The project my company is working on will use FG v1.9.1 (with additions) to seek FAA Certification. But there are several things lacking in the "production" release--the instructor's station is the main thing. I haven't read the FAA Advisory Circular that governs certification of these things (PC-ATD's) in awhile, but I do not recall seeing a requirement for a GPS. But as I said, they have just changed the requirements, and I am not sure just where that leaves our effort.
But for the record, our project is really *not* selling FG; as much as it selling an IFR training platform built on FG. For example, we really only plan on a couple aircraft right now. But we do plan to release scenario-based training content, as this will be the logical representation of the training product. But Curt is right that it takes an enormous amount of work to get this to the point where the FAA will evaluate it, and the software really is just the beginning. However the requirements are indeed published and if you make sure that your product meets or exceed these, then certification is pretty straightforward, as Curt mentioned. I want the developer community to know that, while there is proprietary code involved with bringing our product to the market, there will also be ample code contributed back to the FG development community--although I am not sure how much most users will find useful, quite honestly. Much of it will be related to driving flight controls. And up until the last 6-9 months, I really didn't hear many people even mention the IFR training opportunity that is being missed with FG; shoot, most people I talked to 1-2 years ago (when I was trying to learn how to modify the 2D panel in the 172) couldn't understand why I was even wasting my time by not going 3D! I have said this many times over the past 3-4 years--I have flown just about every PC-based flight simulation package that's been on the market in the past 15-20 years, and Flight Gear flies as well as any of them. The issue is functionality, at least in terms of training student instrument pilots. Develop that, and FG will have absolutely no problems earning FAA certification. By the way, our proposed timeline to make that application is within the next 6-9 months...with any luck. TB ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry® Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9-12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconf _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
