Hi there,
first of all let me say that I am extremely impressed by BridgeCommand, I am myself pretty familiar with the naval/maritime environment due to my professional background, I find BridgeCommand really very impressive and also pretty promising. I am even more impressed due to the fact that BC has apparently been written in some BASIC dialect!?
I think an open source ship simulator can have a VERY promising future, especially in the educational/training and professional sector.
My question is, I was reading in another thread that there are possibly plans to rewrite BridgeCommand in C++ at some point ?
In due course I am planning on re-writing Bridge Command in C++ and an open source 3D engine, both as Blitz3D is a commercial closed source program, and its restriction to DirectX 7 is becoming somewhat limiting. In the mean time I'm developing as far as I can with Blitz3D.
Is this still the case?
I understand the reasoning behind favoring C++ over BASIC, and I also see a larger number of potential contributors if BC were to be rewritten in C++. So, overall from a development point of view I completely share your sentiments.
Which open source 3D engines have you considered so far? Have you looked into OpenSceneGraph (OpenGL)?
What is your opinion on OpenSceneGraph? As far as I know it has built-in support for multiple screens and windows, too.
However, personally I would consider yet another option - not just a specific C++ 3D library, but a more efficient approach:
Have you considered re-implementing BridgeCommand on top of any other open source simulators that are written in C++? That would seem like much less work, and also a much more tangible task. You could sort of "piggy-back" BridgeCommand onto another open source simulator, sort of like a "Mod" (e.g. counterstrike is a mod for half life).
This approach would seem to me like a "win/win situation", because I guess it should be much easier to adapt a car, train (or flight) simulator to support naval vessels than rewriting a cross platform simulation completely from scratch, especially for anyone who is already familiar with C++
Have you done any research regarding C++ based open source simulators that could be used as the foundation for a re-implementation of BridgeCommand in C++ ? Personally, I find the whole thought of re-implementing a program like BridgeCommand pretty daunting.
I am more and more thinking that this would be the right thing to do, because one would get so many things "for free", i.e. a scenery engine, weather support, a community, an actively maintained project and so much more.
BridgeCommand would then mostly boil down to being a custom modification of an existing program. So any C++ work necessary, would mostly end up being patches for an existing project, instead of a completely new project.
I guess most of the artwork could be reused, just by importing/converting the 3D models and textures.
Please let me know what you think
regards
- rodriguez
first of all let me say that I am extremely impressed by BridgeCommand, I am myself pretty familiar with the naval/maritime environment due to my professional background, I find BridgeCommand really very impressive and also pretty promising. I am even more impressed due to the fact that BC has apparently been written in some BASIC dialect!?
I think an open source ship simulator can have a VERY promising future, especially in the educational/training and professional sector.
My question is, I was reading in another thread that there are possibly plans to rewrite BridgeCommand in C++ at some point ?
In due course I am planning on re-writing Bridge Command in C++ and an open source 3D engine, both as Blitz3D is a commercial closed source program, and its restriction to DirectX 7 is becoming somewhat limiting. In the mean time I'm developing as far as I can with Blitz3D.
Is this still the case?
I understand the reasoning behind favoring C++ over BASIC, and I also see a larger number of potential contributors if BC were to be rewritten in C++. So, overall from a development point of view I completely share your sentiments.
Which open source 3D engines have you considered so far? Have you looked into OpenSceneGraph (OpenGL)?
What is your opinion on OpenSceneGraph? As far as I know it has built-in support for multiple screens and windows, too.
However, personally I would consider yet another option - not just a specific C++ 3D library, but a more efficient approach:
Have you considered re-implementing BridgeCommand on top of any other open source simulators that are written in C++? That would seem like much less work, and also a much more tangible task. You could sort of "piggy-back" BridgeCommand onto another open source simulator, sort of like a "Mod" (e.g. counterstrike is a mod for half life).
This approach would seem to me like a "win/win situation", because I guess it should be much easier to adapt a car, train (or flight) simulator to support naval vessels than rewriting a cross platform simulation completely from scratch, especially for anyone who is already familiar with C++
Have you done any research regarding C++ based open source simulators that could be used as the foundation for a re-implementation of BridgeCommand in C++ ? Personally, I find the whole thought of re-implementing a program like BridgeCommand pretty daunting.
I am more and more thinking that this would be the right thing to do, because one would get so many things "for free", i.e. a scenery engine, weather support, a community, an actively maintained project and so much more.
BridgeCommand would then mostly boil down to being a custom modification of an existing program. So any C++ work necessary, would mostly end up being patches for an existing project, instead of a completely new project.
I guess most of the artwork could be reused, just by importing/converting the 3D models and textures.
Please let me know what you think
regards
- rodriguez