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[Will Cronenwett]

Hi again,  forum this time instead of email...  Just by way of introduction, I'm a user of Hardy's products and a contributor of knowledge to the Aerowinx community, but not involved in any way with the development of the software.  I gather you've read some of the posts on the forum.  It's a really friendly bunch of people, who contribute great ideas.  It's a little hard to find screenshots on the forum, since Hardy is releasing things in a piecemeal way, so if you haven't seen any, here's a thread with an example of his excellent art and close attention to detail:

http://aerowinx.com/forum/topic.php?id=272

I think your projects (plane + planet) are extremely well-suited to each other, and I hope you guys can collaborate in the future.

Will

[cameni]

Thanks, Will.
I'm still wondering how the integration would work. I find it hard to orientate myself on the Aerowinx site, apparently the know-how is mostly in the forums and the topic is also pretty hardcore for me. I'm a terrain/planetary rendering fanatic myself, rather than an aircraft simulation one. So maybe I'd need an introduction by a PSX fan (I don't want to block Hardy), who can give me a compressed overview of what PSX is and what the project integration should look like from his point of view.

From Hardy's reply I reckon that simulating the plane in Outerra using the output from PSX would be easy. The mode he presented will allow making a specialized application using the Outerra engine, that will connect to PSX and that's it. However, mapping the controls and visualizing the cockpit will be much more work using only the data available via the TCP channel (I'm assuming that the connection is bidirectional and I actually can send the control values back). So I'm wondering what the depth of the integration should be.

Anyway, as I see it, PSX is a pretty specialized simulator, and 744 would not benefit from our engine that much like say a Cessna at this stage. In the former case the important things are the airports and weather and such, and we didn't show any of these yet. Huge amount of trees and the detail of the terrain outside of the urban areas are our main selling points so far, so I'd wait with marrying the two engines yet.
Knowing how the integration should work in advance would be handy still.

[Will Cronenwett]

I don't think you need to put any energy into modeling the airplane or the cockpit for PSX.  Certainly not the cockpit, because PSX will take care of that.  And the PSX crowd really doesn't put a high priority on moving the virtual camera outside to look at the plane.  Most PSX users would be happy if they could set up a big monitor and look at the world as if they're looking straight ahead out of the pilot's window.  (Even better would be to place about 4 monitors in a semi-circle, showing the view out of several windows...  And other users will want a projection system instead of multiple monitors.)

The main point is that you don't need to do any aircraft or cockpit rendering, just display the world as the captain sees it out the window.

[cameni]

I see. That reduces the complexity considerably, one way communication PSX -> Outerra at least for the start, until we can plug the terrain model from Outerra back to PSX. That can be more problematic, but it's probably also not that important for the target group here.

OK, this could be done relatively easily once we have the required stuff (runways etc.) done.

Thanks Will.

[Will Cronenwett]

The closest you'd have to get to aircraft modeling is that someone will inevitably  demand a window "frame" that looks like the window of a 747.  :-)

Are you planning on an SDK that would allow Outerra users to model their favorite home-town airports?

Hardy has never released products that contain modules made by other people, for what it's worth.  However, especially in this incarnation, he's going to great lengths to insure compatibility with non-native extensions.  Would that be a problem?  In other words, a user would purchase PSX, then purchase Outerra, and then run them both on a network and get them talking.  Maybe several instances of Outerra running simultaneously to represent the view out several windows, with PSX sending information to each?  Like one monitor showing straight ahead, one showing -15 degrees, one showing -30 degrees... although that's just one possibility.  Maybe the best thing to do would be to let users configure the number of monitors and the types of views.

On the other hand, this is such an obvious partnership that he may indeed want to bundle things together more formally.  I have used Hardy's products since 1999, and many of us in the community have been waiting for someone to come along with expertise and passion about "world simulation" to complete Hardy's passion for aircraft simulation.

FWIW, you are indeed correct that the Aerowinx forum is a bit disorganized right now.  He was clear early on that the forum in it's present incarnation isn't supposed to be the public face of his marketing operation.  Rather, since PSX is still a fairly long way from release, the forum is mostly a place for ongoing conversations, mostly among previous users.  There are also reports here and there from alpha testers.  I think the forum will get more organized as he gets closer to releasing his work.

[cameni]

That's how I see it too - there could be a standalone product based on Outerra engine capable to connect to PSX (it may be a dedicated product or some simulator with that functionality). I agree that it should allow various configurations.
A tighter bundling will be possible if there's a strong interest in it from the users and from Hardy as well.

However I don't want to induce overly high hopes, as I've said elsewhere, we as a small team have to secure ourselves some income stream first, so without an external force a simulator cannot be our primary target. So the question is also when this product for PSX could happen. Nevertheless, our situation is still evolving so it's probably premature to speculate now.

[stavka]

Hi Cameni,

Now I'm doing a non-commercial software trying to connect the PSX with different 3D visual worlds. The PSX is already released since long time and from my side I already have the data in real time of things like Lat/Lon, pitch, roll, true heading and altitude (MSL). I would like to send them into the Outerra like formatted text messages through tcp ip to have Outerra synced with the sent messages in a slave mode. It is possible?

In that way we could have the PSX as the primary simulator and the Outerra as the 3D visuals out of window view.

About creation of runways and taxiways is a next step after this project....

Thanks in advance

Tércio Sampaio