Lockheed Martin Prepar3d

[Neil Hewitt]

Hi John.

Absolutely no inference intended that your team is somewhow limited by the previous design choices of FSX. I know first-hand what can be done with an existing code-base by a dedicated and talented team. It sounds like yours is properly world-class. Taking advantage of the GPU to offload calculations is the obvious next step, but I'm sure it's going to take a lot of work and won't happen overnight. It'll be very cool when it does, though.

I wish I knew more about commercial simulator system software. My own specialism is traditional data-driven Web apps, so there's not a huge amount of room for architectural heroics, as it were. If any company out there has created a massively-multithreaded or massively-parallelised flight simulation system, I'd be really keen to hear about it - it's got to be the way forward. In my mind's eye I'm thinking about what a home simulator might be capable of in 2020 already

[Melnato]

Hi John,

Im not a developer, but a "high end" simmer with a full 737 pit and three channel FSX visual,
running on four dedicated computers....see here for background:
http://www.flightdecksolutions.com/f...t=4209&start=0

My questions are:
How many licences would I need? and
Is it really worth changing over for a private user?

Love to test it out nevertheless

Nat

[JNicol]

Hi Nat,

I love your set-up! (I had an FDS A320 at my last company and had lots of fun with it). For a set-up that has three channels for out the window, you would need a P3D license to serve as the image generator master and a copy for each visual channel. That would be four copies. Developers would have access to two copies for the price of the subscription, plus if more copies are needed they could get additional licenses at the standard rate.

John

[AK Mongo]

John,

What does one need to do to qualify as a developer?

Reid

[JNicol]

John,

What does one need to do to qualify as a developer?

Reid

Hi,

As with many other software development network programs, there are many differing levels of skill that members have. From people with no experience, to people with lots of letters after their name and years of experience. Many of the people that develop apps for smartphones have no formal training, but are designing and selling commercial applications. If you have a willingness to learn and want to jump in to Prepar3D development then joining the P3D Developer Network is a great way to start!

John

[JNicol]

Hi Neil, Everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that after looking at the issue and consulting with some of our partners, I confirm that we do not restrict the number of subscriptions that developers can purchase. This means that developers can subscribe to more than one subscription in order to get the number of copies that they require for development and testing. This is particularly useful for multi-channel set-ups. So rather than pay-out $499 for copies over and above the development subscription, you can purchase additional subscriptions. Hope that this helps.

Regards,
John

[Neil Hewitt]

That sounds like an ideal solution, John. Many thanks to you and Lockheed for considering this community. I look forward to signing up when my project gets to the installing-the-computers stage (hopefully soon).

NH

[castle]

Hi John,

Sent off an email to the Prepar3D tech support a few weeks ago, have not heard back, thought I might try here...

Can the Prepar3d be used in a mode wherein ONLY the scenery portion is used; i.e. all the models, instruments, fdms, etc are turned off and a udp socket is used to receive vehicle state that defines position and attitude ( lat, lon, pitch, roll, bank)?

Would this require a 3rd party package such as SimConnect, FSUIPC, or does PrePar3d have an internal socket module with an accessible header file to create a data packet and establish network connectivity.

Reason I ask is have fully functioning 737 and 747 cockpits running with real time Linux OS (RTAI and Xenomai) and hooking into the scenery would be a big positive.

JW

[JNicol]

Hi JW,

Apologies, it looks like the email got lost in the system. Typically it is best to post in the P3D Forums rather than send email. There are more eyes on the posts there. (Sometimes the email goblins eat our emails.)

So what you are looking for is to use Prepar3D as an image generator for out-the-window. This is scenario is supported. You can control a vehicle outside of Prepar3D using SimConnect and send the "ownship" control data to fly it. Prepar3D is multi-channel capable out of the box, which means that you can have multiple slave computers set-up, each with their own viewpoint (and each with a copy of Prepar3D running on it), controlled by a master. This master could be controlled via SimConnect. I have no experience with Linux so couldn't tell you if your specific setup will work, perhaps someone else in the forum can answer that. I am not sure how Linux would talk to the Windows box, our development is done on Visual Studio 2010 and I am clueless in these things.

You could build a model that has no internal cockpit, or just change the model.cfg file to delete the interior model reference. We also have a new feature in Prepar3D that has an "Instrument only" view. This function does not draw the external view point if you are running a computer that is just showing gauges. In FSX and ESP, there is still an overhead of drawing an outside scene even if instruments are maximized to fill a screen in cockpit builds. This issue is now gone.

Also, we are hoping to get a CIGI (Common Image Generator Interface) supported add-on out one day. (Depends on customer demand etc) This will allow Prepar3D to be used on many different types of simulators that support the CIGI protocol for applications exactly as you have described without too much code refactoring, if any.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

John

[Atomic_Sheep]

So the way I see it, Prepar3D is basically what FSX should have been? Like obviously it has a few more features for bigger clients but essentially based on reading this thread alone, I get the feeling that it's just a working copy of FSX? (not trying to sound cynical). Also is there a FSX like demo for it? i.e. a small region with 30 minute run time? Any word on performance improvements over FSX SP2? Lastly, have you guys worked on the flight model at all/are you planning on working on it at all?