Hi Holger and everyone, > At this point I thaught that it would be nicer to create a VATSIM > gateway but as some developers told me there are problems with NDAs and > the protocol (not open source :-( ).
We have two conflicting aims it seems -- integration with an existing community (the more-or-less well-trained ATC staff of, say, VATSIM can never be replaced by a technically new solution alone), and the aim of introducing a technically well-designed platform. You can do the latter in FlightGear without any licensing issues, the former would require an "indirect" approach, IMHO. As a VATSIM pilot and ATC myself, I'd much rather be interested in using FG with VATSIM than with any other network, even if that network is technically superior to anything else. I think that you can, with a bit of work and planning, migrate an established community to a new platform if required, but you can't build a new community from scratch on a new platform. > But what about a "black-box" outside of FlightGear which acts as a > gateway to VATSIM? This program may be not open source but it is quite > not necessary because it can use the flexible protocol architecture of > FlightGear to communicate with VATSIM. A while ago I suggested using X-Plane with XSB, whose FDM is slaved over the network to the output of FG. This would work without any NDA issues, simply by writing an X-Plane plugin and a counterpart on the FG side. Since you don't actually need control input into X-Plane at all, the demo will do and you won't have to buy it, and it runs under Linux too. I started playing around with the X-Plane SDK some time ago but was unable to build any plugins, and I've been too busy since to keep trying. But others have got the SDK to work, so it must be possible, and the rest is pretty straight-forward. A dedicated FG-VATSIM gateway may be easier to write, but you have to get not only the NDA from VATSIM but also VATSIM approval of your client (only approved clients are tolerated on VATSIM). > How about this for the FlighGear community? If this is acceptable I > would suggest that I try to contact VATSIM and will hear what they mean > about this. I'd love to see a solution, either way. I use MSFS and X-Plane on VATSIM on a regular basis and both are driving me mad. I suggest that any external approach (via X-Plane or a "black box") is independent of FG licensing issues and there should be no problem with you implementing and distributing it. It won't be part of FG's CVS, but who cares. A last thought -- concentrating on VATSIM for now instead of a new protocol also has the added benefit that it'll be easier to learn from its design flaws. There are quite a few... Andras ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
