Wednesday, March 19. 2008

Microsoft Opens Up Flight Simulator Dev Platform; VE Integration to Come?

GCN reports that moving to such a kit, called Flight Simulator ESP, aimed at real simulation, not just games, took quite some time as the source data used needed to be relicensed. Licensing is relatively "cheap" with the dev kit running at $99, and client licenses at $799. Full simulators run $15 -20 million.

The potential futures are most interesting for geospatial and BIM:

Microsoft is already planning to expand ESP’s simulation capabilities, so we might see a host of other affordable simulation products reach market soon. In 2009, the company plans to release ESP 2.0, which will include ground capabilities for missions by trucks, tanks and other vehicles. In 2011, ESP 3.0 is projected to introduce support for maritime scenarios and building interiors.

Another promising avenue being explored is integration with Microsoft Virtual Earth. “Virtual Earth has real data, but they don’t have the experiential side of it,” said McCahill, whose team has already done some work with Virtual Earth and developed demonstrations he described as impressive.

“We have done the work to prove it can be done,” he said. We are “taking the real data and making it very interactive.”

McCahill said he hopes integration with Virtual Earth might be possible in the next version, though “I don’t want to commit to that because it takes two teams.”

Comments

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At last - that's all I can say!

#1 Andrey (Link) on 2008-03-19 06:31 (Reply)

Why was my comment deleted, Adena? I thought it was a legitimate question to ask -- how they planned on serving up VE into another model, and considering they have KML in VE now.

Would it be so bad if they did use KML to serve it up?

#2 Daniel (Link) on 2008-03-19 09:05 (Reply)

Daniel,

No, no comments on this topic were deleted. This is the first comment I've seen from you on this topic.

Adena

#2.1 Adena Schutzberg on 2008-03-19 11:25 (Reply)

I must be losing my mind then. I submitted it, it showed up -- noticed not long after it was gone.

Thus, I assumed it was deleted.

#2.1.1 Daniel (Link) on 2008-03-19 12:16 (Reply)

Can you provide a link to the GCN story you were reading? Or was it not online?

#3 Frank Taylor on 2008-03-19 11:03 (Reply)

Done. Sorry, my error.

#3.1 Adena Schutzberg on 2008-03-19 11:26 (Reply)

It will be interesting. Now all can learn how to control boeing

#4 Sergio (Link) on 2008-03-20 15:32 (Reply)

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In reply to	[ Top level ]#1: Andrey on 2008-03-19 06:31 #2: Daniel on 2008-03-19 09:05   #2.1: Adena Schutzberg on 2008-03-19 11:25     #2.1.1: Daniel on 2008-03-19 12:16 #3: Frank Taylor on 2008-03-19 11:03   #3.1: Adena Schutzberg on 2008-03-19 11:26 #4: Sergio on 2008-03-20 15:32
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