Joe Cygan
12-08-2010, 09:34 PM
Anyone catch this? Anyone have this? Any thoughts?
http://www.proflightsimulator.com/index3.html
Neil Hewitt
12-08-2010, 10:00 PM
Yeah, it was discussed in another thread recently. It's basically the open-source simulator FlightGear, packaged up and spamvertised. FG is a lot better than it used to be, and there's enough free scenery and planes that you can pose some nice screenshots, but it's not a patch on FSX or X-Plane.
Because apparently this outfit will make the source code for its version available on request, they are technically following the terms of the GPL under which FlightGear is licensed, so it's legal for them to do this. Many in the FG community are unhappy, though, because they're not being up-front about where the sim comes from and are portraying it as a new commercial product, which it most certainly isn't.
This, of course, is what tends to happen to successful open-source systems. Someone picks it up and does what they're legally entitled to, and the originators get all holier-than-thou because they've commercialised it and thus made it dirty in the sight of RMS (Richard Stallman).
That said, this particular effort does come across as especially slimy.
One to avoid like the plague, this. If you like the idea of playing with FlightGear, go here (http://www.flightgear.org) and find the downloads page. The FG folks have put out an official statement on the whole issue here (http://www.flightgear.org/flightprosim.html).
NH