The "ideal" goals of eB are quite compelling.
I am at this moment waiting to see if the eB can ever be run as a completely open
project.

My goals and interests are in the support and development of Flight Simulation for
Experimental Aviation, Commercial Aviation, Military Aviation, and General Aviation in
that order of priority. As a result, I am more aligned with the prospect of establishing
OpenSim.org as the central focus of Flight Simulation.

There are some very disturbing aspects in the operation of eB that at the moment,
my conscience prohibits me from contributing to that effort. I will not participate in
a project which is not “all inclusive”. I must insist that the following changes take
place within eB for my support and participation to be given.

Anyone should be able to join the eB project at any time without the requirement of a
membership approval review by Moose or Primetime.

Any and all communication must be posted on the public site, no back channel
discussions, no private emails, or ICQ conversations without a capture being posted
on the site.

The currently imposed "Leadership Structure" should be dissolved in favor of allowing
the participants and contributors to decide for themselves which of their peers, they
feel, has the leadership qualities and skills to lead their specific effort.

Free speech, either positive or negative should be allowed and should not be feared!
I personally have no time for negative discussions, only constructive organized and
rather terse discussions! I have important work to be accomplished and have no time
to be distracted by negative discussions. I just tune them out, and so can anyone else
who is focused on accomplishing something of substance. People need to learn
tolerance of viewpoints and perspective, and learn to work together on this common
goal if eB is to succeed. The management of this effort, thus far have not demonstrated
such tolerance.

A fresh example:
Today's update message on the eB site "Starting from this very moment, all the info
related to the project will be delivered using internal emails and ICQ." Again further
denying access to the public domain.

Off my soapbox:

I have now quit my day job, and have committed to working 18 hour days for the next
year to complete the development of a completely free (FSF) and Open Source GPL
flight simulation. I did not make this decision in a vacuum, as it also required the support
of my wife and 3 children (one of which is a newborn). I have intentionally located myself
in a part of the country which has a very low cost of living while providing a short drive to
access the best Aerospace Technical Resources in the country.

I am at this moment, "self funded", utilizing the proceeds of the sale of my entire stock
Portfolio. My entire effort will be freely available to everyone under the GPL license.

As you know, I have been working on a high fidelity, real-time, distributed Wintel based
Flight Simulator part time for the past 14 years. It is my aim to release a distributed
multi-platform version of this code base along with many improvements that have not
had the time or attention.

I have invested some $400K U.S. in the acquisition of my extensive research and
development library over these past 14 years. This project currently occupies 1400
square feet of my house.

The investment from the proceeds of my stock sales have generated an additional
$110K to invest in this endeavor.

As a result, I have just completed the installation and configuration of a "state of the art"
network in my house which comprises a switched network with 8 multiprocessor
machines which can be reconfigured to be Wintel Cluster, Beowolf Cluster,
HLA Network, or my own Peer-to Peer solution which eliminates the limitations of the
DOD's HLA RTI in regard to performance on the public internet. The routers and
switched network allow me to test many scenarios. A dedicated T1 will be installed on
December 18th to provide access to the development network from the Internet. I
intend to make this network fully available to the internet so that it may be used as a
Distributed Flight Sim Development platform tool by the contributors to this project.
I will be releasing a definition of the architecture and services that these machines
will support in the very near future.

Past history:
I have worked on the Boeing 777 and Boeing Joint Strike fighter projects,
Technical Fellow in Geometric Solid Modeling at Spatial Technology,
3D Computer Graphics and CAD / CAM, Distributed Computing and Simulation
contributor with both DIS and HLA, COM Design Review and contributing Architect
with Microsoft Corporation, CORBA Architecture Component Software Architect,
Muti-discipline Aircraft Optimization and Design, as well as a background in
Aeronautical Engineering.

Are you crazy, why give up your income for a year?:

Realistic Flight Simulation is my life's driving passion. And the opportunity has finally
arrived to launch this work into the public domain. And this could not come at a more
critical time in history. This is why I am willing to make such significant personal
investments in the development of something, and give it away completely for free.

I am certain that if someone does not launch a viable and realistic Open Source
Flight Simulator platform within the next year, that advancements and upgrades to
Simulation Products will be lost for a very long time "perhaps decades". If you look at
the Commercial Flight Simulation Training Industry, you will find that the "Simulator"
element of their businesses are "extremely proprietary" as these business divisions
are unprofitable. As well, we have been witness to most recently in the consumer
software area, a complete meltdown of this PC based industry as well. Games
companies that have survived financially up to this point are turning their development
efforts to the development of simpler to produce and very popular game titles.

My goal is to guarantee the continuing development of flight simulations where it will
be possible to accomplish the following:

Learn the skills to become a pilot online, with easy and non intimidating and self
paced training. Develop as close approximation as possible of the knowledge and
skillset to become a Commercial, Military, General Aviation, Aerobatic or Space
Shuttle Pilot.

Learn how a Flight Simulator Works.

Be provided with a FAA Certified training product which maintains pilot currency.

Meteorology and Weather Forecasting and Simulation.

Air Traffic Control Simulation

Perform Aircraft and Spacecraft Design and Learn about Aerospace Stuctural
Design.

That all of the above be possible by the 100th Anniversary of the Wright Brothers
First flight in 2003.

Current Status:
I am currently working on a complete redesign of the flight model to take into
consideration additional elements such as a constrained level of support for High
angle of Attack and Post Stall Maneuvering.

I will be releasing a standard programmatic interface definition soon, and will provide a
base implementation of a generic flight model. Following this release I will be adding
support for the above mentioned features + support for Hard real-time systems,
distributed systems, and Aircraft with VTOL / VSTOL characteristics.

I still believe that some form of financial sponsorship should be arraigned so that at
the end of my year's effort, a team will be compensated to continue to rapidly advance
the development of this simulation environment. The cost? About the price of a low
cost flight simulation a year to support this effort, Approx $30. This will entitle the
members to vote for what features are developed and in what priority they are developed.

I intend to utilize the OpenSim forum for this purpose, and if this is not achievable,
will invest the time and effort to create a separate web site dedicated to this effort,
which will support all of the above mentioned freedoms for it’s participants.

Seems to me, that such an effort should not be required as this will only cause a
Further duplication of efforts and reduce the likelyhood of a successful outcome as
this Flight Sim User Community is not large enough to support numerous competing
efforts.

I think that it is quite ironic that I, a person who was born in Dayton Ohio,
The Birthplace of Aviation itself, and the host city of the 100th Anniversary
Celebration of Powered Flight should seek at this moment to reinvigorate what I see
today as an industry in decline.

Aquila

I think your approach is proper, but you are I believe beating a dead horse... Open sim apparently will be open (small oh) rather than Open (big oh). This forum is essentially dead.

It would have thought that in their shoes, you would have been actively recruited. There are others out there, Herb Funston (Lockheed) for another whom have have intimate knowledge of real world modelling for major manufacturers etc, but the proposed approach gets fur up pretty quickly.

Microprose was just one sim entity. I would recommend that you find another avenue for your talents. If you find it, be sure to let us know, there is a group out there just as dedicated but with no party to attend...

As envisaged currently, eb is I suspect premature and inadequately thought out, run like one of the virtual airlines on Flightsim.com Rather a narrow view for such a grandoise premise.

Go your way, and find that avenue for your talents.

regards,

I do hope you reconsider joining forces with eBattlefield. I respect and understand your opinions for not wanting to be a part of it, however your skills are to valuable to this community. We need more people with skills such as yours to make this dream become reality for all of us. I believe your dedication and abilities will make you a well respected member of the community, in which you would have influence to open up the project the way you see fit.

If nothing else, join us in creating the standard framework, networking engine, etc. Under the BSD if down the road you wish to part company, you may do so and you can branch off use that engine for your own purposes.

Plus a note - it is easier to change an organization from within than from outside.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Birdman:
Plus a note - it is easier to change an organization from within than from outside.

---

Well said!

I don't really know how I feel about all this but I can tell you one thing:
If you want to influence eB to the better, going here and raving about how you have quit your work and how much you know about this is not the right way to go.

Instead, join and tell the "general co-ordinators" what you think about certain things, what you don't like and how you'd want to have it changed.
I can't see why you don't just join! It's up to you how much you want to contribute and how long you stay.

For other GPL based sims, one could use as a nucleus Fly8 (by Eyal Lebedinsky) or Sabre.

I've not aligned myself to eB (and I have only the best wishes for their effort), and I've been considering the options I presented above for myself :).

I would not want to come into a long standing community project such as FlightGear and
indicate that some elements should be re-architected. I am certain that this would create
significant turmoil and hurt feelings for those individuals who have toiled to bring Flight
Gear as far as they have. I think we need to respect that. There is bound to be some
resentment with that kind of an approach.

I believe that any community should make the decision to integrate elements of the OpenSim
components on their own, and they will be full participants in the design and development.

Since both FlightGear and OpenSim are GPL projects, we can each use elements of each
other’s efforts as well as co-design and co-develop modules.

The same opportunity exists for eB to reuse the components of OpenSim. I support their
goals of a coordinated electronic battlespace. However, I believe that such a distributed
network should be made generic enough such that it can also integrate General Aviation and Commercial Airline Aircraft as well as Air Traffic Control.

To participate in this process eB will need to provide an open conduit to the contributors
of the OpenSim effort (public posting of activity and discussions without membership
requirements) just as FlightGear’s operations are entirely open and require no membership
or identification of any kind.

From the very beginning of this effort, I would hope that we could focus first on the needs
of the first time user, or inexperienced Flight Sim enthusiast. That we provide numerous
online tutorials together to assure that they are not intimidated by the complexity of flight.
With this in mind, we can introduce more advanced concepts which provide an ability
for the users of this technology to obtain a knowledge and skill level very close to that of
an actual pilot (Commercial / General Aviation / Military).

This will only be possible with the combined strength of many communities working
together. It is time to take flight simulation to the next level, and do so quickly and expeditiously.
Time to kick the tires and light the fires!

Aquila

I also will be sending some emails to the eBattlefield team and will relay some of the concerns posted here in order to maximize the openess of their project.

Brandon is right IMO through, if nothing else, the source code from the existing projects can be used as a catalyst to stimulate new ideas and improvements in problem solving.

Cheers
Teapot

P.S. Passing this on from the FGFS mailing list ... http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/
I use SuSE 7 myself, but the GNU tools aren't distro specific.
BTW, if anyone is interested in trying Linux, I highly recomend SuSE 7 to ease into the Unix world. Other distro's I've used are RedHat 6.x through to 7 and Debian 2.1 & 2.2, and IMO SuSE is the easiest and least 'buggy' for a non-unix person to come to terms with.

We are currently using internal email, ICQ, eGroups, etc. because the forums suck on the web page. No one wants to download 900 pages everytime you want to see the latest developments on discussion. We are more than likely moving to a USENET based forum. It supports development discussions beyond anything out there. You can crosspost, thread, etc. 100x better than UBB. There is a Java applet out there that we are looking at also that will allow viewing of the group on the web if they don't want to bother with USENET setup. This is down the road though.

Aquila, we extend our arm to you at eB. We are looking for seasoned leaders to help whip this ship into shape. Our current leadership structure will be changing. But again, things don't move at break neck speeds when people are only doing this part time.

I look forward to speaking with you...

What you're doing sounds way more interesting and progressive than anything else I've heard of. Would you consider having an apprentice?

I will be fully documenting and describing the algorithms and architecture so that anyone can understand and evolve this effort!

The accurate simulation of Flight Dynamics and Control Systems beyond the mere "toys" that have been released in PC games is a huge mathematical challenge.

This effort will expose and provide tutorials for the mathematics required to produce accurate real-time and non realtime simulations.

It will be a component based archtecture which will in combination support the modeling of fixed wing / rotary wing / and VSTOL flight platforms.

In addition, this will be a fully coordinated networked environment for all Aerospace Simulation (Commercial Aircraft / Military Aircraft / Air Traffic Control).

The efforts of this forum will be entirely useable by eBattlefield as long as it supports the GPL.

My goals and interests are to support all
Flight Simulation efforts. There will no doubt be a Commercial Aircraft Sim site as well as an Air Traffic Control Site. There will no doubt be sites for specific Military Aircraft as well as possibly Ships (Aircraft Carriers etc..). My point is that there is a tremendous amount of work required to deliver on this vision, and I believe by all of us working togeather, we shall all arrive togeather alot sooner, rather than have a duplication of efforts which has the undesireable result of much later if ever.