* Chris -- Monday 01 November 2004 21:21:
I have a question regarding this type of
senerio. If I have two instances of FlightGear going on two different
machines with a program talking between the two providing updates etc.
Does that mean that I could see the other user's plane fly by etc?

These are two different things that only share the fact that they run
over network. What you are asking for -- multi"player" capability --
is implemented, but does AFAIK not work very well and it isn't a high
priority on the developers' list. Actually, none of the core developers
works on this. It's rather outsiders that occasionally discuss it and
end up with half-finished work before they drop off the mailing lists.

The other networking/IO capabilities aren't thought for multi"player" use,
but for serious tasks, such as teacher/pupil interaction, master/slave
architecture (render side windows on slaves, etc.), interaction with
hardware (fgfs is used in commercial flight simulators!), using fgfs
as a display for data streams (e.g. from flight data recorders) etc.
fgfs is at the same time client and server, and these things are very
well developed and functional. Note, that FlightGear is not a game
or scenery viewer, but a serious simulator. :-)

m.


PS: http://www.flightgear.org/