On Tuesday 03 February 2009, Stuart Buchanan wrote: > Hi All, > > The Register is a popular UK-based IT news website, with a > generally sceptical (and very British) viewpoint. They have a > mention of FG (along with a nice screenshot) in one of their > articles this morning discussing what will happen to the large > number of commercial add-on makers for MSFS. > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/03/microsoft_fligt_simulator >_partners/ > > Worth a read for those interested in what is going to happen to > the MSFS platform and add-on developers in the next couple of > years. > > On a related note, there is an interesting discussion on the > forum from a group of MSFS developers trying to find a way to > port their work to FG: > > http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2972 > > Some random thoughts I'd like to add: > 1) With a few exceptions, our entire ethos and development effort > has been towards a completely GPL'd environment - from the core > simulator to the aircraft models and scenery. We may find in the > near future that commercial add-on developers are more and more > interested in developing for FG, and their work won't be GPL'd. I > see this more as an opportunity than a problem.
Yes, I read this too and agree that it's more an opportunity than a problem. GPL is also about freedom to choose. People can choose whether to release their work under the GPL, or not, and people can also decide whether to pay for proprietary products or just stick to open-source ones. > > 2) Our aircraft/modelling toolkit (Blender/GIMP/XML) is very good > for developing models from scratch, but makes migration from MSFS > models almost impossible. Developing a toolset to make migration > from MSFS native models (or likely, common source formats) easier > may well pay dividends, both in term of commercial offerings, and > GPL'd MSFS models. From what little I know about MSFS, I believe > that their animations are stored within the model itself, rather > than a separate XML file. A Blender plugin to export those > animations to an XML file would probably make life a lot easier. > I suspect this will be quite a hard project, and require > signficiant MSFS knowledge. > > -Stuart Most of the tools required are already built in to FG; it just lacks a suitable model animation development UI. FG obviously can load an animate the models, once in an acceptable format, so it's more a case of either adding an FG mode and a UI that doesn't require the simulation stuff or creating a model animation utility using the model handling code already in FG and adding an interface to it. Not a trivial job, in terms of time required, but all the model loading, visualisation & presentation and animation code already exists. LeeE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
