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Hi Guys,
As some of you may know, I am the former Principal Engineer for Lockheed Martin Prepar3D. What you may not know is that while at another company that I ran, we developed a 3D modeling tool for the creation of real-time simulation objects. i.e. low polygon count OpenFlight format mainly. When we started talking with the Microsoft ACES team during the development of ESP (my company was one of the original launch partners), we added in FSX/ESP model export support. We originally sold the product for $995 per license and initially had some very good success with it with large defence organizations around the world. Of course it can also support P3D models.
Long story short, when I left the original company, I retained the IP for the modelling tool and it has languished on a shelf doing nothing but gather dust. So, I would like to make the product open source and provide a tool that can be used by the flight simulator community. Here is a screen shot to give you a flavour:
There is a little bit of work required to re-brand it and get rid of the current license code. It also needs to go into SourceForge or GitHub and a developer or developers need to own it. A current limitation is that it does not currently support the advanced textures of FSX, such as chrome, but it isn't that critical. This would need to be added at some stage, but it is still a full modeling tool. I have rebrand documents and assets and a list of tasks that need to be completed. I also have some modeling tutorials, manual and so on. The application can also import and export 3ds, ac, dae, flt, dxf and obj files. MDL is export only.
Now Open Source doesn't mean that there isn't a cost. I am currently involved with MakerPlane (www.makerplane.org), an Open Source Aviation organization and it costs money to run. So what I was thinking putting together an Indiegogo campaign and getting contributions to allow us to launch this so that I can pay a lead developer to manage the effort and pay for any extras that might be needed. Any funds left over I want to donate back to MakerPlane..... don't worry there are seriously cool things that we are working on that can be used in the flight simulation community as well.
So, this is a dip of the toe in the water to see if it is warm enough to take the plunge, or if there are toe-eating eels. Any thoughts on this? Do you think that there are enough people in the community that might be interested?
Regards,
John
As some of you may know, I am the former Principal Engineer for Lockheed Martin Prepar3D. What you may not know is that while at another company that I ran, we developed a 3D modeling tool for the creation of real-time simulation objects. i.e. low polygon count OpenFlight format mainly. When we started talking with the Microsoft ACES team during the development of ESP (my company was one of the original launch partners), we added in FSX/ESP model export support. We originally sold the product for $995 per license and initially had some very good success with it with large defence organizations around the world. Of course it can also support P3D models.
Long story short, when I left the original company, I retained the IP for the modelling tool and it has languished on a shelf doing nothing but gather dust. So, I would like to make the product open source and provide a tool that can be used by the flight simulator community. Here is a screen shot to give you a flavour:
There is a little bit of work required to re-brand it and get rid of the current license code. It also needs to go into SourceForge or GitHub and a developer or developers need to own it. A current limitation is that it does not currently support the advanced textures of FSX, such as chrome, but it isn't that critical. This would need to be added at some stage, but it is still a full modeling tool. I have rebrand documents and assets and a list of tasks that need to be completed. I also have some modeling tutorials, manual and so on. The application can also import and export 3ds, ac, dae, flt, dxf and obj files. MDL is export only.
Now Open Source doesn't mean that there isn't a cost. I am currently involved with MakerPlane (www.makerplane.org), an Open Source Aviation organization and it costs money to run. So what I was thinking putting together an Indiegogo campaign and getting contributions to allow us to launch this so that I can pay a lead developer to manage the effort and pay for any extras that might be needed. Any funds left over I want to donate back to MakerPlane..... don't worry there are seriously cool things that we are working on that can be used in the flight simulation community as well.
So, this is a dip of the toe in the water to see if it is warm enough to take the plunge, or if there are toe-eating eels. Any thoughts on this? Do you think that there are enough people in the community that might be interested?
Regards,
John
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