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Microsoft Flight Simulator is really a simulator, not just of flying, but also of the entire world. It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator int

Microsoft Flight Simulator is really a simulator, not just of flying, but also of the entire world. It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it! Imagine Flight Simulator with all the creativity of Minecraft. That would be awesome.

rurounijones 6y ago
> It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it! Something _similar_ happens for Digital Combat Simulator in that third party developers can develop modules for the base game engine (so far it is mostly aicraft but there are 1st party ground units and a 3rd party has indicated interest in building a relistic Integrated Air Defense Network simulator on it as well). Not quite "A world simulator you can do whatever you want with to minecraft levels" though.
kylebarron 6y ago
Cesium is trying to do this: https://cesium.com/blog/2021/03/30/cesium-for-unreal-now-available/ https://cesium.com/blog/2021/03/30/cesium-for-unreal-now-ava...
- mch82 6y ago
  This is worth submitting as a separate post. Thanks for sharing!
- unixhero 6y ago
  Oh my god
- demarq 6y ago
  Another one, though not sure if it stalled, outerra
robertlagrant 6y ago
It's not simulating the world. It's just pulling in elevation and texture data from real world sources (and then people are patching in Google Maps because Bing is not a great data source).
- Macha 6y ago
  Also if you've ever flown low over somewhere that's not like an airport that is modelled/textured separately to the ortho scenery, you see that the data doesn't hold up, so you'd need stuff with sky high views. so could be used for flight sims and.... maybe an rts? You're not using that is as for e.g. driving games or fps games, and crunching Street view data into something usable would require processing and storing a lot more data
- anthk 6y ago
  That was something Flightgear offered with a custom build since a decade ago.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ThrowawayB7 6y ago
> "It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it!" They did, back in 2007 in a product called Microsoft ESP, which became Lockheed-Martin's Prepar3D when Microsoft's ACES Studio was shut down in 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Lockheed_Martin_Prepar3D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Loc...
mopsi 6y ago
> It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it! That's already the case. There's a huge ecosystem of hand-crafted airports, airplanes that are true to every little switch, etc. Microsoft's flight simulators are an open platform like Windows and are meant to be extended. Hundreds of products have been already released (example[1]) for the new Flight Simulator, and there's a thriving freeware scene[2]. You can of course only use Paint and Internet Explorer, but then you'd be missing out. This also negates criticism towards the simplicity of included airplanes. Not happy with the A320? Install open source A320 expansion[3] and enjoy the ridiculous level of detail[4] it brings. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPO5_ky0xJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPO5_ky0xJk [2] https://flightsim.to/ https://flightsim.to/ [3] https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rHtTwqel_A&t=1135s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rHtTwqel_A&t=1135s

rurounijones 6y ago

> It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it! Something _similar_ happens for Digital Combat Simulator in that third party developers can develop modules for the base game engine (so far it is mostly aicraft but there are 1st party ground units and a 3rd party has indicated interest in building a relistic Integrated Air Defense Network simulator on it as well). Not quite "A world simulator you can do whatever you want with to minecraft levels" though.

kylebarron 6y ago

Cesium is trying to do this: https://cesium.com/blog/2021/03/30/cesium-for-unreal-now-available/ https://cesium.com/blog/2021/03/30/cesium-for-unreal-now-ava...

mch82 6y ago
This is worth submitting as a separate post. Thanks for sharing!
unixhero 6y ago
Oh my god
demarq 6y ago
Another one, though not sure if it stalled, outerra

robertlagrant 6y ago

It's not simulating the world. It's just pulling in elevation and texture data from real world sources (and then people are patching in Google Maps because Bing is not a great data source).

Macha 6y ago
Also if you've ever flown low over somewhere that's not like an airport that is modelled/textured separately to the ortho scenery, you see that the data doesn't hold up, so you'd need stuff with sky high views. so could be used for flight sims and.... maybe an rts? You're not using that is as for e.g. driving games or fps games, and crunching Street view data into something usable would require processing and storing a lot more data
anthk 6y ago
That was something Flightgear offered with a custom build since a decade ago.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ThrowawayB7 6y ago

> "It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it!" They did, back in 2007 in a product called Microsoft ESP, which became Lockheed-Martin's Prepar3D when Microsoft's ACES Studio was shut down in 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Lockheed_Martin_Prepar3D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Loc...

mopsi 6y ago

> It would be amazing if they could turn Flight Simulator into a "game engine", so that other developers can build specific scenarios/games on top of it! That's already the case. There's a huge ecosystem of hand-crafted airports, airplanes that are true to every little switch, etc. Microsoft's flight simulators are an open platform like Windows and are meant to be extended. Hundreds of products have been already released (example[1]) for the new Flight Simulator, and there's a thriving freeware scene[2]. You can of course only use Paint and Internet Explorer, but then you'd be missing out. This also negates criticism towards the simplicity of included airplanes. Not happy with the A320? Install open source A320 expansion[3] and enjoy the ridiculous level of detail[4] it brings. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPO5_ky0xJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPO5_ky0xJk [2] https://flightsim.to/ https://flightsim.to/ [3] https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rHtTwqel_A&t=1135s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rHtTwqel_A&t=1135s