Simulator Comparison

[JohnTWMiller]

My professor asked me to simulate our design project aircraft with FlightGear. I did an analysis of FlightGear, FSX, and X-Plane 9 to demonstrate the effectiveness of FSX for simulation and he ceded that I could use FSX as well. After doing more research though, It seems more and more that FlightGear is a tad weak sauce/antiquated, especially given its current applications: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Professional_and_educational_FlightGear_users

Learning from the forum that Lockheed Martin acquired the rights to ESP and is currently applying it to all grades military and industrial simulation internationally, I now feel that I have a case for throwing flight gear out the window altogether. A big part of why he wanted me to use FG was because NASA provided flight dynamics for it, but that was a decade ago and that code has since been replaced, which definitely makes me question its ability to compete with Microsoft ESP/Prepar3d which has been continually improved over the last 20+ years.

Does anyone have some more insight into this?

 

[arno]

Hi,

I guess every simulation has its purpose. Most of them have been developed as games and not as accurate flight dynamics model.

I am not an expert on the FSX/ESP/Prepar3D dynamics, but I think most ESP/Prepar3D users will mainly use it as a visual. Quite often an (accurate) external model is used to simulate the dynamics of the vehicle.

 

[beatle]

I've only downloaded FG binaries a few times over the years, just to see what they were up to, and never actually looked at the source code (afraid of taint and all that), so can't really comment on the merits of the code, but I see two major related differences:

• FSX/ESP/Prepar3d are commercial, payware applications (ie they cost money)
• FG is free

• FSX/ESP/Prepar3d are closed source applications
• FG is open-source

For some, free and open-source make all the difference, but that depends on there being an active community maintaining the open-source project, and I have no idea how actively maintained the FG codebase is these days.

Of course, with FSX/P3D, being the closed source, payware mentioned above, means you do need a license.

If you are buying an FSX for your own personal machine and using said machine to show your project to the class, that sounds like acceptable use of the entertainment license to me, and after the class you have a copy of FSX to fly :->

If you wanted to go with P3D, you would either need a $10/month developer subscription, or a $499 retail seat license (for each machine your solution might need, if you are doing anything multi-channel or multi-player related). I believe Lockheed plans to offer discounts to educational institutions, but no idea what sort of discounts those might be right off the top of my head, there should be an email link on the Prepar3d.com website to inquire for more info if you or your professor are interested.

For FSX/ESP/P3D, there's currently no "supported" API for adding a fullblown external sim, although there are some ways to sort of make it work (FREEZING the object and just shoving new values at the sim as fast as you can :->) - I just so happen to be working on a supported way to do this in P3D right now.

 

[dmaher]

John I’d recommend FSX and more so Prepar3d. If nothing else you’ll get good support from a forum like FSDeveloper. Although I’m not sure what sort of technical roadblocks you’ll face…being that it’s not open source. Getting good results can be time consuming. But there’s also a large group of folks online to answer your questions.

An educational discount for Prepar3d is very important. In my opinion Prepar3d should be in the computer labs of every engineering school – no questions asked. This way it may get integrated into the curriculum…and every aerospace space student gets a chance to use it and see the potential of the tool. It gives students another skill to put on their CV….and it also introduces Prepar3d into the profession at ground level. Once these students get jobs they’ll advocate for Prepar3d. BTW Apple used this strategy to good effect. When I graduated all architecture students were diehard Apple users

 

[vincentf563]

From what I have seen

The sims are fairly accurate. You can set stall speed to within fractions of a MPH, You can simulate climb rate very accurately. Lift drag and horizontal drag can be tweaked to get speed at sea level as accurate as you would ever want. The damage profiles can be set to make whatever you want to fall off at whatever speed you want it to fall off. The only thing that might get tricky is programming gauges. I cant see anywhere that someone has successfully made the gauges act as they would in thin air. And i havent been able to find lift in the glider in the alps because the weather model doesn't simulate rising air currents outside the alpine racing missions.

 

[Heretic]

Flightgear will be my security bailout should things go wrong with Flight!.

The community isn't as as large and (seemingly) as active as MSFS's, but FlightGear has the huge advantage that it's open source and a multi platform title as well as not being limited to civilian flight. Not to mention a centralised scenery distribution server.
In theory at least, this should make for way more input from way more people than possible in FSX. This input doesn't just go as far as FSX's plain "add-on aircraft/scenery/textures in n+1 varietes" but straight down to the source code.

FlightGear's biggest advantage is also its biggest drawback: It's open source.
So you neither have professional graphics artists nor any intent of making the sim as accessible to everyone as MSFS

But still, keeping an eye out for Flightgear might be worth it. I'll check in once in a while to see if there's anything new that makes me drool.

In my opinion Prepar3d should be in the computer labs of every engineering school – no questions asked.

If I could use FSX for something in my mechanical engineering studies, I'd be the happiest camper around.

Also, the thousands of hours spent in and around FSX would actually be of use for the professional part of my life.

When I graduated all architecture students were diehard Apple users

Nowadays, about a third of *all* students use Apple.