Hi JP, and welcome to OT!
I agree, navaids and airports are two primary features necessary for any flight sim.
Navaids are something I have been pursuing for months. Currently, I can actually add them to a specific aircraft on a limited basis by including a script file with all of the necessary parameters, and a function to look up the aircraft's current position and return the data. This could be used to model GPS, ADF, NDB, DME, or even ILS, but would need to include the definition for each airfield, and the scripts be added to each aircraft. A line of sight parameter could also be introduced to model terrain interfering with the signals.
I could easily build a basic demonstration of these capabilities on the Cessna 172, although I am not quite sure how to correctly select the destination and display the data temporarily. (HSI bearing?) I could simply add a user_parameter to the top of the script, which you would set to the destination. Alternatively, I could have the "transponder" ping the airport once the aircraft comes within a certain distance. I would like to hear you suggestion on this!
It wouldn't be a long-term solution, but could provide you with navaids temporarily. I already have much of the functionality done, and would be happy to work with you to build a demo.
Currently, you can build any airstrip in a matter of minutes using the procedural road system. The process is quite straightforward, and with a little bit of effort you could add dozens in a short amount of time. You can also extract the scenery cache files for a specific area and share these airstrips with the community (See this post:
http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=3231.msg36246#msg36246 ). Acetone will be posting a short tutorial on building runways on the Scenery board shortly, and I'll post the link HERE.
In the future, OSM includes all of the airfields world-wide in a separate layer, and those can imported automatically. Now, there are some additional functionalities needed to automatically import the navigation beacons along with each airstrip, but I am sure it can be done with the right data source.
The biggest milestone we are all waiting for at the moment is the extended controls and click-able cockpit manipulators. Once those are released aircraft can be built full-featured, including start-up procedures, etc.
To answer some of your other questions:
Weather (physically and visually) are planned features, and Outerra plans to have it updated from online sources.
AI traffic for land, air and sea is feasible in the future.
Seasonal changes are also a planned feature and have been discussed on the forum at great length.
However, as Brano points out, funding is the great cornerstone. JP, you have identified a small number of the features we'll need for a full fledged flight sim, and only for aircraft, however many of these items have many sub-features and dependencies which will be necessary, and there is a long list of requirements in addition to those.
Again, we are not simply building an "aircraft" flight simulator, instead we are trying to gain traction with a much wider audience, interested in space flight simulation, vehicle simulation (
including tracked vehicles!), train simulation, etc. The idea is to have a fully integrated environment, where all of these activities can take place simultaneously, and without the limits to scale many other engines have.
To me it means that both the Kickstarter and the Steam Greenlight need something that's already a well playable alpha simulator, and that needs to be developed in advance.
I like the idea of Steam early access, it certainly provides a wider user base, above and beyond the flight sim traffic a Kickstarter campaign might generate. If that is the case, we would need to identify what the basic feature set and requirements should be, and qualify the current state and difficulty of each requirement item.
Best regards,
Uriah
Author
Topic: What makes a civilian flight simulator and why Outerra is destined to become one (Read 33805 times)