Newb Question

[biffbutkus]

Hello All,

I'm completely new to FlyInside (and it looks like a very interesting product) so my apologies for asking the very basic question below. I did try to find an answer by looking at the website and browsing the forums but I'm still confused about this product...

Is FlyInside Flight Simulator a completely stand-alone product, or does it require another product like Prepar3d or FSX in order to work?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Biff

[sunjunkiesi]

Flyinside Flight Simulator stands alone.

Flyinside also make products for X-plane, FSX and P3D that allow those applications to become VR compatible (though it must be said that x-plane is probably already more vr compatible than most without flyinside).

The Flyinside Flight Simulator is in early access and is by no means a finished product, however the devs are very active and open to constructive criticism.

[biffbutkus]

Thank you Sunjunkiesi!

I thought it was standalone, but then I read something elsewhere that made me unsure.

Any idea of how (or if) users can develop their own aircraft models? It's not really clear to me at this point what this will look like . I'm coming from the world of JSBSim/Flightgear where it's simply a matter of editing an XML file to create a new aircraft model.

Cheers!
Biff

[sunjunkiesi]

I believe there is an SDK either on the horizon or already published. I don't think it will be as easy as you are used to though, probably more in line with the current p3d model making system. Most of the aircraft are ports from a p3d model. I'm no expert, but from the feel of the flight model it is more of a table lookup flight model than simulated airflow. I'm likely wrong though, I often am...

[biffbutkus]

Hi Sunjunkiesi,

It makes sense that the actual flight model would use coefficient-buildup - this is pretty standard and as long as the data is valid, it can produce the most realistic flight model possible. In fact, all of the commercial fixed-wing Level-D simulators that I worked on in my career used coefficient-buildup with data represented in look-up tables. The obvious problem with this method is that, unless you have full access to the aircraft manufacturer's flight data package, you are making approximations or dealing with published flight data that is incomplete.

The big question for me is whether this sim will use a flexible data-driven approach as used in JSBSim. There you can define the logic and properties in data (even for the FCS), instead of having it all rigidly defined by the code. P3D's FSX based AC config files look very rigidly defined as compared to JSBSim, which restricts how the aircraft modeler can build a flight model.

My expectation would be that users can simply edit data files to define the aircraft aerodynamic coefficients for a given aircraft. My HOPE is that it is as flexible as JSBSim in that users can (for example) define a wind coordinate system vs a body coordinate system for the aerodynamic data, or can define the actual structure of the FCS using just data in an XML file. This is very powerful for aircraft modelers and would be amazing to have.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to how this product turns out - it looks very promising, especially with the focus on multi-CPU and VR. I could see potential commercial applications for low-cost FTDs using this sim and VR .

Thanks for all your help!

[admin]

So right now we aren't at JSBSim level of flexibility. You can define and tweak every table/coefficient yourself but the source code those are being run through is hard-coded. We will add additional tables and coefficients at customer request Someday what you're talking about may be possible but we aren't there yet.

That said, it's very easy to tweak the flight tables. If you go to "Help -> About -> Usage Options" you can enable Debugging Tools. Then there are a few important menus:
"Debugging Tools -> Flight Model -> Extended Properties" - Edit a lot of aircraft properties/overrides
"Debugging Tools -> Flight Model -> Flight Dynamics Editor" - Edit the various lookup tables, in real-time, while flying! You can also see the live input/output value of your current flight on this screen

In terms of a from-scratch aircraft, we're getting close to having an SDK for that. You'll be able to import models from Blender/etc fairly easily and wire them up using a straightforward XML file. After that you can do flight-model stuff from the above tools.

Thanks,
Dan

[biffbutkus]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the response. I totally understand - you guys need to focus on MVP at this point.

Looking forward to seeing this product mature and evolve. I really want to use it in my pit.

Cheers
Biff