Curtis,
Thanks for the response.
This is in fact how a number of our clients operate. There is no
VATSIM-specific code in MSFS or XP at all. the VATSIM client "joins" a
multiplayer session hosted by the user, and then pushes other VATSIM users'
data as MP planes into the client. Similarly, the client takes the MP data
transmitted by the user's sim, translates it to FSD, and sends it out to the
network.
In recent versions of FS we have been able to automate and hide this for the
user's ease of use - the MP session is automatically created, joined to by
the client, etc. The instructions for connecting to VATSIM with FS2000 were
quite long and difficult; in FS2004 & FSX, it's really very easy for the
user.
Your suggestion was to code a MP server that interfaces with VATSIM; mine is
to code a MP client that connects to FG running as a MP server. Both are
certainly workable ideas and I think it would come down to whichever is less
heavy lifting.
One other potential complication you made me think of is that at the moment
both MSFS & XP can run their client as what MSFS terms a "module", meaning a
window inside the sim itself, or as a secondary application. I don't know if
FG has the ability to do this; certainly it would be nice if possible, but I
don't want it to be thought of as a deal-breaker.
Good suggestions and a good way to kick off the dialogue. Tim
On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 2:34 PM, Curtis Olson <curtol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Tim,
>
> Sorry to quote your whole message ... chalk it up to laziness. :-)
>
> As I read through your message a few thoughts occurred to me.
>
> First, there is a large variety of opinions represented here on our
> developers list, and we have a few really die hard open-source folks ...
> "give me open-source or give me death ..." But I think the overwhelming
> majority of FlightGear developers and users are pretty pragmatic. We
> certainly honor, value, promote, and vigorously protect the GPL nature of
> FlightGear, but we realize that there are multiple ways to get through
> life. There's a certain art (probably which none of us have really
> mastered) :-) of filtering through the list noise and focusing in on the
> important responses, ignoring the flame bait, and giving people a little
> slack if they respond with too much haste, or misunderstand the original
> questions.
>
> One idea came to me, and I haven't fully thought through all it's
> implications, but let me present it here for discussion.
>
> What if we (meaning a vatsim developer with protocol access and flightgear
> developers as consultants) develop a utility that to FlightGear looks like a
> standard flightgear multiplayer server. This would run on a user's local
> machine, and their local copy of FlightGear would connect to it like any
> other multiplayer server. This utility would be closed source, and it would
> know how to speak the vatsim protocol. So like you say, it would be a
> bridge between the local copy of FlightGear and the vatsim network.
>
> I like this because we wouldn't necessarily need to change anything within
> the FlightGear source code, and we would automatically support current and
> past versions of FlightGear.
>
> There would need to be some dancing in terms of the FlightGear mutiplayer
> protocol. Certainly you could reimpliment a functional interface, but it
> might save you time if you could borrow some code from the FlightGear
> multiplayer server. That could only happen with express permission of the
> authors of that particular code. Some here may argue vigorously against
> this, but I think a lot of people would be pretty pragmatic about this ...
> assuming you had full support from the multiplayer server author(s) and it
> would be their decision to make. Otherwise you'd have to look at the
> protocol specification and rewrite your own FlightGear compatible interface
> which probably isn't horribly difficult, so maybe that would be the way to
> go and you wouldn't risk offending anyone. But if you do that you need to
> be pretty careful not to look at our multiplayer server code lest it be too
> tempting to copy from it.
>
> I do think it's worth pushing towards vatsim compatibility and I appreciate
> your persistence as we try to find a way through that satisfies all the
> different constraints.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Curt.
> --
> Curtis Olson:
> http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/<http://baron.flightgear.org/%7Ecurt/>
>
>
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