Fs2002 modernization

[Thomas J Wood]

Hi Guys, I have been for the last few years been modding up fs2002. So I got it working with no issues in windows x on the newest patch. I worked with the direct x to get it to work with d11.
I found how to expand the textures for the scenery to 2400X2400 and I found how to make clickable vc's in it. I am now seeing if I can fix up the water. I can make it use modern sounds and 3d gauges and I know how to weaponize it as well. Its all a ton of work that i would do for you guys and for low cost if you would use it.
Mesh dosnt seem to be a problem as there is a good one we could put in it or i could just make one.


So if i was to work on this and bring it up to snuff to modern standards would you guys use it at all?

I also will write a tutorial for you guys one how to have 5 million poly planes in it with out it becoming a slide show.


I ask this because Im not into Flight, Im not into FSX per say, I want to build up my own thing and support it. Just want to do my own thing and creat a small community.

II was wondering if you would like that?
I will show a few pictures and My beta guys are flying in it as their main sim now so they will have vids of it soon too

How it would work is you would have to have your old Fs2002 cds and then Mine would over write the old files and add in the new dll's and other goodies that would make it happen. I could make it up to p3d standards onver a few years and release the parts a bit at a time to you.

Just wondering if you would use it or not.

Thanks in advance.

I call it Freedom-X So freedom of flight In windows X or something like that.

If you guys dont want it I will start working on the cfs3 project I was working on instead.

Good to see you guys still at it.

[Shessi]

Hi Tom,
I got excited when you first anounced your come-back, then you disappeared again! ha.

Now, either you've had a hard time installing your flightsims or...as you keep saying Fs2002, I hope you mean Fs2004/Fs9? Glad you got it working anyway.

From your original statement you went, and have come back from the games console world, where all things are bright. I for one would be very interseted to see a sim beta, but still there must be an absolutely huge amount of work to get to end product, how long and at what cost to you in time, effort, money etc?

Am I understanding this, that basically you are going to use the MS FS sim engine and bolt on your stuff to that? Would Microsoft be ok with that amount of modification?

Would it be backwards compatible, so could we use our old models, scenery, add-ons etc, or would there be a new format for aircraft/objects and no compatibility with old stuff? Personally, for me, if there was no backwards compatibility, then I would be hesitant to get stuck into a new sim.

Having said that, the idea of helping and being involved in the development of a new flight sim is very interesting and intriguing.

Surprisingly so, you are also up against quite a few flight sim/flying games from an excellent freebie such as 'Flightgear' and low cost 'X-Plane 11', then to pay-to-fly 'War Thunder', 'World of Warplanes', 'Rise of Flight', and purchase 'Cliffs of Dover, 'IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad', 'FSX', 'P3D' and the new 'MS FS2020'. After a drought of flight sims through the late 2000's and early 2010's, there has been a huge influx over the last seven or so years.

Very interesting!

Cheers

Shessi

[wombat666]

"Just wondering if you would use it or not."
In a word 'No', but that's just my opinion. Shessi makes a very valid case re the number of options already available, while several new comers over the past few years have crashed and burned.

[zswobbie1]

I would give it a try.. If it improves FS2004, why not indeed.

[Thomas J Wood]

I would give it a try.. If it improves FS2004, why not indeed.

Thats the spirit! :P

I started revamping fs 2002 as it was more of like a challenge to get things better. I did get it to show textures to 2400x2400 and it made a huge differenceq, then I got it to have clickable vc's, I used one of my planes to do it as I had the source for it and it works.

But the market is so saturated right now that fs2002 is to much of a development curve to gain any ting, I mean I would just put it up for free anyways. I found a way to make up to 30 mdl folders to puch the detail up to millions of polies. But if no one is interested then why work on it.

I can do the same thing to fs9, expand the textures way out, make new mesh, rebuild all the buildings and road vehicles, new clouds and high def textures and sounds. Push out crazy detailed planes but if no one wants it then why.

I just came back to the flight sim community and looked around, stupid pay ware costs, crazy monthly payments for flight sims, crazy new flight sims coming along that would take 3 years per plane to build for, honestly the place has gone for a ****.

I thought why not make a sim free and accessible, upgrade the detail, have it back ward compatible, put out low cost planes to support it and even out this run away rip off market place we are facing now.

I might keep on going in my little pet project. I like to share things though, if no one would use it then its now use to any one but me I guess.

But the community over at flight gear is excited to get some help i might look at them. I have a few add ons in the works now for prepar3d so i need to finish them off.

Fs9 is a great sim, could be brought up to way past prepared with a bit of work.

I have done some work on cfs3 too, maybe there...

Any suggestions are awesome!

[zswobbie1]

Hi Thomas,
There is still a large support base for FS2004, I'm sure a lot more than for FS2002, so maybe an update for FS2004 would find more support.
(also, thanks for all the CR-1 freeware as well)

Simming, as the late Garry Smith always said, is all about Fun, Facts, & Fiction, and we 'old timers' still hanging on to FS2004, need more of that.
AS far as the Fiction side of things go, as well as a tip of the hat to Carl Reddin, with his Space scenery, I've always wanted a cartoony type of scenery to fly around in. Garry Smith, with his Ford Tri-Motor Project, gave us a lot of fun stuff, such as his Blackhawk Project, and many other sceneries.

Thomas, keep going, I'm sure you will have a lot of support from us FS9'ers

Regards,

[Shessi]

Hi Tom,
Have to agree with Zwobbie, and based on your answer to that, possibly agree with Wombat. If you want a potentially strong fan base then aim at Fs2004/Fs9, not Fs2002. They are very similar in essence, so if you're going for 2002, why not just go for 2004?

Unfortunately for you Fs2000, 2002, 2004 and even FSX is just about freeware now. There are very few simmers out there who have paid for their versions, or if they have, they bought theirs so long ago, it's almost like freeware. And the freeware aircraft, scenery, objects etc add-ons is absolutely huge.

Surely there is a limit as to the capability of the sim engine (Fs2002 or 2004), which means all that effort to improve, say even Fs2002; will all you'll get in the end would it not be an FSX or P3D anyway? The only major benefit will be that it will be totally free.

The other issue is that if you focus on Fs2002/Fs2004, they are 20 year old, 32 bit, flight sim engines. Therefore they run very well on low end pc's, laptops etc, and have a good ballance of eye candy, functionality and frame rates. If you are working with Win 10 (a 64 bit) OS, you will be limited to what you can do, and if the updates that you make, your super-Fs2002/2004 may not run well on old OS's, which I think a lot (most?) of us use. And that's the reason why we stick with Fs2004 and not go to FSX/P3D etc. For you a catch 22 situation.

I would love you to focus on improving Fs2004, a super Fs2004 or Fs2004 Plus as such, that runs well on 32 bits OS's, has good backwards compatibility, and if you could make it a combat flight sim with real damage physics, then that would be the holy grail....if you could do that then I'm in

By the sounds of what you are doing you're hedging your bets and toe dipping, to see which sim you take the plunge into, please don't spread yourself too thinly, as that's a sure way to.......

Cheers

Shessi

[Thomas J Wood]

Great suggestions.

I don't mind going freeware, that is one thing every one missed about me lol, I'm not greedy, I am a happy fat guy that likes to share. I do payware because my wife demands that I at least get something for spending so much time on a project instead of her..lol!
But the market is saturated way beyond control. I have distributors now rudely demanding my air craft be given to them "or else" sort of bull. I will do precisely what i want and no one is going to tell me what to do with my stuff.

I started this wild ride 22 years ago with fs98, heck I still have unfinished add ons that I tweak from time to time because i just cant leave things unfinished. Right now I have to finish the Aeronca and Ford Tri motor for P3Dv4. I have a new Do 335 and Mosquito to finish off as well.

32 bit to 64 isn't to much of a problem, you build a carriage for the sim and it just runs from a dll that converts for you. I worked on a contract to fix that issue for an old mmorpg called Everquest and it runs fine now. I would just do that to FS9 and have just done the same thing to FS2002 and it runs , like my beta guys say better then ever. I just thought there needs to be a balance in this community. Something to keep the greedy at a level playing field. Build a free to access killer nice flight sim. Free and payware can be support. Old and new add ons no problem.
but it need to run on older pcs. Tricky but can be done.

I will do some work on fs9 for a couple of months and see what I can do with it because we need something. Flight Gear is still monster work and they still have troubles with windows x.
I don't feel like fixing that for them. Freeware is hard to build for it and payware non existent. We need a sim that is widely distributed all ready and that is very well known and that can be worked on with out reverse engineering...I don't want to deal with the High Lords of the Ferengi Empire (Microsoft).

Maybe I'm over reaching here? I can compete easily with A2A and all the other guys ...that's not my concern, My concern is the community is getting damages that wont be repaired for a very long time or ever. That's bad for all of us.

One the other hand, I have so much support, I have customers I talk to every week, they just drop by and chat, its nice. They buy everything I put out suggest wild projects and tell me about their lives. Its pretty cool. I don't think to many developers have that. When I put out a add on you will notice I don't advertise it to much, but I out sell the whole community, that comes from 20 years of being honest and doing the best I can. So I get unadvertised support. I keep the priced reasonable and I treat people like people not a cash cow.

Ok I will move the stuff I made to fs2004, I will start with a proper mesh and get those textures expanded. I will put in a call to my buddy at google and get the earth terrain pictures I need and look at a new plane build for fs9.

Suggestions for a plane would be great! Any plane is fine. I will see in a month or so how it will work out and if its worth the time and effort.

I may be off base and should just keep going along the course I'm on but this sounds pretty fun to me. lol

[wolfebee89]

Indeed Shessi and Zwobbie have given the gist of what the FS2004/CFS2 community has interest in, and not just combat but perhaps also air-races/national air tours and the aircraft of that epoch in Britain, Europe, America, perhaps also the Russians and the far-east...we are after all in the 20s and in the centennial anniversary dawn of the golden age of flight (zwobbie mentioned fiction - certainly porco rosso is quite the adventure)...but all this notwithstanding, given your circumstances and all that you have been through as you have shared with us here at SOH, perhaps the best advise is to do what makes you happy and not depend on what makes others happy; perhaps you will find takers here, perhaps not, but for sure elsewhere, and for certain, a community will blossom around your work/custom sim...of course the latter is if indeed things are freeware; market for payware for vintage sims is increasing small and all the best concerning this venture...OBD WOFF/WOTR is an inspiration - you could seek out their advise; perhaps there may be undiscovered, unexplored markets for you to delve in...all the best and pleasant flights!

[zswobbie1]

I've been running my sims in Windows 10 ever since it came out.
I have 8 different themed versions of FS2004, such as FS Alaska, Golden Wings, Spac (yes, Space scenery and spaceships), Ford Tri-Motor install, Vintage aircraft install, a FS9:SE install for my virtual club, a History install and an Heritage install.
I've never had any issues with any scenery or aircraft in Windows 10, running the sims in XP compatibility mode, as Administrator and with the 9.1 patch.

[Thomas J Wood]

I've been running my sims in Windows 10 ever since it came out.
I have 8 different themed versions of FS2004, such as FS Alaska, Golden Wings, Spac (yes, Space scenery and spaceships), Ford Tri-Motor install, Vintage aircraft install, a FS9:SE install for my virtual club, a History install and an Heritage install.
I've never had any issues with any scenery or aircraft in Windows 10, running the sims in XP compatibility mode, as Administrator and with the 9.1 patch.

Awesome set ups you have there. That's a lot of integrity and patience to set up this sim like that.

Typically most game will run once they are away from the OS like on a USB or just dumping it on the c' drive out side the program files or X86 system. What Im mainly concerned with is the new shaders and new texture format I'm thinking of, we will need it to run compatible with dx 11. Im talking to one of my programmers about the dll system and if we could add a new dll to make the sim able to do all of this dreamy stuff.