There's a bit of a dipsy doodle over at Avsim over the idea of implementing birds as part of The Flight Simulator X worldspace. Steve Lacey has covered that to some degree here.  (be sure and read the comments)

The upshot is about the tension between Fligt Sim as a game or as a real world simulator. I tend to think it can/should be both.

Anyway, I came across the links below via our Environment Art Lead John Smith, and thought it was neat.

The site's link is here: https://www.wwt.org.uk/flamingo/

The cool videos of birds in flight are here...

Movie 1 : Movie 3
Movie 2 : Movie 4

Found at a forum at Avsim dedicated to Microsoft Flight Simulator X:

Google Earth vs FS X

Nice round up of comparison screenshots, also comparing several 3rd party add-ons in Flight Sim 2004, and how close it does and doesn't come to the press shots of FSX we've released so far.

A Flight Simulator enthusiast wrote up some notes about the new version (titled "Microsoft Flight Simulator X") as caught by Susan (Engauged) in her post:

Some more entertainment

The same user is back. This time with a post (from Avsim) on the potential timing of a holiday release for FSX:

Release date of FSX in conjunction with perspectives from Astrological timing

Now go back and read the Guy Kawasaki post about product eveangelism

From Bruce's site...

Track your flight

http://flightaware.com/

In an earlier post (the one with the kittens and puppies) I bungled a link.

I've corrected it in the post, but would be remiss if I didn't post an update:

If you eat food, you might enjoy Ellen's site.

Disclosure:

Ellen is a friend. I eat brunch with her and a few other of my friends.

Don't bungle links of friends, especially ones you eat brunch with.

Yeehaw! Here's a couple of posts I found notable...

Hal blesses the world with a couple of posts worth reading (make sure and click the links he put in)...

Comparing Apples to Really Expensive Apples

Adrian (torgo) our Tecnical Art lead has a post with a link to a tech demo of Shadow of the Colossus woth looking at...

A really cool technical demo...

Enguaged's  Susan points us to

WoCo

And Mike Z's still stuck in neutral... ('cause we don't keep him busy enough) :P

Opening Day

Mike Gilbert (also affectionately known as Tdragger) riled a few feathers talking about how nice it is using the x-box controller with Flight Simulator X

I've seen some negative reactions at the very idea of using such a controller. Below is a representative quote (a comment from Mike's blog post):

"yesss flight simulator and x-box controler...sorry Mike but I`m disgusted...you product manager are trying tell us, that using arcade game controler is better in Flight simulation ...yes it`s for sure but for babes .Please stop looking on it like arcade game only , because there is lot`s of simmers which takes it more seriously... "

Well now Mike's gone a step further and offered up steps for getting the controller to work for people who have Flight Simulator 2004 right now.

With regards to the negative reactions, I commented on this on somebody's post once already, but I'll be durned if I know where that is, or I'd point you to the link. My short take on the subject is that this boils down to the "is it a sim or game?" argument that's been floating around since before I got involved with ACES. It would seem that folk are worried that supporting an Xbox controller means that somehow the taint of consoles is spreading to their simulation

(hey! you got peanut butter in my chocolate!).

Hooey.

Yeah, that's right. You heard me. Hooey.

The input control mechanism doesn't define whether or not something is a sim versus a game. Your brain defines it.

A good deal of our users rely on the keyboard alone for flight. That aint exactly a flight yoke, is it?

What about a joystick? That's not very real. Heck, it's certainly nowhere near Hal Bryan's set up: yoke, pedals, radio stack, and trackIR.

If you're worried that a controller will somehow ruin the game, bear in mund that none of the old modes of input are going away. We're just extending the control matrix to allow a bunch of new (or old!) users an easy (especially if they have an Xbox) way to experience the sim.

But even if the argument fails to persuade you, I've got the trump card.

You *do* know that Flight Simulator has already supported a game pad controller for *many* versions, don't you?  

 :)

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/guys_golden_tou.html

Good read.

Flight Sim has the potential, I think.

Not there yet. (see the entry "elegant" for a start)

Okay. I took the Flight Simulator X screens seen in the link below:

3 years later ...  and here FSX VS Fs2004 Default Terrain

But who took the Flight Simulator 2004 screenshots?

And how did he or she know this: "Calaveras Reservoir (10 mi E of KSJC)" was one of the areas?

I shot the pics, but I'll be darned if I could find that California sim location again...

There's a couple of interviews available at gamespot. My favorite is Mike Gilbert's little piece available here:

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/video_player/popup.php?pid=931252&sid=6141988&tab=related

Great job Mike!

A statement made during our announcement at CES about the team having over a year remaining have generated a few questions in the Flight Simulator communities about when we're gonna ship.

So when are we gonna ship?

The FSInsider site reports in our official F.A.Q. that "We are working hard to deliver “Flight Simulator X” in the holiday 2006 timeframe."

And we are.

Holiday 2006.

What does that mean?

Well, as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future gain, but here are a few titles ACES games studios have released that were shipped in the "holiday" timeframe. If you purchased any of them, you might remember when they started to appear on the shelves.

Combat Flight Simulator 1 --- holiday '98-- October 7 1998

Flight Simulator 2000 --- holiday '99-- September 29, 1999

Combat Flight Simulator 2 --- holiday '00-- September 20, 2000

Flight Simulator 2002 --- holiday '01-- September 24, 2001

What does "released" mean? Wikipedia has a good description of software development cycles here, which includes a generally accurate definition of release.

Which pretty much means, there's a ways to go, but less than a year from our point of view...

There's a lot of folk who figure that any new version Flight Simulator needs a "brand new graphics engine" or to "rewrite" this or that. How would I answer that? I wouldn't. I'd let wiser heads than mine do it for me...

Steve "I worked on DirectX before it was called DirectX" Lacey has a great post from a while ago that addresses this (with regards to backwards compatability):

http://steve-lacey.com/blogarchives/2005/08/backward_compat.shtml

Highlights:

"A lot of the conversation on AvSim seems to imply that we are trading-off increasing the visual fidelity of the product for supporting some old models. Nothing could be further from the truth. The engine is architected such that the core rendering engine is abstracted and the 3D model and database system access it by well defined internal APIs. When we revise the graphics engine we do so without breaking the fundamental way that the object system (and any other client such as weather) accesses it. What we may do however, is provide new features in the graphics engine that can only be fully taken advantage of by newer models that specify new parameters such as bump maps, skinning information, specular maps, etc… "

"...it’s not a matter of old content giving us a backward compatibility boat anchor around our ankles. It’s a matter of us thinking though carefully how to push old content though a new pipe."

And here's Mike Gilbert talking about the same thing:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/2005/08/31/458560.aspx

Key quotes:

"A number of comments suggest we should start from scratch in order to achieve some sort of graphic and feature nirvana. In fact a good portion of the engine gets overhauled every version..."

"Whenever possible we try to architect the engine to be data and metadata driven so add-ons developed for one version will work in the next. Over time (typically 2-3 versions) we may change the architecture to such an extent that we have to break compatibility but we try to limit these changes so users get a reasonable return on their add-on investment. I should point out, though, that one reason we do break compatibility is when customer value dictates it. For example let's say (hypothetically of course) we have a developer working on a new animation system for things like doors, jetways, etc. He will try to accomdate add-ons that use the existing animation technology but if a cool new feature that adds a lot of value to the customer experience simply cannot be done without breaking compatibility he might decide to make the break."

"There are also misconceptions about what value various versions of DirectX bring to the table and a belief that someone we're not taking full advantage of the GPU. DirectX is a general purpose graphics technology. It is not a rendering engine unto itself. There are no 'CreateRealisticJetExhaust' or 'AutomaticallyBlendTheRightTerrainTextures' APIs in DirectX. Saying we should scrap our current engine or move to a different graphics technology would be like saying, "I don't like my 3-year-old metal Volvo. I want a new one built from carbon fiber." Is the material going to make the difference? Won't the new one still be a car?"

Includes link to the CES FSX demo...

http://fsinsider.com/articles/FSX_Press_Release.htm

I expect the headline image will change soon...

My favorite response from a Flight Simulator user so far, found at Flightsim.com:

"Indeed. If FSX looks like FS9 with $100 worth of add-ons, imagine what FSX will look like with $100 of addons."

Link to the whole thread

A user over at Avsim points us to the fact that BillG's CES keynote speech will be available for one and all after 11:00 pm PST here:

http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx

Cheers!

I thought I would be able to get some work done tonight but am so amped from the announcement at CES that I'm likely to spend the rest of my time cruising forums, and monitoring reactions.

So far they're mostly good, although there are a fair share of skeptics and outright naysayers.

The only thing I would tell people to think about as they look over what's been released is that the images shown represent a body of work over time--- the screenshots were'nt all taken at the same point in time, and all screens, no matter *when* they were taken represent work in progress--- things are bound to change until RTM. On the other hand, some stuff in the shots is pretty much finished. We are building a whole planet here, some parts are more finished than others.

I'm not allowed to comment on much more than what's been made available to the public, but I will say that y'all haven't seen everything yet... ;)

Maybe more later,

Cheers,

Jason

{Edit}

For those who saw the webcast of BillG's keynote, that wasn't a video. That was a live demo of a product.

{EDIT #2}

I do want to be clear: a lot of what you see in the screenshots shown is finished work. Some shots a from awhile ago, and some are more recent. Not everything shown is finished yet-- if it was I could go home, and everybody'd have a copy in their hands...

via Nick :

http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx  starts at 6:30pm PST.

WATCH BEFORE YOU POST

2. perscription strength happymaker

this comes to us via the ever lovely gourmand Ellen

(via my buddy robert)

...is another flight simulator! [:)]

Joining the ranks of  Austin Meyer, creator of X-plane, and Matthieu Laban  (who's on the blog roll on the right) is Andreas Jung, who posted a quite thoughtful comment on my last post.

I can't remember the most recent time I've seen this posted (or where), but I've seen it crop up a bit in the major Flight Sim forums:

Microsoft should use Google Earth for Flight Simulator.

 Leave aside for the moment the fact that Microsoft has a rival product gaining steam, the point is people like the idea of highly detailed and accurate satellite imagery-- especially of the sort Google Earth provides-- all streamed over the internet.

At first blush it sounds pretty cool, yeah?

"There's my house!" (speaking of the here's my house thing, check this link out for the ultimate in here's my houseness)

"There's Grandma's house!"

"There's the The Champs Elysées!"

"There's Yasgur's Farm!"

And so on.

I've been a fan of Google Earth when it was still Keyhole, and I think what we're doing here is pretty cool too. Having been involved with scenery/terrain design for multiple ACES games studios titles, I'd be really excited to see streamed satellite imagery appear in Flight Sim (although it could apply to just about anything if done right...), but truthfully I think people underestimate the problems the idea presents. To be clear, none of what I'm about to list are unsolvable, but they do present a barrier to implementation. The list below is not comprehensive, just what came off the top of my head:

1. There's not full coverage of the globe yet.

   True, you wouldn't need to have *everything* to make it happen, but I can already read the e-mails when it turns out (fill in the blank here of your favorite spot on Earth) isn't in the product... This means that you'd have to have some sort of hybrid between what you do have covered and some sort of generic default. This currently works in Flight Simulator (witness VFR scenery, here too, Megascenery, etc.), with specific locations, but not streaming. The progress on what is available changes daily, and I can say that I'm amazed at what's available now as opposed to even just 2-3 years ago...

2. What is covered is inconsistent in color, quality, and season.

I believe that the joy of flying over highly accurate real world imagery would be offset by the immersion break of flying from one inconsistent area to the next, and that it would happen pretty fast. I think people are way more forgiving of a how Google/MSFT might use imagery for mapping versus how they would view it's use in a game/sim. To get consistency you'd have to have a massive effort of color correction/adjustment, or a freakishly advanced automatic system.

3. No good night imagery exists.

At least that I'm aware of. And when I mean good, I mean same level of detail as day stuff. Which means that you'd have to come up with a good way to fake it. (like Megascenery)

4. All the time information is stamped into the image.

Flightsim, for example, ships with Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Hard Winter, and Night variations of our landclass textures. We drape these textures over DEM, light them, and render shadows into the terrain. Much aerial/satellite imagery has lighting from when the image was taken already present-- strong lighting too. This makes for great screenshots, but it does mean that you'd lose one of the neatest things about Flight Sim-- we model the march of time: leave your computer running Flight Sim, and you'll see seasons and time of day change. To replicate that with Google Earth Tech, you'd have to increase the amount of imagery by at least 5X, *and* start to track time of day/seasonal change.

5. Autogen tech isn't designed for massive aerial/sat scenery

Right now autogen tech works pretty well for what it was designed for: default scenery and small (100-400 tile) imagery areas. But as many 3rd party imagery people'll tell you, there's not enough "auto" in autogen. :)

There are mechanisms that can be used to generate buildings and the like, but designing and implementing such a system to do what is necessary in Flight Sim is not a small task.(scroll down the page)

6. Streaming, like that used in Google Earth is not a magic bullet approach for imagery display.

Even when all it's doing is displaying imagery, it's easy to get the "blurries" in Google Earth. Tack on a lot of other systems and simulation stuff, and... well... if you think it can get bad in Flight Sim...

Let me reiterate: I think the tech and potential results are very enticing, and the problems above are are solvable in one way or another.

I've linked throughout this post to some great large scale imagery solutions available already for Flight Sim, so you can see the possibilities in action. And I should note: this is something we look at periodically. Jason Dent and I talked a few years ago about what it would take to do aerial imagery for the planet at 8 meters per pixel (Flight Sim currently uses a resolution of approx 4.8 meters per pixel), and we came up with a figure of around a terrabyte (for just one season/time of day, if I remember right). Sounded pretty bluesky in 1999 (when Jason and I first talked about it), but way more doable now. Technology changes pretty rapidly these days, so who knows?

It would be neat to see my house...