Friday 2010-12-17 Dev. update and Discussion

[erco]

Originally Posted by speculum jockey

Exactly! There is a reason why actual flight simulators (military and commercial) use what are essentially supercomputers (20 core+ systems).

One reason is rendering the sim onto a few displays (sometimes almost 360 degrees) and another is the colossal number crunching dedicated to ultra-realistic flight modeling, flight systems, damage modeling, and a host of other things that you don't have the time or resources to put into a game, which is what SOW is.

They might call this a flight sim, but no matter which way you cut it, it's sill a game meant to generate sales and revenue. Real sims are designed to do neither, they are commissioned by a government body or a commercial sector and made with little thought put towards hardware requirement, money, or fun-factor. The only thing they really have in common with SOW and other flight sims with regards to development might be "development time" but in a lot of cases they're being made at the same time the actual aircraft is being developed so it's not that much of a race.

The last time I was at FlightSafety for recurrent training, I spent some time with the sim techs, asking questions and looking at the hardware. I was surprised to learn that today's multi-core desktops have more than enough computing and graphics power to run a Level D full motion simulator. What the desktop can't do is properly synchronize everything so that everything that's supposed to happen NOW happens NOW. Thus you need a multi-board/multi-processor thing that lives in a server rack. But, relatively speaking, powerful it ain't.

[Trumper]

You also don't get the physical effects,the g forces,the positive and negative,the being thrown around,the force of acceleration and deceleration.
I have to go on a simulator at work [not a pilot one, a train driving one every year ] and the biggest complaint we have is the lack of movement [the seat of the pants driving].You can see the simulated scenery going past but there's no "feeling" of moving.

Another thing you don't get in a commercial sim is the rendering of every little subsystem that an aircraft has. Throttle, Pitch, Mixture, compression, etc are pretty good for a flight sim game, but the ones they use for the big Boeings, Airbusses, and the military jets and choppers simulate the hydraulic and electrical systems, the in-cabin PA system, the backups, the bypass circuits, and a thousand other things. Plus most of them require outside operators to input different variables and such that the pilot and copilot are going to have to deal with. We're probably 10 years away from flight sim games simulating airframe expansion, how icing affects airflow over the wings. . . . and all those other things you find in real Simulators.

I'm not Knocking SOW, but it's not possible given time, money, and hardware constraints. The fact that we are being given variable flames from the exhaust is a milestone, and I'm sure there are other milestones Oleg's keeping for release and future patches.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by erco

The last time I was at FlightSafety for recurrent training, I spent some time with the sim techs, asking questions and looking at the hardware. I was surprised to learn that today's multi-core desktops have more than enough computing and graphics power to run a Level D full motion simulator. What the desktop can't do is properly synchronize everything so that everything that's supposed to happen NOW happens NOW. Thus you need a multi-board/multi-processor thing that lives in a server rack. But, relatively speaking, powerful it ain't.

Makes sense. The days of the 8 and 16 core processors aren't too far away. Once we get to that point we'll be able to do the same sorts of things on a home PC that they do with server racks. Of course it just means that there will be server racks with the equivalent multi core CPU's to match

[Azimech]

And we may see the development of interchangeable modules like A2A has with Accusim, at least that's what they claim, that in the future their modules will be able to interface with a number of 3D flight engines. Imagine SoW becoming hugely successful, and top of the line third part developers joining forces thereby increasing the level of technology. Who knows, maybe russo-american cooperation might even lower the threshold for products from a certain american defense corporation. I'm dreaming again.

[Trumper]

The sim should always be overdeveloped as computers in time will catch up and you need to keep the sim on the front edge able to use the technology as it comes in.

[louisv]

I was talking to some CAE engineers (by far the largest company in the field) and they said the difference is you are in a real cockpit that moves, with real instruments, a true panoramic view, and that costs millions all by itself.

The cockpit is bought from the manufacturer of the aircraft...a cousin of mine is an engineer there and he went to buy a A380 cockpit in Toulouse for CAE's A380 simulator...

The computing power is less than some workstations since they don't upgrade everything all the time. And the software is still mostly 'cheat sheet', table based...no real inertial calculations...To be fair that was 5 years ago, but still the differences are less than you might think, other than the physical cockpit of course. The graphics, while updated all the time are not that great but they are full surround !

Louisv

PS: "Real Flight Simulator" is a repackaging of a free software: by today's standard it's a piece of crap. Enough said.

[Skyflier]

Originally Posted by louisv

Louisv

PS: "Real Flight Simulator" is a repackaging of a free software: by today's standard it's a piece of crap. Enough said.

Louisv I just wanted to concur. I'm not sure I'd ever mention "FlightProSim" as a credible source for anything! Flightgear(.org) might not be the hottest peice of software out there, but somone slapping their logo on a GNU (freeware) release and marketing it with a "money back guarrantee" is pretty sick. I feel sorry for anybody that fell for their scam.

Originally Posted by Trumper

The sim should always be overdeveloped as computers in time will catch up and you need to keep the sim on the front edge able to use the technology as it comes in.

I think Oleg has been working with that philosophy in mind since it too years for IL-2 to be playable at MAX settings on a mid-range system. (although IL-2 was very scalable as well)

[klem]

Originally Posted by erco

The last time I was at FlightSafety for recurrent training, I spent some time with the sim techs, asking questions and looking at the hardware. I was surprised to learn that today's multi-core desktops have more than enough computing and graphics power to run a Level D full motion simulator. What the desktop can't do is properly synchronize everything so that everything that's supposed to happen NOW happens NOW. Thus you need a multi-board/multi-processor thing that lives in a server rack. But, relatively speaking, powerful it ain't.

Well, "powerful it ain't" may be true at the single board/processor level but combined into that multi-board multi-processor supercomputer it is a fair bit more powerful than the new i7 multicore PC about to arrive on my doorstep. But it's true that things have moved enormously over the 20+ years I spent in the flight simulation business. The Visual computers for a certain VSTOL aircraft back in 1987 occupied a portacabin-like structure about 30 feet by 30 feet, completely full up, unique PC boards about 2 feet square and generating enough heat to warm a factory. All to enable low level graphics rendering at high speed. It was later replaced by a system in a cabinet about the size of a small single wardrobe. The later ones were about half that size and some are now down to super PC/rack size.

We've come a long way and we haven't finished yet.