This has probably been talked about here already but will post the link just in case. They are looking for input from the community.

http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showtopic=25954&st=0

BF

Yeah..I had seen that a couple weeks ago. Certainly is an interesting concept..and hopefully they get somewhere with it. They may find that building a new sim from the ground up is far more ambitious than making add-ons for MSFS..that's for sure!

I wonder if they are going to use any part of the laid off MSFS team?

Honest opinion from me? Unlikely they will get anywhere anytime soon, although I admire their vision to go and try.

Unless they hire some FSX crew, their first release will likely be both less than XPlane and FSX. Biggest problem I see is getting all the data (airfields, scenery, towns, Navaids...) This is stuff that has been plugged into the other two civi sims continuously for years, and still you find the occasional misplaced object. Starting from Zero this seems quite an impossible task to get both density and placement of so many objects WORLDWIDE correct.

Maybe if they start with one region of the world (like Flight Unlimited did it back then, but larger) - say continental USA - and then release other parts as modules later on, with the option for addon designers to release their own modules.

I suppose with some of the addon designers working with them, they have quite a depth of knowledge about system modeling and adding aircraft, but I just can't believe they can get a decent worldwide scenery done from scratch in maybe one or two years.

The best way to get it is probably to hire someone who knows where to buy it, i.g. someone who's worked with a GPS vendor or someone from the MSFS team. While they're at it, they might as well go to Navtech or Teleatlas, who supply GPS vendors with street level mapping, and buy data from them so that towns and roads are shown in the right places. That's what the UT team did. Fortunately for Aerosoft, data is for sale these days.

The task is still monumental, but the success of X-Plane is an example of a small company being able to survive in the business.

I know the data is up for sale, but importing it into a flightsim means lots of minor adjustments on I guess at least one out of three imported objects. For the FS Series this process has been going on literally for years and still isn't finished (if it wouldn't be for disbanding of ACES).

Small example: FSX has about 24.000 airports (many of them merely a runway, the majority with a few default buildings placed in correct positions, very few in better detail).

Now if you only take 10 minutes to check each airfield (to see if it conflicts with the mesh, if buildings are misplaced/clipping and so on), work eight hours a day and 25 days a month, you come out at 20 Months workload for a single person. Even a quarter of that comes close to 3 months work with a two person team - and now do the same for roads, rivers, bridges, important buildings, cities...

Because no matter how good the data you buy is, it's never going to import flawless and nice in a proprietary game engine.

I hope I'm around to see this finished.
If I was going to make a suggestion about the sim's developement , it would be to make it possible to use Military airplanes the way they were meant to be used.
Maybe, give us one section of the globe, Nellis Air Force Base, for instance, where we can drop some bombs, let loose some rockets...etc.
I've always dreamed of a "one stop shopping" kind of flight sim. A sim where I can go and do all of my flying, and would hardly need any others. That would be a bit ambitious, I know, but hey, I'm dreaming, here!

I think they would be quite stupid to not implement at least some basic unguided weapon capacity. Like, physics for bullets, unguided missiles and bomb gravity drop (which should in fact be pretty much the same set of physics rules) and a very simple hit-point based damage model if one so desires, but even without damage the ability to fly on a target range would be cool.

If Oleg meant what he said in the last interview, Aerosoft has a very tough competitor!

I say lets aerosoft make the civil sim and Oleg the military one....
both would lose time to learn how the other work in a game