word of each post made. I have not perceived any ad hominem to this point, else I (or one of my fellow moderators) would have taken more direct action.

 

ad hominem - short for argumentum ad hominem, means responding to arguments by attacking a person's character

 

You're kidding right? If you would... please re-read every word in this thread and put yourself in my shoes.

 

Stephen B.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

 

 

Everyday, folks read this thread... perhaps it's the interest in the cock fight, perhaps it isn't.

 

 

 

Now that the staff has stated that the topic is being monitored, perhaps we can behave ourselves and approach the topic logically and constructively.

 

Nope, too late. I slid, fell, and hit my head attempting to skim past some posts heavily laden with testosterone, and I'm sueing. You'll be hearing from my lawyers.  :ph34r:

[srborick 0]

codechris,

 

If you've read through this entire thread as well as the previous threads I was accused of thinking that AVSIM was not good enough to discuss the possibilities of a next generation flight simulator.... a clear case of "darned if you do and darned if you don't".

 

It was also suggested in another comment that I make AVSIM my second home in order to gather the thoughts and opinions of the community regarding a next generation flight simulator... a clear case of "darned if you do and darned if you don't".

 

Stephen B.

Nope, too late. I slid, fell, and hit my head attempting to skim past some posts heavily laden with testosterone, and I'm sueing. You'll be hearing from my lawyers.  :ph34r:

 

Ahhh it's never to late!  And... I'll have my people talk with your people.  ^_^

[Luke 782]

 

 

It's gotten to the stage where Stephen has needed to defend himself against the slanderous statements being made by people like yourself. If I am bitter, it has nothing to do with the success or failure of the SIM-Posium but rather the defamation of my character as an individual and a member of the flight simulator community.

 

I really wish you would stop using these terms unless you understand what they really mean.

 

I've said nothing that is objectively false. I've hurt your feelings, but on questions of fact (most notably, that you have no understanding or knowledge of the subject matter) you yourself have repeatedly agreed and explicitly confirmed this - like in post #451. All that's left are my assertions that what you're doing is of little value, and that having no experience in a technical discipline equates to little or no credibility. I don't think anyone would argue with the latter assertion, and the former is merely spending $25 or so to rent a server or a domain. As others have pointed out, you could have done the same for free by starting another thread here on AVSIM. Many have done so before.

 

What I've noticed, and perhaps others have, is that you're attributing much more value to your efforts (and to yourself) than would otherwise be warranted. Suggesting that what you're doing isn't likely going to do much of value isn't rampant negativity or excessive adherence to the status quo. It's certainly NOT libel. Merely setting up an Internet forum isn't going to let you or any other lay person change the direction of flight simulation, any more than it would for brain surgery.

 

Think about that for a minute. I'm not a brain surgeon, nor have a played on on TV. But one of my daughters has had brain surgery (and well, I've had surgery) and it's complicated, imprecise and expensive. Not to mention dangerous. I'll set up the "Nex-Gen Brain Surgery" internet forum, and ask lots of neurosurgeons and hospitals and health ministry officials to participate. What do you expect their reaction to be? Substitute any other discipline and the reaction will be the same.

 

I'm not sure how many more times I need to say this, but stop using legal (and Latin - these aren't ad hominem arguments either) terms you don't understand. Go do something tangible. Build some scenery. Model an aircraft. Do something that gives you an understanding of the subject matter. People have tried giving you useful suggestions throughout this thread and you refuse to listen. (And please don't ask me to read your articles or the forums. I have, and discovered the revolutionary notions that we should use "modules" and the sim needs an SDK.)

 

Luke

[srborick 0]

ad hominem arguments - first of all I wasn't the person who first used that term our moderator was... so you've just stated that he doesn't know how to use the phrase. (a prime example of taking something out of context and using it to do harm.)

 

Second... "little or no credibility", "I really wish you would stop using these terms unless you understand what they really mean" 

 

Both of those statements are demeaning.... and other statements that you've made were most certainly meant to defame

 

 de·fame

dəˈfām/

verb

 

1. damage the good reputation of (someone); slander or libel.

   "he claimed that the article defamed his family"

   synonyms: libel, slander, malign, cast aspersions on, smear, traduce, give someone a bad name, run down, speak ill of, vilify, besmirch, stigmatize,disparage, denigrate, discredit, decry; More

    

   li·bel

   ˈlībəl/

   noun

    

   1. 1.

      LAW

      a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation.

 

Nothing, I've done... no matter my abilities or my financial contribution (which by the way is far more than you'll know) deserved such retribution by you or any other member of this forum. There is no excuse for such actions.

 

Stephen B.
 

[srborick 0]

Go do something tangible. Build some scenery. Model an aircraft. Do something that gives you an understanding of the subject matter.

 

I was invited and attended the "Microsoft Flight Simulation Community Summit" in 2005.... And, before you ask... don't. My contributions to the flight simulator community will remain anonymous. ( I wasn't going to include this tidbit, but my wife insisted).

[n4gix 4,949]

ad hominem - short for argumentum ad hominem, means responding to arguments by attacking a person's character

 

You're kidding right? If you would... please re-read every word in this thread and put yourself in my shoes.

You presume to instruct a priest in the meaning of simple Latin, and instruct him in his moderator duties? My close friend Rabbi Morris calls that "chutzpah."

 

Not one word written in this thread has in any fashion attacked your character, as far as I can determine. Yes, you have been the recipient of some "schtick," but how you respond to that has been instructive. I deeply admire your patience and fortitude.

 

You may not have noticed that I've been entirely supportive of your efforts in my few personal responses. Did you even consider my suggestion to contact Bruce Williams? He's certainly got the passion for flight simulation, and if he would consent to becoming involved would most assuredly carry the requisite "gravitas" to provide impetus to the endeavor!

 

BTW, I was there as well. Perhaps we even met in that mad crowd and never realized we had. I've even worn the tee-shirt a few times, after having waited out the five year NDA period... :wink:

[dtmicro 1]

Ill-FATED! Blah blah blah to everyone that wrote something down in the last 20 posts or so, here I'm going to try to actually write something of use instead of arguing the same ill-fated presumptuous junk in circles.

ill-fat·ed

destined to fail or have bad luck.

pre·sump·tu·ous

(of a person or their behavior) failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.

 

Stephen, I think people are just trying to point out that what you are trying to do will be next to impossible to start from scratch.

It's not impossible to start from scratch even as open source, it's VERY VERY difficult but not impossible, after all we do have Flight Gear.

The most likely cause of initial demise would be choosing the wrong foundational architecture and game engine, which would create a design environment that would lose the interest of all talented prospective coders from the beginning. That is why I don't just go join Flight Gear, building software can be thought of as a more technical way of building a house, once you get the roof and walls up, it's harder to enhance the foundation. There is a lot of very powerful open source software out there, after all a lot of the Web runs on CentOS or Redhat, or other flavors of Linux.

 

There is an unbelievable amount of talent in FSX add-on development, but that said a lot of it is not the same type of talent you need to build the initial architecture around an engine (Some of the talent fits for this, and some of the talent fits later).

 

The way I see a Next Gen Flight Sim engine is that it has to have these capabilities:

 

1) A C# code base interfacing with a modern game engine and a performance friendly developer database on the back-end.
 

2) The ability to use multiple types of land texture creation. One being, repeating textures derived from PR that are modded by procedural like algorithms, you basically have a template of PR textures that are modded in real-time by blend equations rather than trying to generate the world with only procedural equations. This forms the basis of your global textures. You would likely need to create around 25,000 tiles of the highest RES 30cm or better sampled PR from various places around the world. You don't need to create all these tiles at first, you start with just one state in the US. 30cm is almost good enough even for a car to drive over at close distances, not by default, but with a little trickery.

 

At sub-500 feet elevations, you apply a filter to the ground texture that smooths out the details, and then the overlay vegetation and grass does the rest. Overlay'd vegetation (excluding trees) will essentially disappear with a blur or blend mask as you get above a certain altitude as to use NO texture memory for 3D grass at a certain elevation. The color of the 3D vegetation will actually inherit itself from the aerial imagery with a shader mod.

 

Add-on developers however can do whatever they want, PR-scenery, Land Class, or (if the game engine supports it) real-time procedurally generated.
 

3) The ability for add-on developers to overlay a fully rendered sub-area (city / national park / airports) that overlays on top of the procedural and landclass to provide more variety.
 

4) A graphical creation UI that simplifies the way for add-on developers to interface their add-on products
 

5) World Placement Tools built directly into the simulator that allow real-time object placement, that are almost as easy to use as a Minecraft like interface. (thinking wireframe mesh mode with alignment markers and 3D positional movement). Also includes brush modes to quickly drop trees and stuff directly, as well as some shader stuff.

 

6) Fully locked down (unmoddable, non-overwriteable) core file system. This is done by an add-on installer that is built into the game, and every developer must conform to the same add-on installer. This installer would use logging and registration system so that anytime an add-on modifies something, it would register the modification and use the new instance of it, while leaving the old instance untouched. Thereby not allowing a developer to overwrite the core default files installed with the sim. Reverting the sim to its original state, is as simple as a checkbox. Every add-on has its own private duplicated / inherited config file, it cannot change your configs.

 

7) ENB and SweetFX like shader mods built directly into the game, to allow people to optimize their viewing colors without having to change their core calibration or profiles of their monitors.

 

I believe getting those things created first is the key, the clouds and weather engines, plane models, physics, AI, can all be created separately mostly by add-on developers or by purchasing other products already built.

 

The thing about procedural generation is that you don't necessarily need to do it with complex math algorithms, you can use the procedural class assignment method and blend mask algorithms built into a game engine. This last thing can be thought of much like CSS, and is in some ways FSX already does this (such as with autogen). The problem is the FSX Autogen stuff is tedious at best because one developer's file overwrites the default autogen, though some are finally making it easier with tools to keep the autogen separated.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

ll-FATED! Blah blah blah to everyone that wrote something down in the last 20 posts or so, here I'm going to try to actually write something of use instead of arguing the same ill-fated presumptuous junk in circles.

 

Thank you.

 

If I was Stephen, I might copy that down before it gets lost in the bowels of this thread.

 

I believe getting those things created first is the key, the clouds and weather engines, plane models, physics, AI, can all be created separately mostly by add-on developers or by purchasing other products already built.

 

A basic sim-core was mentioned previously in the thread, and was dismissed by some as an unmarketable goal. Could you explain your reasoning for why a sim core should be the target of a next generation sim?

[dtmicro 1]

On a project as complicated as this, having too wide of a focus will probably just end up as a last-gen flight sim.

 

I see the initial focus and goal as simple as 2 points:

1) Best possible graphics (primarily being ground textures, buildings, roads, etc...)

2) Easiest to extend and write add-ons
 

If we want the best possible graphics then it is very important to get the core foundational architecture CORRECT before all the actual SIM features are implemented, if people start writing the sim functionality and add-ons while the foundational architecture is under development or changing, it will become a mess as the foundation programmers will be trying to adapt to the add-on programmers, instead of the other way around. To obtain a clean and cohesive world, the initial graphics and design interface need to set the stage for the entire rest of the sim world. 

 

I think the core is marketable because you will be able to create a prototype demo and have a playable interface. You can add clouds and stuff as a simplified temporary thing, and even landing or whatever. But, the real high-end sim physics will be done by the experts in each discipline by converting their current software (hence Rex for cloud textures, Accusim for landing sounds and Cessna trainer physics, etc...).

 

I think some parts of FSX are already good enough for a next-gen sim, such as the cloud textures. The water and ground textures need massive work though. I have not seen a game produce clouds as good as FSX clouds, GTA V's clouds don't come close to Rex clouds IMO.

 

GTA V is the gold standard for road and buildings, for ground textures not quite though some parts of their world are better than others. I can see the checkerboard effect in GTA's ground textures.

 

Imagine a REX-LIKE profile shader mod system (but with many more features than changing a few colors) for ground textures that allow people to download a modded add-on of an modded add-on (a never ending hierarchy). Hence, someone writes an add-on, then everyone can take part in customizing.

 

Imagine a brush mode to where you can paint fall colors across a hill over the trees with a "fall tree template color brush". The colors will not necessarily show up at real high altitudes to where the REAL aerial imagery takes over, but at very low altitudes we can enhance the game greatly.

 

Actually I see the shader kits and colors modding the aerial imagery as well, but that feature can be turned on or off. Now we can have the best of both worlds, realism and BEYOND-REAL REALISM (like GTA V).

 

Stuff like that.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

 

 

I think some parts of FSX are already good enough for a next-gen sim, such as the cloud textures. The water and ground textures need massive work though. I have not seen a game produce clouds as good as FSX clouds, GTA V's clouds don't come close to Rex clouds IMO.

 

So essentially the same reasons that we've already explored. I just wanted a look at it from your side. The next thing then is why REX-like clouds, when everyone else and their dog is going volumetric? Especially when we are talking about tons of textures, vs a volumetric system.

 

In fact I don't see fsx style cloud textures in anything nowadays.

[dtmicro 1]

I didn't really put much thought into the clouds at this point, not there yet.
 

I meant the look of the textures, not so much the rendering method or how they look as they approach you. Volumetric has issues as well such as it's harder to make them look good at a distance.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

 

 

I didn't really put much thought into the clouds at this point, not there yet.

 

lol. the way my brain works I think of everything in a lump at the same time. when trying to sound smart, I call it big picture. My mom would just say "Scatterbrained."

 

So, what do you think somebody would realistically need for a prototype of such a thing? Since nobody else has stepped forward, you immediately become the best available expert. 

[dtmicro 1]

I'd have to write it up more detailed and break it all down to know for sure. Depends a lot on the game engine, and the level of completion it would need to reach. I mean you could take a plane model and do a small area in some 30cm aerial images down into a game engine in not very long at all, probably get something decent looking in 3-6 months as more of a slew engine with very very basic physics (whatever the engine came with and maybe adding a sim plug-in), but that wouldn't do a whole lot as none of the other components would be finished. You might even have time to throw some experimental Terragen like renders over the aerial images as well.

 

The placement tools, low-flying graphics like buildings, grass, shaders, and the config and all that stuff, going to need quite a few people to finish all that. You might be able to adapt the game engine's placement tools into an encapsulated wrapper, but again depends on which engine and what features it has.

The vector conversions from the GIS coordinate systems as well as PR images (WGS 84) to the game coordinate system are not really that hard as long as the game engine implements at least one standard coordinate system (I think most will), then you can just use ARC GIS or GDAL Warp or similar to convert the images, just like doing PR for FSX.

 

The problem is all the vector data, you have to do a lot of whiz-banging to get that correct because you are essentially wanting to replace the textures at the lower elevations with higher RES using some type of land class system.

 

I also think studying the default GIS land class systems out there to be useful, but I'd prefer to create a simplified one somehow (this would take some work too).