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[ZeosPantera]

I agree with PTTG. Outerra in its early stages (IE Now) can't start dedicating too much time to a single simulator discipline. It should progress with an equal development schedule on all aspects.

At the end of that cycle however, the sky is the limit. Assuming there is an influx of people that wish to use this universal simulator and cash flow at that point is enough to hire new people.. AND Cameni has enough of the engine coded to allow 3rd parties (Hired Employees at this point) to work on the specific genre's everything can be refined to its maximum. Planes can be setup to be 100% realistic in controls and interfaces. Cars can start having their tire models refined, submarines can have their interiors modeled.

First thing first.. Finish the entire world. Biomes, weather and bug fixes. These are things ALL sim disciplines are going to benefit from.

[PRiME]

If enough money was pledged they could hire a couple extra people to specialise in making the flight simulation aspect of the games. But yes the main guys should get the engine up to spec overall to suit all simulation aspects.

I personally would love to see Infantry/Soldier/Human and Tank/Half-tracks simulations being more fleshed out.

[KelvinNZ]

hmmm, I haven't purchased my lotto ticket yet.

[|ZUTI|]

We only need a good API and tools to import stuff in.

[Airhogg]

Great points made here.  It's true that this has the potential to be an "all-inclusive" simulator for ANYTHING, and that  it can be as complex as you want it to be for any level (perfect flight sim, FPS, driving sim, space conquest, etc...).   I guess I'm too old school to get away from thinking that a program has to go in 1 direction.

To appease everyone, how about the ability to turn some things on or off.  For instance, someone who wants a true flight simulator so they can practice for their check-ride might not like doing touch-and-go's at their local airport just to find a guy running on to the runway with a rocket launcher.  So the sim guy could turn off the "FPS switch" before starting up his session.  The same could go for any other extension of simulation.  The users would have to be placed in a world with other users of equal settings, so you would actually have multiple "games" running at the same time (flight sim, FPS, space conquest, etc...).  You could still have an "everything" mode for some real fun!  I'd love to see some players trying to just build up a community in one part of the world and then get caught in the middle of a gunfight between two factions for the community's natural resources.  Just when you think the community is about to be waxed, their mother ship swoops down from an outpost in space and drops 43 JigaHectreTons of urethric plasma on their heads!

....where did you say I can donate?

[Aman]

TrackIR-support. Heli's. 3d-party-support for planes and other addon's. Powerfull editor (i wanna make my own Mars-Station with a spaceship right in front of it).  Cars and motorcycles (wanna do some realistic rally). A nice physics system supporting projectile trajectory (i love VBS II). VBS II and Outerra intermixed would be the ultimate ultimate ultimate Battlefield-Simulation.

[ZeosPantera]

....where did you say I can donate?

Buy yourself and everyone you know the $15 beta. That seems to work best!

Actually is there a gift option yet? I know I could squeeze some more $$ out for the cause.

[PRiME]

The military would be interested in buying many licences if this engine had all the features of VBS, mainly because of the fact outerra would allow them to choose and setup real world combat scenarios much easier. However VBS engine (based off arma etc..) has ALLOT of very very cool stuff so its probably something that would take serious effort.

[SilentEagle]

All of the suggestions here are excellent.  Aircraft physics is already supported by a good system, but could always be expanded upon by others and implemented into the sim.  Two things this this engine absolutely has to have to destroy other sims is very detailed wind/turbulence physics and fluid multiplayer net code.  The wind/turbulence code in other sims is very simple and canned.  It does not replicate real world encounters, in my opinion.  Also, the multiplayer net code for all sims, besides the LockOn/FC/DCS series is terrible for what I enjoy doing.  I spend almost all of my flight simulation time doing online formation flying and having a very stable aircraft to fly off of is the most important aspect that I take into account when choosing a sim.

As stated before, keeping the engine open to development in all areas is the most important thing at this point.  Once weather/climate code is implemented, this will take off with 3rd party support, and I am just one of many who are interested in developing within this environment.

[PRiME]

You also need to be able to crash your aircraft and have a epic explosion and crater effects, maybe even  a slick crash landing scrap along the ground

[WP]

A more disturbing trend I have noticed is that most places I see Outerra mentioned (be they forums or sim sites) there are alot of people who don't believe Outerra is suitable for flight simulation. This is way off the mark in my opinion. Here is an example from simflight.com from when the tech demo was released.

Why do they think the engine isn't suitable for flight sims?

[ZeosPantera]

Why do they think the engine isn't suitable for flight sims?

I think it is because it isn't planning on becoming a dedicated flight sim or the fact that it is being developed by by a small group and likely won't get the corporate approval for using real names on planes and such..

Makes no nevermind to me. Having the flight sim aspect (physics at least) become full blown simulator is something I am all for, but only when it comes right besides all the other genre's this engine is destined to handle.

[Karamich]

Outerra can become easily the bed of the next gen flight simulators and those who do not see that in the horizon in my opinion, are motivated by emotional protection of their beloved flight simulators (and I mean the known Flight Simulators developers or followers)... I heard skepticism on Xplane forum toward Outerra and it is clear why....

I believe that Flight Dynamics / Virtual Aerodynamics codes/libraries and capabilities are around since the early days of PC simulation so no new news in that domain...Therefore we see many indie FLight Sims that can appear every now and then and not just MSFS or the "new Commercial" title Xplane10...

However what we do not see in the Flight Simulator titles today, is a new way of simulating the world.

The known Flight Simulator engines are more or less using the same world representation methods that are sometimes more than 10 years old technologically and conceptually in my opinion...

So what can make Outerra stands out of the usual PC Flight Simulation engines that are used for commercial or indie Flight Simulators, is by being first and before everything else, a sort of "next gen" dynamic world simulator or earth simulator.

If Outerra is pushed to simulate dynamicaly and in new ways everything related to atmospheric light, nature per regions, weather, seasons, vegetation, urban developement etc etc. and the interaction of all these together, then adding Flight Dynamics libraries to it would be a peace of cake in my opinion.

For example, XPlane 10 has only 1 seasonal textures set (green) coupled with a nice month switching slider that no matter on what month you put it, your world will remain the same, green... And no matter what real weather phenomenon you download, it could be the big snow storm in Canada, it will happen on green lands...

The reason why no seasonal textures are developed for XP10 is most probably the lack of artistic ressources to create the whole database of textures for fall, winter, spring and summer... And because the engine is based on this 4 seasons textures switching method (as far as I heard on their forum)

To me, this lack of seasonal variation, no matter what the reason is behind not including it in XP10, kills one of the most important immersion factor in a modern simulator engine made in 2011/2012...

No matter how "realistic" XP dynamics are, it is no more the big news in my opinion, we saw flight dynamic capabilities since a long time now and I think in 2012 we want to see an immersible realistic and dynamic world...

Hence, an efficient new method of simulating the dynamic world, like Outerra will reduce allot of the old primitive methods that tried to simulate our planet and required allot of texture developement...

All in all even if I am a very dedicated aviation lover and Flight Simmer, I look forward to see Outerra, before becoming a Flight Simulator engine, to become a super realistic and dynamic earth simulator engine that could make MSFS / Flight and XPlane engines look made of the old old past

Cheers!

[lonewulf47]

I agree that almost everything has been said about the necessities for a modern PC-Flightsimulator. Nevertheless one of my favouite items has been only covered once by Andrey as kind of a sidenote. Every distinct Flight Simulator makes use of a worldwide system of navigation points. There are many ways to do this but only ONE decent way to achieve absolute efficiency, and that's the use of an official ARINC 424 dataset. There are however two possibilities how to give the user access to this:

- the first would be that the simulator contains a complete native ARINC 424 dataset which can be updated on a voluntary basis by the user at the 28-days AIRAC cycle. This would  imply that every developer would either use the ARINC dataset directly for all navigational purposes including Departure and Arrival Procedures or each delevloper would create his own parser which would convert the ARINC data into a suitable format for his developments. That's how most of the today's Flight Simulators handle navigational data except that parsing is done externally by Navigraph and no native ARINC 424 dataset is present in the simulator.

- my favourite second possibility would be that the creator of the simulator decides about the final format of a parsed ARINC 424 dataset and will only allow this dataset to be used for each kind of add-on. The obvious advantage of this method would be a single replacement of the database for each AIRAC cycle - compared to what we have in today's simulators (mainly FSX) where each add-on developer has his own parsing system and the user therefore needs to update several databases for one cycle. For someone (e.g. like me) who uses many high-level add-ons including planning tools and other programs the number of databases to be updated easily reaches a figure of more than a dozen!

The most inportant thing however is that it should be avoided to use databases with different effective dates within the same simulator. Even X-Plane is going the wrong way in that respect by usind DAFIF data for it's main database and hence forces each add-on developer to use his own set of Departure and Approach Procedures derived from an ARINC dataset which again causes mixups as these databases usually are again of a different effectivity date. Furthermore DAFIF is not a complete database and it's data integrity is not guaranteed for data outside of the US. The result at present is not ecouraging as there are actually only two add-ons using ARINC data and each of them a different parsing - one of them even a mixture of two different datasets! Inconsistencies like those should be avoided in any case - and be it also (but not only) for the benefit of the user...

[NAX]

Very interesting thread.
As a cockpitbuilder there is one essential thing needed: A accessible data protocol like FSUIPC is in the MS series. Since our airplane is simulated in a external or standalone software, we need a method to collect data from the sim regarding position, height, air preassure, temperature, wind etc.
If these data can be collected via some kind of addressed protocol, we're good to go

As a flightsimmer I want PHYSICS, the realistic one. Objects, airplanes in my case, need to act realistically in different settings, influenced by wind as an example.
Easy ways to add sceneries and landclass would also be great to get a "living world". I see in the 3D model warehouse that a lot of airports is made with high detail and I believe it should be easy to insert these formats now. Sketchup is a powerful tool that is free and easy to learn. Supporting these formats can make the 3rd part movement really really big. Placing your own house in the sim wold be doable for everyone.

As a dreamer I have longed for the day where flightsimmers, trainsimmers, boatsimmers, construction and farm simmers and so on, can play together in the same world.
Think, running the trainsim, looking to the sky and there is a airplane flying by. Both the train and the airplane run their own online controlling systems, but still "live together".
I'm not all that into wargames, but have had my hours in the combat sims and Battlefield i.e.
I would like them to play in the same world as well, but there have to be a option to be able to detect damage. If some kiddo could enter his F-16 and blast me of the skies, I wouldn't use the sim at all. But being able to jump into one myself, it would be cool to join some dogfights. Just that it need to be my own choice.

Outerra can be a platform for so many games I forget to mention here, but bare with me.
I hope many many get their wishes and dreams fulfilled with this platform.

I know this would be my platform of choice for my long lasting flight sim hobby if the terms is right. As for now it have great potential.