Microsoft ESP

I know this is old new, and I guess you must have read about this multiple times already by now. But as I think it is still very interesting I am writing this blog post about ESP. ESP is a new simulation platform that Microsoft has recently announced and it is based on the same simulation engine as FSX. Or to quote the description from Microsoft themself: 

“Microsoft ESP is a
visual simulation platform that brings powerful, high-fidelity simulations to
widely available, low-cost Microsoft Windows®-based PCs. Organizations that
rely on Microsoft ESP can improve their workforce readiness more efficiently
and cost-effectively than with traditional computer-based animation or
simulation tools. Combined with its developer-friendly Software Development Kit
(SDK), Microsoft ESP provides government and commercial entities and modeling
and simulation specialists with an affordable, portable, and highly extensible
platform for training and learning, decision support, and research and
development modeling.

Simulations built on
Microsoft ESP can engage users in immersive experiences with very realistic
land, sea, and air environments—making them ideal tools for training. With a
high-speed Internet connection, up to 30 users, including students, instructors,
and support personnel, can participate simultaneously in Microsoft ESP
simulations from any location in the world. In addition, the platform’s
built-in analysis and full playback capabilities facilitate evaluations of crew
performance, mission planning, and decision-making.”

I find this a very interesting product, as the use of the FSX engine can also have great benefits for non-entertainment use. For example at work we sometimes already use FS2004 as a quick visual for our simulations, simply because it covers the entire world by default. That is not something that can be said about any image generator. This can save us a lot of time in having to design or update visual database to include a certain area. And also with the FS SDK tools it is possible to add new data faster to FS than for most other image generators. And another interesting reason to use FS is that because it has been designed for entertainment usage, the resulting graphical image is a lot better in general.

So the fact that Microsoft has now announced a professional version of FS sounds very interesting, given the benefits I mentioned above. I have also written before about my efforts to convert between FS and OpenFlight (the format used in most other image generators). Now with ESP I see a lot more connections between the FS and the “professional” world and I am certainly looking forward to explore those new options. So hopefully I can report some more interesting things later on.

Back home from Florida

This weekend I arrived again at home after my trip to the I/ITSEC in Orlando for work. I have got rid of most of the jetlag by now, although I guess it will take me a few days to get back on speed with the forums and emails again. The fact that we celebrate Sinterklaas here this week also means I have to spend some time on writing a poem and buying some presents.

So I guess it will take till next week till I am fully up and running again. After all the travel of the last months I am looking forward to be home a little bit more, so that I can get some progress again on the tools and techniques I am working on. 

Perfect timing

As you might have read in my previous post, I am packing to travel for my work. And just at this moment it seems that the FSDeveloper site is not accessible. I have already contacted support of the host, but as the server is in the US they are still asleep I guess. So hopefully they can fix things soon. Once I have arrived in Florida I will try to check again if everything is working.

Almost travel tired

Last week I arrived home from my trip to the DevCon and FanCon, so by now I have got rid of the jetlag and have catched up with all things at home again. But today I will leave again for a trip, for work this time. We are going to the I/ITSEC. Although I will probably spend most of my time in the boot of our company, to take care of the simulators we will demonstrate there, I also hope I can see the interesting things other companies have to show.

With all that travelling lately, it has been a bit harder to find time for my FS activities. Keeping up with the forum activities has not been so bad, but I have had a bit of trouble to find time to program on new or updated tools for FSX as well. I hope that will improve a bit when I get back from this trip, as this seems to be the last trip for a while. And also the Christmas holidays are approaching.

But now I better pack my suitcase and go to the airport. 

Day 13: Travelling home

So today I arrived home safely,  the only minor problem I guess is the slight jetlag I have now. It seems I am not that good anymore in sleeping in aircraft seats. Or maybe the fact that I left Seattle around 13:00 also has something to do with it, as at that time of day you are not so sleepy in general.

Looking back at the last two weeks it has been a fantastic trip. I have met so many people that I knew already from forums. Now I know the faces behind all of the problems that get discussed and I think that is really a good thing. And also the sightseeing in the area around Seattle was very nice, at least I have seen a little more than only the conference center.

Hopefully you will see the benefits of this trip in the community in
the times to come, as I learned a lot of interesting stuff and met a
lot of interesting people.

So now it is time to unpack all the stuff and hopefully I have some time afterwards to catch up with the emails and forums that are still waiting. But there is one thing more important to do this weekend and that is seeing my girlfriend again, that alone makes me very happy to be home now.

Day 12: Olympic National Park

The DevCon and FanCon are now over for a few days already and since then I have been exploring the area around Seattle a bit more. On Monday I went to see Seattle Downtown and although it was a bit windy and wet, it was nice to walk through the city and feel the atmosphere a bit. In the afternoon I went to the Museum of History and Industry and I enjoyed the exhibition a lot. It basically tells the story of how the ciy developed since the first people came there and how the economy developed during that time (logging, gold rush, industry like Boeing, etc).

On Monday evening I met Bob Bernstein again (I had already met him during the DevCon). But this time he had invited me to his house, to have dinner together with his family. During the evening we had some interesting discussions about FS and scenery design in particular. All together I enjoyed this visit a lot, as it is also good to know what kind of person is behind a certain forum nickname.

On Tuesday I drove in the direction of the Olympic National Park and I am still there as I write this. The rainforest is really beautiful and I have enjoyed it a lot to walk around in the park. Of course I also had to check out the Pacific coast, but the waves were quite rough and there was a lot of wood on the beach. So I did not really feel the need to sit down there (maybe the temperature also had something to do with that).

Tonight I will have to pack my suitcase properly again, as tomorrow I will be flying back to the Netherlands. So this interesting trip has almost come to an end now. All together it has been a great trip until now, but I am also looking forward to go home again. 

Day 9: AvSim FanCon day 2

Today it was much more quiet on the FanCon, it seemed quite some people had already left. But this also had some advantages, for example that we could play a multiplayer Reno airrace mission with a group of developers. Although we could not do the mission in slew mode, it actually went quite well and it certainly was a lot of fun.

After attending a very good presentation by Bill Womack about the possibilities of the new FsX materials (I guess I should ask him to put that explaination on the Wiki as well), we decided to go out and doing something fun in the afternoon. We decided on going to the harbour of Seattle and taking a scenic flight with a floatplane of Kenmore Air. That was a lot of fun. although it was a little bit bumpy due to the strong winds out there. I guess this was a nice present to give myself on my birthday. 

This week I also met Misho Katulic for the first time. Certainly among scenery designers he is best known for his TerraBuilder tool, but he also showed us his latest product TerraBuilder:Moon. This interesting addon will transform the FS world as you know it into the moon. So instead of flying around you local airport, so you try out to land on the moon. So I guess all space enthousiasts should check out the website of this new addon.

Day 8: AvSim FanCon day 1

The 2nd and 3d day of the DevCon kept me quite busy, so I did not write a new blog posts about them. But I can tell you that those two days were great as well. Learned a lot and spoken to a lot of interesting people.

Yesterday was the 1st day of the Avsim FanCon and I enjoyed that a lot. There were quite some interesting presentations and I met more people that I know from the AvSim scenery design forums. It is so nice to have a face behind those forum user names now.

I also gave a presentation at the FanCon, about the evolution in scenery design over the last 10 years. Some time ago I realized that it is 10 years ago already that I started to make scenery for Fs5 and since then a lot has changed. So in the presentation I took an look at how the default scenery has changed between Fs5 and FsX. Of course this is quite a lot, in Fs5 we still had a flat, empy world. While in FsX we now have a realistic looking, living, populated world. Comparing screenshots of the same location in all those versions of FS gives a nice overview of the changes.

Besides the default scenery, I also took a look at how my own addon sceneries have evolved over time. It was quite fun to actually dig up the first addon I made for Fs5 again. With the help of a DOS emulator, I even got Fs5 with that addon to run again on my laptop. In the last part of my presentation I took a look at how the scenery design tools have evolved in those 10 years and you can be sure the changes are quite big. Some things have become easier, other things have become more complex now. But one thing is sure, in all those years we have had a lot of fun making addon scenery.

 In the evening there was the AvSim Awards Banquet. They had two very interesting speakers, the first was a Boeing test pilot who gave a talk about the Boeing 747 Superfreighter that is used to transport parts of the 787. And the second speaker was Eric Lindbergh Jr. who talked about his own transatlantic flight and the XPrize foundation he is involved in. Both together this made the banquet very interesting.

Day 5: DevCon 1st day

 So today was the first day of the DevCon, my main purpose of this travelling. On this blog I can not talk about all the actual stuff being discussed there, as we are under NDA for that. But I certainly did meet a lot of interesting people. I am sure I will forget to mention somebody here, so sorry if I forgot you.

For example I met Bob Bernstein and Bill Womack, two people I know for years already from different internet fora for scenery designers. It was really nice to talk with them in person. I also met different users of the FSDeveloper website, luckily most recognised me from my avatar photo. I also met with Russell, the author of FSX Planner and we had some very interesting talk about his tool and scenery development in general.

And of course I should not forget to mention all the people from the ACES team I talked with during they day. Being able to talk so easily with them about things that we (as the community) think are important is a great benefit of an event like this.

I also gave my presentation today, or maybe I should say presentations as I had two different subjects to talk on. The first part of my presentation was about the FSDeveloper community and how we try to support other addon developers with the forum, wiki, etc. The second part of the presentation dealt with the OpenFlight conversions I have worked on in the past. Or maybe that is even more an example, my talk was more about the possibilities for conversion in general.

Day 4: Museum of Flight

Today I went to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle. I have seen quite some aviation musea by now (for example Duxford in the UK, Aviodrome in the Netherlands), but this one also has a very good collection. And also the volunteers working there are very friendly and have great stories to tell you about the aircraft.

Besides all the “usual” pieces that you will find in almost every aviation museum (like a DC-3, Piper Cub, etc) there were also a lot of pieces that made the visit very interesting. For example there was a section about the US air mail history (very interesting for an European like me). And also in the sections about the First and Second World War I spend quite some time. They had a really good mix between talking about the aircraft and about the pilots flying them in those sections. In the Second World War section especially the part about the war in the Pacific interested me, as that part usually gets less attention in Europe.

All those old aircraft with their beautifull piston engines interest me a lot, but in the museum they also had some very interesting modern pieces like a SR-71 and a Concorde. Although I have been in the Concorde at Duxford before, it surprised me again how narrow that cabin actually is. Another interesting piece was the old Air Force One 707, with most of the interior still in place as well.

And being in Seattle (and on Boeing Field) there was a section about the history of Boeing as well of course. That section was in the origional “Red Barn” where the Boeing Company started a long time ago. It was very interesting to see the kind of tools they used back then to make an aircraft. Especially when you compare it to the things I saw yesterday at the assembly line of the 777.

This afternoon I arrived at the Hilton hotel in Bellevue where the actual DevCon and FanConf conferences will be held. The DevCon will be starting tomorrow and I will also have to give my presentation on the first day. So I guess I will do a last dry-run in my hotel room tonight. I must say I am really looking forward to meet all those people I know from the internet in real tomorrow.